'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 pocket.
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 Al near Pontefract, but a little after two in the morning I was in the cab of a long-distance container truck bound for Musselburgh.
CHAPTER FOUR
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-'