North Star (22 page)

‘You could have left a message.’ His voice had sharpened. ‘You’re in trouble and you can’t blame me if I’m left with the feeling that you’re trying to use me to get yourself off the hook. I gave you my number on the chance you might find yourself involved in subversive activities and be prepared to give evidence. What you’ve been telling me isn’t evidence. It’s supposition based on two conversations – conversations that may be no more accurate than the evidence you gave in court.’

I started to tell him that my version of what had happened that night was the truth, but he cut me short. ‘Then why didn’t you make a statement to the police? You knew they wanted to interview you. I reminded you of that when we met.’ And he added, ‘I also said you were vulnerable. But that hardly applies now.’ He rang off then and I was left with the certainty that he hadn’t believed a word I had said.

It was some time before anyone came. Once I opened the door and looked out into the corridor, but the desk was at the end of it and no hope of slipping away unobserved. At last the plain-clothes man came back. ‘You can go back to your hotel now.’

I got up, wondering what that meant. ‘You accept my statement then?’

‘It’s being considered.’

‘But you’re not detaining me.’

‘You’re requested to notify the duty officer here of your destination on leaving your hotel. That’s all for the moment.’ He opened the door for me and I walked down the corridor and out past the desk into the street. I was free – for the moment, while they made up their minds. Garrard hadn’t believed me. Nor had Sayre. So why should they? At the railway station I bought a copy of the Hull evening paper. It was there on the front page –
CROWN WITNESS ACCUSED
,
and inset a picture of myself being mobbed as I entered the Guildhall that morning.

They were waiting for me when I reached the hotel, a reporter and a photographer, the flashlight snapping and questions being fired at me. I started to brush past them, but then I stopped. It was a moment to fight back, a chance I might not have again. I took them up to my room and made a statement, accusing Bradshaw of lying, of perverting the course of justice, accusing Scunton, and others I didn’t name, but militants who had no connection with Hull or the shipyard strike, of intimidation. ‘And the object of it all is the offshore rigs. You find a man calling himself Stevens, a man who has probably had a hand in the Irish troubles – he’s the man behind it all.’ And I described him to them.

But I could see they didn’t believe me. The vulnerability of offshore rigs was too remote, the whole thing too fantastic. And the bitterness I felt, it was in my voice, and that was against me, too. The reporter didn’t even bother to write it all down. I couldn’t blame him. He was a local reporter, interested only in local news, and what I was telling him must have sounded wild and unconvincing in the mundane setting of that hotel bedroom. In the end they left and I flopped on to the bed feeling utterly drained.

I must have fallen asleep, for I woke suddenly with the light from the street lamp shining on my face. A door banged, the sound of voices loud from the bar. I looked at my watch. It was past ten. I got up, stripped and had a bath. Then I packed my case, wrote a note to the hotel manager, instructing him to send the account to the Star-Trion office in Aberdeen, and went out leaving the key in the door. I had less than £20 in my pccket.

The lobby was empty now except for the night porter behind the desk and a man sitting by the entrance with a paper on his knee. I watched him for a while. He wasn’t reading the paper, and I didn’t think he was a guest. He could have been waiting for somebody, but he looked more like a man on
duty. There was a garage at the back of the hotel and after a little searching I found the door leading out to it. It was not far to the Central Station and a couple just leaving the forecourt of the Royal Station Hotel gave me a lift as far as Melton. It took me a further two hours and three separate lifts to reach the A1 near Pontefract, but a little after two in the morning I was in the cab of a long-distance container truck bound for Musselburgh.

I think it was the trawler I worried about more than myself as I sat slumped in the heat of the driver’s cab, thundering north up the Al. Perhaps I clung to her as the only reality left to me, so that my mood of depression was overlaid by a sense of urgency. What had happened to me in Hull had made me realize I was dealing with people who did not make idle threats.

It was dawn when we arrived in Musselburgh. I got a bus into Edinburgh, had breakfast in the station buffet and caught the first train to Aberdeen. The Star-Trion offices were in one of the solid residences near Mansfield Road, not far from the River Dee Dock. Some attempt had been made to modernize the place, but the effect was makeshift, as though the company were on a temporary lease and might move out at any moment. There was a telex machine in the outer office and a big fair girl at a typewriter. I told her who I was and asked her to book me a cabin on the night boat to Lerwick.

‘Don’t you have a return ticket by air?’ she asked.

‘You can’t just walk on to a flight,’ I said. But it was the closer check at Dyce that worried me, the isolation of the Sumburgh terminal. Nobody stopped me boarding the boat, and in the morning, when I disembarked at Lerwick, I didn’t see a single policeman. It was as though, with the release of those two men, they had lost interest in me. I was so anxious to see Gertrude, and get back to the trawler, that I didn’t stop to consider there might be another reason. I grabbed a taxi and drove straight to Taing.

The air was luminous with a light drizzle, the hills all green and the lochs limpid, not a breath of wind. The sun broke through as we came down to the voe, no trawler now and the
house solitary and alone, the stonework glistening with moisture. I think I knew she wasn’t there before we had even reached the house. It had an empty, deserted look. No answer to my knock, and when I tried the door it was locked. Nobody locks their door in Shetland unless they are away. I tried the back, but that, too, was locked. And then I drove to Scalloway.

I hadn’t seen Fuller since that night I had taken him down to view the
Duchess.
He was wearing the same dark business suit and looked like a fish out of water in that little port. He had taken over two rooms in the local hotel, his only equipment a telex, a telephone and a filing cabinet. Lying on the desk in front of him was a copy of the
Hull Daily Mail
, my picture staring up at me and the headline –
CROWN WITNESS ACCUSED
. ‘So you know what happened.’

‘I’ve read the report.’

‘You had the local paper sent up specially …’

‘No. It came in the post yesterday. Since then I’ve been trying to get a skipper –’

‘You mean you didn’t order that paper. It came unsolicited?’

He nodded. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ve also been trying to contact Mr Villiers.’

‘It doesn’t concern Villiers.’

But he didn’t agree. ‘He’ll have to be told. And now that you’re here, perhaps you’d like to give me your version. Then I’ll know what to advise him when I get through.’

Advise him! ‘What do you mean? We have a contract –’ But I saw by the look on his face he had made up his mind. ‘Where’s Gertrude Petersen? I want to see her, and I want to get back on board. Where is she?’

‘She left on a trawler yesterday evening. After she had read the report she insisted she must get out to –’

‘You showed it to her?’

‘I didn’t have to. She’d seen it already.’

‘Do you mean somebody had sent her a copy, too?’

But all he could tell me was that she had had the paper with
her when she came into his office after lunch. ‘Now, if you’ll fill in on the details for me.’ He sat there waiting, his hands folded across his stomach, his stolid, heavy face impassive. I gave him my version of what had happened and some indication of what was behind it. Finally, I said, ‘Somebody wants me out of the way. And they want that contract scrapped so that you’re in the market for another stand-by boat.’ He didn’t say anything, his face blank. ‘Have you been offered a replacement?’

He leaned forward, staring down at the paper as though weighing the headlines against what I had told him. ‘You think the rig is in some sort of danger, is that it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. But I could see he didn’t believe me, any more than that reporter, or Garrard. He leaned back, his eyes staring beyond me. ‘It could be said you’re the real risk. And reading this report …’ His thick fingers dabbed at the headlines. ‘Is it true your father was a Russian agent?’ He was suddenly looking straight at me.

‘Who told you that?’

‘An Inspector from Special Branch.’ The softness of his voice had gone as he added, ‘Well, is it true?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said. ‘I never knew him.’

‘But you,’ he murmured. ‘Your record …’ He was frowning, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what to say. If I believe you …’ He paused, still frowning. ‘But it doesn’t make sense. It would be very difficult to tamper with a huge structure like
North Star
. Certainly not if the guard ship is doing its job.’ And he added, ‘That’s my difficulty, you see. And yours isn’t the only trawler available, not now.’

‘You have been offered a replacement then.’

He smiled. ‘Oil companies are always being offered things – at a price.’ The smile vanished, his lips pursed. ‘But if there is the remotest possibility of danger to the rig, then the price becomes irrelevant. And another thing I have to bear in mind is that your view of what happened in court – or rather, what was behind it – is not likely to be the police view. They could
arrest you at any moment. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t done so already.’

‘They can’t arrest me out there,’ I said. ‘They can’t board my ship in international waters –’

‘You’re employed by us,’ he said sharply. ‘And we would facilitate any action the police might decide to take.’ He got abruptly to his feet. ‘Leave it with me now, Randall. I’ll have a talk with Mr Villiers and we’ll see where we go from there. All right?’

I didn’t argue. There was no point.

‘Come back after lunch,’ he said, opening the door for me. ‘I’ll let you have our decision then.’ The door closed and I went down the bare wooden stairs. The drizzle had lifted, the sun glimmering through. I crossed the road and walked to the pier where a couple of purse-seine fishing boats were unloading their catch. Gulls wheeled screaming and the water calm. I lit my pipe, leaning against the rail and letting the peace of it soak into me, that deep instinctive feeling that this was where I belonged. All that had happened was of no importance then, obliterated by the sense of familiarity, the feeling of contentment.

And then I heard the fishermen talking and reality broke in again. They were talking about their rights in the fishing grounds. ‘Chased off like that … What right have they got, any more than us? Just because they’re a bluidy oil company … Aye, we should have told the bastards to go to hell.’ And the skipper, leaning on the bulwarks and saying, ‘What d’you expect me to do – risk a collision?’ He was a broad, big-bellied man in a Shetland jersey with a brown beret on his head. ‘She’s bigger than us. I’ll report it, but I doubt if the Council can do much. It’s the Government in London. They want oil.’

‘They don’t depend on fish for their living.’

A bitter laugh, the slam of a box and a voice saying, ‘Aye, that they don’t. And now they’re drilling off this side of Shetland. Soon we’ll be ringed by oil rigs, fenced in like a lot of puir peerie sheep. Time the Council took note of us.’

The skipper nodded. ‘There’s a meeting tomorrow and I’ll be there. So will a lot of others. We’re not the only boat …’

I turned away, my peace of mind shattered. Politics! Couldn’t I ever get away from politics? I went in search of some food, knowing that it could only have been my own trawler they had been cursing.

Shortly after two I was back in Fuller’s office. He had spoken to Villiers and had orders to get me back on board the
Duchess.
‘Don’t ask me why.’ He sounded annoyed. ‘I tell you frankly, it was against my advice. But he’s got troubles of his own, so maybe he doesn’t want to be bothered by a little matter like you and your trawler.’ The London papers had arrived and he had the
Daily Telegraph
in front of him, open at the City page. ‘All right then.’ He was looking down at the paper, not at me, and I had the impression that his mind was on other things. ‘The taxi will be here shortly to take you to Sumburgh. There’s a helicopter flight leaving about four o’clock.’

‘You passed on what I told you?’

‘For what it’s worth, yes.’

‘What did he say?’

He looked at me then. ‘What did you expect him to say – with this hanging over him?’ And he slapped the paper. ‘Shetland is a long way away and what seems important to you will be looking a lot less important viewed from an office in the City with the pack in full cry. But just remember this, any trouble on the location and you’re out. I’ll get replacement guard boats on my own responsibility. And if the police decide to arrest you, don’t try and rely on the fact that you’re in international waters. I won’t stand for that. I’ve enough trouble dealing with fishermen’s complaints without getting involved with the police. We come under the law. Is that understood?’

‘You may accept that you come under the law,’ I said. ‘But others don’t. I’ll wait for the taxi downstairs.’ And I turned and walked out of his office, the anger and bitterness back.
Why the hell couldn’t somebody, just for once, let me get on with the job of running a trawler and making her pay? I was seething all the way to Sumburgh, my mind turned inwards so that I no longer saw the peace of the hills, no longer felt I had come home again. And then, in the little airport building at Sumburgh, I bought a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
and saw the mess Villiers was in.

The details are not important, though I had plenty of time to study them as the helicopter rattled noisily north-westward out to the rig.
Tailor-made to our purpose
, Stevens had said, and now I could see it for myself. The man was being accused of asset-stripping for his own personal gain and the full glare of publicity was being focused upon him, all of it adverse. He had acquired Star-Trion through an investment company managed by VFI. Star-Trion had then been broken up and the assets sold off. These sales, with one exception, had been to companies unconnected with himself. The exception was the oil assets, consisting chiefly of the
North Star
rig and the licences to drill in Blocks 206/17 and 18. These had been acquired by a nominee company controlled by VFI and the price had been fixed by Villiers himself. ‘Rigged’ was the word used by a solicitor acting for one of the investment company’s major shareholders.