‘Hello, Thelma,’ their guide said. ‘Three teas. Lunch smells good.’

‘Ratatouille, steak and chips, or chilli.’ Thelma poured tea from a huge pot.

‘Canteen’s open twenty-four hours,’ the guide told Rebus. ‘Most guys, when they first arrive, they overeat. The puddings are lethal.’ He slapped his stomach and laughed. ‘Isn’t that right, Thelma?’ Rebus recalled the man in the Yardarm telling him much the same thing.

Even seated, Rebus’s legs felt shaky. He put it down to the flight. Their guide introduced himself as Eric, and said that seeing how they were police officers, they could skip the introductory safety video.

‘Though by rights I’m supposed to show you it.’

Lumsden and Rebus shook their heads, and Lumsden asked how close the platform was to decommissioning.

‘Last oil’s already been pumped out,’ Eric said. ‘Pump a final load of seawater into the reservoir and most of us will ship out. Maintenance crew only, until they decide what to do with her. They’d better make up their minds soon, manning this even just with maintenance shifts is an expensive business. You still have to get the supplies out here, the shift changeovers, and you still need the safety ship. It all costs money.’

‘Which is all right so long as Bannock is producing oil?’

‘Exactly,’ said Eric. ‘But when it’s not producing … well, the accountants start having palpitations. We lost a couple of days’ worth last month, some problem with the heat exchangers. They were out here, waving their calculators about …’ Eric laughed.

He was nothing like the roustabout of legend, the myth of the roughneck. He was a skinny five and a half feet and wore steel-rimmed glasses above a sharp nose and pointed chin. Rebus looked at the other men in the canteen and tried to equate them with the picture of the oil ‘bear’, face blackened with crude, biceps expanding as he fought to contain a gusher. Eric saw him looking.

‘The three over there,’ meaning the checked shirts, ‘work in the Control Room. Nearly everything these days is computerised: logic circuits, computer monitoring … You should ask for a look round, it’s like NASA or something, and it only takes three or four people to work the whole system. We’ve come a long way from “Texas Tea”.’

‘We saw some protesters in a boat,’ Lumsden said, scooping sugar into his mug.

‘They’re off their noggins. These are dangerous waters for a craft that size. Plus they circle too close, all it’d take is a gust to blow them into the platform.’

Rebus turned to Lumsden. ‘You’re the Grampian Police presence here, maybe you should do something.’

Lumsden snorted and turned to Eric. ‘They haven’t done anything illegal yet, have they?’

‘All they’re breaking so far are the unwritten maritime rules. When you’ve finished your tea, you’ll want to see Willie Ford, is that right?’

‘Right,’ Rebus said.

‘I told him we’d meet him in the recky room.’

‘I’d like to see Allan Mitchison’s room, too.’