I was so urgent by then to check what I thought I had seen that I didn’t hesitate. I switched on my torch and went running along the path that twisted and turned through the lakeside scrub until I had reached the point where I thought I had seen them. But there was nothing there, nobody, nothing lying in the water. I found the marks of the inflatable, could see where the tipped-up prop of the outboard motor had made a furrow in the black silt of the shore, and there were the marks of feet, but the coarse sand was so loose that there was no knowing whether they had been made by one person or two. It looked like more, for of course, to manoeuvre an inflatable into the water with its outboard engine attached would have been something of a struggle, certainly for one man.
There was a piece of rag there and a short length of nylon fishing line with a knot in it, also a dark stain in the coarse silt that looked as though oil had leaked out from the outboard engine. That was all I could find, though I probed around for some time in the bushes. I even called Tarasconi’s name, but my voice was lost in the sound of the wind and the water, not just the dam now, but waves breaking out in the middle of the lake. Nobody answered, so that I was forced to the conclusion that both of them had left m the boat. But where would they go, and why, in the dark with half a gale blowing up on the lake?
I went back to the road then, the wind a little easier as I started down it, and when I reached the house, the verandah door was ajar and I could hear voices raised in argument: ‘All right then, there is one guy — probably more. But if you want a fix that bad you do your own haggling, buggered if I will.’
They were in the lounge, Tom still on the couch, his son standing over him. ‘… Mexican, I think,’ Brian was saying as I pushed open the door. ‘His name’s Rodrigo, a gone-to-seed, Che Guevara type with a drooping black moustache and a slinking sort of truculence.’ He was wearing an old camouflage jacket and a green baseball hat, and at my entrance he turned quickly, his strange face set, his eyes glaring at me, almost black with anger. ‘So you found him in the Yukon and you brought him down here to see the damage he’s been doing. Good on you, mate. But now they want to cut more timber, he tells me, and they’re using Miriam as a lever.’
‘I think, in the circumstances,’ I murmured soothingly, ‘it would be better if you just sat down, relaxed and we discussed the situation. What are you doing here, anyway?’
‘None of your business. And I’m hungry. I’ve spent the better part of twenty-four hours sitting under a rock halfway up the mountainside.’ He had turned and was walking into the kitchen.
I looked across at Tom, sitting slumped on the couch, his eyes half-closed. Clearly he had no intention of standing up to his son. ‘He’s been down to the Cascades, but they threw him out. Now he’s planning to get in by the back door, across the lake.’ Tom gave a little shrug. ‘He’ll only make things worse.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t know, Brian’s always been like that. Puts his head down and charges, no thought for the consequences. His mother was the same. Whatever she wanted she had to have, never mind anybody else. Ruthless,’ he muttered. There’s a ruthless streak.’ Apparently Brian had arrived back a few minutes after I had left, coming down off the slope of the mountain above. ‘I woke to find him standing over me and you weren’t there. Where were you? You were gone a long time.’
I told him where I had been and what I thought I had seen up there at the lakeside. ‘What’s that?’ Brian was framed in the kitchen doorway, a packet of biscuits and some cheese in his hand, his mouth full, ‘A struggle, you say?’
‘I can’t be certain. The light coming and going, everything …’
‘I know, I know — I was coming down off the mountain. But if there was a struggle, who won — Rodrigo?’
I shook my head. The light was too dim.’
‘And afterwards?’ He wolfed down the rest of the biscuit and cheese. ‘Did he go off in that inflatable?’
‘I think so.’
‘Which way — down the lake, northwards?’
I nodded. ‘He kept close to the shore.’
‘Yes, of course. He couldn’t go out into the middle. Too much wind. You’re certain there was only one of them in the boat?’
‘I can’t be sure, of course,’ I said. ‘It looked like that.’
‘Okay, let me get some food inside me, then we’ll go up there again, see if he comes back. And some coffee,’ he added, turning back into the kitchen. ‘I need coffee if I’m to keep awake. I’ve got a boat up there, an old canoe I borrowed.’ He pulled another can of beans from the cupboard. ‘Beans! Windy things and I’ve had a bellyful of them. But sustaining.’ I had followed him into the kitchen and was filling the kettle while he set the beans on to heat. ‘You willing to paddle a canoe with me? Ten miles, a short steep portage, then another mile or so on a smaller lake. Have to make it before dawn.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We got just over five hours. That should be enough if the wind goes down.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’ I could hear it thrashing in the trees still.
Then we’ll have to hide up.’ I asked him why and he looked at me as though I were being particularly stupid. ‘A boat, any sort of a boat, sticks out on a lake like a fly on white paper, we’d be visible for miles as soon as dawn broke.’
‘And you don’t want to be seen. Who would be there?’ I asked. ‘Who are you afraid might see you?’
That’s one of the things I mean to find out. There’s that Mexican — why’s he suddenly headed down the lake at night?’
‘It could be Tarasconi,’ I said.
Tarasconi!’ He laughed. ‘Not a chance. You said only one and he wouldn’t stand a chance against a guy like Rodrigo.’ He took the beans off the stove and poured them onto a soup plate, then sat down at the kitchen table, eating them with a spoon. ‘Help yourself. You’ll need something hot inside you.’ He reached for another spoon and thrust it into my hand as I sat down opposite him.
‘You knew Tarasconi was here, then?’
He nodded, his mouth full. ‘That’s why he came here — to see me. Flew into Bella Bella by plane from Rupert. Found out from Steve Davis I was up here and he airlifted him in in his Cessna. A nasty little man. Walked in here just as I was having a late breakfast, sat where you’re sitting now — said a South American named Lopez had told him Miriam was being held hostage. Wouldn’t say by who, and I didn’t believe him. He wanted to trade a half share of a gully named Stone Slide up near the Ice Cold mine for information about where she was being held.’
‘And where is she being held?’ I asked. ‘Did you get it out of him?’
He shook his head. ‘No. He admitted in the end he didn’t yet know for sure. It was dangerous, he said, but if I made it worth his while …’ He waved his spoon at me. ‘Tuck in, it’s the last hot food you’ll get for a while if you’re coming down the lake with me.’ He pushed the plate of beans towards me. ‘Anyway, like I said, I didn’t believe him. And then he said, did I know my father was alive?’ He nodded, smiling. ‘I believed that all right. So I kept an eye on the little bugger after that, and when he started moving into positions where he could watch Rodrigo launching that inflatable to go down the lake, I began to think maybe there was something in what he’d told me. Now, for God’s sake, Tom says it’s true, about Miriam.’ He leaned suddenly forward, his face thrust close to mine across the table, his eyes staring. ‘Is it true?’
I told him briefly what I knew, then asked him about the man I had seen following Tarasconi up to the lake. ‘A dropout,’ he said. ‘One of the toughest. Likes a fight, so long as he’s got the knife. A Mexican or Honduran.’ We had finished the beans by then and he slid the biscuits and cheese over to me. ‘Middle American anyway, squats in somebody’s apartment in a block of flats down by the swimming pool.’