North Star

I hesitated, torn between a desire to talk to the man who had come to install the equipment and the urge to get ashore. 'All right,' I said and got my anorak from the wheelhouse. But when I joined him in the boat he knew nothing about the telephone conversation. He had only just got back from Harolds-wick.

We landed on the little beach at Fiska Wick and walked to the hotel. The old man was waiting for me in the room where we had talked before. There was a peat fire still glowing in the grate and the single window looked out on to the green slopes of the hill behind. He fixed Ian with his eyes, a hard, flat stare, waiting until he had left and the door closed behind him. Then he turned to me and said, 'It's some months now since we had our first talk. Now it's time for you to reach a decision.'

He was silent a moment, trying no doubt to think how best to put it to me, but I didn't give him the opportunity. 'Was that Dillon on the phone a while back?'

He looked surprised, and when I explained that I had picked up the conversation on the boat's radio, he said:

'Then you know?'

'What?'

'That North Star has struck oil.'

CHAPTER THREE

The news came as a shock. We had had our first flurry of snow the previous evening and there had been a drift of white on Hermaness Hill as we had come into Burra Firth. Winter here, and North Star striking oil, everything suddenly come at once and my father demanding I make a decision. What decision? But I knew. I could see it in his cold blue Nordic eyes. 'Who is this man Dillon?' I asked him. And I think I knew that, too.

'You'll be meeting him in a few hours.'

'A property man, Ian said, with an interest in fishing. But it's not fishing, is it? The equipment in those cases-'

'You broke into them — why?' I don't think he expected an answer, and after a moment he said, 'Sit down.' He waved me to a seat on the far side of the fire, then slumped into the wing chair. 'There's no more time.' His voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper and there was a look of weariness on his face. 'I wish '\ now you hadn't come.' He gave a little shrug. 'I suppose it was inevitable, but…' He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, twisting his mouth around it. 'I could have wished it had been some other time.'

'It's North Star. Is that what you're trying to tell me?'

He didn't answer, sitting there watching me. 'You have to make up your mind now.'

'What are you planning to do?'

But he ignored that. 'I've given you a job, kept you clear of the police-'

'What are you planning to do?' I repeated.

That's not for me to say. It's not my plan. Once, yes — but I only came into this because of Ian and the hotel here.' That twisted smile again. 'I hardly expected the two of you.' And then he said, 'I'm getting old, you see. And it's been a hard life.' He seemed to brace himself. 'But I'm still alive. Very much alive. And he's right. We can do a lot with this rig. It's a very good situation, if it's handled right. And it will be.' His eyes were closed, his voice very quiet, and I had the feeling he was talking to himself.

'Is Ian in on this?'

His eyes flicked open. 'Good God, no. Of course not.' He made a dismissive movement of the hand. 'Money. That's all he's interested in. It's the be-all and end-all of his existence.' The weariness was back in his voice. 'Anna was like that, under the skin, under the lovely bloom of youth-' He shook his head. 'Perhaps that's why I didn't marry her. So pretty, so sweet, but under the skin — nothing, no love of poetry, no inkling of the ideological turmoil, the reaching out to the stars…' His voice faded.

'Yet you wrote to her — from Spain.'

'Oh, yes.' He smiled. 'She showed it to you, did she?'

I nodded.

'And asked you for money?'

'I hadn't any.'

He smiled at me, and the twisted mouth made a mockery of it. 'You're different, aren't you? Different stock. And you had it as a child. Money, I mean. You could afford to turn your back on it. Nobody can buy you.'

'Did you buy Ian?'

'Ye-es. I suppose you could call it that.'

'To what end?' And when he didn't say anything, I told him how we had sighted Island Girl that night the rig had had her windward anchor cables cut. 'There was no other vessel there, so Ian must have been responsible-'

But he shook his head. 'Ian wasn't on board.'

'Dillon?'

He nodded.

'It's not fishing he's interested in then — it's sabotage.'

There was a long pause, and he sat there, drawing on his cigarette and staring at me. 'It's a rough world,' he said very quietly, the peculiar lisp coming through strongly. 'Some day man will learn to organize it so that he can live in peace. But not yet. You have to accept that. You have to accept the reality of the world in which you live.' He leaned forward, his voice urgent. 'Life is a battlefield, a political struggle, you see. And we're all a part of that struggle. We take sides, get involved-' His cigarette stabbed at the air. 'You. Me. All of us. You made your decision. You involved yourself — just as I did. And now — you can't escape that involvement now.'

He paused, breathless, and I said, 'What are you trying to tell me? That I should be a party to locating a wellhead and then destroying it?' His eyes widened slightly and I thought I had guessed the purpose of that equipment. 'A man calling himself Stevens followed me into Foula, when I was skipper of the Duchess and we had the North Star contract. He said what you've just been saying. He said Villiers was vulnerable, capitalism at its worst, and that there was political advantage to be had out of it. And with Ian on the Zetland Council-' My God! He had manipulated it all so cleverly. 'And you a Shetlander,' I cried. 'You were born on the west coast. Are you prepared to see the whole of that coastline scummed with oil, a massive pollution that will destroy the livelihood-'

'I tell you, it's a rough world,' he said sharply. 'And there are always sacrifices. Think of the loss of life in the war, twenty million in Russia alone, the destruction, the appalling conditions.'

'And this is war.'

He nodded slowly. 'As good a name for it as any.'

'And I'm to be in the front line, with you. Bringing unnecessary pollution-'

'Michael, you can't help yourself.'

'I bloody well can.' I had got to my feet and stood over him, hating him for what he was, for what life had done to him. 'You're so twisted in your mind it's a pity that shell didn't kill you.'

He sat very still, looking up at me, and there was something almost pitiable in his expression. 'You didn't mean that.' And when I remained silent, the two of us staring at each other, his face gradually hardened. 'That's your answer, is it?' He got slowly to his feet, reaching for his stick. 'I had hoped…'

'That I'd co-operate?' The anger and disgust in my voice seemed to touch him on the raw.

'That you'd have more sense,' he snapped at me. And then that strange, disfigured face softened again. 'Would you like some lunch? It's almost time.'

'No thanks,' I said. 'I'll go for a walk.'

He nodded. 'Good idea. Give you a chance to think it over.'

'There's nothing to think over.'

'No?' He smiled. 'Well, maybe not. But just remember what I've said. There's no escape, the police against you and your ship the only one they know was there when the cables of that rig were cut. Go for your walk and think it over. Your liberty, your future…" He left it at that, still smiling and a devil lurking in his eyes, as though in me he saw a reflection of himself. 'Come back not later than five. Dillon will be here then and we'll be running tests in the firth before dark.' And he added, 'The North Star strike is only a rumour based on core samples flown to Aberdeen. There's still some time yet.'