His words, the empty stillness of the place; I didn’t like it either, but we couldn’t stand there for ever thinking about the strangeness of it. ‘There’ll be a message,’ I said again, and I pushed past him, going first into the front room, which was lounge and dining-room combined, then through to the kitchen. There was no message, but the remains of a meal still lay on the table, there was food in the fridge, which was working, and in the front bedroom the bed was unmade, clothes scattered around, his grip on the floor.
I called to Tom. ‘Looks like he’ll be back soon.’
He came in, looked at the bed and the clothes, then rummaged around in the grip. ‘It’s Brian all right. Blast the boy! I was relying on him…’ He didn’t say what it was he was relying on him for, but I could guess.
We went back into the kitchen. The wind had risen, tapping the branches of a small rowan against the window, and it was drizzling again. Above us the sliced rocks of the great slide hung raw and wet out of the low cloud base. ‘Gloomy sort of place.’ Tom switched on the kitchen light, then went to the store cupboard and began going through the tins. ‘Beans!’ he muttered. ‘Reminds me of those weeks I spent up at Ice Cold. Baked beans! And peaches, canned peaches!’ He gave a snorting laugh. ‘Which do you want, beans or sardines — or corned beef?’
‘Any bread?’ But I knew it was a forlorn hope.
‘Biscuits,’ he said. ‘And there’s coffee, a big jar of instant coffee.’
‘No tea?’
He shook his head. ‘You’re being difficult.’ I settled in the end for coffee and baked beans. ‘A beanfeast,’ he said and gave a laugh that was more like a giggle. ‘Can’t call it high tea — no tea. And high coffee, that sounds daft. So a beanfeast it is.’ And he filled the kettle at the sink, the handle rattling against the tap. ‘Where the hell is the boy? Why isn’t he here?’
Darkness came early in the narrow, fjord-like cleft into which the town and the pulp mill were clamped, mountain and cloud cutting out the light. I was glad I had had the sense to get spare batteries for my torch on the ferry, remembering the Mate of the cutter saying it rained 370 days of the year at Ocean Falls, and Cornish adding that in winter gusts of 100 mph hit the water from the mountains above, that once he had had a foot-thick coating of ice on all the metalwork on deck, the whole crew out hacking away at it with axes for fear the ship would capsize with the weight of it.
We had our meal, and when we had cleared it up, we dossed down in the lounge. It was still drizzling, so no point in going down into the town; anyway, I was too tired. I was on the floor, wrapped in blankets and an old sleeping bag, Tom snoring on the settee. Some time later he got up and went out of the front door. It was the coffee, I suppose, and when he came back I asked him whether it was still raining. ‘Don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t notice.’ And he went to sleep again immediately. It was cold now and I wrapped the blankets close around me, but it was no good. I had to get rid of some of that coffee and when I went out the clouds were broken and lifting, patches of starlight and the wind thrashing in the trees.
I was just zipping up my flies before going into the house when a movement on the road caught my eye, somebody coming up from the town. There was a dark shadow and the scuff of soft shoes on the wet planks. I thought perhaps it was Brian and I was on the point of calling out when the man moved into the pale light from our verandah and I froze, clinging to the shadows beside the house. I couldn’t believe it. But there he was, his aquiline features and dark hair clear in the light, his face half-turned towards me, and that same bearskin poncho.
I nearly called his name, but then I remembered how I had last seen him, the anger and the hate in his eyes as Tom had left him beside the mine track. Then he was past me, a shadow moving into shadow, and while I stood there, wondering why he was in Ocean Falls and how he had got there, I saw there was somebody else on the road, a figure slinking along without a sound.
I didn’t move and as he passed me I saw it was the same dark, lank-haired man we had seen earlier coming from the inflatable up on the lake. The way he moved, his total concentration on the figure ahead of him, there was no question in my mind — he was following Tarasconi.
I waited till he was well up the hill, almost at the bend, then I went back into the house, grabbed my deck shoes, calling to Tom as I slipped them on, ‘Tarasconi just went by. Tony Tarasconi. He’s being followed.’ Tom grunted as I filled in the details, adding, ‘He must have taken the ferry the day before us. He said he was planning to go to Haines.’ I had my shoes on then, grabbing up my torch and my anorak. ‘I’ll just go as far as the lake.’
‘What for?’ He was still half asleep.
‘To see where they go, of course.’
I left him then, slipping out onto the planks of the roadway and moving upwards, keeping to the shadows and half running, my deck shoes making little sound. Blasts of cold air swept down from the mountains, the cloud ragged and edged with moonlight, rents of bright starlight showing. Round the bend the boardway straightened and for an instant I saw both figures. Then Tarasconi disappeared in the brush that bordered the lake. The man following him slipped away to the left, climbing in great leaps till he, too, disappeared, obviously intent on circling his quarry. But why?
I moved up the last of the boardway with extreme caution, keeping all the time to the shadows, and then making a quick dash for it when I reached the open area of rough ground that led to the gate guarding the entrance to the dam-top. There were some bushes and, crouched in their shadow, I had a view along the margin of the lake. The moon was still behind cloud, or maybe it had not risen above the high ranges to the east, but there was enough light from its reflection on the cloud edges, and from the stars, for me to see several hundred yards, as far at least as the point where the inflatable was concealed. I was certain by then that it was the inflatable Tarasconi was after. To steal it, or puncture its fat, inflated sides, or was there something hidden in it, something he needed to find out about?
Crouched there, waiting, my eyes fixed on the spot where I thought the inflatable was hauled out, time passed slowly, the light coming and going with the passage of the clouds, and my eyes straining. Sounds were impossible to hear, even the sound of the wind, my ears full of the roar of water pouring white over the lip of the dam and on down the steep rock-strewn valley to the fjord below. I saw a figure moving along the water’s edge in a crouching run, but only for a moment and then it vanished, merging into some bushes, so that I thought perhaps I’d been mistaken. Then I saw it again, but in a different position. The light brightened momentarily. There were two figures. They seemed to be facing each other and at their feet a dark shadow that could have been the inflatable.
They might have been arguing over it, but the light was so uncertain, everything so indistinct, the hands flung up, the step backwards, the splash, all more likely in my imagination for the wind was blowing a veil of cloud across the sky, my eyes peering helplessly as the dark increased.
Had there been two? Had one of them knocked the other into the lake? I looked at the clouds racing across the sky, their passage marked by glimpses of stars. I couldn’t be certain what I had seen. Crouched there, close above the lake, the night filled with the roar of water, I began to doubt whether it was really Tarasconi I had seen hurrying up the board road.
I suppose it was only a minute or two, though it seemed much longer, before the clouds were blown away, and then, suddenly, I could see the inflatable. It was afloat and there was a figure crouched over the stern of it. He was working at something, the outboard presumably, and then he was paddling. I could even see the water dripping from the paddle blade as he worked the boat away from the shore, and when he was clear he crouched over the stern again, his arm flashing and a froth of water thrusting him away from me; then more cloud and suddenly the man and the inflatable had vanished, swallowed in the dark waters of the lake.