Offshore by Lucy Pepperdine

Author:Lucy Pepperdine
Language: eng
Format: epub

The walls of the roofless hut were peppered with shrapnel holes and the door hung out of kilter on its top hinge. Copious black smoke and tongues of orange and yellow flame poured from every aperture.

The silver clad trio fought the blaze with everything they learned from their industry training courses, hammering it into submission with high power water jets and dousing sprays. Eventually clouds of steam replaced smoke, until that too dispersed to reveal the scale of destruction.

The roof and the upper part of the walls of the hut were gone, blasted to oblivion. Nothing more substantial than the doorway, the lower three feet of wall and the bolts fastening them to the deck remained. Inside were only pieces of twisted metal and a pile of sodden black ash. The fire-fighters continued to damp down until they were satisfied every ember had been extinguished.

With less than five minutes of air left they removed their breathing apparatus, made up their equipment and stood down.

Eddie released the sweating and exhausted men to change into their regular clothes and take some rest, before advising Lydia and Brewer they could now safely return to the lounge.

Then he and Shaw went through the regulation post operational procedures.

They checked the equipment and clothing for damage before stowing it in lockers, and while Shaw cleaned the breathing apparatus masks and fitted fresh tanks ready for next time, Eddie made all the notes necessary to complete an incident report.

It was full dark when he and Shaw donned hard hats and purple nitrile gloves, and under the harsh glare of deck lights and mobile arcs, began the investigation.

“Smell that?” said Eddie.

Shaw took a deep inhalation. “Acetylene?”

“Yep. And?”

“Paraffin, and …” Another sniff. “… trace of meths?”

“Three out of three.”

Using additional light from their torches, they carefully picked their way further into the wrecked welding hut to dig around in the ashes and search out the seat of the fire.

“Something here,” called Shaw, and got down for a closer look. “Oh, holy shit.” He got up again. “I think you’d better see this, skip.”

Eddie made his way over to where Shaw stood.

“What have you found?”

“This.” Shaw trained his torch beam on the lump at his feet. “It’s Daz isn’t it?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“Who else could it be?”

The body lay on its side, curled like a comma, knees bent, both arms contracted in a typical pugilistic attitude as the muscles beneath coagulated and shortened with the intense heat, blackened skin shrunk so tight against the underlying structures that it had split and cracked and flaked away, exposing bones and teeth beneath.

The clothing had been burned off, no hair remained, and the eyes, those once sharp cold grey eyes full of indolence and mischief, were no more than black pits lined with globs of gelatinous poached egg white, their substance boiled away.

Shaw got down again. “Look here,” he said, indicating the body’s wrists with a coloured finger.

Clearly visible in the film of carbonised skin were the slits deliberately cut by Euterich, opened by the heat into wide grinning gaps.

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