The Land God Gave to Cain (3 page)

It was an appalling thought and I worried about it all through supper—far more I think than about my father's death, for I couldn't do anything about that. When we had finished the meal I said to my mother, “I think I'll just walk as far as the call box.”

“Who are you going to phone?”

“I don't know.” Who did one ring? There was Canada House. They were really the people to tell, but they'd be closed now. “The police, I suppose.”

“Do you have to do anything about it?” She was standing there, wringing her hands.

“Well, yes,” I said. “I think somebody ought to know.” And then, because I still didn't understand her attitude, I asked her why she'd tried to hide the message from me.

“I didn't know if you …” She hesitated, and then said quickly, “I didn't want your father laughed at.”

“Laughed at? Really, Mother! Suppose nobody else picked up this transmission? If these men died, then you'd have been responsible.”

Her face went blank. “I didn't want them laughing at him,” she repeated obstinately. “You know what people are in a street like this.”

“This is more important than what people think.” My tone was impatient. And then, because I knew she was upset and tired, I kissed her. “We shan't be bothered about it,” I reassured her. “It's just that I feel that I must report it. It wouldn't be the first time he picked up a transmission that no other operator received,” I added, and I went out of the house and back along the street to the Underground.

I had no idea who I should get on to at Scotland Yard, so in the end I dialled 999. It seemed odd to be making an emergency police call when we hadn't been burgled or anything. And when I got through to them I found it wasn't easy to explain what it was all about. It meant telling them about my father and the “ham” radio station he operated. The fact that he had just died because of his excitement over the message only made it more confusing.

However, in the end they said they had got it all clear and would contact the Canadian authorities, and I left the call box feeling that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It was their responsibility now. I needn't worry about it any more. And when I got back to the house, I put the log book away in my suitcase and went through into the kitchen, where my mother was quietly getting a meal. Now that the matter of the message was cleared up and the authorities notified, I began to see it from her point of view. After all, why should she worry about two men in a distant part of the world when my father was lying dead upstairs?

That night my mother had the little bedroom and I slept on the couch in the parlour. And in the morning I woke to the realisation that there was a lot to be done—the funeral to arrange, all his things to go through and the pension people to be notified. I hadn't realised before that death didn't end with sorrow.

After breakfast I sent a wire to Mr. Meadows and then went on to arrange things with the undertaker. When I got back it was almost eleven and Mrs. Wright was in from next door having tea with my mother. It was Mrs. Wright who heard the car draw up and went to the window to see. “Why, it's a police car,” she said, and then added, “I do believe they're coming here.”

It was a Police Inspector and a Flight Lieutenant Mathers of the Canadian Air Force. They wanted to see the log book, and when I'd got it from my suitcase and had handed it to the inspector, I found myself apologising for the writing. “I'm afraid it's not very good. You see my father was paralysed and—”

“Yes, we know all about that,” the Inspector said. “We've made inquiries, naturally.” He was no longer looking at the page on which the message had been written, but was leafing back through the log book, the Flight Lieutenant peering over his shoulder. I began to feel uncomfortable then. The pages were such a muddle and in the Inspector's hands the log looked exactly what it was, a child's exercise book. I remembered my mother's words—
I didn't want your father laughed at
.

When he had examined every page, the Inspector turned back to the one on which the message was written. “I think you said that your father died immediately after writing this?”

I explained to him what had happened—how my mother thought she heard him call out to her and went up to find he had somehow struggled to his feet. And when I had finished, he said, “But you weren't here at the time?”

“No. My job is near Bristol. I wasn't here.”

“Who was here? Just your mother?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Well, I'm afraid I'll have to have a word with her. But first we'd like to have a look at the room where your father had his radio.”

I took them up and the Flight Lieutenant had a look at the radio whilst the Inspector prowled round, looking at the books and the map hanging on the wall. “Well, it's all in working order,” the Flight Lieutenant said. He had switched on the receiver and he had the earphones over his head whilst his fingers played with the tuning dial. But by then the Inspector had found the old log books in the drawer and was glancing through them.

At length he turned to me. “I'm sorry to have to ask you this; Mr. Ferguson, but we've been on to the doctor and I understand your father had a stroke some three months ago. You were down here then?”

“Yes,” I said. “But only for a few days. He made a very quick recovery.”

“Have you been here since?”

“No,” I told him. “We're on airfield construction at the moment. It's a rush job and I haven't had another chance—”

“What I'm getting at is this … can you vouch for your father's mental state? Could he have imagined this?”

“No. Certainly not.” I felt suddenly angry. “If you're suggesting that my father …” I stopped then, because I realised what must have prompted the question. “Do you mean to say nobody else picked up that transmission?”

“Not as far as we know.” He turned to the Flight Lieutenant. “However, there's no doubt he was following the progress of this expedition,” he said. “There are dozens of references to it in these notebooks, but …” He hesitated, and then gave a little shrug. “Well, take a look for yourself.” He passed the books across to the Canadian. I might not have been there as the Air Force officer bent down to examine them and the Inspector watched him, waiting for his reaction.

At length I could stand it no longer. “What's wrong with the message?” I asked.

“Nothing, nothing—except …” The Inspector hesitated.

The Flight Lieutenant looked up from the log books. “We're not doubting he was in touch with Ledder, you know.” His voice held a note of reservation, and as though conscious of this he added, “I checked with our people at Goose right away. Simon Ledder and his wife are both registered hams operating their own station under the call sign VO6AZ. They take on outside work and in this case they were acting as base station for the McGovern Mining and Exploration Company, receiving Briffe's reports by R/T and transmitting them to the Company's offices in Montreal.”

“Well, then?” I didn't understand why they were still so doubtful about it. “The fact that nobody else picked up the transmission—”

“It's not that,” he said quickly. And he looked across at the Inspector, who said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Ferguson. All this must be very trying for you.” He sounded apologetic. “But the fact is that Briffe and the man with him were reported dead—almost a week ago, didn't you say, Mathers?” He looked across at the Canadian.

“That's so, Inspector.” The Flight Lieutenant nodded. “On September twenty-fifth to be exact.” He tossed the log books on to the table. “I don't want to seem unappreciative,” he said, looking across at me. “Particularly as you say your father's excitement at receiving the message was the cause of his death. But the fact is that Bert Laroche, the pilot of the crashed plane, trekked out on his own. He reached one of the construction camps of the Iron Ore Railway on the twenty-fifth and reported that the other two were dead when he left them. He'd been five days trekking out, so they were dead by September twentieth. Now you come along with the information that your father picked up a radio broadcast from Briffe yesterday. That's nine whole days after Briffe was dead.” He shook his head. “It just doesn't make sense.”

“The pilot might have made a mistake,” I murmured.

He stared at me with a sort of shocked look. “I guess you don't understand the Canadian North, Mr. Ferguson. Men just don't make that sort of mistake. Certainly not experienced fliers like Bert Laroche.” And he added, “He crashed his Beaver floatplane into a rock trying to land on a lake in a snow storm. Briffe and Baird were injured. He got them ashore and the plane sank. That was on September the fourteenth. Baird died almost immediately, Briffe a few days later, and then he started to trek out.”

“But the message,” I cried. “How else could my father have known—”

“It was all in the news-casts,” Mathers said. “The whole story—it was repeated over and over again.”

“But not about the lake surely,” I said impatiently. “How would my father know it was a lake with a rock in it? And how would he know about Briffe and Baird being injured and the pilot gone?”

“I tell you, Briffe and Baird were dead by then.”

“Are you suggesting he made it all up?”

Mathers shrugged his shoulders and reached for the last of the log books, turning the pages until he came to the message. He stared at it for a long time. “It just isn't possible,” he murmured. “If your father picked up a transmission, why didn't someone else?”

“You've checked, have you?”

“We're checking now. But, believe me, if anybody in Canada had picked it up, they'd have reported it immediately. The papers were full of the search when it was on.”

“I can't help that,” I said. “Maybe nobody else picked it up. But my father did. The message is there in that log book to prove it.” He made no comment. He was looking back again through the old log books. “I remember once,” I added desperately, “my father picked up a message from a yacht in the Timor Sea when nobody else did. And another time he made a contact—”

“But this is R/T. How could he possibly pick up Voice from an old set like Briffe's?” The Flight Lieutenant was still riffling through the pages of the logs, but now he suddenly closed them. “There's only one explanation, I guess.” He said it to the Inspector, who nodded agreement.

I knew what he meant and I was furious. I'd done what I thought was right and here were these two strangers trying to make out that my father was crazy. I wished to God I'd never reported the matter. My mother was right. How could I possibly make them understand that a lonely man could scribble a lot of nonsense all over those log books and yet be reliable when it came to picking up a transmission? “Surely somebody else must have picked the message up,” I said helplessly. And then, because they didn't say anything, but stood there looking uncomfortable, I let my feelings run away with me. “You think my father made it all up, don't you? Just because he had a head wound and was paralysed and drew little pictures in those books, you think he isn't to be relied on. But you're wrong. My father was a first-class radio operator. Whatever the doctors or anybody else may say, he'd never make a mistake over a message like that.”

“Maybe,” the Canadian said. “But we're two thousand five hundred miles from Labrador and Briffe wasn't on Key, he was on Voice transmission—in other words, radio telephone.”

“That's what my father implies. He says it's Briffe's voice he's hearing.”

“Sure. But I've already checked on this and all Briffe had was an old wartime forty-eight set. That's the Canadian equivalent of your British Army eighteen set. It had been modified to operate on the seventy-five metre phone band, but he was still using it in conjunction with a hand generator. Even with a line aerial instead of a whip, Goose would have been just about at the limit of his range—that's why he was reporting back to Ledder instead of direct to Montreal.”

“I don't know about that,” I said. “But I do know this. See all those books up there? They're about Labrador. My father was fascinated by the place. He knew what it would be like for those men lost out there. He knew that message was important. That's why he suddenly found his voice and called out. That's what forced him to his feet when he hadn't stood—”

“Just a minute,” the Flight Lieutenant said. “You don't seem to understand what I've been trying to tell you. Those men are dead. They've been dead more than nine days.”

“But that message …”

“There wasn't any message.” He said it quietly, and then added, “See here, Ferguson. I'm sorry about your father. But let's be practical. We had four planes searching for almost a week. Then Laroche came out and reported the other two dead and we called off the search. Now you want me to advise a resumption of a full-scale search, involving machines and fliers in hours of duty over desolate country, just because your father wrote down a message in an exercise book before he died—a message that, even if it had been transmitted, it was technically impossible for him to pick up.”

There wasn't anything I could say to that. “If it's technically impossible—”

“He was more than two thousand miles outside of normal range. Of course,” he added, “there's always the chance of freak reception, even at that distance, and just in case, I'm having inquiries made of all ham operators in Canada. I've also asked for a full report from Ledder. I think you can be quite sure that if any transmission was made on the twenty-ninth, then we'll find somebody who picked it up.”

The Inspector nodded. “If you don't mind, I'll keep these notebooks for the time being.” He picked them up off the table. “I'd like to have them examined by our experts.”