Landslide. Desmond Bagley
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.
I sat back and looked at the paper before me. So Trinavant had been a partner of Matterson – but not the Matterson I had met that day because he was too young. At the time of the smash he would have been in his early twenties – say about the age of young Frank Trinavant who was killed, or about my age at that time. So there must be another Matterson – Howard Matterson’s father, presumably – which made Howard the Crown Prince of the Matterson empire. Unless, of course, he had already succeeded.
I sighed as I wondered what devil of coincidence had brought me to Fort Farrell; then I turned to the next issue and found – nothing! There was no follow on to the story in that issue or the next. I searched further and found that for the next year the name of Trinavant was not mentioned once – no follow-up, no obituary, no reminiscences from readers – nothing at all. As far as the Fort Farrell Recorder was concerned, it was as though John Trinavant had never existed – he had been unpersonned.
I checked again. It was very odd that in Trinavant’s home town – the town where he was virtually king – the local newspaper had not coined a few extra cents out of his death. That was a hell of a way to run a newspaper!
I paused. That was the second time in one day that I had made the same observation – the first time in relation to Howard Matterson and the way he ran the Matterson Corporation. I wondered about that and that led me to something else – who owned the Fort Farrell Recorder?
The little office girl popped her head round the door. ‘You’ll have to go now; we’re closing up.’
I grinned at her. ‘I thought newspaper offices never closed.’
‘This isn’t the Vancouver Sun,’ she said. ‘Or the Montreal Star.’
It sure as hell isn’t, I thought.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked.
I followed her into the front office. ‘I found some answers, yes; and a lot of questions.’ She looked at me uncomprehendingly. I said, ‘Is there anywhere a man can get a cup of coffee round here?’
‘There’s the Greek place right across the square.’
‘What about joining me?’ I thought that maybe I could get some answers out of her.
She smiled. ‘My mother told me not to go out with strange men. Besides, I’m meeting my boy.’
I looked at all the alive eighteen years of her and wished I were young again – as before the accident. ‘Some other time, perhaps,’ I said.
‘Perhaps.’
I left her inexpertly dabbing powder on her nose and headed across the square with the thought that I’d get picked up for kidnapping if I wasn’t careful. I don’t know why it is, but in any place that can support a cheap eatery – and a lot that can’t – you’ll find a Greek running the local coffee-and-doughnut joint. He expands with the community and brings in his cousins from the old country and pretty soon, in an average-size town, the Greeks are running the catering racket, splitting it with the Italians who tend to operate on a more sophisticated level. This wasn’t the first Greek place I’d eaten in and it certainly wouldn’t be the last – not while I was a poverty-stricken geologist chancing his luck.
I ordered coffee and pie and took it over to a vacant table intending to settle down to do some hard thinking, but I didn’t get much chance of that because someone came up to the table and said, ‘Mind if I join you?’
He was old, maybe as much as seventy, with a walnut-brown face and a scrawny neck where age had dried the juices out of him. His hair, though white, was plentiful and inquisitive blue eyes peered from beneath shaggy brows. I regarded him speculatively for a long time, and at last he said, ‘I’m McDougall – chief reporter for the local scandal sheet.’
I waved him to a chair. ‘Be my guest.’
He put down the cup of coffee he was holding and grunted softly as he sat down. ‘I’m also the chief compositor,’ he said. ‘And the only copy-boy. I’m the rewrite man, too. The whole works.’
‘Editor, too?’
He snorted derisively. ‘Do I look like a newspaper editor?’
‘Not much.’
He sipped his coffee and looked at me from beneath the tangle of his brows. ‘Did you find what you were looking for, Mr Boyd?’
‘You’re well-informed,’ I commented. ‘I’ve not been in town two hours and already I can see I’m going to be reported in the Recorder. How do you do it?’
He smiled. ‘This is a small town and I know every man, woman and child in it. I’ve just come from the Matterson Building and I know all about you, Mr Boyd.’
This McDougall looked like a sharp old devil. I said, ‘I’ll bet you know the terms of my contract, too.’
‘I might.’ He grinned at me and his face took on the look of a mischievous small boy. ‘Donner wasn’t too pleased.’ He put down his cup. ‘Did you find out what you wanted to know about John Trinavant?’
I stubbed out my cigarette. ‘You have a funny way of running a newspaper, Mr McDougall. I’ve never seen such a silence in print in my life.’
The smile left his face and he looked exactly what he was – a tired old man. He was silent for a moment, then he said unexpectedly, ‘Do you like good whisky, Mr Boyd?’
‘I’ve never been known to refuse.’
He jerked his head in the direction of the newspaper office. ‘I have an apartment over the shop and a bottle in the apartment. Will you join me? I suddenly feel like getting drunk.’
For an answer I rose from the table and paid the tab for both of us. While walking across the park McDougall said, ‘I get the apartment free. In return I’m on call twenty-four hours a day. I don’t know who gets the better of the bargain.’
‘Maybe you ought to negotiate a new deal with your editor.’
‘With Jimson? That’s a laugh – he’s just a rubber stamp used by the owner.’
‘And the owner is Matterson,’ I said, risking a shaft at random.
McDougall looked at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘So you’ve got that far, have you? You interest me, Mr Boyd; you really do.’
‘You are beginning to interest me,’ I said.
We climbed the stairs to his apartment, which was sparsely but comfortably furnished. McDougall opened a cupboard and produced a bottle. ‘There are two sorts of Scotch,’ he said. ‘There’s the kind which is produced by the million gallons: a straight-run neutral grain spirit blended with good malt whisky to give it flavour, burnt caramel added to give it colour, and kept for seven years to protect the sacred name of Scotch whisky.’ He held up the bottle. ‘And then there’s the real stuff – fifteen-year-old unblended malt lovingly made and lovingly drunk. This is from Islay – the best there is.’
He poured two hefty snorts of the light straw-coloured liquid and passed one to me. I said, ‘Here’s to you, Mr McDougall. What brand of McDougall are you, anyway?’
I would swear he blushed. ‘I’ve a good Scots name and you’d think that would be enough for any man, but my father had to compound it and