North Star (8 page)

‘It took me most of yesterday to find out just how you’d fixed it.’

‘I didn’t fix it.’

‘No, it was that oil man Fuller. But you’re the mortgagee and I’m willing to buy you out.’

‘It’s all tied up with the charter agreement.’

‘I know that. But it suits my plans. I’ll give you a thousand – cash. So long as you get her floated.’

Within two minutes he had raised his offer to fifteen hundred and I wondered why. Cash meant he knew all about fiddling tax. It wasn’t only that I was suspicious; it went against the grain. And when I asked him who would skipper her, he said he had his own man and a crew as well.

‘You’d still have to complete the charter,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Of course.’

It didn’t make sense. ‘What’s behind your offer?’

He laughed. ‘I told you. I need a ship. And this is the only one available.’ And he added, ‘Fifteen hundred isn’t a bad offer just for getting her afloat and towed into Bressay Sound.’

‘You’re wasting your time,’ I said. ‘Money doesn’t mean very much to me.’ And it was true. If I had stayed in the States I could have had all the money I wanted, but not on my terms. And what the hell is life about if you don’t live it on your own terms? But to explain that to Sandford, who had inherited a solid streak of peasant greed from his mother, would be like explaining Marxism to a Hull trawler owner. I pulled the door open. ‘I need another beer,’ I said.

He stood for a moment uncertainly. But he knew it was no good. ‘I thought you were clever.’ His voice reflected his
disappointment. ‘You’re just a bloody fool,’ he said angrily. And then, as he was going out, he turned and asked me why, after all these years, I had come to Shetland making enquiries about my father? ‘You never knew him. You never cared what happened to him. Why now?’

‘That’s my business,’ I said and I pushed him out into the gangway, ordering Henrik to take him ashore in the work boat we now had alongside. Gertrude Petersen arrived shortly afterwards with a meal she had prepared at home, and when I told her what had happened, she said, ‘I don’t like that man. I don’t like the people he employs. Last December, when we are stormbound in Burra Firth for two days, we are in the hotel and there is this Irish behind the bar – he make trouble for Johan.’ She didn’t say what trouble, but there was a slight flush on her face as she added, ‘It is the last time we drink in his hotel.’

I forgot about Sandford after that. We lived by the tide, our heads aching after every shift, falling into our bunks as soon as we had fed and sleeping until the alarm woke us. And when, in the early hours of the Friday morning, it was done and we began pumping, I just stood there on the deck staring at the dark shadow of the hills, feeling utterly exhausted. I was like a surgeon who has performed a difficult operation. All I wanted now was for the patient to live, and so identified had I become with the ship that I felt it was a part of me.

We breakfasted late to the racket of the pump, and afterwards Gertrude drove me to Halcrow’s yard. They were behind schedule, and with the drilling contractors screaming for their supply ship, the trials were set for Sunday afternoon. That gave us two clear days. We got the anchor out on the port beam, with the chain linked by a big block and tackle to the trawl winch hawser, then at low water on the Saturday morning, with the Land-Rover hitched to the tail end of the purchase guy, and all of us pulling, some of the locals as well, we managed to roll her about 12 degrees. This list to port was just sufficient to bring the whole patch clear of the water at the
bottom of the tide. But it still took two tides to cut the plate edges of the hull, beat out the dents and weld the last six inches of the patch. Even when that was done the pump could only just hold its own.

‘We’ll have to slip and patch her properly from the outside,’ I told Gertrude as we stood that evening in the engine-room, the sound of the pump drumming at the deck overhead and the water gurgling in the bilges. She didn’t argue. On the port side the floor gratings ran down into water. Even when we had released the purchase tackle and the trawler was floating upright on the top of the tide, water sloshed and gurgled over the gratings as the ship moved in the wind, dancing to a slight swell coming in round the end of the spit. She knew the hull had to be absolutely watertight if we were to keep the sea in all weathers for three weary months.

All this time the wind had been westerly and the water in the voe quiet under the lee of mainland. Now the forecast was for changeable weather, the last of the depressions moving away towards Iceland and a High coming in behind it, with a Low over France. That slight swell was a warning of northeasterly winds. Duncan appeared at my side and stood sniffing the air as though he, too, sensed the change. He was a dour man with a long nose and a sandy moustache. The hospital had discharged him the previous afternoon and he had been down in the engine-room ever since cleaning the place up with the help of his assistant, Per, and the youngest member of the crew, a big bull of a boy known as Sperm. ‘Pump holding?’ I asked him.

‘Aye.’

‘And the engines?’

‘They’ll no get her oot o’ here, if that’s what you mean.’

So we just had to hope Jim Halcrow would risk bringing the supply ship right in on the tide. ‘Mrs Petersen told you the parts you ordered have arrived by air?’ He nodded and I asked him how his ribs were.

‘Strapped so tight I can’t hardly breathe. But it’s the electrics
I’m worried aboot. That pipe to the cooling system is nothing by comparison. It could be the dynamos will have to be stripped doon, or even replaced, and God knows what’s happened to the wiring.’ He sniffed again at the breeze coming in down the voe. ‘Ach weel, I’ll get back doon again noo. That bluidy boy dinna ken the difference between an oil line and a fuel pipe.’

‘You’d better get some sleep,’ I told him.

‘A week in that bluidy morgue – what the hell ye think I been doing?’ And he disappeared into the night, heading for the door to the engine-room, his left arm held awkwardly to his body.

It was still only a breeze when dawn broke. But by 09.00 it had strengthened to Force 4 and there were waves breaking on the seaward side of the spit. We grounded shortly afterwards, the keel bumping on boulders. The grating and clanging lasted almost half an hour. All we could do after that was wait, and hope that the wind wouldn’t increase before high water, which was at 16.05.

But by then I had something else to worry about. Gertrude arrived just as we were completing the lifting of the anchor and she came aboard as soon as the work boat had dropped the anchor and chain under the bows. ‘Jim Halcrow says he will bring the supply ship in whatever the weather. He has the power and the manoeuvrability, also he draws much less than we do. But he needs to know the exact time you expect to be afloat.’

‘Tell him we’ll be bumping the bottom at about 15.35 and clear to tow off any time after 16.00.’

She nodded. ‘Okay. I tell him that.’ There was a pause and then she said, ‘There was a man at the yard this morning. He was making enquiries.’

We were standing in the starboard bridge gangway, watching the crew heaving in on the anchor chain, the trawler lying still now and the hills behind a diorama of shifting light as the clouds scudded over. An island scene, and all so peaceful that
the industrial world I had lived in seemed unreal. ‘What sort of a man?’

‘A police inspector, but in plain clothes.’

Not Bob Scunton then or the other man. That was something. Unless this inspector insisted on my going back to Hull. ‘What did he want?’

‘Just enquiring about you. What you were doing.’

‘Did he ask you any questions?’

‘No. He did not need to. He had already talked to me the previous day.’

‘Where?’

‘At Taing.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

She looked at me then. ‘Why do you think? I don’t want to distract you.’ And she added, ‘He will see you when the ship is afloat and lying off the yard.’

God! What a practical, soulless woman she was, not caring a damn about anything but her trawler.

‘What is it about?’ she asked. ‘You have done something?’

I looked at her, feeling suddenly cold and hard inside. Was this what a whaling station did to you? She had been brought up in the stench of the flensing deck, and her father had rubbed his hands with glee and said it smelled of money. She had told me that herself, laughing, and I had seen her in my mind as a young girl with the guts and urine of dead whales spilling out at her feet, and her father beaming and rubbing his hands. ‘A little girl was nearly killed,’ I said.

‘And you were involved?’

‘No.’

‘Then why is this inspector here from London?’

‘Better ask him,’ I said, and went down the ladder to give a hand for’ard.

Gertrude Petersen left shortly after that. The warps were all ready aft, the anchor stowed and the chain flaked neatly on
the foredeck, heaving lines and fenders handy. Nothing to do after lunch but watch the tide making and the sea slowly building as the wind increased – and think about what happened next, why they should have sent an inspector from London. In the privacy of my cabin I poured myself a stiff whisky. I should have been worrying about the tow. Instead, I was thinking how hard she was, my mind going back to the problem that had been with me ever since that night in Hull. A local matter surely, not something for Scotland Yard. Unless … But I shied away from the thought. It was just a matter of intimidation. Intimidation that had got out of control. I must concentrate on that. Did I identify the men or not? That was all that mattered.

Johan poked his head round the door. ‘We can see the tug now. It is steaming out in the bay. Fixed courses, so he is making speed trials.’

I followed him into the bridge, relieved to get away from my thoughts. The sky had cleared, the whitecaps in the bay bright in the sun. The supply ship was just turning at the extremity of her northward run up by Stany Hog. The high superstructure for’ard and the flat run aft certainly gave her the look of a tug. She completed the turn and started south. The time was 14.55. Less than an hour to go. I went all round the ship with Johan, checking that everything was ready and that each man knew what he had to do. Then I went back to the bridge and tested the loudhailer. No sign of the ship. She was lost to view behind the dune-like hills of Ward of Brough.

Ten minutes later she poked her bluff fendered bows round Cunning Holm islet, moving slowly now, coming in on her echo-sounder. A few minutes and she was in full view, turning and pointing her bows straight at us. And at almost the same moment I felt a slight lift to the deck under my feet, heard the first faint rumble of the keel knocking on boulders. She came in very slowly, feeling her way, until her bows were level with the spit. She hung there for a while, her engines throwing a froth of water for’ard along her sides as she maintained station
against the wind funnelling down the voe. I could see Jim Halcrow seated at the controls high up in the little glass wheelhouse, Gertrude Petersen beside him. He put a microphone to his lips and loud across the water came his query – ‘Are you off the bottom yet?’

I was out on the bridge gangway then and I called through the loudhailer for him to come and get us. He gave me a thumbs-up and drifted round the end of the spit, turning on his own axis and bringing his stern right against ours. I had never seen one of these vessels operating in a confined space; it was like driving a Dodgem. We didn’t need heaving lines. Johan just passed the end of our big warp straight into the hands of the man hanging out over the stern roller. He hitched it on to the winch hawser and my men hardly had time to make fast before the supply ship was going ahead, rope and hawser taking the strain. There was an ugly grinding noise, a jar on the soles of my feet as we came up against rock, then we were off, our bows swinging away downwind.

It was the neatest thing; one moment we were aground, hammering on boulders, the next we were out in the channel, clear of the spit and stern-on to the voe. The supply ship had 6000 h.p. and Jim Halcrow used the wind to get us positioned, then he just plucked us out stern-first into the bay. The tail end of our warp was already made fast at the bows. All we had to do was cast off astern. As soon as our bows were round the tow began.

We had to go round Bressay and enter Lerwick from the south, but even so, we were anchored off the Halcrow yard before dark. A constable in uniform was standing on the boat jetty watching us.

By the time we had finished flaking down the tow warp the work boat was alongside, Jim Halcrow coming on board, followed by Gertrude Petersen, her eyes shining. ‘It worked,’ she said laughing. ‘Your patch is all right.’

‘So long as the pump keeps going.’ My voice sounded sharp. I was quite incapable of responding to her mood. I hadn’t
expected a constable. ‘Trials go off satisfactorily?’ I asked Halcrow.

‘Fine. Manoeuvring and towing made a good test for the new shaft.’ He glanced at the sky up-wind of us, then at his watch. ‘Well, let’s have a look at your problems. Where’s your Chief, in the engine-room?’

I nodded and led him below. We could hear the water sloshing about in the bilges as we went down the ladder. The sound of it was loud now the ship was floating to her marks. Duncan appeared out of the gloom. ‘Ye’ll have to have a resairve pump on board.’ Apparently we had made 5 inches during the tow. I introduced him to Halcrow and left them to it. When I got back to the deck the yard boat had arrived and the constable was waiting for me. He was a big, tow-headed young islander with a friendly face. ‘You the captain?’

‘Yes.’

He had his notebook open in his hand. ‘Michael Mouat Randall. Would that be the name?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘I must ask you to accompany me to the station.’

‘Any reason?’

‘No, sir. Only that Inspector Garrard would like a word with you.’

So their witness hadn’t perjured himself yet and there was no warrant. ‘I’ve a lot to do,’ I said. ‘If the Inspector wants to talk to me he’s welcome to come on board.’