Bagley, Desmond - Landslide

by Landslide

  "He won't do that by keeping away from her," I said. "Or by flooding her land. By the way, what's her legal position on that?"

  "Tricky. You know that most of the hydro-electric resources of British Columbia are government-controlled through B.C. Electric. There are exceptions -- the Aluminium Company of Canada built its own plant at Kitimat and that's the precedent that governs Matterson's project here. He's been lobbying the Government and has things pretty well lined up. If a land resources tribunal decides this is in the public interest, then Clare loses out."

  He smiled sadly, "Jimson and the Fort Farrell Recorder are working on that angle right now, but he knows better than to ask me to write any of that crap, so he keeps me on nice safe topics like weddings and funerals. According to the editorial he was writing when I left the office, the Matterson Corporation is the pure knight guarding the public interest."

  "He must have got the word from Howard," I said. "I gave him the results not long ago. I'm sorry about that, Mac."

  "It isn't your fault; you were just doing your job." He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "Have you decided what you are going to do?"

  "About what?"

  "About this whole stinking set-up. I thought you'd taken time off to decide when you were out in the woods."

  "Mac, I'm no shining knight, either. There isn't anything I could do that would be any use, and I don't know anything that could help."

  "I don't believe you," McDougall said bluntly.

  "You can believe what you damn' well like," I said. I was getting tired of his prodding and pushing, and maybe I was feeling a mite guilty -- although why I should feel guilty I wouldn't know. "I'm going to write a report, collect my pay and climb on to a bus heading out of here. Any mess you have in Fort Farrell is none of my business."

  He stood up. "I should have known," he said wearily. "I thought you were the man. I thought you'd have had the guts to put the Mattersons back where they belong, but I guess I was wrong." He pointed a shaky finger at me. "You know something. I know you know something. Whatever your lousy reasons for keeping it to yourself, I hope you choke on them. You're a gutless, spineless imitation of a man and I'm glad you're leaving Fort Farrell because I'd hate to vomit in the street every time I saw you."

  He turned and walked into the street shakily and I watched him aim blindly across the square. I felt very sorry for him but I could do nothing for him. The man who had the information he needed was not Bob Boyd but Robert Grant, and Robert Grant was ten years dead.

  I had one last brush with Howard Matterson when I turned in the report. He took the papers and maps and tossed them on to his desk. "I hear you had a cosy chat with Clare Trinavant."

  "I stood her a dinner," I said. "Who wouldn't?"

  "And you went up to her cabin."

  'That's right," I said easily. "I thought it was in your interest. I thought that perhaps I could talk her round to a more reasonable frame of mind."

  His voice was like ice. "And was it in my interest that you stayed all night?"

  That gave me pause. By God, the man was jealous! But where could he have got his information? Clare certainly wouldn't have told him, so I was pretty certain it must have been young Jimmy Waystrand. The young punk was hitting back at me by tattling to Matterson. It must have been pretty common knowledge in Fort Farrell that Howard was hot for Clare and getting nowhere.

  I smiled pleasantly at Matterson. "No, that was in my interest."

  His face went a dull red and he lumbered to his feet. "That's not funny," he said in a voice like gravel. "We think a lot of Miss Trinavant round here -- and a lot about her reputation." He started to move around the desk, flexing his shoulders, and I knew he was getting ready to take me.

  It was unbelievable -- the guy hadn't grown up. He was behaving like any callow teenager whose brains are still in his fists, or like a deer in the rutting season ready to take on all comers in defence of his harem. A clear case of retarded development.

  I said, "Matterson, Clare Trinavant is quite capable of taking care of herself and her reputation. And you won't do her reputation any good by brawling -- I happen to know her views on that subject. And she'd certainly get to know about it because if you lay a finger on me I'll toss you out of the nearest window and it'll be a matter for public concern."

  He kept on coming, then thought better of it, and stopped. I said, "Clare Trinavant offered me a bath and a bed for the night -- and it wasn't her bed. And if that's what you think of her, no wonder you're not making the grade. Now, I'd like my pay."

  In a low, suppressed voice he said, "There's an envelope on the desk. Take it and get out."

  I stretched out my hand and took the envelope, ripped it open and took out the slip of paper. It was a cheque drawn on the Matterson Bank for the full and exact amount agreed on. I turned and walked out of his office boiling with rage, but not so blindly that I didn't go immediately to the Matter-son Bank to turn the cheque into money before Howard stopped it.

  With a wad of bills in my wallet I felt better. I went to my room, packed my bag and checked out within half an hour. Going down King Street, I paid my last respects to Lieutenant Farrell, the hollow man of Trinavant Park, and walked on past the Greek place towards the bus depot. There was a bus leaving and I was glad to be on it and rid of Fort Farrell.

  It wasn't much of a town.

  Part IV

  Chapter 1

  I did another freelance job during the winter down in the Okanagan valley near the U.S. border and before the spring thaw I was all set to go back to the North-West Territories as soon as the snows melted. There's not a great deal of joy for a geologist in a snow-covered landscape -- he has to be able to see what he's looking for. It was only during the brief summer that I had a chance, and so I had to wait a while.

  During this time, in my correspondence with Susskind, I told him of what had happened in Fort Farrell. His answer reassured me that I had done the right thing.

  "I think you were well advised to cut loose from Fort Farrell; that kind of prying would not do you any good at all. If you stay away your bad dreams should tail off in a few weeks providing you don't deliberately think about the episode.

  "Speaking as a psychiatrist, I find the ambivalent behaviour of Howard Matterson to be an almost classic example of what, to use the only expression conveniently available, is called a 'love-hate' relationship. I don't like this phrase because it has been chewed to death by the litterateurs (why must writers seize on our specialised vocabulary and twist meanings out of all recognition?) but it describes the symptoms, if only inadequately. He wants her, he hates her, he must destroy her and have her simultaneously. In other words, Mr. Matterson wants to eat his cake and have it, too. Taken all in all, Matterson seems to be a classic case of emotional immaturity -- at least, he has all the symptoms. You're well away from him; such men are dangerous. You have only to look at Hitler to see what I mean.

  "But I must say that your Trinavant sounds quite a dish!"

  "I've just remembered something I should have told you about years ago. Just about the time you left Montreal a private enquiry agent was snooping about asking questions about you, or rather, about Robert Grant. I gave him no joy and sent him away with a flea in his ear and my boot up his rump. I didn't tell you about it at the time because, in my opinion, you were then in no fit state to be the recipient of news of that sort; and subsequently I forgot about it.

  "At the time I wondered what it was about and I still have not come to any firm conclusion. It certainly was nothing to do with the Vancouver police because, as you know, I straightened them out about you, and a hell of a task it was. Most laymen are thick-headed about psychiatry, but police and legal laymen have heads of almost impenetr able oak. They seem to think that the McNaughten Rules are a psychiatric dictum and not a mere legal formalism, and it was no mean feat getting them to see sense and getting Bob Boyd off the hook for what Robert Grant had done. But I did it.

  "So who could have em
ployed this private eye? I did a check and I came up with nothing -- it is not my field. Anyway, it is many years ago and probably means nothing now, but I thought I might as well tell you that someone, other than your mysterious benefactor, was interested in you."

  That was interesting news but many years out of date. I chewed it over for some time, but, like Susskind, I could come to no conclusion, so I let it lie.

  In the spring I headed north to the MacKenzie District where I fossicked about all summer somewhere between the Great Slave Lake and Coronation Gulf. It's a lonely life -- there are not .many people up there -- but one meets the occasional trapper and there are always the wandering Eskimos in the far north. Again, it was a bad year and I thought briefly of giving it up as a bad job and settling for a salaried existence as a company wage slave. But I knew I wouldn't do that; I'd tasted too much freedom to be nailed down and I'd make a bad company man. But if I were to continue I'd have to go south again to assemble a stake for the next summer, so I humped my pack for civilisation.

  I suppose I was ail sorts of a fool to go back to British Columbia. I wanted to follow Susskind's advice and forget all about Fort Farrell, but the mind is not as easily controlled as all that. During the lonely days, and more especially the lonelier nights, I had thought about the odd fate of the Trinavants. I felt a certain responsibility because I had certainly been in that Cadillac when it crashed, and I felt an odd guilt about what might have caused it. I also felt guilty about running away from Fort Farrell -- McDougall's last words still stuck in my craw -- even though I had Susskind's assurance that I had done the right thing.

  I thought a lot about Clare Trinavant, too -- more than was good for a lone man in the middle of the wilderness.

  Anyway, I went back and did a winter job around Kamloops in British Columbia, working for an academic team investigating earth tremors. I say "academic" but the tab was picked up by the United States Government because this work could lead to a better means of detecting underground atomic tests, so perhaps it was not so academic, after all. The pay wasn't too good and the work and general atmosphere a bit too long-haired for me, but I worked through the winter and saved as much as I could.

  As spring approached I began to get restless, but I knew I had not saved up enough to go back north for another summer's exploration. It really began to look as though this was the end of the line and I would have to settle down to the company grind. As it turned out I got the money in another way, but I would rather have worked twenty years for a company than gain the money the way I did.

  I received a letter from Susskind's partner, a man called Jarvis. He wrote to tell me that Susskind had unexpectedly died of a heart attack and, as executor of the estate, he informed me that Susskind had left me $5,000.

  "I know that you and Dr. Susskind had a very special relationship, deeper than that normal to doctor and patient," wrote Jarvis. "Please accept my deepest regrets, and you will know, of course, that I stand ready to help you in my professional capacity at any time you may need me."

  I felt a deep sense of loss. Susskind was the only father I ever had or knew; he had been my only anchor in a world that had unexpectedly taken away three-quarters of my life. Even though we met but infrequently, our letters kept us close, and now there would be no more letters, no more gruff, irreverent, shrewd Susskind.

  I suppose the news knocked me off my bearings for a while. At any rate, I began to think of the geological structure of the North-East Interior of British Columbia, and to wonder if it was at all necessary to go back to the far north that summer. I decided to go back to Fort Farrell.

  Thinking of it in hindsight, I now know the reason. While I had Susskind I had a line back to my beginnings. Without Susskind there was no line and again I had to fight for my personal identity; and the only way to do it was to find my past, harrowing though the experience might be. And the way to the past lay through Fort Farrell, in the death of the Trinavant family and the birth of the Matterson logging empire.

  At the time, of course, I didn't think that way. I just did things without thinking at all. I turned in the job, packed my bags and was on my way to Fort Farrell within the month.

  The place hadn't changed any.

  I got off the bus at the depot and there was the same fat little guy who looked me up and down. "Welcome back," he said.

  I grinned at him. "I don't need to know where the Matter-son Building is this time. But you can tell me one thing -- is McDougall still around?"

  "He was up to last week -- I haven't seen him since."

  "You'd be good in a witness-box," I said. "You know how to make a careful statement."

  I went up King Street and into Trinavant Park and saw that there had been a change, after all. The Greek place now had a name -- a garish neon sign proclaimed it to be the Hellenic Cafe. Lieutenant Farrell was still the same, though; he hadn't moved a muscle. I checked into the Matterson House Hotel and wondered how long I'd be staying there. Once I started lifting stones to see what nasty things lay underneath I could see that innkeeper Matterson might not want to have me around as part of his clientele. But this was for the future; now I might as well see how the land lay with Howard.

  I took the elevator up to his office. He had a new secretary and I asked her to tell the boss that Mr. Boyd wanted to see him. I got into Howard's office in the record-breaking time of two minutes. Howard must have been very curious to know why I was back in Fort Farrell.

  He hadn't changed, either, although there was no real reason why he should. He was still the same bull-necked, beefy guy, running to fat, but I thought I detected a shade more fat this time. "Well, well," he said. "I'm certainly surprised to see you again."

  "I don't know why you should be," I said innocently. "Considering that you offered me a job."

  He goggled at me incredulously. "What!"

  "You offered me a job. You said you wanted a geological survey of all the Matterson holdings, and you offered the job to me. Don't you remember?"

  He remembered mat his mouth was open after a while and snapped it shut. "By Christ, but you've got a nerve! Do you think that . . ." He stopped and chuckled fatly. "No, Mr. Boyd. I'm afraid we've changed our minds about that project."

  'That's a pity," I said. "I find myself unable to go north this year."

  He grinned maliciously. "What's the matter? Couldn't you find anyone to stake you?"

  "Something like mat," I said, and let a worried look appear on my face.

  "It's tough all round," he said, enjoying himself, "but I'm sorry to tell you that I don't think there's a job going anywhere in this territory for a man in your line. In fact, I'll go further: I don't think there's any job around here that you could hold down. The employment situation is terrible in Fort Farrell this year." A thought struck him. "Of course, I might be able to find you a job as a bell-hop in the hotel. I have influence there, you understand. I hope you're strong enough to carry bags?"

  I wasn't worried about letting him have his fun. "I don't think I'm down to that yet," I said, and stood up.

  That didn't suit Howard; he wasn't through with grinding my face in the mud. "Sit down," he said genially. "Let's talk about old times."

  "Okay," I said, and sat down again. "Seen anything of Clare Trinavant lately?"

  That one really harpooned him. "Well keep her name out of this," he snapped.

  "I only wanted to know if she was around," I said reasonably. "She's a real nice woman -- I'd like to meet her again some time."

  He looked like someone who'd just swallowed his gum. The idea had just sunk in that I was really interested in Clare Trinavant -- and he wasn't far wrong, at that. It looked as though my tenure of the hotel room would be even shorter than I thought. He recovered. "She's out of town," he said with satisfaction. "She's out of the country. In fact, she's even out of the hemisphere, and she won't be back for a long time. I'm sorry about that -- really I am."

  That was a pity; I'd been looking forward to exchanging insults with he
r again. Still, she wasn't the main reason I was back in Fort Farrell, even though she was a possibly ally I had lost.

  I stood up again. "You're right," I said regretfully. "It's tough all round." This time he didn't try to stop me; perhaps he didn't like my brand of chatty conversation. I made for the door, and said, "I'll be seeing you."

  "Are you going to stick around here?" he demanded.

  I laughed at him. "That depends if the employment situation is as bad as you say." I closed the door on him and grinned at his secretary. "A mighty fine boss you've got there. Yes, sir!" She looked at me as though I were mad, so I winked at her and carried on.

  Baiting Howard Ma tier son was childish and pretty pointless, but I felt the better for it; it gave a boost to my flagging morale. I hadn't had much to do with him personally, and beyond the comments of Clare Trinavant and McDougall, I knew nothing about him. But now I knew he was a brave boy indeed; nothing suited Howard better than to put the boot to a man who was down. His little exhibition of sadism made me feel better and gave added enjoyment to the task of cutting him down to size.

  As I walked along King Street I glanced at my watch and quickened my pace. If McDougall still kept to his usual schedule he'd be ha ving his afternoon coffee at the Greek place -- the Hellenic Cafe. Sure enough, there he was, brooding over an empty cup. I went to the counter and bought two cups of coffee which came to me via a chromium-plated monster which squirted steam from every joint and sounded like the first stage of an Atlas missile taking off.

  I took the coffee over to the table and dumped a cup in front of Mac. If he was surprised to see me he didn't show it. His eyelids just flickered and he said, "What do you want?"

  I sat down next to him. "I had a change of heart, Mac."

  He said nothing, but the droop of his shoulders altered to a new erectness. I indicated the Espresso machine. "When did that sign of prosperity come in?"

  "A couple of months ago -- and the coffee's godawful," he said sourly. "Glad to see you, son."