We had been at sea three days days when the body was found.
Having been assigned to 'clean up' duties, the lowest available, I have spent my days roaming the ship with a brush and black plastic sack. I move between the carpet layers, the carpenters, the painters. I sweep here and there. I have found two sections of the ship where I am able to hide, killing two, perhaps three hours at a time.
Spirits on board the ship are running low. The heat and sight of endless sea has made the air thick and lugubrious. It lays heavy, as another load for us workers to carry.
On a deck above the Asian men lay in the sun; smoking, sunbathing. Every so often the shrill machine gun fire of their laughter pierces through the heat and every man below imagines it to be directed at him. I miss a pile of unswept dirt, the carpet layer slices a misplaced finger against a backdrop of happiness.
For three days they have fed us nothing but rice.
We eat together; workers on one side of the canteen, non workers on the other. We sit in silence. They speak loudly in unknown voices.
They find his body half hidden behind crates in a storage room at the bottom of the ship. In his pocket they find a letter addressed to Melicertes Palaemon and so both newspaper articles had been wrong. There is a contact name and telephone number in Greece.
The discovery seals the workers into silence. Laughter still drip fed to us from the decks above. Eyes are cast up.
I overhear a Scottish carpenter say "that dead boy was one of us."
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