He nodded. 'Jump in then and I'll drive you over. Take about an hour, that's all.'
I hesitated, thinking it was probably just an excuse to find out more about me. But the wind was blowing from the north-west now. It was cold, and anyway it would be interesting to have a look at that trawler; there couldn't be more than one beached on Shetland. I got in beside him, but instead of turning the car, he said suddenly, 'What made you come to Grund Sound?'
'There's a plaque in the church here. I wanted to see it.'
He stared at me suspiciously. Then he laughed. 'Oh, that.' He nodded towards the graveyard and the man shovelling earth. 'There was a funeral here today. I thought perhaps.. You saw it, did you?' And he added, 'It was the trawler's skipper they buried. Old man Petersen. Owed money in Lerwick, a finance company mortgage.' He backed and turned the car. 'The wreck's up for sale now.'
Just outside Hamnavoe we turned right, across the bridge to Trondra. 'You ever been to Unst?' he asked. 'I've got a bit of a hotel at the end of Burra Firth where the north road stops. Trolls, Vikings and stone circles, that's what they come for. And it's only two miles to the top of Herma Ness. They can see Muckle Flugga from there and go home with pictures of the northernmost point of the British Isles.' He had a quick, energetic way of talking, as though needing to convince himself all the time that he was possessed of a dynamic personality. 'Birdwatchers in summer. Gales in winter.' He laughed. 'It's a bloody hell of a place.'
'Then why are you up there?' I asked.
'Oil. I'm waiting for the oil to come ashore, that's why.' He leaned towards me, his manner becoming confidential. 'I've got a company now. And I've just landed a contract to supply two of the rigs — food mainly. But to ship the stuff out I need a boat, you see.'
We crossed the Scalloway-Lerwick road, heading north alongside Loch of Tingwall towards the eastern shore. It was shortly after midday when we drove through Skellister, South Nesting Bay blue under a blue sky and the voes, sheltered in the lee of the land, calm as silk. The Duchess of Norfolk lay in the East Voe, so close against a narrow spit of land she might have been moored there. She was low in the water aft, but still neat and trim, not too much rust and her brasswork gleaming in the sun.
'Looks in good condition,' Sandford said.
I nodded, thinking of the men following that coffin. So much care, and their ship stranded here and up for sale. 'She's holed below the waterline, is she?' I couldn't see any damage, part of her bulwarks stove in, that was all.
'It's on the other side,' he said, and we left the car, walking through little mounded hills of sheep-cropped grass until we stood on the spit only a few yards from her. I could see it then, a ragged tear in the plating by the stern. It was about five feet long and only just showing above the surface of the water.
'Well, what do you think?'
I barely heard him. I was day-dreaming — thinking how it would be possible to repair that rent and get her off. Down by the stern like that, her engine-room would be flooded. But if that was the only damage a single pump would soon float her, once the hole was patched. 'You don't know how far the damage extends below the water, do you?'
'About two feet — three feet at the after end.'
'Somebody took you out?' There was no sign of a boat.
He laughed. 'Nobody here last night. It was almost dark. I just stripped off my clothes and swam out.' There were ropes trailing from her deck aft, but he had not climbed on board. 'Well, what do you reckon she'll fetch at auction?' He was watching me closely.
She was soundly built and those Paxmans… 'Have you got enough money?' I was wishing to God I had.
'No,' he said. 'Of course I haven't. But I can borrow it, can't I? Same as I did when I converted those old wartime buildings up at Burra Firth.'
I stood there, looking at the chunky vessel with her high straight stem, the rounded stern. She had been drifting before the gale all the time until she struck. It was the bulwarks for'ard that were damaged, nothing much else — a window broken and one of the trawl doors missing, that was all I could see. And if a man who'd never been to sea in his life could borrow the money…
'How much would she be worth down south?' His voice was eager, greed in his eyes as he stared at me. 'Slipped and repaired with the engines in proper order.'
'She was built in 1939.' I was remembering prices paid for old trawlers in Hull, but most of them distant water boats and much bigger than this one. 'Somewhere around fifty thousand,' I said. 'Sixty at the most.'
'And lying here, just as she is, beached in the voe and her engines full of seawater?'
He wanted a low figure, of course, hoping for a bargain. 'It depends if anybody else is as keen as you. You might get her for as low as fifteen. But you'd be lucky.'
'Fifteen — that's about what I thought. Less maybe.' He was staring at the black hull and I knew he was working out the probable cost of repairs. He didn't see her as a ship, only as a means of making money.
'When will they fix the date for the auction?' I asked.
'It's fixed already — next Monday.' And this was Friday. The haste seemed almost indecent, but as he pointed out, it only needed a strong nor'easter, and the finance company wanted their money. 'They don't care what she fetches so long as it covers the mortgage. That's the beauty of it.'
We walked back to the car then, both of us too preoccupied with our thoughts to say much as we drove back through Skellister and along the road to the south. We were in country that was as much water as land, loch and sea all quiet in the lee, the hills smiling in the sun, and my mind on that trawler resting on her bed of boulders. If he hadn't been so coldblooded about it, regarding her, not as a ship, but simply as a means of making money, I don't think I would have done what I did. Or if he had asked me to skipper her… But he was so bloody anxious to get to his bank before it closed that he hardly said a word as he drove straight to Lerwick and parked the car on the Esplanade not far from the steamer quay. 'Meet me here in an hour's time and I'll drive you back.'
But by then I had made up my mind. 'Don't bother,' I said. 'I have to see somebody here anyway.'
'Just as you wish.' He hesitated, then slammed the car door. 'Well, thanks for your help.' And he hurried away, across the road and up a steep little alley.
It was a crazy idea. I had rather less than £100 in my pocket. But to hell with that. To hell with the police. Hull was a long way away and I was thinking of the future now, and Providence in the shape of that trawler beckoning irresistibly. A bank might not give me a loan, but there were companies operating up here now that had the cash if I could provide them with what they wanted. I walked along the Esplanade to the Queen's Hotel, got myself a beer and a sandwich and phoned Wishart in Sumburgh. I was lucky, he was in and he knew where the oil man who had rented a car from him was staying — at the Lerwick Hotel. 'His name's Fuller and he's got it till Monday.'
'Monday evening?' I asked.
'No, morning. He's booked out on the early flight to Dyce.'
'And he hasn't changed his booking?'
But he didn't know about that. 'If he has, he can't have the car.'
I thanked him and rang off. Either Fuller didn't know about the auction, or else he wasn't interested. An oil company looking for a trawler would hardly concern itself with a wreck, and wanting one on the cheap was a relative term. I had another beer, enquired the way to the hotel, and set off up the hill behind the port.
The Lerwick Hotel was out by the hospital, a low building standing well back, with Bressay and the open sea behind it. Fuller wasn't there. He had left immediately after breakfast, taking a packed lunch with him. I wrote him a note telling him I would call back at six that evening and went down to the port again. In the raised pedestrian way above the Esplanade I found a newsagent's and bought an Ordnance Survey map and a copy of the Shetland Times. The local paper was datelined 28th March. It had come out that morning and the wreck of the Duchess of Norfolk was its lead story.