North Star

by Hammond Innes

  It was from the Star-Trion office in Aberdeen and read: INFORM CAPTAIN RANDALL, STANDBY BOAT DUCHESS OF NORFOLK, WE HAVE RECEIVED NOTIFICATION FROM THE CLERK OF THE CROWN COURT IN HULL THAT HE HAS BEEN CALLED AS WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION IN A CASE OF ARSON DUE TO BE HEARD ON JUNE 5. SOLICITORS FOR THE CROWN INSIST THAT THE WITNESS BE IN HULL AT LEAST 24 HOURS BEFORE THE CASE OPENS AND HOLDS HIMSELF AT THE DISPOSAL OF THE PROSECUTION. YOU ARE TO NOTIFY ETA SUMBURGH AND WE WILL BOOK ONWARD FLIGHT. CONFIRM PLEASE.

  ‘Veil?’ the barge engineer enquired as I stood gazing down at the flimsy, my mind leaping to the courtroom and the Crown’s QC questioning me. Cross-examination would follow. And the court listening, faces in the public seats. You’ll never know a moment’s peace … ‘It eez an order of the court. I do not know the law in your country, but I think you ’ave to go, eh?’

  I nodded. Two weeks. In just over two weeks I would be in that court, a witness, and the shadowy figures I had seen running would be standing in the dock facing me. Scunton would be there, others too, watching me, waiting to hear what I said.

  ‘Vat I tell them?’

  And I would be under oath. How Fiona would laugh! She had never believed in God. She was an atheist, and the oath an Establishment trick, an anachronism harking back to an age of superstition when there was a Heaven and a Hell and fire and brimstone.

  ‘I think you ’ave to go, is it?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll have to go.’ For all the marching and the talk, the strikes and demos, the System was still the same. ‘Tell your office to book the onward flight so that I get to Hull on 3rd June. Accommodation, too.’

  ‘Okay. I tell them. Iz not very nice I think appearing for a prosecution.’ He was smiling sympathetically. ‘That is vy I do not tell you over the radio. Then everybody know.’

  ‘Kind of you,’ I murmured. And conscious of the need to say something that would satisfy his curiosity, I added, ‘Two youths set fire to a house and I am supposed to identify them.’

  ‘Vandals, ja. Ve haf that in Holland alzo. Too much.’

  I went back to my ship, morose and silent, cursing myself for not having gone to Hull directly the Fisher Maid docked in Aberdeen. It would have been over and done with then, my statement given to the police instead of in open court, and no threats, nothing they could have done about it. Now, whatever I said, one side or the other would hold it against me.

  May ended as it had begun in a blaze of fine weather, the days passing in the slow monotony of patrolling back and forth. The crew were relieved one at a time and the Norwegians stayed. Fuller had succeeded in fixing their work permits. There had been an outcry about it and there was a picture in the local paper of some fishermen demonstrating in front of the Star-Trion office in Scalloway. Gertrude did not bother to send us the national papers, knowing the rig was supplied by helicopter – anyway we got the world news over the radio. But she did send us the Shetland Times and in the issue of 16th May there had been a short paragraph stating that Mr Ian Sandford of the Root Stacks Hotel, Burra Firth, had acquired the Hamnavoe fishing vessel, Island Girl, built in 1947. He now intended to use her for supplying oil rigs operating off Shetland. Gertrude had marked the news item and in a note to me she said, I think this is possibly why we have had no more trouble from him.

  On the evening of 2nd June, the day before I was due to leave for Hull, the drawworks suddenly went silent. They had started pulling pipe shortly after noon, and Rattler’s skipper, Jock Fraser, told me over the radio the rumour was it was a dry well. This was confirmed when Bowstring came on the air to say she had cleared Aberdeen and her ETA would be around 15.00 hours next day.

  I went on board the rig shortly after 07.00. The drawworks were running again and Sparks told me they would be lifting anchors and moving to a new location just as soon as they had cleared the seabed. The helicopter that would take me to Sumburgh was not due until 08.30. I left my case under the sick-bay attendant’s desk and went in search of Ed Wiseberg.

  I found him down on the spider deck with Ken Stewart and several others. They were standing just inside the pump room in front of a big steel cabinet equipped with a TV screen. The picture was vague, a flickering image of some white object that wavered uncertainly. ‘Guess we’ll have to trim again, Ken. The angle’s still wrong.’ The barge engineer went over to the pumps and stood considering, the mud tanks rising in bulky curves behind him. He stepped forward, pressing levers, holding them as the pumps hissed. Ed Wiseberg was at the console of the TV cabinet, the picture shifting, the object becoming clearer as he adjusted the position and focus of the camera on the seabed. The atmosphere was tense, electric with frustration and concentration. Through the open door I could see the spider with its girders slotted in to the deck structure and the guidewires leading down into the depths.

  It was the retrieving tool that showed up white on the TV screen and they were trying to stab it over the top of the casing which protruded through the main guide base. This was on the seabed and the casing had already been cut about 12 feet below the MGB.

  I chose what I thought was a suitable moment to tell Ed Wiseberg I would be gone for a few days, but he ignored me, his face like granite, his eyes on the screen. ‘Jeez, we nearly got the bugger then. A little more, Ken.’

  ‘For’ard again?’

  ‘Yeah, for’ard. A little starboard, too.’

  I watched as they juggled with the positioning of the rig, the casing suddenly quite clear on the screen, the retrieving tool seeming to float above it. Occasionally a fish swam in front of the camera. It was just after 08.00 that tool and casing merged, the white engulfing the black. The toolpusher was on the phone, ordering the hydraulic rams to be closed, and in a moment the whole rig was shaking as the drawworks laboured to break the casing out. A sudden jolt, the big diesel up on the derrick floor changing into high gear, running fast now and everybody smiling. Ed Wiseberg put the phone down with obvious relief. ‘Looks like we’ll make the first flight after all.’ He was smiling, looking pleased. ‘Goddam your bloody regulations,’ he said to me. ‘At that depth, what in hell’s it matter if we leave a bit of pipe?’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Where you making for when we get ashore?’

  ‘Hull,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yeah. I remember. You’re a witness, eh? Well, mebbe we can have a drink together in Aberdeen. Christ! I could sure do with one right now.’ He turned in to the workshop, a tired man, moving slowly. ‘We bin juggling with that damned retrieving tool since four this morning. It’ll be good to get home.’

  ‘You’re married then?’

  He nodded. ‘Twenty-two years. And you?’

  I told him and he said, ‘Yeah – well, I guess there’s not much difference between trawling and drilling. Some women can take it, some can’t. Enid and I, we’ve lived in so many goddam places. We got married in Tampico. She had one boy in Curaçao, the other in Edmonton. The two of them are just about grown up now so she gets lonesome at times.’

  ‘Why don’t you retire then?’ I asked him.

  ‘Retire?’ He pushed his hands up over his eyes, pausing and staring round him as we reached the changing room full of oil-stiff overalls and safety helmets, a litter of discarded clothing. ‘Yeah. Mebbe I will one of these days. But I bin drilling all my life. I don’t know.’ He shook his head, smiling quietly to himself. ‘There’s always the next hole, you see. Right now we drilled a dry one. Next time – next time we strike it, eh?’ He grinned and pushed open the door to the quarters. ‘I gotta change now. See you on the chopper.’

  But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him on the helicopter. He slept all the way to Sumburgh, and on the Air Anglia flight to Aberdeen he sat with Ken Stewart. He was two seats ahead and I could hear his harsh, grating voice. They were discussing the new breed of anchorless drill ships that maintain station by computerized control of a dozen engines. Ken Stewart was a much younger man. He had only come into the oil business when the North Sea started up. But Ed Wiseberg, with his experience �
� it seemed strange that he was content to operate on an old rig like North Star.

  His wife was waiting for him at Dyce Airport, a thin fair woman in a BMW. I watched them greet each other perfunctorily and drive off. I was the only one booked to Newcastle and from there I caught a train, arriving at Hull in time for a late meal at my hotel. The strike was over. It had been settled almost a month ago, but the shipyards were still working overtime to catch up. Before turning in I went for a walk. There was not much traffic about, the streets almost deserted. It had always been a quiet place after about ten o’clock. I thought a walk would help me work things out, but my mind seemed disorientated by the sudden switch from the endless empty sea to the atmosphere of a big town.

  I must have been tired, for I slept heavily that night and I had barely finished breakfasting in my room when the phone rang. It was Edward Hall of Morley & Hall, the solicitors. He wanted me to make a statement to the police. ‘As you were not called at the committal proceedings before the magistrates, a copy of your statement as additional evidence will have to be served on the defence before the trial.’

  ‘And if I don’t make a statement?’ I asked.

  ‘Then you will have to be subpoenaed.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘On the presumption that you are a willing witness I have arranged with the police –’

  ‘I’d rather see you first,’ I said.

  He tried to press me, but in the end he arranged to see me in his office at two o’clock. I had only just put the phone down when the desk rang to say a Detective-Sergeant Gorse was asking for me.

  I saw him in the lounge, a big man with a slow, not unfriendly manner. ‘Now, Mr Randall, you recall the night of 28th February. We wanted to interview you then. But you know that.’ There was a mild note of censure in his voice. ‘You’ve had a somewhat isolated job recently, but I presume you know we’re holding Bucknall and Claxby on remand. That was the decision of the magistrate’s court and the case is being heard in the crown court tomorrow. They are charged with arson.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You were there and you saw what happened.’

  ‘I was there,’ I said.

  ‘You broke into the house, got the Entwisles’ little girl out and handed her over to one of the neighbours, a Mrs Fenton. Then you vanished from the scene.’

  ‘I was mate of a trawler sailing at dawn.’

  ‘We know that. And we radioed the Fisher Maid to say we wanted to interview you. But, when you landed at Aberdeen, you booked out on an Air Anglia flight to Shetland under an assumed name. Why?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer that.’

  ‘No. But it’s something you’ll certainly be asked in court. If we had known where you were –’ He pulled out a notebook, settling himself in his chair. ‘No matter. We got a committal and now if I could have your statement.’

  ‘I’m seeing Mr Hall this afternoon.’

  He frowned, but his manner was still mild as he said, ‘Don’t you think you’ve delayed long enough?’ And when I didn’t say anything, he added, ‘Now, let’s start at the moment you arrived in Washbrook Road. What time was that?’

  I shook my head. A statement to the police was official and irrevocable. I didn’t want that. Not yet. ‘If you don’t mind, Sergeant, I’ll leave any statement I’m going to make until I’ve seen Mr Hall.’

  He hesitated, reluctant to leave it at that. ‘It would save a lot of time.’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to him and explained that I prefer to see him first.’

  He sighed and put his notebook away, getting heavily to his feet. ‘As you wish.’ His tone was distant and there was a hardness in his eyes as he stood looking down at me. ‘I think I should tell you we know about you hotheads meeting in the Congregational Hall. You’d be wiser to make a statement now.’ He hesitated, and then with a sudden burst of feeling, he said, ‘Don’t be a fool, Randall; don’t try and shield those bastards. Little Amelia could have been anybody’s child – yours, mine, anybody’s.’ He turned abruptly, as though regretting his outburst, and went out through the swing doors, walking quickly.

  Time passed slowly for me that day. I had nobody to talk to, nobody to turn to, and like a fool I put off going to the trawler owner’s office to collect the pay and bonus due to me. I couldn’t face it. I didn’t want to have to talk to people I knew, and with only myself for company my nerves were on edge when I finally had my interview with Hall. He was a small, deceptively quiet man in a grey check suit, and at first I thought him rather lightweight. He went through the police report of what had happened that night, his voice quick and very quiet, almost a mumble. He had been in court all morning and I got the impression he was reading it as much for his own benefit as mine.

  They had all the details, even the time I had arrived in Washbrook Road, where I had stood. And I sat there, feeling dazed, conscious that I was being involved in legal procedures and still uncertain what I was going to do. It was an untidy, musty-smelling office, most of the space taken up by the oversize mahogany desk at which Hall was sitting. Behind him were dusty-looking shelves stacked with books, ledgers and files. I think it was the books and papers that gave the place its musty smell. The windows were shut against the noise of the traffic. Deed boxes, some of them open, lay strewn around on the floor. But though the office was untidy and archaic, the desk in front of me was equipped with the latest tape recorder, phone and intercom.

  Hall came to the end of his reading and looked across the desk at me. He had taken off his glasses and was polishing them gently with a very white handkerchief. There was a lull in the traffic, the room suddenly very quiet, his eyes fixed on me, and I found myself swallowing, knowing this was the moment of decision.

  I had had all the time between Gorse’s visit and this meeting in which to think about it. For much of that time I had remained in the hotel. I had been expecting Scunton, or one of the others, certain they would try and pressure me, or at least appeal to my brotherly feelings. But nobody had come. They had left me strictly alone.

  Hall leaned forward. ‘Were you listening while I was reading that?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You didn’t comment.’ His voice was crisper now. ‘Then I take it you accept the report as being correct?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘What does that mean? That you have reservations?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer and his words had a bite to them as he went on, ‘You realize your absence hasn’t made it very easy for the police. In the magistrate’s court they had to rely on the depositions of other witnesses. In your absence these could hardly be conclusive, but the magistrates were satisfied that there was a prima facie case, and because a child’s life had been endangered, they committed the accused for trial at the crown court.’ He paused, looking at me over his glasses. ‘Well, now you are here, let’s try again. Is that account correct?’

  I hesitated. In the main it was, so what else could I say but Yes?

  He nodded. ‘That’s better.’ He looked at the report again. ‘You notice there is no reference to the reason you were standing there in the dark watching the foreman’s house. Also, of course, nobody knows what you may or may not have seen prior to the moment you broke down the door and got the little girl out.’ He stared at me, the silence dragging and his long hands stretched out on the desk in front of him. ‘Now, I am going to ask you three very simple questions.’ His voice was quiet, but very determined, his eyes fixed on mine. ‘I want answers to those three questions, and I want the truth.’

  I suppose it was the reference to getting the little girl out, but all I could remember as I faced the hard stare behind those glasses was the sergeant’s voice that morning, shaken by the violence of his feelings as he said – She could have been anybody’s child – yours, mine, anybody’s … ‘I’ll tell you the truth,’ I heard myself murmur.

  He nodded briefly. ‘Just answer Yes or No please. First question: Were you waiting in the dark because you suspec
ted an attack would be made on Entwisle, or his family, or his property?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You saw the petrol bomb thrown. Can you identify the persons who threw it through the window?’

  My voice sounded thin and remote as I answered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they are the accused you will see in the dock tomorrow – Harry Bucknall and John Leonard Claxby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. And now one final question: You realize, of course, that you will now be the chief witness for the prosecution, that if we succeed we will be putting two dangerous young men behind bars, I hope for a long time. I know something of your background and it could be that you will be under considerable pressure – not only from some of the men you know in this port, but also from within yourself. When you are in the witness box, will you give the same answers to those questions that you have given me here?’

  I hesitated. But there was no turning back now. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good. George Sayre will be acting for the crown and he’ll be glad to know we’ve got a statement out of you at last. Particularly as Lawrence Mendip is defending. A willing witness is always better from counsel’s point of view.’ And after that he took me through the events of that night, writing the statement out in longhand. When he had finished, he read it through to me, made a few alterations, and then called his clerk and arranged for it to be typed. While this was done I waited in the outer office. It took about half an hour, and then I was in his office again, reading it through. Finally I signed it.

  He rose then, holding out his hand to me, a flicker of warmth in his eyes. ‘I realize this has been very difficult for you, but truth is something absolute, a rock on which the conscience of man can rest secure.’ His words, as I set them down, sound pompous, but they did not seem so at the time. And then he went on, ‘A copy of your statement will have to be served on the defence as additional evidence and I should perhaps warn you that Lawrence Mendip has something of a reputation.’ But then he added quickly, ‘Of course, Sayre will have established everything by then and cross-examination can never shake a witness who is telling the truth.’ He smiled encouragingly as he showed me to the door. ‘I think you will find it all very simple and straightforward. I’ll expect you at the Guildhall at ten tomorrow morning.’ A brief nod and I was in the outer office, going past the counter, down the stairs into the crowded street.