The Land God Gave to Cain (11 page)

“Not exactly new information, sir,” I said.

“Then what's this guy Ledder all steamed up about? You saw him at Goose and he radioed a message to our office. You wouldn't have come all this way without something new for us to go on. What did you tell him?”

My mouth felt dry. McGovern was a type I'd never met before and his domineering personality seemed to bear down on me and crush me. “It wasn't exactly anything new,” I murmured. “It was just that I convinced him that my father really did pick up a transmission.”

“It doesn't say that here.” He tugged at the straps of his briefcase and pulled out a message form. “This is how his message reads.” He pushed a pair of steel-rimmed glasses on to his blunt nose. “
Possibility G2STO picked up transmission Briffe should not be ignored. Urgently advise you see Ferguson's son
. Why?” he said. “What did you tell him?” He was looking up at me over the top of his glasses. “What made Ledder advise us to have a talk with you?”

“It wasn't so much what I told him,” I said. “It was more the background I gave him to my father's reception of Briffe's message. You see, my father died, virtually as a result of receiving—”

“Yes, we know all about your father's death,” he cut in. “What I want to know is what you told Ledder that made him radio this message?”

“I merely filled in all the background for him.” I felt at a loss how to break through and explain my father to this man. “It's not so much the facts,” I said, “as the story behind the reception. If you'd known my father—”

“So there's nothing new?”

What could I say? He was watching me and it seemed to me that he was challenging me to produce something new. And all the time his eyes remained wide open, not blinking. It disconcerted me and in the end I said nothing. He seemed to relax then and looked away, glancing down at the papers he had spread out on the desk. “Your name's Ian Ferguson, I believe?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded a stranger to me.

“Well, now, Ferguson, I think I should tell you, before we go any further, that the report of this transmission your father was supposed to have picked up was given immediate and most serious attention, not only by myself, but by the Air Force authorities and others. If we could have found one single radio operator anywhere in the world who could confirm it, the search would have been resumed. But we couldn't, and when we got the police reports of the full circumstances …” He gave a slight shrug that dismissed my father entirely.

I found my voice then. “If it's facts and nothing else that interest you,” I said angrily, “then perhaps you'll appreciate the significance of what I learned at Goose. You say you couldn't get confirmation of Briffe's transmission. Of course you couldn't. Every other operator had given up listening for him. Every operator, that is, except my father. If you'd read Ledder's report you'd know that my father contacted him again on the twenty-sixth, the day the search was called off, to ask whether there was any other frequency Briffe might use in an emergency. Ledder told him No, and repeated Briffe's transmitting frequency. Surely that's proof enough that my father was keeping a constant watch?”

“I see. And you expect me to believe that your father was keeping a twenty-four hour watch for a transmission that he couldn't possibly expect to receive, and from a man who was dead anyway?” He was looking at me as though to say,
If you tell me Yes, then I'll know your father was crazy
. “Well, was he?”

“He had Briffe's sending frequency,” I said. “He'd nothing else to do and he was obsessed …”

“Was the receiver tuned to that frequency when you got home the evening of the day he died?”

I should have checked that, but I hadn't. “I don't know.” I felt angry and helpless. And then footsteps sounded in the passage outside and Bill Lands went to the door. “Here's Bert now.”

“Tell him to wait,” McGovern said. And then he was looking at me again. “So you believe your father really did pick up a transmission from Briffe? And you've come all this way in order to convince us—without a single item of fresh information. Correct?”

“But I've just told you—”

“You've told me nothing. Nothing that I didn't know already.” He pulled a stapled sheaf of papers from his briefcase and after removing two of the pages, he passed the rest across to me. “Now I want you to read these reports through. Read them carefully, and then if there's anything you can add to them or any new light you can throw on the situation, I'll be glad to know about it.” He had risen to his feet. “But,” he added, “I think you should understand this. The man waiting outside is Bert Laroche, the pilot of the floatplane that crashed, and he says Briffe is dead.”

“I'm not interested in what Laroche says.” My voice sounded a little wild. “All I know is that my father—”

“You're calling Bert Laroche a liar. You're doing more than that. You're accusing him—”

“I don't care,” I cried. “I'm not concerned with Laroche.”

“No,” he said. “Why should you be? You never met the guy and you don't understand his world.” He was staring at me coldly.

“It's Briffe I'm concerned about,” I murmured.

“Yeah?” His tone had contempt in it. “You never met him either, or the other guy—Baird. They mean nothing to you, any of them. All you're concerned about is your father, and for his sake you're prepared to make a lot of trouble and smear a decent man with the mud of your accusations.” He had come round the desk and was standing over me, and now his hand reached out and gripped hold of my shoulder, stilling my protest. “You read those reports. Read them carefully. And just remember that, afterwards, you're going to meet Laroche, and anything you have to say will be said in his presence.” He was staring down at me, the eyes stony and unblinking. “Just remember, too, that his story says your father couldn't have picked up a transmission from Briffe on the twenty-ninth. Okay?” He nodded to Bill Lands and the two of them went out.

His greeting to Laroche outside in the passage was in a softer tone, and then the door closed and I was alone. The voices faded and the walls of the office closed in around me, unfamiliar and hostile—isolating me. Was it only two days since I'd run into Farrow in the Airport Bar? It seemed so long ago, and England so far away. I was beginning to wish I'd never come to Canada.

Automatically I started to look through the papers. It was all there—a summary of the notes my father had made in his log books, my statement to the police, the description of the room and his radio equipment, technical information about the possibility of R/T reception at that range, Ledder's report, everything. And then I came to the psychiatrist's reports:
It is not unusual for physical frustration to lead to mental unbalance, and in those conditions a morbid interest in some disaster or human drama may result in the subject having delusions that attribute to himself an active, even prominent role, in the events that fill his mind. This occurs particularly where the subject is overmuch alone. In certain unusual cases such mental unbalance can give rise to extraordinary physical effort, and in the case under review
…

I flung the sheaf of papers on to the desk. How could they be so stupid? But then I realised it wasn't their fault so much as my own. If I could have told them about that earlier expedition, they might have understood my father's obsession with the country. All those questions that had puzzled Ledder.… I couldn't blame them really. They hadn't meant anything to me until Ledder told me what had happened to my grandfather. Even now I didn't understand all the references.

I got out the list of jottings I'd made from his log books and went through them again, and the name Laroche stared me in the face. Why had my father been so interested in Laroche? Why was his reaction important? I picked up the sheaf of papers McGovern had given me and searched through it again. There was a list of all the radio stations—service, civilian and amateur—that had been contacted, and three solid pages of reports from pilots flying the search. But the one thing I wanted wasn't there and I guessed that the pages McGovern had detached before giving it all to me were those containing Laroche's statement.

I sat back then, wondering what Laroche would be like and whether his story would help me to decide what I ought to do now. McGovern wasn't going to do anything—of that I was certain. But if Laroche had been able to satisfy Briffe's daughter that her father was dead.… I didn't know what to think. Maybe Lands was right. Maybe I should just leave it at that and go home.

The door behind me opened and McGovern came in. “Well?” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Have you read it all through?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I didn't find Laroche's statement.”

“No. He'll tell you what happened himself.” He came and stood over me. “But before I call him in, I want to know whether there is any material fact that's been omitted from these reports. If there is, then let's have it right now, whilst we're alone.”

I looked up at him and the hard grey eyes were watching me out of the leathery face. His hostility was self-evident, and I was conscious of the limitations of my background. I hadn't been brought up to deal with men like this. “It depends what you call material facts,” I said uncertainly. “That psychiatrists' report—it's based on the supposition that my father was simply a spectator, that he wasn't involved at all. They didn't have all the facts.”

“How do you mean?”

“They didn't know his background, and without that the questions he asked Ledder and many of the jottings he made couldn't possibly make sense to them.”

“Go on,” he said.

I hesitated, wondering how to put it when I knew so little. “Did you know there was an expedition into the Attikonak area in nineteen hundred?” I asked.

“Yes.” And it seemed to me his tone was suddenly guarded.

“Well, it appears that the leader of that expedition was my grandfather.”

“Your grandfather?” He was staring at me and it was obvious that the revelation meant something to him, had come as a shock.

“Now perhaps you'll understand why my father was so interested in anything to do with Labrador,” I said. “It explains all those questions he asked Ledder—questions that the psychiatrists couldn't understand. And because they couldn't understand them, they thought he was mad.”

“So James Finlay Ferguson was your grandfather, eh?” He nodded his head slowly. “I thought maybe it was that. As soon as they told me your father's name I guessed we'd be back to that expedition. So did Bert. My God!” he said. “This is the third generation. And it was never more than gossip. Nothing was proved. Not even that woman could prove anything. And now you come over here with a lot of wild accusations that are based on nothing more substantial than this.” He stared at me stonily, the veins of his face corded with anger. “Why the hell didn't you tell the authorities that your father was living in a world of the past—or didn't you dare? Did you think that would make him appear even more crazy?”

“He wasn't crazy,” I almost shouted at him. I didn't understand half of what he'd been saying. “As for telling the authorities—I'd never heard about my grandfather's expedition until last night.”

“Never heard about it?” He stared at me with obvious disbelief.

I told him then how I'd heard of it first from Ledder and how he'd only got the briefest information about it over the air from one of the geologists.

“Good God!” he said. “So you don't know the details. You don't know who was with your grandfather on that expedition—”

“No,” I said. “I didn't come here because of that. I came because my father was a first-rate radio operator and I'm convinced …”

“Okay,” he said. “I admit that puts a different complexion on it. But only as far as your motive in coming over is concerned,” he added quickly. “It doesn't mean Briffe is alive. You may have known nothing about the Ferguson Expedition, but your father did.”

“What's that got to do with it?” I demanded.

“Everything,” he said. “In my opinion, everything. His motive is obvious.” And he added darkly, “There are more ways than one of being unbalanced.”

I didn't understand what he was getting at, and I told him so.

“All right,” he said. “Forget it. You're not involved, and I accept that. But I can't accept the rest—that your father really did pick up a transmission.” And when I started to protest, he silenced me with an impatient movement of his hand. “Wait till you've heard what Bert Laroche has to say.”

He left me then and went out, closing the door behind him. Through the flimsy wood partitioning I heard the whisper of their voices. What was he telling them? Was he briefing Laroche what to say? But I couldn't believe that. It was something else—to do with that expedition. If only I knew all the facts! I twisted round in my chair, watching the door, wondering what Laroche would be like. If my father were right, then the man had made a terrible, unbelievable mistake.

The door opened again and McGovern entered. “Come in, both of you,” he said, and went over to the desk and sat down. Lands followed, and then a third man, tall and lean with the sort of face I'd never seen before. A gleam of sun threw a dusty shaft across the office and he walked right into it, his face dark and angular, almost secretive, with high cheekbones and the eyes laced with little lines at the corners so that they seemed constantly screwed up to peer at some distant horizon. A great gash ran from the top of his head down across his forehead to finish above his right eye. It was part-healed now, a black scab of dried blood, and the hair that had been shaved away on either side of it was beginning to grow again like black fur against the white of the scalp. The eyebrow had also been shaved away and this gave his features a strangely twisted look.