High Stand

1

Following the shore, it was the dark grit of the little beach that I saw first, a scuffed drag-line leading across it to the pale tin gleam of the boat hauled up close to the bushes and tree roots of the bank. I turned my head and there was the hut, a dark shadow in the cloud mist that looked surprisingly large, like a small castle on its rocky mound. The dogs were quiet, the door shut. I back-paddled, dipping the oars with care. The log-built shape faded and was suddenly gone, swallowed so completely by the mist it might never have been there.

I rowed gently to some rocks, found a place where the boat would be partially concealed, leaving it there, half-in, half-out of the water, and making my way cautiously through the trees until I could see the hut again. The trees hung heavy with moisture, no breath of air, everything very still except for the all-pervading sound of water falling.

I don’t know how long I crouched there, my legs cramped, my trousers clinging wetly, eyes straining and the minutes passing. I thought I heard the rattle of a chain, and once I imagined the sound of voices, but nothing moved, the world in limbo, and the boat so near I could have reached out and touched its outboard engine. It was an aluminium boat with a flat ribbed bottom and a bow like a punt. A bald-headed eagle swooped on a fish and I began to shiver.

I couldn’t stay there indefinitely. If Camargo and Lopez had been coming up to the hut they’d have launched the canoe by now, and with branches as paddles, or with just their hands, it wouldn’t be long before they were here. I rose, trembling, and started cautiously forward. The hut had windows either side of the door that gave it the appearance of a wood-brown Indian face peering out over the lake, the glass of the eyes glinting with the water’s pale reflection. There was a side window too, but that seemed boarded up. If I could look in through the windows facing the lake without disturbing the dogs …

As though they had sensed my thoughts, the sound of chains dragging was suddenly quite distinct. I froze as one of them gave a little bark that was half-enquiring. At the same instant the door of the hut opened and a man came out, tall’ and gangling with big ears either side of a long, battered face. I suppose I was within fifty feet of him as he turned and said in English, ‘No sign of them yet. They must have missed their way.’ He was speaking to the man I had last seen in the early hours of the morning following Tarasconi up the wet curve of the wooden highway in Ocean Falls.

The dogs barked as Rodrigo moved towards the path that led to the portage. ‘Ah got two guys expecting me. Canadian whites.’ He hawked and spat in the direction of the dogs. ‘Remember. You tell that boss o’ yours Ah need double, an’ Ah need it reg’lar. The market down there’s growing fast. Okay?’ He looked at the dogs and spat again. ‘You got all the protection you need, eh?’

‘I guess so,’ the other replied, and then I couldn’t hear them any more, the two of them moving off into the trees, the mist swallowing them.

My head turned to the hut and the open door, the dark rectangle of it holding my gaze, seeming to beckon. I moved on the instant, almost running. It wasn’t a conscious action, my feet moving of their own accord, a reflex action. The dogs began barking as I reached the door. Inside there was a table, chairs, a sort of dresser with crockery, a kerosene stove and a two-tier bunk against the far wall, a walkie-talkie, aerial extended, hanging on a nail on the wall and below it a rifle propped against a small cupboard that had a pressure lamp on it, keys and a powerful torch. There were two doors leading off the central room, both of them held securely shut with heavy double bars of fresh-sawn timber slotted into clumsy wooden brackets.

‘Miriam!’

There was no answer, everything very still, except those damn dogs, barking madly now, leaping at the full stretch of their chains.

‘Miriam!’ I called again and a man’s voice answered. He was behind the door to my left. I started towards it with the intention of lifting the bars, but there was a shout from the direction of the lake and I stopped, turning to the open door and the figure of a man running towards it.

I slammed it shut. There was a big key in a lock and I turned it. Seconds later fists pounded on the door’s wooden boards, a voice shouting at me to open up and not play bloody stupid games. He thought I was Camargo or Lopez. ‘Don’t fool around, the High Stand owner is there and he’s high as a kite. Don’t let him out.’

The dogs had stopped barking, but they were leaping and growling at the full stretch of their chains as the man’s face appeared at one of the windows, the two of us staring at each other. Then I had turned and was wrestling with the timber bars to the door, a voice calling from the inside something that sounded like ‘shoot the bastard’ followed by a string of obscenities. The bars were swollen with damp. I reached for a chair, knocking them up as a rock smashed the glass of the nearest window.

The room door crashed open, Tom standing there, his eyes wild, his face flushed, that muscle twitching at the line of his mouth. ‘Where’s that fucking Mexican? Where’s Rodrigo?’ His eyes, searching madly, fastened on the rifle propped against the cupboard. He lunged for it as a dead branch began to demolish the rest of the window, the man wielding it yelling for the door to be opened.

The room from which Tom had emerged was small, no more than eight feet deep, and there was the figure of a man sprawled on a bed at the end. There was a bucket against the opposite wall, the place smelling of stale humanity and excrement. There was blood on the blankets, the man’s face swollen and bruised. He looked as though he’d been badly beaten up.

Behind me I heard the click of a bolt. I turned and in the same instant there was the crash of a shot. Tom was at the smashed window, the rifle at his shoulder, smoke curling lazily from the barrel, and from outside the hut the shot man began to scream.

It was a crazy thing to do. If he’d killed the man he would be on a murder charge, and God knows what that would do to him, and Miriam, all the publicity, his name blazoned across Canada and Britain, and myself a witness to it. I could see the expression on the QC’s face after he’d read the brief. I can’t remember what I said, but when I seized hold of him, trying to restrain him, trying to tell him the consequences, he rounded on me, his face creased with anger, his teeth bared below the beginnings of a new moustache. ‘Murder, you say. Are you bloody crazy? That bastard out there, he’s the murderer.’ And when I stared at him unbelievingly, he said, ‘Go and look. On the bed, in there.’

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

‘Olsen. Thor Olsen, my forest manager. And he’s dead — dead. You understand?’ He was leaning his face close to mine and screaming the words at me. ‘Dead!’ he screamed again. ‘Beaten to death to force Miriam to tell A-Aleksis there — ’ he nodded to the man squirming on the ground outside, his hand grasping his left leg, moans of pain issuing from his wide-open mouth — ‘to tell him something she didn’t know. I should have killed him.’ He thrust his face right into mine, the bulging eyes lit by a curious light, violence and excitement vibrating in his voice as he repeated, ‘I should have killed him — shot him dead. Instead, I’ve shot his knee to pieces, nothing more. So don’t talk to me of murder.’

A voice called, and he swung round. It was a woman’s voice, muffled, but with a high pitch of hysteria. She was calling his name and he lunged for the door at the other end of the hut, clawing at the wooden bars, then hammering them up with the butt of the gun he still held in his hands. The door thrust open and she was there, her arms round him, half laughing, half sobbing, her hair dishevelled, no make-up and her clothes in a mess, blood and dirt and all creased with constant wear. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t say anything. They just clung to each other, like two lost souls. Then she saw me and she smiled, looking past his shoulder. ‘Philip. It was you, wasn’t it?’

I didn’t say anything and she pushed him away — but gently, almost reluctantly. ‘Tom, you’ve been taking that stuff again. You’re high.’

‘Of course I’m high. I’m on top of the world.’ He laughed, the sound of it a little wild. ‘If I hadn’t been high I’d never have had the guts to come here with that little Mexican bugger Rodrigo looking for you and walking s-slap into the bloody neat little trap they’d laid for me.’

She came across to me then, holding out her hand. ‘Thank you, Philip.’ And as I took it she leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the mouth. ‘I’m filthy,’ she said. ‘I’m going down to the lake to clean up.’ But she hesitated, staring down at the man who had been her jailer moaning and squirming on the ground, only half conscious now.

‘Did he kill Olsen?’ I asked her.

‘In a way, yes.’ She had turned back to the two-tier bunks to grab a piece of soap and a towel that was hanging there. ‘Thor wasn’t young,’ she said, turning to face me. ‘Over sixty, he said, and he’d had a hard life. I think it was a heart attack. He was tied up and that sadistic beast was hammering at him with a rough jagged end of a cedar branch, and then suddenly Thor collapsed, and he was dead — just like that. No sign of life. I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but no good. He was gone.’

She went out then, stepping past the figure on the ground and going down to the lake, where she stripped off her clothes and began washing herself, her movements practical and energetic, an essential action for any woman who had been cooped up for several weeks in a small room, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off the scene. It was so like some of the great pictures I had seen in magazines and books-Nude Bathing in a Lake. She looked beautiful.

‘You going to gawp at my wife all day?’

I turned to find Tom laughing at me. And then I remembered — Camargo and Lopez. And I shouted to Miriam, a sudden vision in my mind of the canoe emerging out of the grey veil of the mist and one of them lifting his gun to his shoulder. Swan Lake and Miriam in the role of Odette, falling and dying there, naked by the quiet, still waters of a lake deep in the Rockies.

She came back into the hut then, her breasts bare and the towel wrapped round her middle, her skin glowing with the coldness of the water.

I started explaining to Tom how his son and I had gone down into High Stand and how we had split up, Brian staying there while I hurried back up to the lake ahead of the two South Americans.

‘So they could be here any minute.’

I nodded.

‘And they’re armed.’ He was already moving round the hut, gathering up food, kit, clothes and a torch. ‘We must be out on the lake before they get here. You got all you want? Miriam! Bring your blankets, we may have to sleep out tonight, it depends when the tug arrives.’ He took down the walkie-talkie hanging on the wall and passed it to me. ‘Sling that over your shoulder. Now let’s get moving. We’ll take the hut work boat and tow yours. Then they’ll be stuck here till that dirty little lying pusher of a Mexican comes back for more snow.’ I’d never seen him like this, so sure of himself, so in command, not even at his own dinner table back at Bullswood House. But the mention of Rodrigo made me wonder whether the man could have heard the shot, might even now be lurking in the mist at the edge of visibility. Tom was sure not. ‘He’d never have heard it, not above the sound of water falling to the lower lake. Ready?’

I nodded and he called to Miriam again. She came out of the room, fully dressed with a bundle of blankets under her arm. ‘I’ve enough here for both of us,’ she told him.

‘Good.’ He went out and I followed.

Miriam hesitated. ‘What about Thor? We ought to bury him,’.

‘No time.’ He was standing over the man whose knee was a pulp of blood and bone showing through his trousers. The dark eyes were blank with pain, his breath coming in quick gasps. ‘I ought to knee-cap both your legs,’ he said, and I saw the man wince, his eyes half-closing and his teeth gritted as he waited in fear for the impact and the agony. Then he passed out.

We shut the door of the hut, locked it and took the key. ‘If they land here th-they’ll be fully occupied dealing with that guy and trying to get back down to the camp.’ Tom was moving across the little beach to where the aluminium boat lay. We dumped our things in it, dragged it down to the water, and while Tom dealt with the outboard, Miriam and I carried the semi-inflatable down, making the painter fast to an aluminium cleat close by where Tom was sitting.

He was pulling the starter cord then, and as we climbed in, the engine burst into life. I thought I heard a shout, somebody calling out of the mist. Miriam had sat herself on the flat platform of the punt’s bow and she thought she heard it, too. But by then I was pushing off with an oar, the outboard lowered and the prop biting, a froth of water astern as the boat gathered way.

It was then, as we were moving out from the shore, the hut already gone and the trees fading into mist that Tom saw it, and as I turned it was just emerging from the mist, a canoe’s bows and a man’s body, ghostly and unreal.

Tom half rose, his eyes widening, his mouth open. The engine roared, the boat skidding round in a tight turn, and he was suddenly singing, bawling out at the top of his voice: ‘… the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored — ‘ The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the boat driving straight for the canoe, which was now broadside to us, the two men in it kneeling and staring at us.

Lopez was the first to react, leaning forward and grabbing his rifle.

‘You fool!’ I yelled, for Miriam, seated in the bows, was more at risk than either of us.

‘.. the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword — ‘

Camargo, too, had got hold of his gun, both of them starting to aim and the canoe so near and clear now I could see the moisture beads on moustache and beard, the frayed stitching of an anorak and their faces set, their dark eyes staring.’..

sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men — ‘ The crunch as we hit the canoe was instantaneous with the crash of their rifles, the flat punt-end riding up on it, trampling it down into the water, the two men falling, their hands thrown up and Tom’s voice still drumming out the words, the crash of the shots reverberating, wood splintering… ‘Our God is marching on.’

He leaned out and grabbed hold of Camargo’s rifle, wrenching it out of his hand as the canoe disappeared. ‘Swim for it, you buggers,’ he yelled at them, lifting the outboard clear of the wreckage, then revving the engine again and heading down the lake, the semi-inflatable riding through the remains of the canoe and their two heads watching us from the water, two disembodied faces staring in disbelief.

‘He is coming like the glory of the morning on the waves; He is wisdom to the mighty, He is succour to the brave…’

I think I must have said something like, ‘You can’t leave them to drown,’ for he stopped singing long enough to shout above the engine’s busy noise, ‘Can’t I? Don’t you know why they were coming up here, to the hut? I heard it all on that thing.’ He pointed to the walkie-talkie. ‘They were going to play around with Miriam. Do whatever was necessary to get me to sign. And I wouldn’t have had any alternative. I’d have signed away High Stand to save Miriam, and you want me to hang around and pick the bastards up.’ He gave a wild laugh, the two heads fading into the mist, open-mouthed, their shouts inaudible.

‘So the world should be His footstool, and the soul of time His slave. Our God is marching on!’ He sat down suddenly, throttling back on the engine and staring into the void. ‘I don’t care if they drown. I should have killed them, up there at Ice Cold. And Wolchak. What about Josef Wolchak?’ His eyes fastened on mine. ‘He’s down there at the camp, isn’t he? And Mandola. What about Mandola and all the others?’

‘What others?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘All the others, the men who run the pushers, the big boys who pull in the money. Who’s down at the camp?’

‘Wolchak was the only one I saw, apart from the loggers and truck drivers.’

‘And Brian’s down there?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re still felling, then. Have they got a scow there?’

‘A barge,’ I said.

‘Scow, barge — what the hell! Aleksis said something about it having to be loaded by morning. He was talking on the radio. Wolchak had to have my signature to the document by noon tomorrow at the latest. That was when they expected the tug.’

The wildness seemed to have gone out of him, the eyes dead, as though the destruction of the canoe had got some of the anger and the hate out of his system. He was staring along the cascade shore of the lake, trees like phantoms standing in the mist, his eyes blank, his thoughts turned inwards. I didn’t say anything, thinking of Camargo and Lopez, two heads in the water beyond the inflatable and disappearing into the void, wondering whether they’d be able to swim ashore or whether the coldness of the water and cramp would drown them first.

Even then I hadn’t realized the violence of the world into which I’d been dragged. Only Miriam knew, and she was silent, huddled in the bows, her face tense and very pale. ‘You all right?’ I asked her and she nodded, no glimmer of a smile, no change of expression, and her eyes on Tom.

‘Where did those two come from? There’s a way down; at the end of the lake, is it?’ He had to shout to make himself heard above the engine.

‘Just follow the shoreline,’ I told him. ‘There’s a bit of a bay. I’ll point it out to you. It’s not far then to the old extraction track.’

‘You’ve been down it, have you?’

‘I told you.’

He nodded, but I could see he hadn’t taken it in, so I told him again how we’d gone down into High Stand, watched the felling of the timber, and then, when Wolchak had driven Camargo and Lopez to the start of the track, Brian had stayed there while I hurried back ahead of the two South Americans to commandeer the boat and arrive at the hut just when Rodrigo was leaving. ‘I suppose he told you he’d take you to where Miriam was being held?’

He smiled then, but it was more of a grimace. ‘I didn’t trust him, of course, but I was desperate. I wanted to believe him, and then when I saw Miriam… I’d forgotten they could communicate by VHP, that the whole thing could be stage-managed so that she was there, tied to the door bar; that was all I saw till that bastard with the big ears swiped me across the back of the head.’ He put his hand up, feeling it gently. ‘I’ve still got a hell of a bump. Then they flung me into that room with the corpse of poor old Thor … One day perhaps I’ll be able to look Rodrigo in the face knowing he’ll spend half the rest of his life behind bars. Perhaps I should have…’

But I stopped him there, for we were approaching the end of the lake, the mist swirling to a puff of wind and trees appearing in the gap. He slowed as I motioned him to turn towards the shore and then the aluminium bottom of the boat was bumping on boulders, scraping on the dark grit that ran up to the tree roots. Without being told, Miriam took the painter and stepped over the side, moving slowly, like an.automaton, as she splashed her way to the bank. Tom was bent over the outboard, unbolting it from its bracket, and when he’d brought it ashore he looked at me with a quizzical expression. ‘Don’t reckon we’ll be wanting it again, do you?’

I shook my head and he smiled, walking with it to the sloping rock where Brian and I had landed from the canoe and tossing it into the lake. He stood there for a moment, watching it sink, as though in that action he had virtually burned his boats. His mood communicated itself to me, so that as we gathered up our things I had the feeling that whatever lay in store for us down below, there would be no turning back.

It was almost three in the afternoon when we started down that track, myself in the lead and seeing my own footprints in the mud. The breeze was moving the mist, so that the light came and went, strange cloud shapes forming, and there was a rustle of leaves, or was it the distant murmur of the water falling? I felt very tired then, my limbs heavy, my brain numbed with lack of sleep and the unaccustomed exercise. I think we were, all three of us, pretty near the limit of our reserves, Miriam in particular. She didn’t talk. Even when asked a direct question she scarcely bothered to answer. There was no expression in her face, and the way she moved she seemed to be in a daze.

We reached the end of the spur, and before following the curve of the hairpin, we stood for a moment looking down at the camp through a gap in the clouds that were billowing raggedly between the rock walls of the inlet. The barge, lying against the quay, was deeper in the water now, the logs stacked in two great bundles, butts facing outwards against the blunt ends of the vessel, the tapering tops laced together like the ringers of some huge hand; there were at least a dozen more logs stacked on the quayside, the boom crane moving all the time as it lifted others from the big tractor transporter. Another log was clamped in the rock niche against the cliff, the A-frame mobile rig drilling into the butt end. ‘Your son thinks they’re constructing a logging boom,’ I said. ‘And that that means they’re going to fell the whole area of High Stand.’

‘Could be.’ He nodded slowly. And then suddenly he turned on me and said in a voice taut with nerves, ‘So what the hell does he expect me to do about it? What can we do?’

‘Get an injunction, I suppose.’ I said it without any enthusiasm for the idea, my tired mind thinking ahead to all the work involved in getting an action like that against an American company through a British Columbian court.

‘An injunction! That’s all you lawyers can think of. Fees for yourself and a court order, a bloody little piece of paper and some poor devil of a bailiff, if there is such a thing, traipsing all the way up here from Vancouver… Have you any idea of the sort of people he’d be dealing with? Well, have you?’

At the time I don’t think I really understood what he was talking about, but I could see his point about the bailiff. It would be a civil action and the police would only become involved if there was contempt of court. By then, of course, so much time would have passed that the whole of High Stand would have been felled and shipped, our only recourse the courts again for payment of a proper price for the sale of the timber standing.

The clouds were lifting. For a moment they were above our heads, so that we could look right down the long arm of water, great banks of vapour vaulted over it, the mountains either side cut off, everything looking sombre and very wet. He had turned his head and was staring down at the camp again, men moving around the drilling rig and on the flat platform of the quayside where two of them were working at the butt end of the log that had just been lowered to them. ‘What do you think they’re doing?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Brian’s probably right in thinking they’re constructing a booming pen. They’ll need it if they’re planning to shift the whole stand out in a hurry. There isn’t storage space on the quay and the poorer logs they’ll probably raft out anyway.’ He had been speaking slowly, as though by putting it into words he could convince himself that Brian’s explanation was the right one. ‘Why else would they be drilling the butts of selected logs?’

He looked at me then, his eyes staring, his shoulders sagging. There was a weariness about him that I found disturbing, and my mind flashed back to that lunch at a place near Lewes — it seemed a whole world away now — and Miriam telling me how one minute he’d be on top of the world — ‘the stars in my lap’, I remembered her words — and the next nothing, a bundle of nerves and temperament, full of insecurity. ‘It’ll sort itself out, I suppose.’ He said it wearily and I saw Miriam watching him, a frown on her face, and there were lines, so that she looked suddenly older, and the expression in her eyes — I think it was pity.

His gaze lifted. They stood looking at each other for a moment and I sensed something pass between them. And then he straightened up, pushing his hand through the wet brush of his hair and squaring his shoulders. ‘Let’s get on, shall we?’

He gave one final glance down at the camp below, then continued on round the hairpin bend, moving fast. I caught up with him in the first salmonberry thicket. ‘What are you planning to do when you get down there?’ I asked him.

‘See what Brian’s up to. Try and stop them if I can.’ He shook his head, clearly irritated by my question. ‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to see.’

Miriam caught up with me then, her hand grasping mine, her fingers fastening tight as she held me back. ‘Watch him,’ she whispered. ‘Please. I don’t know how much of the stuff he’s had. But I know this mood.’ She half slipped on a patch of mud, and then she muttered something about his being unpredictable.

‘Unpredictable?’ I repeated, and she nodded: ‘He could do something stupid, so please — keep an eye on him.’

We were glimpsing the cascades up on the rim of the lake above, the murmur of water filling the horseshoe basin with gentle sound and, below us, the green vista of the cedar tops silvered with moisture, the cloud-topped gut of the inlet beyond. Then the cloud came down again and for a time we could see nothing but the down-slope of the track ahead disappearing into vapour that the breeze rolled around as though it were smoke.

We must have been quite close to the upper edge of High Stand when I thought I saw movement. Tom had seen it, too, for he was suddenly standing very still, his head stretched forward, peering into the mist. Slowly he unslung the rifle from his shoulder, his thumb on the safety catch as he held it poised in both his hands. Faint from below came the sound of a power saw muffled by the trees.

I still held the gun he had snatched from Camargo and then passed to me. I looked down at it, finding the safety catch and wondering whether it was loaded. I’d never fired a rifle in my life. He moved forward in a crouch, and I followed, and then a voice called up to us.

It was Brian.

He didn’t look at his father, walking straight past him, his eyes on Miriam. ‘So you found her,’ he said to me, his face lit by a smile. And then they were hugging each other, and Miriam crooning over him as though she really were his mother. Her reaction, the sudden outpouring of pent-up emotion, was a reminder of the long period of uncertainty and fear she had suffered up there in that hut.

‘I told you not to go looking for Rodrigo.’ He had turned to face his father, hot anger blazing in his dark eyes. ‘I warned you.’ He swung round on me. ‘What happened?’ And when I had told him, he turned on Tom again. ‘God, Jesus! You bloody fool! You could have had Miriam maimed for life and those bastards with an agreement signed that gave them the right to do what they’re doing. You played right into their hands. Don’t you realize there’s anything up to a million dollars in the forest your father planted?’

‘It’s not the trees,’ Tom said. That’s just a cover.’

Thunder rolled down from invisible mountains, a flash of lightning.

Brian shook his head. ‘I warned you, and bloody hell, you took no notice.’ The sky had taken on a livid hue, the head of the inlet blocked out. ‘All you care about is yourself and getting enough coke to keep you high, just so you don’t have to face up to the reality of what you’ve done, letting these people in.’

‘I tell you, it’s just a c-cover.’ Tom’s voice was taut as though on the edge of losing control himself.

‘Listen!’ And Brian went straight on, ignoring his father’s attempt to tell him something, ‘Do you hear it — those chain-saws?’

They stood facing each other, the echoes of the thunder dying away across the peaks. ‘Listen!’ he said again. ‘Now do you hear it?’ And he seized hold of his father’s arm and dragged him down the slope of the track. ‘Come on, I’ll show you. We’ll go down through the timber and you can see for yourself.’ Miriam tried to stop him, but he waved her away. ‘It’s time he realized just what he’s doing. Once he’s seen it, maybe he’ll understand.’

The single-purposedness of the man was quite extraordinary. He must have been as tired as I was, and yet he could still radiate a sort of demonic energy, his obsession with trees filling his mind to the exclusion of anything else, so that I felt it was a sort of madness that had taken hold of him. And Tom went unresisting, a dazed expression on his face as though he were in the grip of Fate and had no volition of his own.

Only once did he break away. ‘Must have a pee,’ he murmured. And it was the same as it had been up near Ice Cold. I heard him snorting the stuff up his nose, and as we went on down into the forest, he developed a spring to his step, something near to a swagger in his walk. Miriam was by my side and she said, ‘Stop them, can’t you? They’re so — explosive. The two of them together.’ She was very tense herself. ‘They’ve always had this effect on each other.’

I shook my head. It wasn’t for me to interfere, and anyway we were nearing the end of the track, light showing through the tree boles and the sound of the saws getting louder every moment.

We came to the edge of the clear-felled area, the time 15.55 and the only difference from when I had been there in the morning was that the two fellers had moved half a dozen trees or more northwards, so that our view of the camp was partly obscured by the piled-up brash of lopped branches. Also the thunder was nearer, a closeness in the air and the lowering cloud base getting darker. The sound of the saws was loud here, a small wind carrying it towards us, one man working his way along the bole of a newly fallen tree, snicking branches off with the tip of his saw, the other bent over a standing giant that already had a gaping wedge sawn out of its base to guide the fall.

Brian had hold of his father’s arm again, moving him forward under cover of the standing stems. He was talking all the time, but the sound of the chainsaws was so loud I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then timber splintering and the man nearest us looked up from the fallen tree, his chainsaw idling, the other man stepping back from the base of the stem he had been cutting into.

‘… Stop them.’

‘How?’

‘For God’s sake, you’ve got a gun.’

Both saws idling now, the top of the tree beginning to move, branches snapping and the three of us staring as the tree slowly toppled forward, the green top of it arcing down across the backcloth of cloud-filled mountainside, black rock and the pale gun-metal flatness of the water… Then the splintering crash of the branches, the thud of the stem hitting the ground, an explosion of dust and debris. ‘That must be about the tenth I’ve seen felled today — ten in the few hours I’ve been here.’ Brian’s voice was harsh with anger. ‘You watch — he’ll move straight onto the next in line.’ And suddenly he swung Tom round, facing him. ‘Remember what you told me, all those years ago — about your father, what he’d written in the deeds. Remember? And now I’ve read it. And if you won’t stop them…’

‘You can’t do it, Brian.’ Miriam had moved forward, tugging at his arm, trying to push her way between them. ‘He’s your father. You can’t goad him like that.’ She was half-sobbing, her voice vibrant. The saws started up again. The feller had moved and was bending down by the next tree, the saw labouring under full power as the blade cut into the base of it.

Tom pushed Miriam away, his eyes fixed on the man as though mesmerized, watching the first cut made, Brian silent now, and Miriam standing there, her mouth open, her eyes wide. ‘No!’ I heard her cry that, and then the blade was making the slanting cut, her voice drowned.

Slowly, like a man in a trance, Tom moved out into the open. For a moment he stood there, the gun held ready across his body. The saw laboured, both men intent on what they were doing, the one felling, the other trimming. At last the guide wedge was finished, the feller straightening up, pushing it out with the tip of his saw, the motor idling. Then he was moving round to the rear of the tree, and the sight of him settling himself into position to begin the main saw cut that would fell the tree seemed to trigger something off in Tom’s mind. He suddenly started forward, shouting at the man to stop.

The man didn’t hear him at first. Neither of them seemed to hear him. By then he was half-running towards them, yelling to them at the top of his voice. The laboured sound of the saw ceased abruptly, the blade withdrawn and the engine dying as the man straightened up, staring at Tom. ‘Drop that saw! Drop it!’

‘Who are you?’

Tom told him his name and the man laughed. ‘You don’t give orders around here.’ And he bent to the base of the tree again, the note of the saw rising.

I suppose it was the man’s manner, his deliberate, almost contemptuous ignoring of him, that touched off the rage that had been building in Tom, so that it became a desperate hepped-up madness. He raised his gun and fired, a snap shot. But the man had seen it coming; he ducked round the end of the tree, slipping the saw blade out from the cut, so that it was held in both his hands as he stood up, flattened against the still-standing stem. The other had also stopped sawing, both of them watching as Tom stumbled forward, working the bolt.

Then he had stopped and was fumbling in his pocket. ‘Oh God!’ Miriam was close beside me, Brian just starting to move, and I stood there, staring, as Tom started forward again, reversing the gun so that he held it by the barrel to use as a club.

‘No!’ The exclamation, forced out of her by fear of what was going to happen, rang out in what seemed a desperate stillness, everything happening in slow motion, Tom running forward, and the man stepping out from behind the tree, the engine of his saw revving and the chain of it screaming on the blade.

Tom shouted something, the gun rising in his hands, ready to strike, and the man swinging his saw up so that the blade was stuck out in front of him. Whether Tom stumbled, or whether the man thrust the blade forward and he ran straight onto it, I shall never know. All I recall is the sight of him lunging forward, the rifle coming down and then the thin scream as the blade bit into his chest, bone and flesh flying, blood streaming from it where before I had seen only sawdust, and the poor devil pitching forward, the scream cut off, his body almost ripped in half.

And at the same instant the rifle I was holding was plucked from my hands and Brian had fired it, the crack of the shot followed by the man with the saw being slammed round. His hand clasped at his shoulder. Then he had ducked behind the tree again.

Suddenly all was still, the saws silent, both fellers hidden, and Tom’s body lying there, the green of his anorak merged with the green of lopped branches, and Miriam standing beside me, her eyes wide with horror, a low moaning sound coming from her open mouth.

‘You got any ammunition for this thing?’ Brian’s voice sounded half-choked, his face white against the black of his hair.

I shook my head, remembering how Tom in the euphoria of his singing had plucked it out of Camargo’s hands.

The fool! I never thought…’ He had turned to Miriam, trying to exonerate himself, and she just stared at him in blank horror, glassy-eyed.

The man Brian had wounded was crawling into the forest, dragging his chainsaw behind him. I thought at first he was merely trying to get away from us, but then I saw he was making for the place where they had left their anoraks and their lunch packs.

Brian had seen it, too. He raised his gun, though there was nothing in it, shouting at the man to stop. But at that moment Miriam started forward. He reached out, catching hold of her arm. ‘There’s nothing you can do for him.’

‘How do you know?’ She wrenched herself free, moving fast as she ran the thirty yards or so to where Tom lay, face-down on the ground, his body still. And when she reached him, she called out to him, bending down and turning him over. ‘Tom!’

I can see it so clearly, the ripped clothing and the gaping wound, blood still flowing and his eyes fixed and staring. You didn’t need any medical training to know that he was dead. Miriam had taken his head in her hands, kneeling there, her face gone paper-white and a sort of croon issuing from her mouth — of love, or horror, I don’t know which it was as she clasped that poor, mangled body to her.

At what point Brian and I had moved forward I don’t know, but we were there beside her, standing with our heads bent. In such circumstances, it seems, one is too shocked to say a prayer. I had seen injuries before, car accident injuries, dead bodies, too, but always in the cold isolation of a mortuary or a funeral parlour. To see violent death at the instant of dying, the eyes so wide and the teeth bared, the skin of the face still flushed with the exertion of that final rush… My limbs seemed suddenly paralysed, my mouth dry as I swallowed desperately.

‘Drop it!’ Brian’s voice was harsh and high, the gun raised. He was pointing it at the man who had been crawling to where they had left their things. He had a walkie-talkie in his hands and in the stillness I heard him say, quite distinctly, ‘Hurry! They’re armed.’ And then he dropped the radio onto the ground, sitting up and placing his hands on top of his head.

I walked over to him. ‘My name’s Redfern,’ I said, ‘and I’m an English lawyer.’ Lawyer always sounds stronger than solicitor. ‘The man you have just killed is my client and the owner of the trees you are illegally felling. You’ll be charged with murder.’

‘Yeah?’ The hard, leathery face cracked open to reveal a row of broken teeth. ‘You saw what happened. An unprovoked attack …’

‘It was murder,’ I repeated.

‘He stumbled, fell right onto the saw, didn’t he?’

‘Time we were moving.’ Brian had picked up the walkie-talkie handset. ‘Wolchak will be here in a moment.’

‘Then he can take us up to his office,’ I said. ‘He’ll have an R/T set there and we can get onto the police, maybe get that Coastguard cutter back.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Philip.’ It was Miriam. She had got to her feet, her hands covered in blood, and there was blood all over her skirt, her lips a tight line, her eyes frozen. ‘Nothing you can do for Tom. Nothing any of us can do.’ There was no emotion in her voice. ‘All we can do now is try and get out of here, alive.’

I started to argue with her, but she cut me short, her manner quiet and very controlled. ‘I don’t think you understand. Either of you. This isn’t about forestry. It’s nothing to do with trees.’ She looked towards the two men sitting there and staring at us. Then she turned abruptly. ‘We’ll go back up to the lake now.’

I hesitated. Then I followed her, realizing suddenly that her words were for the benefit of the two fellers, that what she wanted to tell us couldn’t be said while they were within earshot. Brian stood there for a moment longer. He was genetically incapable of accepting instructions from a woman, but in the end he followed. There had been something in Miriam’s tone, and in her manner — a decisiveness, almost a cold-bloodedness in the way she had torn herself away from her husband’s body — that was very compelling.

We reached the track, and when we had gone up it a little way, she left it and headed into the dark of the forest. Not until we reached the edge of it, almost at the spot where Brian and I had stood earlier in the day looking out towards the camp, did she turn and face us. She was so choked up, so near to tears that she could hardly speak: ‘What I have to tell you — you, Brian, in particular — is that what is going on here has nothing to do with the forest your grandfather planted. Nothing at all.’ It had begun to rain, all the end of the inlet blotted out.

‘Balls!’ Brian’s voice exploded in sudden anger. ‘Why do you think Tom changed his Will? Why did he leave these trees to me? Because I know the value of them and understand why my grandfather — ‘

‘It’s not that.’ Her chin was suddenly lifted, a sharp determined line. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is that these people — ‘

‘SVL Timber and Milling? They’re sawmillers handling high quality cedar for a specialized market. There’s a million dollars locked up in this plantation if they can get it out before I stop them.’

‘They aren’t sawmillers. They’re dope smugglers.’ Her face was flushed with anger. ‘The trees here are a cover for a drug-importing racket into the States.’

He stared at her unbelievingly, the forest darkening behind him as the clouds thickened. ‘Where the hell did you get that idea?’

Tom — up at Ice Cold.’ Thunder crashed, a blinding fork of lightning. ‘Why do you think he disappeared? Why do you think he was desperately trying to find gold? These people had their claws into him and he didn’t know how to get clear of them. That’s why he was back on drugs. He was scared — scared out of his wits.’

‘But — ‘ Brian stared at her, frowning, and then he voiced the question I had been on the point of asking her: ‘The SVL Company in Seattle. I went and saw them, a man named Barony. It’s an old-established timber company, founded back in the First World War when demand was high.’

‘But who’s behind it now?’ she asked. ‘I spoke to Barony, too, I asked him for the name of the major shareholder and he told me to mind my own business. Also, he said his company merely bought timber standing. The people felling and loading it were self-employed, nothing to do with him.’

It was what I had been told, what Brian had been told, too. We stood there talking it over for a moment longer, but so much of what had happened fell into place that I think even Brian would have been convinced if I hadn’t told them about the customs operation and how a barge loaded with logs from the Cascades had been searched, the tug, too, without anything being discovered. If they were smuggling drugs, then the method was not apparent, and Tom hadn’t told her how it was being done. Nor had he confided in me, not even on the ferry when he had lain there in his cabin mulling over those Chicago press cuttings.

Finally Brian said, ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out.’ He was gazing out to the quay, where the squat shape of the barge showed drab against the approaching cloudburst.

Wolchak had just come out of his office. He paused for an instant, looking up the valley, the sound of the rain audible as lightning flashed. He wrenched the door of the pick-up open and jumped in, thunder crashing and the office disappearing. The sound of the rain was like surf on a sand shore. The pick-up stayed just ahead of it, so that we could see him quite clearly as he drove past, and the next instant the rainstorm was on us, breaking against the forest tops with a roar that almost drowned the next clap of thunder.

Sheltering behind separate tree boles, the rain such a flood of water and the noise so overwhelming that each of us cowered there in isolation, the horror of what had happened and the motives that had driven Tom to such a point of desperation had time to sink in. I saw Brian glance uncertainly at Miriam, could see what was going on in his mind. His appalled realization that he was to some degree responsible for what had happened to his father was there in his face.

He said something, but either she didn’t hear or she didn’t want to hear, her face set and stony, no forgiveness in it at all. He looked down at the walkie-talkie, then at the one still slung over my shoulder, and the sight of that means of communication with the outside world seemed to turn his mind to practical matters. The full force of the rain was passing now, but it was still a downpour blotting out all sign of the camp and the jetty as he stepped out from behind his tree. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

I stared at him blankly, seeing the rain streaming down his face, his black hair plastered to his head. ‘Where?’ Just opening my mouth to say that one word filled it with water, the fresh sweet taste of rainwater on my tongue.

‘The barge. It’s our chance now — to get aboard — unseen.’ He passed me the handset and turned to Miriam. I thought she would refuse, that he would have to waste time arguing with her. But she nodded and went with him without question, out into the rain, as though, like me, she had realized the logic of his suggestion. If we were ever to get away from the Cascades and the Halliday Arm of the Cascade Inlet our only hope was the barge, and to get on board without being seen we had to do it now while the whole place was awash with rain.

We ran. We ran blindly through the storm, our clothing soaked, water streaming down our bodies. I could feel it cold on my skin, my trousers clinging and my anorak getting heavier by the minute. But somehow we made it, reaching the drowned quay only yards away from the shadowy bulk of the barge. It looked huge close-to; I had never seen such a giant of a barge in my life, not even on the Dutch waterways.

Then our feet were squelching on its wet steel deck plates as we stepped aboard, over mooring lines and the hose of a pump, hurrying aft along the narrow sidedeck to the wheel-house. It was a small place, the paint flaking and very dirty, sliding wooden doors at each side. There was a wheel and below the windows a shelf with some mugs, a tobacco tin half full of cigarette stubs, an oily rag, some matches, and in the corner a VHP radio, the sort of set used by small boats. It was wired to a battery clamped to the wooden flooring below the shelf, and I presumed it was there to enable tug and barge to keep in contact.

‘You reckon it works?’ Brian reached forward and switched it on. A little dot glowed red in the gloom and it began to crackle at us. His hand strayed to the mike on its rest at the side of the set, but I stopped him.

‘You won’t contact anybody,’ I said. ‘Not in the middle of the mountains here.’

He nodded and switched off. ‘At least it’s alive and it works.’ He ducked his head, disappearing down the near-vertical ladder that led through a trap door to the shelter and comparative warmth of a sort of cuddy. Miriam and I followed him.

The time was 16.39. Another twenty-four hours and with luck we would be out into the Inside Passage headed towards Vancouver. The rain stopped abruptly, footsteps sounded on the deck plates overhead and a voice shouted instructions. They had begun to load another log.