I was shivering then and Gertrude said, 'You are all right now.' Blankets were heaped on top of me and I tried to push them away, thinking of the old man and Dillon, the Swede's hands scrabbling, and the little torpedo, echoes to the seabed, the anchor cables exploding — a kaleidoscope of impressions with the blurred vision of Johan's bearded face and Gertrude looking down at me with huge eyes full of pity. And at last I found my voice, heard myself say, 'The radar. Get that boat on the radar.'
'It's all right. The rig is all right and no need for you to worry.'
'It's not all right.' A big hand thrusting me back, myself struggling — 'Stop them — if those bastards blow the last four anchors…'
And Gertrude's voice: 'Relax. Nothing you can do.'
But I knew there was. If the rig went adrift… If they succeeded… 'It's a lee shore,' I gasped. I saw it in my mind, the rig stranded and battered on Foula, or on the Mainland shore of Shetland. And the disaster blamed on me. The boat gone, nobody else but me… 'Get me some clothes.' I pushed the blankets back, holding on to my stomach and forcing myself up on my elbow.
'You can't, Michael.'
'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 northeast 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 standby 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 wild-ness 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 voice was reproachful.
'Tell him I'm sorry,' I murmured. 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.'