‘Some clothes. Quick, for Christ’s sake.’ I swung my legs off the bunk, forcing myself up stark naked, thinking only of that deadly, dangerous little man and what he had planned. Not the others. The others didn’t matter, not even my father. It was Stevens, Dillon, whatever the cold-hearted bastard liked to call himself. ‘Some clothes, damn you,’ I said, through gritted teeth.
A jersey, trousers, carpet slippers much too large for me; somehow I got into them and dragged myself through the door to the bridge. Lars was at the helm, Henrik at the Decca. Beyond them the rig wavered, a lit tower block canted at an angle and rising and falling in the glass of the windows as the Duchess steamed at slow ahead into the waves. The bows fell away and I lurched down to push Henrik away and watch the sweep lighting the screen in its steady radial circling.
‘It is all right,’ Gertrude said again. She was close behind me. ‘It is holding on the other anchors.’
The screen, blurred by the break of the waves, was difficult to read, my head throbbing, my eyes not focusing properly. ‘Where’s that boat now?’ I asked Henrik. ‘Is that it over the bows?’
‘No. Is a buoy, I think. The boat is starb’d bow.’
I waited till the sweep swung round through north-east and there it was, out beyond the pinhead blips of the two buoys, beyond the first distance circle. I reached for the telegraph, rang for full ahead. The bell answered just as a voice crackled out of the loudspeaker. It was Ken Stewart calling on us to stay by the rig and patrol the buoys of the four anchors that were still holding. ‘Is Randall able to talk now?’
I reached for the phone. ‘Randall here.’ And I told him briefly what had happened, how his own stand-by boat had cut the four windward cables by trailing a sonic beam transmitter. ‘She’s out by Nos. 5 and 6 buoys, but we’re going after her now. She won’t cut any more cables, and we’ll keep after her.’
By then we were almost on top of the two buoys and the blip was moving away to the north, fast. He wanted us to stay by the buoys, of course, but I ignored him, blowing into the engine-room voice pipe and calling for maximum revs. I was remembering the Mexican fixing the cylinders in the hold, the powerful engines of that other vessel hammering at the wooden sides of the chain locker, and Gertrude behind me said, ‘No. No, there’s no need for that.’ A hand fell on my shoulder, gripping me tight, and Johan said, ‘You hear what Gertrude said.’ His voice was thick and obstinate, and still gripping me, he reached out for the telegraph and put it back to slow again.
I think I was crying then. Crying with frustration. Certainly there were tears in my eyes as I faced Gertrude, telling her how I had been set adrift, Dillon intending my body to be the only evidence and my father acquiescing. The scene was still so vivid, my anger, my hatred of that man so intense that when I turned on Johan, hitting out at him, there was a wildness running through me. He was a beer-drinker, too fat in the belly, and that is where I hit him. Gertrude screamed at me, but then the voice pipe whistled and I picked it up and heard Duncan asking what the hell was going on. But I couldn’t answer, my legs suddenly weak and buckling under me. I heard Gertrude say something, but her voice was a long way away, and then I was being lifted up and the next thing I knew I was on the bunk again and she was holding a mug of something hot to my lips. ‘Drink it. Then you feel better. You shouldn’t have hit Johan.’ Her tone was reproachful.
‘Tell him I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. I don’t know whether it was exhaustion or the sedative she had mixed with the drink, but I was asleep before I had finished it.
When I woke dawn was just breaking and we were running before a big sea. I knew that by the swooping corkscrew motion, the pitch of the engines, the occasional sound of a wave breaking aft. It meant that we had left the rig and were headed east for Shetland. I closed my eyes again. Nothing I could do about it now. Nothing I could do about anything, and I was tired. God! I was tired.
I didn’t wake again until Gertrude brought me some food on a tray. It was past nine then and when I asked her where we were she said, ‘Approaching Papa Stour. It is blowing very hard, so we go to Aith. It is nearer and soon we will be under the lee.’
‘What about the rig?’
‘When we leave it is dragging, but not much, and they have sealed off the drill hole. The choke and kill, that is what Ken Stewart call it, and they do that before the marine riser casing broke. So eat your food. There is nothing to worry about.’
It was eggs and bacon and a mug of coffee. Just the smell of it made me hungry. ‘I haven’t thanked you,’ I said. ‘If you hadn’t been standing by North Star –’
‘It is not me you have to thank. It is your wife.’
‘Fiona?’ The coffee was thick and sweet in my mouth as I gulped at it. ‘What the hell’s Fiona got to do with it?’ I was staring at her, seeing her large-mouthed competent face, thinking how comfortable and practical she was in comparison with Fiona. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘She did a very wonderful thing – for you.’ She spoke very softly, a note of sadness, almost of pity in her voice. ‘She loves you I think very much.’
‘It’s finished,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk about it, not with her. I began eating, feeling confused and wondering what was coming.
‘For you maybe,’ she said quietly. ‘But not for her.’ There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘She is something to do with those men on the fishing boat I think.’
‘Probably.’ I was remembering how she had followed me to Hull, what she had said the last time I had seen her, in the corridor outside the court. ‘What happened to the boat?’ I asked.
‘You don’t have to worry about the boat. It made off to the north.’
‘You didn’t follow it.’
‘No.’
Would the police accept that? Would they accept that there had been a boat and that it was Dillon, not me, who was responsible for cutting the cables? I was still thinking about that and eating at the same time when she said, ‘You do not want to know what Fiona did?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, Michael. It does matter.’ And she went on, a note of urgency in her voice, ‘Listen please. We came into The Taing and there was a letter for me, from Aberdeen. She wanted to see me urgently, about you. A matter of life and death, she say, and God help me I think she is just dramatizing. So I don’t do anything until we are fishing off the Hebrides and I get a telegram from her over the R/T. A telegram is something I cannot ignore, so we put into Kinlochbervie and I telephone her. We arrange to meet in Inverness the next day. And it is there she tells me what is going to happen.’
‘About the rig?’
‘Ja.’ And she nodded, her fair hair falling over her face. ‘But it is not only about the rig. She is convinced the man in charge of the operation will make it look so that you are responsible. She is afraid for you. She thinks perhaps it is your dead body –’
‘Did you report this to the police?’
‘No, that was a condition she made. She was concerned for you, not the rig.’
‘Surely you warned Ed Wiseberg?’
‘Yes. As soon as we reached North Star I talked with him by loudhailer. I tell him something is planned to happen to the rig. But he thinks the Duchess is there to cause trouble – to frighten the men or something. He tell us to Eff Off.’ She smiled. ‘He is very tense, you know, already occupied with his testing. So then I ask the stand-by boat if you are on board or perhaps on the relief boat. But they don’t know anything about you, so we stay around the rig, watching. And when it is dark and the relief boat arrive, we keep downwind of her with our lights turned off.’
‘She told you I was going to be put in a boat?’
‘No, she don’t say that But Johan and I, we think it is possible. We just don’t know what is going to happen, only that we must stay in the vicinity of North Star. Then Ken Stewart say there is a torch blinking an SOS in the water and that’s how we come to pick you up.’ And she added very quietly, ‘So you don’t owe your life t
o us, but to Fiona.’ She was gazing at me wide-eyed, waiting for some reaction.
But there was nothing I could say, and I went on eating, feeling helpless, propped up in the bunk and thinking of Fiona risking her liberty, perhaps her life, because of something that was finished, dead, buried in the past. What the hell could I say?
She sat there waiting until I had finished my food, then she took the tray and stood there, holding it in her hand and looking down at me. ‘Do you want me to send a message? I know where she is staying.’
‘Tell her I’m safe,’ I said.
‘I already send a telegram to say that. But she will expect something more – a message from you.’ She reached down to the locker beside the bunk and handed me a writing pad and ballpoint. ‘You think it out. We will be in Aith in about an hour. Then you can send it yourself.’
She left me then, apparently thinking my reluctance due to her presence. I stared at the pad, knowing there was nothing I could say that wouldn’t encourage Fiona to think there was still something left of our marriage. She loves you, I think, very much. It was Gertrude I wanted to think of, not Fiona – Gertrude who had brought her trawler north, to stand by the rig in the hope of finding me. And she had done that after three months without a word from me, knowing that I was somehow involved.
One hour, she had said. Then we would be in Aith, tied up at the pier. I thought of all the telex messages being sent out by North Star – to Fuller, to the Aberdeen office, to Villiers in London. And the news broadcasts. It would have been on the radio this morning. TV would have it by midday, newspaper presses rolling the story out, a rig broken adrift and suspected sabotage. Aith might only be a small place, but it was on Mainland, and once we were in, press, reporters, police, they would all be there.
A wave crashed aft as we were pooped, but I barely noticed it. I hardly heard the strange noises the hull made as the plates worked under the pressure of the seas. I had one hour, just one hour to myself to get a clear statement down on paper. I was still tired, my head throbbing, but I knew it had to be done. And, once I had started, I found myself writing fast and with concentration, so that I barely noticed the decrease of movement, the growing quiet as we came in under the lee.
I hadn’t quite completed it when I felt a bump on the starboard side, the sound of feet on deck and voices. We were alongside, and a moment later Gertrude came in followed by a tall, stooped figure in a tweed jacket. ‘Inspector Garrard,’ she said. ‘He wants to see you alone.’
The Inspector came forward, ducking his head to avoid the steel angle irons of the roofing. ‘Before the reporters get at you,’ he said. He waited for Gertrude to leave, then pulled up a chair and sat down, opening his briefcase. ‘Since I’m not sure whether you’re one of the villains or not I suppose I ought to caution you.’
‘You want a statement, is that it?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll need a statement.’
‘I’ve just been writing it for you,’ I said and handed him the pad.
‘Good. That saves a lot of time.’ He took it and there was a long silence as he read it through. When he had finished, he said, ‘With what Mrs Petersen has told me and the messages we’ve had from North Star, this is about what I had expected.’ He hesitated, smiling slightly. ‘We kept tabs on you, of course. From the moment I had them release you from the Hull Central Station we’ve been following your movements, but at a distance. The trouble was we weren’t sure exactly who was involved and how it would be done. We hoped you’d lead us to that. But then it all happened too quickly.’
It was a shock to realize that this quiet academic-looking man had been making use of me so deliberately. But my reaction was only one of relief. ‘What about Dillon?’ I asked.
‘His real name is McKeown. Until now he’s always worked in the background. We’ve been trying to –’
‘Yes, but what’s happened to him? Where is he now?’
He shrugged. ‘You’re probably right in saying they’ve destroyed the fishing boat after transferring to another vessel.’
‘But you don’t know. You don’t know what’s happened to them.’
He shook his head. ‘A navy ship is out there now, searching. But I’m afraid we moved too late.’ And he added, ‘We’ve pulled in Sandford, of course. He doesn’t seem able to tell us much, but what he has told us tends to corroborate your statement.’
He stayed there for about half an hour, asking questions and checking my answers against information in a file from his briefcase. Finally he rose. ‘I have to be getting back to Lerwick now. Like you, I wish we knew what happened after the rig’s cables were cut. But it’s been a bad night out there. North Star has dragged about three miles and one of the remaining anchor cables snapped under the strain. But the forecast is for less wind, so the rig should hold. And Villiers arrived by plane this morning. He’s in Scalloway now. He’ll want to see you. Also, the media. They’ll want the story, too.’ He put the file back in his briefcase and snapped it shut. Then he stood looking down at me and I sensed a sudden awkwardness. ‘One other thing. Mrs Petersen said she told you your wife was in Aberdeen.’
I nodded, something in his expression warning me so that I think I knew what was coming.
‘You saw her in Hull, at your hotel. And she was in court that day. We kept track of her after that, so we knew where to pick her up for questioning.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m sorry about this, Randall, but I had a call from the Aberdeen police just before I left Lerwick. When they went to her lodgings last night, they found she’d been taken to hospital that morning suffering from an overdose of barbiturate.’
He didn’t have to tell me. I knew from the expression on his face. ‘Dead?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. She was dead on arrival at the hospital.’
I didn’t see him go. I just lay there staring at the rusting paint of the roofing, thinking of Fiona alone in some wretched boarding house. Was it my fault? Was I to blame? If I’d been there, if I hadn’t left her … If I’d gone back to her that night when she had come to my hotel room … But it wouldn’t have been any use. I knew that. It was something in her makeup, the restlessness, the nervous vitality, the constant shifting from one cause to another. And drugs her only solution. Poor Fiona! I should have wept for her, but my eyes were dry and I felt no loss, only a sense of relief that it was over.
The door opened and Gertrude came in. ‘He told you, did he?’ Her eyes were enormous and I saw they were full of tears. ‘I’m sorry, Michael.’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry about,’ I said, and I meant it, remembering the lost years and what her life had been.
‘How can you say that?’ And she went on, ‘You don’t see her as I saw her that day in Inverness.’ Her voice was trembling with emotion. ‘She was so lost, so alone – and frightened I think. But not for herself. For you.’
I got out of the bunk then, going to her, shocked that it was she, not me, that was crying for Fiona, and I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that Fiona was all right now, the long internal struggle over. But she pushed me away, swallowing her tears and saying in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, ‘There are people, journalists, wanting to see you. They are in the bridge. I came to tell you.’
I got dressed and went through into the bridge and saw them there, rain beating at the windows and the hills on either side of the little port lost in cloud. It was still raining when the last of the reporters left, but the clouds had lifted slightly so that the long bank of Burgins was just visible and the island of Papa Little at the end of the voe. I was just going below for lunch when a taxi drew up and Villiers got out, standing bareheaded in the rain talking to the driver, a bright red anorak slung carelessly over his shoulders. Two other taxis followed, nosing between the houses. He glanced at them, his hair already wet, his square jaw jutting angrily. Then he turned, walking quickly on to the pier, climbing over the bulwarks and coming straight to the bridge.
‘Randall.’ He held out his hand. ‘Glad to see you saf
e. I saw Inspector Garrard on the road. He showed me your statement. You’re lucky to be alive.’ He glanced round the empty bridge. ‘Where’s Mrs Petersen?’ And when I told him she was below, he said, ‘I’d like to see her please – both of you. I’ve got to get out to the rig and in this weather yours is the only boat can get me there.’
He didn’t waste time. As soon as I had called Gertrude and we were both of us with him in my cabin, he said, ‘Now, can we come to some arrangement? We’ve got an ocean-going tug on the way, but it won’t be there for another twenty-four hours at least. George Fuller got me a Met. forecast just before I left Scalloway. There’s a break coming in the next six to eight hours, but there’s another Low moving in and worse to follow. Did Garrard tell you we’ve had one man killed and two injured? Apparently they had been winding a new cable on to No. 2 winch drum with the intention of trying to hold the rig on a spare anchor when the cable got out of control. ‘Unfortunately, it was Ken Stewart who was swept over the side. The other two men, they’re all right – one has a broken arm, the other cracked ribs. But with Stewart gone, there’s nobody I trust on board to handle navigation if the rig starts drifting again.’ He was looking straight at me. ‘How fit are you? I want somebody out there with me who can take charge in an emergency.’
‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘But how do you think you’re going to get on board? Even if there is a break, there’ll still be a hell of a sea running.’
He nodded. ‘I appreciate that, but it’s something I’ve got to try.’ He hesitated. ‘We already owe you quite a lot – you and Mrs Petersen. But there’s no stand-by boat with the rig now and this is the only trawler in the area big enough to stay by North Star till the tug gets there. You can state your own terms, but don’t let’s waste any time. Okay?’
The terms we agreed covered any damage, gave us a hefty bonus if the Duchess stayed by the rig until it was re-anchored, and provided for a long-term charter thereafter at favourable rates. I called to Johan to get the crew up and we cast off with the TV cameras set up on the pier taking pictures and the producer shouting for Villiers to come out on to the deck. Gertrude was already writing out the charter agreement and it was signed before we were in to Swarbacks Minn and meeting the full force of the north-westerly wind. The tide had only just turned against us and I took her through the Sound of Papa, a big sea running as we came out from under the lee of Papa Stour.
North Star Page 28