"Innes Hammond - North Star v1.1 (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Innes Hammond)

'There was more noise on that platform than there ever had been when North Star was drilling, the wind roaring through it, banging and slamming at the iron sheets, tearing them loose, whirling them away. Everything chaos, and the thuds of the waves thundering beneath our bodies. The half-submerged rig had a dead feeling. It was like a rock awash.'

Mike Randall, one-time militant with a police record, could never forget the petrol-bomb - or what it had done to the child. When he came home he was still running, with just one last place to hide.

North Star was the oldest rig in the North Sea, operating west of Shetland in the most dangerous sea area of all.

Randall was on the trawler Duchess which became her guardship. Until the night of the savage storm - when one man's decision marked the turning point and started a desperate battle for life...



Hammond Innes


North Star (1974)





CHAPTER ONE

It was March, the wind cold from the north-east and the Fisher Maid plunging down the waves with a wicked twist to her tail. I shut the door of the bridge behind me, leaving the skipper to listen to the forecast, and went down the ladder, heading aft to check the gear. I knew the forecast would be bad. But it couldn't be any worse than the weather we had had off Bear Island. I paused in the shelter of the superstructure. Here on the starboard side I was out of the wind and I took out my pipe, filling it automatically, standing there staring out across the darkening sea.

I had seen to the stowage of the gear myself, a thousand miles back when we had finished trawling; it was just an excuse to be out in the open, away from the smell of oil and stale food, the blare of the radio and the company of men I had been locked up with for too long. On a trawler it's bloody difficult to be alone when you want to.

Shetland was still just visible, the black humps of the distant hills like wave patterns against a cold green strip of sky, and the light on Sumburgh Head blinking above the hard line of the horizon. Only that pale green strip to mark the bitter cold we'd been steaming through; the rest of the sky was clouded over now. A flurry of sleet drove like a veil across the starboard navigation light. Inside of two days we would be back in Hull, and still I hadn't made up my mind, the shadowy figures, the crash of glass, the sudden blaze of bottled petrol, and that child's face at the upstairs window ... It had haunted me throughout the voyage.

Slowly the pale light faded in the west. I stood there watching it until that last vestige of the dying day was engulfed by night, wondering whether the strike would still be on, what the hell I was going to do. Waves were breaking against the stern, the driven spume white in the gathering dark, and the wind whistling in the top hamper. I was thinking of my father then, wondering what he would have done, giving his life for a cause in a country not his own. Would he have allowed his principles to be totally destroyed by a single cruel and senseless action?

The match made a small flared arc as I tossed it over the side, my hands gripping the rail, the metal cold to the touch, my eyes staring westward to Shetland, fifteen miles away. He had been born in Shetland, and I had never been there. I hadn't even known him, only the legend. My mind slipped back, my life in flashes, and always that legend, a guiding light to everything I had done - and I wasn't sure any more. A door opened, the muffled sound of the radio reminding me of the industrial world just two days' steaming away, the docks, the stuffy smoky meetings, the arguments, the pickets, the turmoil of over-population, man in the mass. Christ! How could one man, one individual speck, find his way in the tangle of motives and pressures?

'Mike!'

I turned, glancing upwards to see Sparks standing at the top of the ladder, his thin hair blowing in the wind. The bridge door slammed behind him as he came down to stand beside me, a sheet of paper thrust towards me.

I pushed it away. 'I don't need a forecast to tell me it'll be Force 9 before the night's out.'

'It's not the forecast.' His thin, rather high-pitched voice was half blown away by the wind. 'A message for the skipper.'

'Well, give it to him then,' I said irritably.

'I have. But since it concerns you--' I could smell the beer on his breath as his pale face thrust closer, the eyes bright behind his glasses. 'You in trouble?'

'How d'you mean?'

'Look, Mike,' he said, 'you were shipped at the last minute after Les Sinclair had gone down with a virus. You and the skipper - you're not buddies like Les, so he may not tell you. I thought I'd warn you, that's all. The police will be waiting for you when we dock. A Detective-Sergeant Wright. Here's a copy of the message.' And he pressed the piece of paper into my hands.

'Thanks.'