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me. ‘Bucknall doesn’t matter. But Claxby is too useful a man to be thrown away.’
    ‘Get out of here!’
    ‘You could be useful, too.’ He said it reflectively, as though considering the matter. Then he shrugged. ‘But at the moment we’re concerned with the East Coast yards. We’ve failed with the trawlermen. The fisheries officer of their union won’t play. But if we can hold the strike long enough, then there’ll be very little fish coming in anyway. That will give the unions the leverage they need in their negotiations. A trial, with two militants in dock, wouldn’t suit us at all.’ He paused, and then added, ‘We were able to have a word with your radio operator before coming here. In a pub. You’re out of a job again, it seems.’ And when I didn’t say anything, he smiled. ‘He told us he thought you ought to be commanding a supply ship. That’s where the future lies, isn’t it?’
    He was looking at me again and the expression of his eyes had a speculative quality. ‘Get into oil,’ he said quietly. ‘And forget about what you saw in Washbrook Road.’ He stubbed out his cigarette, then turned abruptly towards the door, jerking his head at Scunton. ‘Think about it,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘All you need tell the police is that it was too dark to see who they were.’
    ‘And if I tell them the truth?’
    He swung round on me. ‘Then you’d be a fool.’ And he added, ‘You keep your mouth shut and I’ll see our witness does the same. You understand?’ He stared at me a moment. Then he nodded and went out, Scunton following, their footsteps sounding hollow as they went down the ladder and across the deck to the gangway. And after that I was alone again, still in my pyjamas and feeling cold.
    I got myself a drink, my hands trembling, wishing, as I had done so often in my life, that I had somebody to fall back on,not just the legendary figure of my father, but somebody, something, to give me strength. And suddenly I was thinking of the islands seen the previous evening black against that green strip of sky. Shetland, the land where my father had been born. I had never been so close to Shetland before, and sitting there, the brandy warming my guts, it gradually came to me that now was the moment. I would go north to the islands – now while I had the chance.

2
    My first sight of Shetland was a lighthouse sliding by the window and green lawn slopes falling from rock outcrops, everything fresh and clean, touched with the luminosity of evening light. The Highlander landed and I saw the remains of old wartime buildings as we taxied in to park beside a large British Airways helicopter. There was a light drizzle falling, and as I stood waiting on the apron for my baggage, the smell of the grass and the sea all about me, I had a deep sense of peace, something I hadn’t felt for a long time.
    Most of my fellow passengers were oil men returning to the Redco rig. For ten minutes or so they filled the little prefab terminal with colour and the babble of their accents; then they trooped out to the waiting chopper and in a buzz-saw whirr of engines and blades they were lifted up and whirled away. Suddenly everything was very quiet, only the rattle of crockery as a woman went round the tables collecting empty cups, the murmur of voices from the BA desk where the despatch clerk was talking to the crew of the Highlander. There was an Ordnance Survey map on the wall. I got myself another cup of coffee and stood looking at it, refreshing my memory based on the Shetland charts I had pored over on the bridge of Fisher Maid .
    Sumburgh Head is the southernmost point of the whole island chain, the tip of a long finger of mountainous land jutting south from the main port of Lerwick. The distance by road looked about 30 miles. A voice at my side said, ‘Can I help you?’ He was a small man in blue dungarees, dark-haired with bright blue eyes and a ruddy face.
    ‘I want to get to Hamnavoe,’ I said and