Landslide. Desmond Bagley
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know if I have a right to interfere. I came to Fort Farrell purely by chance and I don’t know if this is any of my business.’
He puffed out his cheeks and blew out his breath explosively. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘I just don’t get it.’ He wore a baffled look. ‘Are you telling me that you read that ten-year-old issue just for kicks – or just because you like browsing through crummy country newspapers? Maybe you wanted to check which good housewife won the pumpkin pie baking competition that week. Is that it?’
‘No dice, Mac,’ I said. ‘You won’t get it out of me until I’m ready, and I’m a long way off yet.’
‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve told you a lot – enough to get my head chopped off if Matterson hears about it. I’ve put my neck right on the block.’
‘You’re safe with me, Mac.’
He grunted. ‘I sure as hell hope so. I’d hate to be fired now with no good coming of it.’ He got up and took a file from a shelf. ‘I might as well give you a bit more. It struck me that if Matterson wanted to erase the name of Trinavant the reason might be connected with the way Trinavant died.’ He took a photograph from the file and passed it to me. ‘Know who that is?’
I looked at the fresh young face and nodded. I had seen a copy of the same photograph before but I didn’t tell McDougall. ‘Yes, it’s Robert Grant.’ I laid it on the table.
‘The fourth passenger in the car,’ said McDougall, tapping the photograph with his fingernail. ‘That young man lived. Nobody expected him to live, but he did. Six months after Trinavant died I had a vacation coming, so I used it to do some quiet checking out of reach of old Bull. I went over to Edmonton and visited the hospital. Robert Grant had been transferred to Quebec; he was in a private clinic and he was incommunicado. From then on I lost track of him – and it’s a hard task to hide from an old newspaperman with a bee in his bonnet. I sent copies of this photograph to a few of my friends – newspapermen scattered all over Canada – and not a thing has come up in ten years. Robert Grant has disappeared off the face of the earth.’
‘So?’
‘Son, have you seen this man?’
I looked down at the photograph again. Grant looked to be only a boy, barely in his twenties and with a fine full life ahead of him. I said slowly, ‘To my best knowledge I’ve never seen that face.’
‘Well, it was a try,’ said McDougall. ‘I had thought you might be a friend of his come to see how the land lies.’
‘I’m sorry, Mac,’ I said. ‘I’ve never met this man. But why would he want to come here, anyway? Isn’t Grant an irrelevancy?’
‘Maybe,’ said McDougall thoughtfully. ‘And maybe not. I just wanted to talk to him, that’s all.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s have another drink, for God’s sake!’
That night I had the Dream. It was at least five years since I had had it last and, as usual, it frightened hell out of me. There was a mountain covered with snow and with jagged black rocks sticking out of the snow like snaggle teeth. I wasn’t climbing the mountain or descending – I was merely standing there as though rooted. When I tried to move my feet it was as though the snow was sticky like an adhesive and I felt like a fly trapped on flypaper.
The snow was falling all the time; drifts were building up and presently the snow was knee-high and then at midthigh. I knew that if I didn’t move I would be buried so I struggled again and bent down and pushed at the snow with my bare hands.
It was then that I found that the snow was not cold, but red hot in temperature, even though it was perfectly white in my dreams. I cried in agony and jerked my hands away and waited helplessly as the snow imperceptibly built up around my body. It touched my hands and then my face and I screamed as the hot, hot snow closed about me burning, burning, burning …
I woke up covered in sweat in that anonymous hotel room and wished I could have a jolt of Mac’s fine Islay whisky.
The first thing I can ever remember in my life is pain. It is not given to many men to experience their birth-pangs and I don’t recommend it. Not that any commendation of mine, for or against, can have any effect – none of us chooses to be born and the manner of our birth is beyond our control.
I felt the pain as a deep-seated agony all over my body. It became worse as time passed by, a red-hot fire consuming me. I fought against it with all my heart and seemed to prevail, though they tell me that the damping of the pain was due to the use of drugs. The pain went away and I became unconscious.
At the time of my birth I was twenty-three years old, or so I am reliably informed.
I am also told that I spent the next few weeks in a coma, hovering on that thin marginal line between life and death. I am inclined to think of this as a mercy because if I had been conscious enough to undergo the pain I doubt if I would have lived and my life would indeed have been short.
When I recovered consciousness again the pain, though still crouched in my body, had eased considerably and I found it bearable. Less bearable was the predicament in which I found myself. I was spreadeagled – tied by ankles and wrists – lying on my back and apparently immersed in liquid. I had very little to go on because when I tried to open my eyes I found that I couldn’t. There was a tightness about my face and I became very much afraid and began to struggle.
A voice said urgently, ‘You must be quiet. You must not move. You must not move.’
It was a good voice, soft and kind, so I relaxed and descended into that merciful coma again.
A number of weeks passed during which time I was conscious more frequently. I don’t remember much of this period except that the pain became less obtrusive and I became stronger. They began to feed me through a tube pushed between my lips, and I sucked in the soups and the fruit juices and became even stronger. Three times I was aware that I had been taken to an operating theatre; I learned this not from my own knowledge but by listening to the chatter of nurses. But for the most part I was in a happy state of thoughtlessness. It never occurred to me to wonder what I was doing there or how I had got there, any more than a newborn baby in a cot thinks of those things. As a baby, I was content to let things go their own way so long as I was comfortable and comforted.
The time came when they cut the bandage from my face and eyes. A voice, a man’s voice I had heard before, said, ‘Now, take it easy. Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.’
Obediently I closed my eyes tightly and heard the snip of the scissors as they clipped through the gauze. Fingers touched my eyelids and there was a whispered, ‘Seems to be all right.’ Someone was breathing into my face. The voice said, ‘All right; you can open them now.’
I opened my eyes to a darkened room. In front of me was the dim outline of a man. He said, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
A white object swam into vision. I said, ‘Two.’
‘And how many now?’
‘Four.’
He gave a long, gusty sigh. ‘It looks as though you are going to have unimpaired vision after all. You’re a very lucky young man, Mr Grant.’
‘Grant?’
The man paused. ‘Your name is Grant, isn’t it?’
I thought about it for a long time and the man assumed I wasn’t going to answer him. He said, ‘Come now; if you are not Grant, then who are you?’
It is then they tell me that I screamed and they had to administer more drugs. I don’t remember screaming. All I remember is the awful blank feeling when I realized that I didn’t know who