Crude Carrier

by Rex Burns

  “Yes.” The second officer kept his eyes on the readouts and dials, glancing now and then at the Sweding machine’s load projections. But the defensive angle of his shoulders showed he was very much aware of Raiford. “Where did you say you worked before coming aboard?”

  “I didn’t. I’d been out of a job for six months. Got laid off, saw an ad that said electrical engineers were needed aboard tankers.”

  “So you decided to play jack-tar for a while.”

  “It’s a job. Free room and board and the pay’s not bad.”

  “That’s what we’re all in it for, isn’t it? The money.” He fine-tuned another dial and glanced at Raiford. “A river of money, this business. And we all need more. Never seem to have enough, eh?”

  Raiford held his gaze. “A man can always use a bit more.”

  After a pause, Shockley nodded. “Yeah. We all can.” Then he spoke as much to himself as to Raiford. “Damn right we all can!”

  Raiford wasn’t quite sure what that exchange had been about. At first he sensed an implied meaning, a vague offer of some kind for some service equally vague. But then Shockley fell silent, turning from Raiford to keep his attention on the display boards. After a long while, the Sweding machine gave a readout and the pudgy man said, “We’re reaching ullage on all tanks.”

  Whatever made Shockley defensive and sullen began to ebb, revealing a glimmer of the man’s pleasure in doing his job well. “Now we leave just enough air space for the cargo to expand when we reach the tropics.” He rattled numbers on the keypad. “Has to be exact—too much space and we go light on the cargo and lose money. Doesn’t take much, either. A meter low in each of those tanks adds up to a lot of tons of oil. Owners get damned upset if that happens. Too little space and the expansion could make the old Aurora split her seams. It’s all programmed in the computer by the chaps ashore, but I like to check anyway. I mean, their arses aren’t sitting on all this oil, are they?”

  “How long before the computer does it all?”

  “And I’m out of a job?” Shockley shook his head. “Damned close now. Endangered species, that’s what we are. But nobody’s looking after us because of that.” The sullenness returned. “We have to look out for ourselves.”

  “So I better not plan on long-term employment?”

  “Your kind will do all right. Always do.”

  “My kind? What’s that mean?”

  Whatever Shockley had been about to blurt, he changed his mind. Instead, he said, “Computer whizzes. Electronics specialists. Automation means a vessel can’t do without you. Me, I’m just here to keep an eye on the vessel and these bloody machines. Wouldn’t know what the hell to fix if one acted up.”

  The Sweding machine gave another chuckle and burped out a sheet of printout. Shockley ripped it off. “Here’s our final projection and I have to get it up to the bridge. Why don’t you go up on deck and watch the port inspector verify the ullage?”

  They both found relief in leaving the pump control room and each other. The heat of afternoon had thickened the sea haze. A misty, pearly glare surrounded the Aurora Victorious and two far-off tankers at their floats. The shore was seven miles distant and invisible, but at some vague distance, the Ju’aymah oil platform was a dark line pimpled with scattered buildings and linked by causeways to clusters of oil meters and manifolds. Light standards were spaced along the sea island’s edges, and a tall mast bearing a flashing red light warned aircraft. The surrounding horizon was lost in the gauzy light. One of the neighboring ships, deceptively small against the milky nothingness where the horizon should have been, rode empty and high. Reflected on the level sea were the red of its lower hull and, in the black paint above, the white of its load lines. Another tanker was nearing full, its black flank standing less than half as tall as the empty ship. Raiford figured his own vessel must look like that by now: the lowest part of the main deck appeared to be almost level with the water, and a lot of the white load markings on her bow had sunk out of sight beneath the ocean’s flat surface.

  Third Officer Li stood in the shade of the island, dressed in a yellow T-shirt, white ducks, and a sun-faded gimme cap that said MOPAR. He greeted Raiford with a smile that hinted he, too, had heard what happened. “Soon we start voyage back—much chipping rust, much painting.”

  “That’s what we do on the way back?”

  “Oh, yes. Maintenance schedule must be followed. Shore office sends it out, tells us what to take care of now, what to do tomorrow. Always, with a full ship, we clean and paint.” He explained, “Full tanks are much safer than empty ones for chipping and sanding—not so much fumes.”

  Far down the green deck shimmering with heat, the tall figure of Captain Boggs, the squat one of Pressler, and two or three crewmen watched a kneeling shape reach an arm into an open Butterworth plate.

  “What’s that guy doing?”

  “Oil terminal inspector. Measures empty space above the level of cargo—learns how much oil exactly in each tank.”

  “All the computers and electronics and flow gauges we have, and that guy still has to measure the oil with a dipstick?”

  Li laughed. “Shipper’s final check. Not too easy to give false reading on a stick. Also tells Captain Boggs how much oil to jettison in bad weather.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Heavy seas. If a vessel rides too low, no freeboard. Can ship water into boilers, can break apart. Very dangerous, too much load in heavy seas.” He pointed to the high-riding tanker on the horizon. “You see the freeboard lines and Plimsoll mark on that bow over there?”

  Raiford spotted the short white horizontal load lines that made little ladders above and below a white circle that was bisected by its own longer horizontal line. “What do you call that? The Plimsoll mark?”

  “Yes. Look at that other ship. Almost all its freeboard lines are under water. Plimsoll mark’s right at water. Very loaded vessel, like us. Top is load line for tropical seas. Next line, just at water, is load line for summer seas. Below is load line for winter seas. Before, we use winter load line going around Cape Town. Now we use the summer line to carry more oil. Good for owners but not so good for a safe ship.” The slight man’s shoulders rose and fell with an acceptance of his fate and of decisions out of his hands. “It’s a gamble. If the sea gets too rough, we jettison enough oil to stay afloat. Maybe five hundred tons, sometimes a lot more.” He laughed and covered his mouth. “A lot of money. But Confucius say, better half a load than no load at all.”

  “Confucius said that?”

  Another laugh. “Maybe.”

  It was a glimpse behind the man’s reserve to a humor that Raiford had not suspected. It told him that the third mate had, indeed, heard of the morning’s adventure and was now willing to admit this giant Westerner into a level of acquaintance generally denied other round-eyes. “Well, it’s nearly October. What’s that, springtime in the Southern Hemisphere?”

  “Yes. Not so bad as July and August. We have a good northern monsoon down to the equator and calm seas. But below Madagascar maybe storms. Big waves—big!” His gesture motioned toward the island towering above them. “So big they break the glass on the navigation bridge!”

  Raiford looked up the tall face of white steel with its tiers of square, sun-glinted windows. “That’s fifty feet up.”

  A happy smile. “Oh yes.”

  “You have seen a wave that high?”

  “Oh yes. First trip when I was a cadet. Scared me very much!” He pointed toward the bow and made a rolling motion with his hand. “Came over the bow, bam! Smashed glass in the bridge. Killed the helmsman. Hell of a mess.”

  “This was on a tanker like this?”

  “Oh yes. Aramco Sheik.”

  Raiford looked up again. Maybe fifty. Forty feet for sure. With him on this tub? Suddenly, despite its size and solidity, the tanker did not feel so large and safe.


  The cluster of men began to separate. The inspector, the captain, and a crewman headed for the ladder that hung over the side down to the landing platform and a motor launch moored to it. The first mate strode quickly toward the island. Other hands began closing and dogging the inspection plates, and another mounted his bicycle for a sprint toward Li and an exchange of rapid Chinese.

  “We drop lines now,” said Li. “Get under way.” He seemed eager to have the ship free of its moorings. It was a mood that the rest of the crew shared. Almost imperceptibly, following a brief scramble of crewmen, bleated commands from the Tannoy, and a splash of heavy mooring lines, the ship, with a deep blast of its hoarse whistle, began to swing through the flat sea. It created a heavy bulge of water that gradually turned into a deep wake fanning away from the moving hull in oily undulations. As the massive craft turned, Raiford could make out through the haze on the western horizon something congealed that drifted past in dimly marbled patterns. Sometimes it was white, sometimes pale brown. Then he recognized it: sand and rock where the desert came down to the water’s edge. It was all he saw of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

  XIII

  Julie used five minutes of the stripe on the back of her BT telephone card before she located a number for Reginald Pierce on Primrose Lane, Rochester, Kent. By then, it was almost eleven at night and too late to call. All the books on “How to Be a Detective” offered techniques for the care and handling of interviewees, and ringing a telephone so late in the evening was not highly recommended.

  She transferred lines at Oxford Circus for Victoria Station, letting the first train pass to note if any other passenger stayed behind on the vacant platform. On the following train, she moved rearward through three or four of the almost empty cars and exited just as the doors were closing at the next stop. Then she caught the next train, scanning the few passengers for any familiar face. All the standard maneuvers told her she was clean.

  At Victoria Station, she dropped ten pence into the turnstile that guarded the stairs down to the women’s loo. This late, it was empty of all but a few bundles of rags sleeping here and there on the ill-lit landing or against the glaring white tiles of the washroom. She took her time, listening for footsteps on the echoing floor. Climbing up the stairs, she paused inside the turnstile to survey the vast and cold station with its closed shops and slowly moving janitors. Their wide brooms slid noiselessly across empty concrete floors. Half shadowed against distant closed shop fronts, an armed policeman rocked slowly back and forth on tired feet.

  Departure times and station names on the flutterboard listed the next train to Rochester at 04:59—a milk run that stopped at every station. Flickering lights on the notice board monotonously telegraphed its messages, among them the familiar “Delays Southeast Due to Leaves on the Line.” Another string of glowing letters stated that morning expresses to Dover started at 06:00 and ran every thirty minutes through the rush hours, stopping at—among other stations—Rochester. Julie noted a couple of likely times and then went back down the wide and echoing stairs to the Tube to feed her day pass into the turnstile slot. The little card did not pop up on the other side of the gate this time. Julie glanced at the clock over the closed ticket windows: 23:58. This long day’s pass had expired.

  A hazy midmorning sun brought out bands of yellow leaves that marked the hedgerows. Between them, the fields were bright green with recent rain or plowed to bare, dull earth that waited for winter seed. Pale gray sheep dotted gentle emerald hills, and then the farmland would disappear behind an abrupt blur of stained and mossy brick. The train sped past long and narrow gardens serving row homes whose back doors faced the railway. Next would come a cluster of apartment façades with blank and curtained windows overlooking the track, followed by the sudden and close graffiti on retaining walls and concrete platforms. Smaller stations clattered past the windows, and then they lurched and rocked across rail junctures through thinning houses and into the green countryside again.

  It took a full hour to reach Rochester. Once a major port, the small city perched on the high banks of the slow Medway River. The train curved and slowed as it crossed a trestle bridge over the muddy flats and brown water of the river’s estuary. A handful of tired-looking coastal freighters and lines of grimy barges were anchored at the sides of the channel. On the far shore, a large and modern marina held rows of pleasure craft—sail and motor—all battened against autumn weather and looking lifeless on the flat water. The south bank rose steeply, held by stone retaining walls. Roadbeds angled up between redbrick buildings toward the tall remnant of a shattered stone keep that lifted above slate roofs like a broken, yellowed molar. Julie’s guidebook said the fortress had been founded by the Romans, built by the Normans, and destroyed by Cromwell.

  Rochester platform, like most of the others, was short on paint but long on litter and warning posters. At midmorning, with outbound trains almost empty, Julie was one of only four adults to alight in the thin sunshine and damp, chilly air. The small group made its way through the station to the cul-de-sac that opened on a busy thoroughfare. Two of her fellow passengers were women, one white-haired and bent with osteoporosis, the other heavyset and wrestling two small children. The only male was a teenager with a half-shaved scalp and gold rings dangling from his ears, nose, and eyebrows. All of which made Julie feel better about being followed. If the punk rocker was a tail, he wouldn’t be hard to see; if either of the women were, she could outrun them.

  A small knot of drivers stood out of the wind near a line of cabs, smoking and talking. As Julie neared the first car, a beefy figure raised his eyebrows. “Need a taxi, miss?”

  The red-faced driver knew where Primrose Lane was—“A bit west, miss. Not too far, you’ll see”—and talked almost as fast as the meter ran about the local landscape and what Julie might be doing in Rochester. Only half listening, Julie said yes, she was American; yes, it was her first visit to the town; yes, the castle was an interesting ruin. No, she did not know that Charles Dickens had spent a good part of his childhood here.

  “You’ll have to see the Dickens Museum, you will, miss—just down the High Street from the station. People come from all over to see that. And the Dickens festivals. Two of ’em: Christmas Festival in December, Summer Festival in June. Quite the affairs, both, but my favorite’s the Christmas Festival. People all dressed in the costume of the day, music, food—”

  The scratchy voice described that festival then shifted to the Summer Festival and listed its virtues as the cab swerved through automobile and bus traffic, lorries and vans, bicycles and crossing pedestrians heading to work. Up a steep hill, past wide football fields into neighborhoods of row houses, then half-timbered duplexes with small gardens, larger single homes with deeper lawns and taller fencing, and an occasional estate sheltered behind high brick walls. Finally the taxi turned into a winding lane with little traffic and few cars parked along the curbless verge. Pairs of semidetached homes were spaced down the gently curving street. “Here you are, miss. Number 42.” The cabbie was impressed by the address. “Quite the nice neighborhood your friends live in.” He took Julie’s money and handed her a smudged business card. “Just telephone this number for a lift back, will you, miss?”

  Julie, eyes on the plain white car parked a bit down from the house, nodded. Ahead of it was another white car with a blue light mounted on the roof. On the door was a silver-and-blue seven-pointed star topped by a crown. The center of the star held a rearing white horse. Around its borders blue letters spelled “Kent County Constabulary.” An impassive policeman in a dark blue uniform answered her knock. When he heard what Julie wanted, he frowned and said, “You’ll wait right here, please,” and closed the door.

  Two or three minutes later, a short, blond man in a light brown suit opened the door to study Julie for a long moment before speaking. There was no surprise or admiration in his stare, merely assessment. “Might I ask what business you have with Mr. Pie
rce, please?” It was the familiar way police had of asking a question but making a demand. The corners of the man’s mouth were pinched, and an unfocused, half-stifled anger radiated from him.

  “I want to interview him about an accident that took place aboard his ship a few months ago.” Julie showed her private investigator’s identification card.

  The policeman read it carefully. It bore Julie’s photograph and looked very official. But it carried no legal weight at all in the States, and apparently even less in England. “Might I see your passport, please?”

  Julie handed him the dark blue booklet. The man read first the identification page and then leafed carefully through the sheets for the stamps marking British Customs.

  “You came in through Heathrow two days ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Might I ask where you’ve spent these last two days?”

  “London. I talked to the people at Hercules Maritime who own Mr. Pierce’s vessel, and to the cargo broker who handles that ship.”

  “And where in London are you staying, Miss Campbell?”

  “Hotel Russell, Russell Square. Has something happened to Mr. Pierce?”

  The policeman ignored the question. He slipped Julie’s passport into his coat pocket. “I’d like a word with you, if you don’t mind. Would you accompany me to the police station, please?”

  She would accompany whoever had her passport. Which they both knew.

  The policeman’s title was inspector, his name was Moore, and his assignment was homicide. Julie could picture the blond man as a schoolchild, pink cheeked, smaller than his mates, with wide blue eyes and a round pink mouth singing in the church choir on a village Sunday. But that child had been lost somewhere and what remained was the slightly curly blond hair, thinning now, the sallow cheeks of an office dweller, and eyes whose innocence had been replaced by a flat and almost emotionless distance as he stared across a Styrofoam cup and nodded. “Go on.”