We were under way then and within an hour the sun was burning up the clouds so that the islands and tops of the coast mountains gradually emerged, vistas of tree and rock and water, the sun a luminous glow in the shimmering haze. Noon found us entering the narrowest part of the Grenville Channel, still steaming at something around 18 knots as far as I could guess. I came in from the deck to see Camargo and Lopez sitting three rows back from where I had put my bag. One had a newspaper, the other a magazine. Tom appeared to be asleep, but when I told him it was time we joined Jim Edmundson in the bar his eyes opened slowly, the pupils strangely enlarged, his gaze uncertain.
‘You see him.’ His voice was a little slurred.
‘But he wants to talk to you. A few questions.’
‘Tell him I don’t like drink, an’ I don’t answer, questions. Tell him anything you dam’ well like. I don’t wanta be bothered with it. Unless we can hitch a ride on that cutter that’s meeting him. If we can do that, then okay — ‘ His lips were spread in a sly smile as though he thought the decision he had made was a clever one. ‘If he’ll get us all to the Cascades, then I’ll tell him — whatever he wants to know. If he can find Miriam — part’c’ly if he can locate Miriam… You think he carries that much weight, enough to get things moving — well, do you?’
‘I don’t know.’
He sighed, his shoulders lifting in a slight shrug, his head drooping, his eyes closing.
In the end I was on my own when I joined Jim at the bar. He didn’t seem surprised. That man’s on drugs, isn’t he?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said guardedly.
Takes me back.’ He was smiling quietly, his hands still gripped round the beer in front of him. ‘Don’t know where those Yanks were getting it from. I never enquired. But they were sure getting it from somewhere. You ever tried it, Philip?’
I shook my head.
‘Me neither. I’m an open air man. It’s city boys mostly take to the stuff. I suppose you need a kick if you live in a concrete ghetto. And in war you need to forget. But a man like Halliday…’ He shrugged. ‘Had everything he wants, I suppose, an’ got bored. Now…’ He opened his briefcase. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing he isn’t here. Much better I show it to his lawyer.’ He pulled out a sheet of flimsy paper and passed it across to me. ‘Radio message. It was waiting for me when I came on board.’
It announced that the Kelsey had orders to pick up an American tug bound for Seattle towing a barge loaded with logs and stand by while customs officers carried out a routine inspection. You are to proceed on board Kelsey with the utmost speed on arrival Bella Bella. Capt. Cornish will brief you to the extent that it may concern your forestry inspection. I handed it back to him. ‘Well…?’ I was wondering why he had shown me what was a fairly confidential document.
‘Obviously this is another load of timber coming down from your client’s Cascades plantation. When the skipper knows you two are landing at Bella Bella with me it’s just possible he may want Halliday or both of you with him when he rendezvous with the tug- just in case there is any question of the logs themselves being held for examination.’
‘Do you know what it’s about?’ I asked.
‘No. Could be just a question of the export licence. They aren’t all that easy to get, all timber having to be offered to Canadian pulp and saw mills first. But a customs inspection of an American tug sounds to me more like a narcotics operation. Last night in the hotel there was some talk in the bar about ferries being gone over for drugs, particularly the American ships coming down from Alaska. At any rate, officers of the narcotics division of the FBI, the Federal Drugs Enforcement Administration, had been staying in the hotel for several weeks.’ He lumbered to his feet. ‘What can I get you?’
I would have liked a straight malt, something with a kick in it that would steady me up, but I didn’t think they’d have a malt. ‘Same as you,’ I said, my nerves tense, and then, as he went to the bar, I sat back, consciously trying to relax. But I couldn’t, my mind overwhelmed by what he had told me, thinking of the tug, which might already have left the Halliday Arm towing that barge piled with felled trees, and wondering when the operation would take place, whether the tug would stop, and if not … Anything seemed possible, remembering that note from Miriam and all that Tom had told me at Ketchikan in that sick little cabin of his. I hadn’t any doubt, you see. None at all. This was the drug route, though how they got the drugs on board the tow I couldn’t guess. But on board either the tug or the barge they would certainly be. That was why Brian Halliday’s protest hadn’t stopped them, why they had nearly run him down.
Jim came back with two more cans of beer and as he lowered himself into his seat again he said, ‘Something I want to ask you — something that arises from my perusal of the information sent me by the forestry people. My remit, you understand, is to report on the extent to which the environment may be damaged by Halliday signing away more hectares of his father’s plantation for clear felling — I take it, with die mine yielding what amounts to a nil return, or what has probably already happened, becoming a drain on his resources, I take it he is now more or less living off the BC forestry land. That right?’
I hesitated, considering how much I ought to tell him. He was no longer a chance-met Canadian being friendly and helpful to a stranger; he was an official asking questions about a client of mine and the answers I gave he would regard as being given in my official capacity as Tom’s lawyer and could well go into his report.
‘Well?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think you could say that until a new gold yielding area is opened up at Ice Cold he is quite probably living off the sale of timber he made to the SVL Company in Seattle.’
He nodded, raising his glass and emptying almost half of it. ‘As I understand it, he’s cut through all the natural growth up on the slopes and what he’s left with now is a fully stocked plantation of some four hundred hectares in the bottom. That’s not far short of a thousand acres. And this is something I find hard to believe, but it’s there in my notes — ’ he slapped his briefcase — ‘it was planted about seventy years ago.’
‘Why do you find that hard to believe?’ I asked.
‘Because here in BC we only started planting trees in World War II. Before that we relied on natural regeneration. I guess there was some experimental hand planting before then, but if Halliday’s father was planting back at the end of World War I, and on the scale of a thousand acres, then he was way ahead of his time. Maybe he was over in England and got the idea from your Forestry Commission. It was around then that Britain started hand planting. And another thing I don’t understand — why are the trees being harvested now? We wouldn’t normally fell western red cedar under about a hundred and twenty years.’
‘I see.’ I stared at my drink, thinking about that. ‘How much do you reckon the plantation is worth with the trees at their present age?’