Hammond Innes - High Stand

There was a marvellous view of Vancouver sitting like a miniature Manhattan surrounded by vast expanses of sun-bright water as we came in to land. Ships, and tugs with long trams of barges, some with log rafts, the Strait of Juan de Fuca reaching out to the American mainland and the distant shapes of snow-clad mountains. It was for this, and the sight of the Arctic Ocean, that I had flown the northern route instead of the more prosaic and slightly cheaper route via Edmonton. As soon as I had settled into my hotel, which was in the rather congested eastern part of Vancouver known as Gas Town, I took a taxi across town to the Bayshore Hotel. It was right on the water, close against the old wharfs and boatyards of Coal Harbour.

At reception I was able to confirm that Miriam had in fact spent three nights at the hotel the previous month, but she had left no forwarding address and had not booked in again. Presumably while staying at the Bayshore she had made contact with friends, or people her husband had known, and had been invited to stay on with them on her return from Whitehorse. It was something I had expected, but it still came as a disappointment. At the back of my mind, I suppose, I had been hoping to have her company for the evening. Instead, I walked through Stanley Park as far as the light on Brockton Point with its view of the First Narrows and the Lions Gate Bridge, then dined at a restaurant in Coal Harbour.

This half-derelict area between the Canadian Pacific railway tracks and the waterfront is almost the last remaining relic of the old part of Vancouver, and after my meal I wandered round the whole complex of crumbling boatyards, half-collapsed wharfs and charter boat offices. The air was very still, a warm, balmy night, the water dead calm and the only sound the slap of wavelets against the wooden piers as the wash of the occasional yacht or motor cruiser reached the shore. It was a late night tour of one of the most atmospheric parts of the city that was later to save my life. But I didn’t know that at the time, of course, and spent several minutes at the end of a tumbledown jetty looking enviously across the water to that extraordinary marina of timber housings over towards Deadman’s Island that shelters the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club’s motor cruiser fleet. I would dearly have liked to ‘borrow’ one of those craft to explore the waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland. At least it would be nice to be staying here at the Bayshore with that magnificent view across to the lights of the North Shore with the Rockies beyond. So much to see, so much of grandeur and beauty, and neither the time nor the money.

Next morning the sun shone out of a clear blue sky and I strolled up Cordova Street, Granville and Dunsmuir and south down Burrard as far as Robson’s Square. It was on Robson Street that the solicitors who had drawn up the timber agreements had their offices, on the twenty-first floor of a tall glass building with a view past the green copper summit of the Hotel Vancouver to the BC Ferries’ jetty and the CPR tracks running towards Coal Harbour. By comparison with my small set-up at Ditchling their premises were palatial. I had no appointment and was quite prepared to arrange for a meeting either the following morning before my plane left for Whitehorse or on my return. However, the partner who had looked after Halliday’s Canadian affairs was available and after only a short wait I was shown into his office. His name was Roy McLaren, a paunchy, heavily built man of about fifty with thick gold-rimmed glasses which gave his round, rather boyish face a look of enquiring wonder. Yes, Mrs Halliday had been in to see him — he reached for his diary, turning back the pages — ‘I think I gave you the date in my letter.’

I nodded. ‘And you haven’t seen her since?’

‘That also I said in my letter. Neither her nor her husband.’ He looked across at me from behind his glasses. ‘Did you know Tom well?’

I had to explain then that I had only acted for him in the matter of his Will and had known him for no more than three years. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘we’ve been acting for him since his father died. And the firm, of course, acted for his father before then. I’m afraid I never knew Josh Halliday. A great character by all accounts. My uncle was the one who dealt with him.’ He put his hands together, the fingers forming a steeple, pressing them hard as he stared at me enquiringly, an expression of large-eyed innocence. ‘When Tom inherited my uncle handed him over to my father. This is a very inbred firm, you see. Even my eldest sister is a partner. Damn good lawyer, too.’ He relaxed his fingers, smiling. ‘I took over Tom’s affairs here when my father retired about six years ago.’

‘About the time the output from the Yukon mine was beginning to decline.’

‘I didn’t know anything about that. There was some talk about it later, of course, but at the time all I was concerned with was drawing up the agreements for the sale of timber on that property of his up north along the coast. He was acting on the advice of a forestry man named Hugh Ringstrop over by Campbell River.’

‘Did Ringstrop negotiate the price?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. And he marked out the areas. He was Tom’s forestry adviser.’

‘And that last sale agreement?’ I asked. ‘Did he negotiate me price for that too?’

The fingers pressed tight again. ‘Not sure, but I think so. I remember he said it would be difficult to get an export licence, and anyway the stand was really too young. “Hadn’t reached maturity” was one way he put it.’

‘But you still drew up the agreement.’

‘Yes.’

‘Knowing about the curse.’

‘Ah!’ The fingers pressed very tight, the eyes wide and innocent behind the thick glasses. ‘Yes, of course — we sent the deeds over to his bank in London above five years ago. That was after the divorce had gone through and he remarried.’ He smiled. ‘You never met his first wife, of course.’ The hands fell suddenly flat on the desk. ‘A very beautiful, very terrible woman. I think he might have killed her if she hadn’t gone off with another man. Martina. They had two sons. Which brings me to something else. There has been one small development since I replied to your original letter.’ He pressed a bell on his desk and a very severe-looking woman in a bright pink cotton dress came in and handed him a folder. The younger of those two sons — do you know him?’

‘Brian?’

He nodded. The woman went out, closing the door without a sound.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen him, have you?’

He was smiling again, the eyes slitted now and wrinkles showing. He opened the folder. It contained a single sheet of typing and some newspaper cuttings. ‘He came to see me — week before last. His father has left him the Cascades, is that right?’ And when I nodded, he went on, ‘I didn’t altogether approve of his manner, or his dress for that matter, so I taped the whole interview. It didn’t last long. Five or six minutes, that’s all. Then he was gone.’

‘It was about the Cascades he came to see you, was it? An area of timber he calls High Stand.’

‘That’s it. Four hundred hectares of what Ringstrop describes as the finest plantation of western red cedar he has ever seen.’ And he added, ‘I’ve written to you, giving the gist of our conversation, but my letter probably arrived after you’d left. I was on holiday last week, fishing up the coast by Kelsey Bay.’ He picked up the largest of the newspaper cuttings, unfolded it and passed it across the desk to me. ‘This appeared while I was up the coast. Recognize anyone?’

It was a full page of the Vancouver Sun, half of it taken up with a picture of a huge barge under tow. The barge was piled high with the rounded trunks of large trees and below the steel hawsers of the towing bridle, riding the barge’s bow wave, was a man in an inflatable holding aloft a banner. He wore a baseball hat and a T-shirt with Greenpeace on it, and the words on the banner were the same as the headline that flared across the page: