'Yes, herr direktor. They know nothing. It is a complete mystery.'
'What catchers were in at the time?' I asked.
'Was it Hval Ti?' Jorgensen's voice was sharp, precise. He was dealing with a subordinate now and I suddenly knew I wouldn't like to work for the man.
But Keilland was unperturbed by his director's tone. 'Yes, he answered, a shade surprised. 'Yes, it was Hval Ti. Lovaas brought that whale in. It was the first of the season. How did you know?'
'Never mind how I knew,' Jorgensen answered. 'Come up to the office and we will talk.' And he went off through the packing sheds.
Kielland turned to me and smiled. 'We had better follow,' he said.
Jill and Curtis had both come ashore. They joined me as I moved off after Jorgensen. 'What a horrible smell,' Jill said. She had a handkerchief held to her nose. The delicate scent of it was obliterated by the overpowering stench.
'That is money,' Keilland chuckled. 'Money always smells on a whaling station.'
'Thank God I don't possess much of it then,' Curtis said with a laugh. 'I've never smelt anything as bad as this — not even in the desert, and the smell was pretty bad there sometimes.'
We went through the packing sheds where whale meat was stacked on deep shelves, tier on tier, from floor to ceiling. Then we emerged into the charnel house of the flensing deck. This was a wood-floored yard surrounded by the factory buildings. To our left the slipway dropped into the sea. To our right were the winches, their greasy hawsers littering the deck. And opposite us was the main part of the factory with the hoists for raising the blubber to the vats for boiling. Great hunks of backbone, the meat hanging in red festoons from the enormous bones, were strewn all over the deck. Men in heavy boots slithered on the blood-soaked planking as they dragged the sections of bone on long steel hooks to the hoist. The wooden boards were covered in a thick film of oily grease. Jill caught my arm. It was very slippery. We went past the winches and up a cindered slope by the boiler house and the oil storage tanks to a huddle of wooden buildings perched on a flat rock.