Very reassuring.
The flunkey who’d handed him the brochure had said he hoped Rebus had brought something to read.
‘Why?’
‘Because the flight can take three hours total, and most of the time it’s too noisy for chit-chat.’
Three hours. Rebus had gone into the terminal’s shop and bought himself a book. He knew the journey comprised two stages — Sumburgh first, and then a Super Puma helicopter out to Bannock. Three hours out, three hours back. He yawned, checked his watch. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock yet. He’d skipped breakfast — didn’t like the idea of boaking it back up on the flight. His total consumption this morning: four paracetamol, one glass of orange juice. He held his hands out in front of him: tremors he could put down to aftershock.
There were two anecdotes he liked in the brochure: he learned that a ‘derrick’ was named after a seventeenth-century hangman; and that the first oil had come ashore at Cruden Bay, where Bram Stoker once took his holidays. From one kind of vampirism to another... only the brochure didn’t put it like that.
There was a television on in front of him, playing a safety video. It told you what to do if your helicopter went down into the North Sea. It all looked very slick on the video: nobody panicked. They slid out of their seats, located the inflatable life-rafts and launched them on to the calm waters of an indoor pool.
‘Holy God, what happened to you?’
He looked up. Ludovic Lumsden was standing there, newspaper folded in his jacket pocket, a beaker of coffee in his hand.
‘Mugged,’ Rebus said. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?’
‘Mugged?’
‘Two men were waiting for me last night outside the hotel. Threw me over the wall into the gardens, then stuck a gun against my head.’ Rebus rubbed the lump on his temple. It felt worse than it looked.
Lumsden sat down a couple of seats away, looked aghast. ‘Did you get a look at them?’
‘No.’
Lumsden put his coffee on the floor. ‘Did they take anything?’
‘They weren’t after anything. They just had a message for me.’
‘What?’
Rebus tapped his temple. ‘A thumping.’
Lumsden frowned. ‘That was the message?’
‘I think I was supposed to read between the lines. You wouldn’t be any good at translating, would you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’ Rebus stared at him hard. ‘What are you doing here?’
Lumsden was staring at the tiled floor, mind elsewhere. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Why?’
‘Oil Liaison. You’re visiting a rig. I should be there.’
‘Keeping an eye on me?’
‘It’s procedure.’ He looked towards the television. ‘Don’t worry about ditching, I’ve had the training. What it boils down to is, you’ve got about five minutes from the time you hit the water.’
‘And after five minutes?’
‘Hypothermia.’ Lumsden lifted his coffee cup, drank from it. ‘So pray we don’t hit a storm out there.’
After Sumburgh Airport, there was nothing but sea and a sky wider than any Rebus had seen before, thin clouds strung across it. The twin-engined Puma flew low and loud. The interior was cramped, and so were the survival suits they’d been made to put on. Rebus’s was a bright orange one-piece with a hood, and he’d been ordered to keep it zipped up to his chin. The pilot wanted him to keep his hood up, too, but Rebus found that sitting down with the hood tight across his head, the legs of the suit threatened to dissect his scrotum. He’d been in choppers before — back in army days — but for short hops only. Designs might have changed over the years, but the Puma didn’t sound any quieter than the old buckets the army had used. Everyone, however, wore ear-protectors, through which the pilot could talk to them. Two other men, contract engineers, flew with them. From flying height, the North Sea looked tranquil, a gentle rise and fall showing the currents. The water looked black, but that was just cloud cover. The brochure had gone into great detail concerning anti-pollution measures. Rebus tried to read his book, but couldn’t. It juddered on his knees, blurring the words, and he couldn’t keep his mind on the story anyway. Lumsden was looking out of the window, squinting into the light. Rebus knew Lumsden was keeping an eye on him, and he was doing so because Rebus had touched a nerve last night. Lumsden tapped his shoulder, pointed through the window.
There were three rigs below them, off to the east. A tanker was moving away from one of them. Tall flares sent bright yellow flames licking into the sky. The pilot told them they would pass to the west of the Ninian and Brent fields before reaching Bannock. Later, he came back on the radio.
‘This is Bannock coming up now.’
Rebus looked past Lumsden’s shoulder, saw the single platform coming into view. The tallest structure on it was the flare, but there were no flames. That was because Bannock was coming to the end of its useful life. Very little gas and oil were left to exploit. Next to the flare was a tower, like a cross between an industrial chimney and a space rocket. It was painted with red and white stripes, like the flare. It was probably the drilling tower. Rebus made out the words T-Bird Oil on the jacket below it, along with the block number — 211/7. Three large cranes stood against one edge of the platform, while a whole corner was given over to a helipad, painted green with a yellow circle surrounding the letter H. Rebus thought: one gust could have us over the side. There was a two hundred foot drop to the waiting sea. Orange lifeboats clung to the underside of the jacket, and in another corner sat layers of white portacabins, like bulk containers. A ship sat alongside the platform — the safety and support vessel.
‘Hello,’ said the pilot, ‘what’s this?’
He’d spotted another boat, circling the platform at a distance of maybe half a mile.
‘Protesters,’ he said. ‘Bloody idiots.’
Lumsden looked out of his window, pointing. Rebus saw it: a narrow boat painted orange, its sails down. It looked to be very close to the safety ship.
‘They could get themselves killed,’ Lumsden said. ‘And good riddance.’
‘I do like a copper with a balanced view.’
They swept out to sea again and banked sharply, then headed for the heliport. Rebus was deep in prayer as they seemed to weave wildly, only fifty feet or so above the deck. He could see the helipad, then whitecapped water, then the helipad again. And then they were down, landing on what looked like a fishing net, covering the white capital H. The doors opened and Rebus removed his ear-protectors. The last words he heard were, ‘Keep your head down when you get out.’
He kept his head down when he got out. Two men in orange overalls, wearing yellow hard hats and ear-protectors, led them off the helipad and handed out hard hats. The engineers were led one way, Rebus and Lumsden another.
‘You’ll probably want a mug of tea after that,’ their guide said. He saw that Rebus was having trouble with the hat. ‘You can adjust the strap.’ He showed him how. There was a fierce wind blowing, and Rebus said as much. The man laughed.
‘This is dead calm,’ he yelled into the wind.
Rebus felt like he wanted to hang on to something. It wasn’t just the wind, it was the feeling of how fragile this whole enterprise was. He’d expected to see and smell oil, but the most obvious product around here wasn’t oil — it was seawater. The North Sea surrounded him, massive compared to this speck of welded metal. It insinuated itself into his lungs; the salt gusts stung his cheeks. It rose in vast waves as if to engulf him. It seemed bigger than the sky above it, a force as threatening as any in nature. The guide was smiling.