Hammond Innes - The Land God gave to Cain

‘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 conjuction 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 ‘.el’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.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’ It seemed useless to say anything more. And yet … My eyes strayed to the map of Labrador. He’d forced himself to his feet in order to look at it. Why? What had been in his mind?

‘I don’t think it’s necessary for us to trouble Mrs Ferguson after all,’ the Inspector was saying. They went down the stairs then and I showed them out. ‘I’ll let you have these back in a day or so.’ The Inspector indicated the exercise books in his hand.

I watched them as they walked out to the police car and drove away. What had he meant by saying he’d like to have them examined by experts? But, of course, I knew, and I felt as though in some way I had let my father down. And yet, if the men were dead… I went back into the parlour to be faced with my mother’s reproachful gaze and Mrs Wright’s eager questioning.

But there were other, more practical things to think about, and with the funeral the sense of grief pushed everything else into the background of my mind.

It wasn’t until the morning I was leaving to return to Bristol that I was reminded of the strange message that had caused my father’s death. The postman brought a registered package addressed to me, and inside were the log books. There was also a letter, impersonal and final: I have to inform you that the Canadian authorities have been unable to obtain any confirmation of the message claimed to have been received by your father, Mr James Ferguson, on 29th September. Our experts have examined the enclosed, and in view of their report, and the statement by the only survivor that the two remaining members of the party are dead, the Canadian authorities do not feel that any useful purpose can be served by resuming the search. However, they wish me to express their appreciation, etc., etc.

So that was that. The experts — psychiatrists presumably — had looked at the log books and had decided that my father was mad. I tore the letter savagely across, and then, because I didn’t want my mother to find the fragments, I slipped them into my suitcase, together with the log books.