The Chamber - Softcover

Dean, Will

Softcover

ISBN 10: 166802117X ISBN 13: 9781668021170

Verlag: Atria Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

And Then There Were None meets The Last Breath in this tense and suspenseful locked-room thriller that takes place inside a hyperbaric chamber from the author of the “brilliant, twisted, and oh so clever” (Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author) novel The Last Thing to Burn.

Six experienced saturation divers are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. Calm and professional, they know that rapid decompression would be fatal and so they work in shifts, breathing helium, and surviving in hot, close quarters.

Then one of them is found dead in his bunk.

With four days of decompression to go before the locked hatch to the chamber can be safely opened, the group must watch one another’s backs at all times. And when another diver is discovered unresponsive, everyone is on edge. What…or who…is taking them out one by one? And will any of them still be alive by the time the four days is up or will paranoia, exhaustion, suspicion, and pressure destroy them all?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands of the United Kingdom. After studying law at the London School of Economics and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a wooden house in a vast forest, and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. His debut novel, Dark Pines, was selected for Zoe Ball’s book club on ITV, shortlisted for the National Book Award (UK), The Guardian’s Not the Booker prize, and was named a Telegraph book of the year. He is also the author of This Is Not the End, The Last One, First Born, The Last Thing to Burn, which was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and The Chamber.

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Chapter 1 1
THE SEA DOES not care for your lost loves or your heartache. It is ambivalent to your fears, your trauma, your mortal desires. The sea knows only itself; sprawled across the world, smothering the depths, concealing both truths and horrors. The sea does not know love from hate.

The sea merely is.

I leave Aberdeen behind and step up onto the gangplank of the Deep Topaz, our DSV or Diving Support Vessel. I have already said my goodbyes. Salt breeze in my eyes, wind stinging, I climb on board with my bag. Mike Elliot is waiting for me, sun illuminating his weathered face and green eyes, picking out the silver in his eyebrows.

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen.” His San Diego accent has been softened by a decade of North Sea life.

“Dickens?”

“The other guy. How’s life?”

“Same ship, different day.”

He smiles and I catch sight of the military tattoos on his forearms, some of them undisturbed, others camouflaged by fresh ink. Regrets and mistakes. Reinvention. I pull out my camcorder and he makes his excuses and leaves me alone.

I aim it awkwardly at myself, the flip-out screen displaying my pale, pointy face. No makeup or hairstyling. Home-dyed hair almost too short for a ponytail. My mother used to call me pretty, if you make a real big effort, and she was being generous. “This is our home for the next month,” I say self-consciously. “Twenty-eight of those days will be at pressure, or at depth, as we say, at least it will for Mike and me and the other four saturation divers. We will live on board this ship, in a small pressurized chamber, and then we will descend in pairs via a Diving Bell to work shifts on the seabed. The pay is five or ten times what we might earn onshore doing construction work. We are well compensated for the risk.”

I end the recording. The footage, which will be edited into a short film by one of the largest diving firms in Scotland, might help bring more women into the industry. I feel it’s my duty to at least try.

Deep inside the vessel I discover Jumbo, a veteran Sat diver from Liverpool. Some might call him my Sat Daddy—an experienced diver who once took me under his wing—although he and I have never used that term. Jumbo is short and dark and muscular, and he has the eyes of a much older man. His mother is Irish and his father is St. Lucian, and he is one of the most respected divers working British waters.

“Ears,” he says, his accent still strong despite living in Cawdor, east of Inverness, for decades. “Have your ears ready, Brooke.”

I greet the medic, Gonzales.

“Ellen Brooke?”

I nod and she asks me to take a seat in a chair. We are most likely the only two women on this ship. Long curly black hair and a serious, uneasy expression. She uses an otoscope to check my ears because they are particularly vulnerable to changes in pressure. One thing Jumbo told me years ago: Sat divers need guts and good ears.

Gonzales measures my blood pressure and checks my breathing, her frown intensifying.

“All good?” I ask.

She clears me and we exchange a glance and I am not sure what to make of it. She seems ill at ease. When Jumbo is looked over he pulls off his shirt. Evidence of a life of work: scars, inside and out. Removing his shirt isn’t flirtation and it isn’t bragging; it is Jumbo proving he isn’t too old yet for the job. I have never doubted him in this respect, but I fear he may be starting to doubt himself.

Medics wield a surprising amount of power over us saturation divers. They decide if we work or if we go home. They have access to extremely potent drugs. They have authority with little oversight, at least on board the ship.

I have known one or two to relish that power.

A gull squawks.

The Deep Topaz is steaming out into the North Sea past Buchan Deep, east of Aberdeen. A desolate horizon devoid of landmarks or reassurance. The world out here appears blank and untouched, but crisscrossed along the seabed beneath us is an extensive labyrinth of wellheads and pipelines, manifolds and connectors. This is an unseen universe, and only saturation divers have access to it.

I am not permitted to film the briefing from the captain, Lennox. He instructs us, in serious, gruff tones, to stay safe. He says anyone can call an “all stop” at any time. That is technically true, but you had better have a darn good reason considering how the ship costs over a hundred thousand pounds each day to run, and the only reason it is running—and the ninety or so crew are being paid—is to keep us six divers alive. The captain reiterates that safety is paramount. He instructs us all to take our time and avoid injuries.

The other divers are on either side of me. Mike and Jumbo—rugged, long-limbed American and compact Brit—are the oldest and most experienced. Both military men, they are followed in age by me and André and Spock. Then there is Tea-Bag, our resident rookie.

“I’m Ellen Brooke,” I say, holding out my hand, although I doubt he needs the introduction. “What’s with the nickname?”

Tea-Bag shrugs.

André, named after the vertiginous wrestler of the 1970s and’80s, says, “Lad keeps his bag in his mug, don’t you, Tea-Bag, mate? You leave it right in there.”

I would guess Tea-Bag is about a decade younger than me. Thirty or so. Olive skin, big brown eyes, square jaw. I overheard him talking to his mother in a different language from the docks before we stepped aboard. You can tell when someone is talking to a parent, reassuring them, no matter what language they are speaking. He says, “I like stronger tea than you, André. I won’t tolerate a weak brew.”

André smiles a big toothy grin—he has a significant gap between his front teeth—and with a broad Nottinghamshire accent, looks down at the rookie and says, “Third time in the bin, is it?”

Tea-Bag swallows, pulls back his shoulders. “Second.”

André’s smile flattens somewhat. He looks more circumspect. “You’ll be all right, lad.”

We don dive company overalls and hard hats and head out on deck. Gusts of squally wind; the sound of waves crashing. The deckhands are checking valves and cables, and the crane operator is running through his checklist. A tall, upright man with a tidy white beard and piercing blue eyes steps over to us. I smile as soon as I recognize him.

“Should be straightforward,” says Halvor Magnussen, soft-spoken in spite of his build. He is a man devoid of small talk, and a legendary Sat diver himself back in the days when life expectancy in this profession was far shorter than it is now. “One-and-a-half-ton lift bag.”

Halvor talks us through the work, his Norwegian accent stronger on certain words than others, and we listen. The sea isn’t calm but it isn’t stormy either, and the last of the gulls from land up and leave as we head out into deeper waters. All, that is, except one. Behind my colleagues I catch sight of a large black gull spread-eagled on the timber boards, its wings extended. The bird’s neck is broken, its head loose and set at some ungodly angle. Its beak is slightly ajar. I should be paying attention to Halvor’s technical directions, but I watch on as a young deckhand in a hard hat picks the gull up gently in his gloved hand, primary feathers splaying in the breeze, gemstone eyes shining, and throws it unceremoniously over the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atria Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 166802117X
• ISBN 13: 9781668021170
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 332
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar