Desmond Bagley - Landslide

Matterson waved his hand. ‘Cut it out, Fred; it may never happen. You’ll only want to drill if you come across anything definite – isn’t that right, Boyd?’

‘That’s it.’

Donner looked down at Matterson with his cold eyes. ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘You’d better not have Boyd survey the northern end. It’s not …’

‘I know what it’s not, Fred,’ cut in Matterson irritably. ‘I’ll get Clare straightened out on that.’

‘You’d better,’ said Donner. ‘Or the whole scheme might collapse.’

That exchange meant nothing to me but it was enough to give me the definite idea that these two were having a private fight and I’d better not get in the way. That wanted clearing up, so I butted in and said, ‘I’d like to know who my boss is on this survey. Who do I take my orders from – you, Mr Matterson? Or Mr Donner here?’

Matterson stared at me. ‘You take them from me,’ he said flatly. ‘My name is Matterson and this is the Matterson Corporation.’ He flicked his gaze up at Donner as though defying him to make an issue of it, but Donner backed down after a long moment by giving a sharp nod.

‘Just as long as I know,’ I said easily.

Afterwards we got down to dickering about the terms of my contract. Donner was a penny-pincher and, as he had made me mad by trying to skinflint on the possible boring operations, I set my price higher than I would have done normally. Although it seemed to be a straightforward job and I did need the money, there were undercurrents that I didn’t like. There was also the name of Trinavant that had come up, although that seemed to have no particular relevance. But the terms I finally screwed out of Donner were so good that I knew I would have to take the job – the money would set me up in business for a year in the North-West.

Matterson was no help to Donner. He just sat on the sidelines and grinned while I gouged him. It was certainly a hell of a way to run a corporation! After the business details had been settled Matterson said, ‘I’ll reserve a room for you at the Matterson House. It doesn’t compare with the Hilton, but I think you’ll be comfortable enough. When can you start on the job?’

‘As soon as I get my equipment from Edmonton.’

‘Fly it in,’ said Matterson. ‘We’ll pay the freight.’

Donner snorted and walked out of the room like a man who knows when he isn’t wanted.

The Matterson House Hotel proved to be incorporated into the Matterson Building so I hadn’t far to go when I left Matterson’s office. I also noticed a string of company offices all bearing the name of Matterson and there was the Matterson Bank on the corner of the block. It seemed that Fort Farrell was a real old-fashioned company town, and when Matterson built his dam there would be the Matterson Power Company to add to his list. He was getting a real stranglehold on this neck of the woods.

I arranged with the desk clerk to have my bag brought up from the bus depot, then said, ‘Do you have a newspaper here?’

‘Comes out Friday.’

‘Where’s the office?’

‘Trinavant Park – north side.’

I walked out into the fading afternoon light and back down High Street until I came to the square. Lieutenant Farrell was staring sightlessly into the low sun which illuminated his verdigris-green face blotched with white where the birds had made free with him. I wondered what he would have thought if he knew how his settlement had turned out. Judging by the expression on his face he did know – and he didn’t think much of it.

The office of the Fort Farrell Recorder seemed to be more concerned with jobbing printing than with the production of a newspaper, but my first question was answered satisfactorily by the young girl who was the whole of the staff – at least, all of it that was in sight.

‘Sure we keep back copies. How far do you want to go back?’

‘About ten years.’

She grimaced. ‘You’ll want the bound copies, then. You’ll have to come into the back office.’ I followed her into a dusty room. ‘What was the exact date?’

I had no trouble in remembering that – everyone knows his own birthday. ‘Tuesday, September 4th, 1956.’

She looked up at a shelf and said helplessly, ‘That’s the one up there. I don’t think I can reach it.’

‘Allow me,’ I said, and reached for it. It was a volume the size and weight of a dozen Bibles and it gave me a lot less trouble than it would have given her! I supposed it weighed pretty near as much as she did.

She said, ‘You’ll have to read it in here; and you mustn’t cut the pages – that’s our record copy.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised, and put it on a deal table. ‘Can I have a light, please?’

‘Sure.’ She switched on the light as she went out.

I pulled up a chair and opened the heavy cover of the book. It contained two years’ issues of the Fort Farrell Recorder – one hundred and four reports on the health and sickness of a community; a record of births and deaths, joys and sorrows, much crime and yet not a lot, all things considered, and a little goodness – there should have been more but goodness doesn’t make the headlines. A typical country newspaper.

I turned to the issue of September 7th – the week-end after the accident – half afraid of what I would find, half afraid I wouldn’t find anything. But it was there and it had made the front page headlines, too. It screamed at me in heavy black letters splashed across the yellowing sheet: JOHN TRINAVANT DIES IN AUTO SMASH.

Although I knew the story by heart, I read the newspaper account with care and it did tell me a couple of things I hadn’t known before. It was a simple story, regrettably not uncommon, but one which did not normally make headlines as it had done here. As I remembered, it rated a quarter-column at the bottom of the second page of the Vancouver Sun and a paragraph filler in Toronto.

The difference was that John Trinavant had been a power in Fort Farrell as being senior partner in the firm of Trinavant and Matterson. God the Father had suddenly died and Fort Farrell had mourned. Mourned publicly and profusely in black print on white paper.

John Trinavant (aged 56) had been travelling from Dawson Creek to Edmonton with his wife, Anne (no age given), and his son, Frank (aged 22). They had been travelling in Mr Trinavant’s new car, a Cadillac, but the shiny new toy had never reached Edmonton. Instead, it had been found at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot cliff not far off the road. Skid marks and slashes in the bark of trees had shown how the accident happened. ‘Perhaps,’ said the coroner, ‘it may be that the car was moving too fast for the driver to be in proper control. That, however, is something no one will know for certain.’

The Cadillac was a burnt-out hulk, smashed beyond repair. Smashed beyond repair were also the three Trinavants, all found dead. A curious aspect of the accident, however, was the presence of a fourth passenger, a young man now identified as Robert Grant, who had been found alive, but only just so, and who was now in the City Hospital suffering from third-degree burns, a badly fractured skull and several other assorted broken bones. Mr Grant, it was tentatively agreed, must have been a hitchhiker whom Mr Trinavant, in his benevolence, had picked up somewhere on the way between Dawson Creek and the scene of the accident. Mr Grant was not expected to live. Too bad for Mr Grant.

All Fort Farrell and, indeed, all Canada (said the leader writer) should mourn the era which had ended with the passing of John Trinavant. The Trinavants had been connected with the city since the heroic days of Lieutenant Farrell and it was a grief (to the leader writer personally) that the name of Trinavant was now extinguished in the male line. There was, however, a niece, Miss C. T. Trinavant, at present at school in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was to be hoped that this tragedy, the death of her beloved uncle, would not be permitted to interrupt the education he had so earnestly desired to give her.