When the perpetual autumn rain starts and various meteorological forces take over, low clouds stack against the mountains trapping the air so that the smoke from eleven sawmills remains captive for weeks at a time. In this season, with its stench of rotten fish, spoilt vegetables, decayed wood, horse shit and rotten eggs from the gasworks, a visitor might think the city to be one enormous wharf.
Especially prominent is the smell of creosote. In the Northwest, rot is as inevitable as death. It’s the enemy you will never overcome; you can only beat it back by coating everything with creosote.
Since arriving in Vancouver, DS Hook has grown accustomed to the city’s stink—an attractive, manly smell if somewhat poisonous, like the smell of gasoline, mothballs and gunpowder.
He has become so used to the taste of air at the back of his throat that, as with Scotch, he can distinguish its components. Tonight the air tastes of sweetened tar. At other times he detects notes of burnt rubber and smoked meat.
He lights an Ogden’s—pleasant, manly and, doctors say, good for the system as well.
As he does for his meetings with the reporter, he is wearing street clothes so as not to draw the attention of the taxi drivers who surround the hotel and are currently seated on their fenders, awaiting customers, smoking cigarettes, selling condoms to pedestrians and trading the telephone numbers of sporting women.
Leaning against a lamp-post with a clear view of the staff entrance, Hook looks over to Granville Street, where pedestrians herd past the Radiophone sign for the second showing of The Phantom of the Opera at the Capitol. He’d like to see it himself, but Jeanie is afraid it would keep her up at night. (Given her husband’s profession, Jeanie prefers to avoid entertainment that invokes fear.)
The lift attendant emerges twenty minutes after the end of his shift, in an eight-dollar suit and a tweed cap. While riding in the lift, Hook judged him to be in his late thirties, but now he appears much older, for his walk has the old man shuffle and stoop. His left arm swings by his side, but not so the right arm, which he has thrust into a side pocket to keep it from waving about on its own.
Hook crosses the street to head him off: “Excuse me, Mr Sark, sir, I wonder if I may—”
Immediately he realizes his mistake, as the lift attendant does a fast about-face, fists up, on guard, ready to fend off the enemy.
Hook holds up two open hands in the traditional gesture of harmlessness. “Easy does it, sir. Sorry to startle you.”
The lift attendant takes a deep breath and relaxes somewhat. “Ah, it is you, Officer. I apologize for that. It is old habit.”
“In any case, Corporal Sark, it was careless of me.”
Sark tilts his head sideways: “Why you say Corporal?”
“Snipers are usually corporals.”
“And how you know I was a marksman?”
“For one thing, your fondness for enclosed spaces.”
“Ah. Yes, I can see that.”
They head north on Howe Street. DS Hook has encountered a good deal of odd behaviour during and since the war, usually based on outmoded precautions. Here is a man whose avoidance of open spaces has put him in an upright coffin, going up and down for a minimum of eight hours a day.
As they approach Georgia Street, Hook turns to say something—and finds nobody there.
He thinks he knows what’s up: a sniper may be trained to kill, but his life depends on his ability to disappear. So he retraces his steps until he reaches a patch of lawn containing a large shrub with a slightly enlarged shadow; the lift attendant has positioned himself so that, in this light, he appears to be part of the shrub itself.
“Did you see something suspicious, Mr Sark?”
He replies in a low voice, with calm urgency. “Devonshire Apartments. Seventh floor. Second window west.”
Hook scans the floors and windows in the Devonshire. (The Last Thing in Apartments, according to an advert in The World.) In between a pair of partially drawn curtains he can make out the silhouette of a man whose elbow is sticking out at shoulder height.
“I think I see him, Mr Sark.”
“And do you see rifle? Port position?”
“It could be a rifle, yes. But from the motion of the arm, I think it may also be a man brushing his teeth.”
After a pause, the lift attendant emerges into the street light. “Is not possible to be too careful.”
Hook recalls that snipers rarely suffer from shell shock, but can display unique long-term symptoms, each one a version of soldier’s heart: compulsive checking for enemies, extreme reactions to sudden noses, rituals of all kinds, not to mention a wariness of human beings in general. Snipers, like Redhats, were a despised group and a common object of irrational “morning hate,” and had as much to fear from their fellows as from the enemy.
To achieve some sort of rapport, Hook scours his brain for other facts about sniper duty. “It looks as if you’re used to having a spotter.”
“I did not lose a single one.”
“You lost an arm, though.”
“It was a lucky shot.”
Momentarily, Hook envisions the Front as a forest occupied by snipers with rifles and wirelesses, on the hunt for each other.
“I suppose you had the Ross rifle.”
“The Ross was good rifle, yes.”
Interesting. Hook decides to push him a bit: “Was it really? I heard otherwise. The Ross rifle is notorious.”
“Doesn’t take crack shot to hit a man eating his lunch, sitting on a pile of wood.” In the lamplight, the lift attendant’s aquamarine eyes are focused on a point far away.
DS Hook gets the picture and moves on. “I wonder if you might tell me something more about Mr Cunning.”
“We had no acquaintance outside the lift. This is frowned on by Mr Tremblay.”
“I’m not surprised. Still, anything that comes to mind could be useful.”
“Mr Cunning was contradicting gentleman.”
“Do you mean that he contradicted other people’s statements?”
“No, himself he contradicted. In his taste.”
“What sort of taste do you mean, Mr Sark? Booze?”
“He was fond of patent medicines. They often are.”
“What do you mean?”
“A habit could be this or that. Alcohol, cocaine, opium, codeine, bromide, women—it depends on the need to go up or down.”
“Which direction did Mr Cunning prefer?”
“All of them, sir. Mr Cunning had a variety of visitors. Some official, some not so official.”
“Friends, would you say?”
“Business connections is more like, I would say.”