The Fish Kisser Read Online Free PDF

Amsterdam.
    â€œHey. Barman. Whash your name anyway,” slurred one of the detectives.
    â€œIt’s Len, Sir.”
    â€œYeah, Len, baby. Uh, what’s happening. Can’t you keep this bloody boat still.” Detective Constable Doug Smythe, with many years of drinking under his belt and a maze of flamboyant capillaries on his nose, was sober enough to realize the swaying motion was not just in his head. But the other detective, a younger man with brush cut hair, and a goatee, which he believed fashionable, had flopped forward against the bar and wound his arm around a stanchion to prevent himself from sliding off the chair.
    Sergeant Jones had ventured to the washroom, and was now making his way back across the deserted dance floor, waltzing back and forth in tune to the reeling of the ship. Sickness had left its mark—slicks of mucous stained his shirt and right trouser leg, and a large dollop of vomit perched on the toe of his right shoe.
    The obstacle-free dance floor presented no real challenge to Jones, other than remaining upright with nothing solid to grasp. But the stairs, tables, andchairs of the bar area were an entirely different terrain, yet to be conquered. The Calypso Bar occupied the entire aft section of the ship—a cavernous auditorium of six semi-circular terraces overlooking the dance floor, each terrace reached from the one below by a wide flight of eight stairs. The bar itself was almost five decks higher than the dance floor, and only a ship’s architect with an outrageous sense of humour could have placed the bar at the top of the incline and the washroom at the bottom.
    Jones fell as he climbed the steps to the first terrace and was catapulted into a table by a particularly violent pitch. Grabbing a chair, he held on, bracing himself against the next lurch. Seconds later the ship slammed into another wave. “Hold tight!” he shouted to himself, grasping the chair tightly, but it was unattached and crashed with him down the eight steps to the hardwood floor below.
    â€œBuggerin’ ell!” he screamed, his words lost in the vastness of the almost deserted auditorium. He tried the stairs again, only climbing three before being shaken off balance, then lying on his back on the dance floor, swearing at the ceiling fifty feet above, unaware his left wrist had been shattered in the first fall.
    â€œI think your mate needs a hand,” said Len, watching from his perch at the bar, giving D.C. Smythe a poke.
    â€œOh shit,” he replied, dragging his younger colleague with him to the sergeant’s aid.
    With the detectives no longer at the bar, Len seized his chance to escape and in less than thirty seconds ripped the cash drawer from the till, flicked off the lights, slammed and locked the bar grill, and was on his way to bed.
    Disappointment awaited him at the purser’s office, where he went to pay in the evening’s takings.
    â€œAll hands on deck mate,” the assistant purser said. “Didn’t you hear the call? Some poor sod’s gone for a swim.”
    He hadn’t heard; didn’t want to hear. Working late into the night wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t done a day shift for his mate, a kitchen fitter, the previous day. Just for a second he considered sloping off to bed, figuring he’d not be missed, but the assistant purser, with more years at sea than he wanted to remember— waiting for a pair of dead purser’s pants, according to his wife—saw the intention spread across Len’s face.
    â€œI’ll tell the deck officer you’re on your way then,” he said, pointedly, as he picked up a walkie-talkie from the desk.
    â€œFuck you,” Len muttered, ambling disgruntledly toward the boat deck.
    â€œThis is the centre of the search area,” the deck officer was explaining as Len joined a group of crewmembers sheltering from the storm under one of the larger lifeboats. An