North Star

by Hammond Innes

  Sayre was able to show that in one particular Bradshaw’s evidence was inaccurate – the curtains could not have caught fire because Mrs Entwisle had taken them down for cleaning two days before. He also got an admission out of him that he had served a sentence for theft. But he could not shake him. The man stuck to his story, and the fact that the occupants of the house were away and that he had entered with intent to commit a felony seemed somehow to make it all the more convincing. It explained his reluctance to come forward. It made his presence in the witness stand, at the risk of prosecution, an unselfish act that called for some sympathy, not disbelief.

  Re-examining, counsel for the defence was able to drum these points home. No other witness was called. Neither of the accused gave evidence. And in his first words to the jury, Mendip emphasized that, though they might have reservations about accepting the evidence of a man who admitted he had once been convicted for theft, they had to bear in mind that the main witness for the prosecution had also been in prison, though for different reasons. ‘So you have two witnesses, two entirely different statements, both given under oath. They are absolutely contradictory. You are not required to decide which is the truth. All that is required of you is that you determine whether, in view of the fact that there is no satisfactory evidence to support either testimony, you can possibly convict these two young men, both protesting their innocence. I say you cannot. You cannot convict when doubt – extreme doubt, you may feel – has been cast on the case for the prosecution.’

  The judge in his summing up took a similar line, but less firmly and with some reluctance. ‘Of one thing there is no doubt. The witness, Michael Randall, entered the burning house and rescued Amelia Entwisle at some risk to himself. If the other witness is telling the truth, then you may reasonably ask yourselves why he did not attempt to rescue the child himself, or at least to offer assistance to the man who did. After all, once he was out of No. 8 he ceased to be a trespasser and became just a passer-by. There is, therefore, no reason at all why he should not have gone to Randall’s assistance. Instead, according to his evidence, he remained concealed, a watcher, taking no part, offering no help. You may feel that only proves him to be a nervous, perhaps frightened man at the time. Or you may feel it indicates that his testimony is false. Are you to believe him, or are you to believe Randall? It is not easy for the jury when the two main witnesses are suspect. One of these men is a liar and it is for you to decide which.’

  But then he added, ‘However, this is not your prime responsibility. Your prime responsibility is to the prisoners – are they guilty or not guilty? Here doubt alone is sufficient. If such conflicting testimony raises a doubt in your mind – a reasonable doubt – then you must give the prisoners the benefit of that doubt. But if you accept Randall’s testimony, then there is no doubt, just as there is no doubt about his rescuing the child. You will now retire and consider your verdict.’

  The jury were out barely ten minutes. They found both the prisoners Not Guilty and there was a murmur of approval from some of the public. And as the judge dismissed the case and ordered the prisoners to be released a constable appeared at my side. I was hurried out of the building by a back entrance and into a police car.

  I wasn’t taken back to my hotel. I was driven instead to Hull Central Police Station and put in a room with a uniformed constable. I didn’t argue. I think I was too shocked by what had happened. I have always differentiated in my mind between law and justice. The law is part of the Establishment, the rules by which the System perpetuates itself – but, strangely, I had always respected British justice. The laws might be wrong, but within the limits set by those laws, I believed British men and women did dispense justice. Now a lying witness, suborned to pervert the course of justice, had led judge, jury and lawyers by the nose, convicting me there in that court, though I was not on trial.

  And Fiona had known. She had warned me. You shop those boys and they’ll nail you. She had known that justice, like truth, could be turned upside down, an image in a distorting mirror. And I hadn’t believed her. I had let slip the opportunity to escape, convinced that justice could recognize truth, and Sayre hadn’t even recalled me to the witness stand. The rules of the game did not allow it. Instead, he had thrown in his hand, and in doing so had branded me a liar.

  The door opened and an officer in plain clothes came in and sat down at the table opposite me. He had the usual form. ‘Name please …’ and he began filling it in as I answered his questions. And when that was done, he said, ‘Are you prepared to make a statement?’

  ‘My statement is in the court records.’

  But that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted a completely new statement, and he cautioned me.

  ‘Are you going to charge me?’

  He shrugged. ‘That will depend on your statement. In any case, it’s not for me to decide.’

  And so I went over it all again and he wrote it down laboriously in longhand, then took it away to be typed. When he returned and I had signed it, I said, ‘I want to speak to Inspector Garrard.’ And I gave him the slip of paper with the number on it. ‘I think he’s a Special Branch officer.’

  He looked at it and then at me. ‘It’s unusual …’

  ‘So is what happened in court today,’ I told him angrily.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He nodded to the phone on the table. ‘We’ll put it through here if we get him.’ He left me then and I was alone in the room. Maybe I could have walked out, but it never occurred to me. I was too busy thinking what I would say to Garrard if they managed to get through to him.

  It was a long wait, and then suddenly the phone rang and I picked it up. ‘Inspector Garrard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Randall,’ I said. ‘You told me to ring you –’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  I began to explain what had happened in court, but he said, ‘I know all about that. What is it you want to tell me?’

  I told him then about the man calling himself Stevens, how he had come on board the Fisher Maid in Aberdeen. And then about the second meeting when we were anchored off Ham in Foula. The name meant nothing to him, but when I had given him a description I thought I detected a sudden interest. ‘You say it’s Villiers he’s after?’

  ‘Not Villiers personally, but his reputation. It’s the rig chiefly.’

  ‘What can he do to the rig?’

  I tried to explain, but sitting there in an office in a police station, the rig sounded very remote, the loneliness of the sea area west of Shetland impossible to convey. And then I asked him about my father. ‘Is he still alive, do you know?’

  ‘Have you any reason to believe he is?’

  ‘Only that you were right when you said he was brought out of Norway in 1942. The Duchess picked him up and Stevens implied that you would know.’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘What exactly did he say?’

  ‘That rehabilitation is a long process and not many survived. I think he was referring to men returned to Russia after the war.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing, except he suggested it might make a difference if I were able to talk to him.’

  ‘But you haven’t?’

  ‘No, of course not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you for confirmation that he’s still alive.’

  There was a pause. Then he said, ‘I can’t answer that. I’m not sure.’ And then I heard him murmur reflectively, ‘He couldn’t possibly – he’d be too old.’

  ‘Too old? For what?’ I asked him.

  But all he said was, ‘No, it’s out of the question. And this man Stevens – where’s he operating from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And you don’t know his real name.’ A faint sound like a sigh came over the line. ‘Well, I’ll have the local police check on Sandford. At least we know where to find him. But –’ Another long pause, and then he said, ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you. I talked with Detective-Sergeant Gorse. You’re suspected
of committing perjury. When was your meeting with this man Stevens – weeks ago, wasn’t it? Well, wasn’t it?’ And when I admitted that it was over six weeks ago, he said, ‘Then why the devil didn’t you contact me before?’

  ‘I tried to,’ I said. ‘I rang the number you gave me from the rig, but you weren’t there.’

  ‘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.

  4

  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 th
ere 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.’