‘All right,’ said Ahwaz. ‘Choose a bag, bring me it. From the bottom of the pile.’ But when I tried to hand him the plastic sack, he shook his hands away sharply. ‘You hold it!’ He unclasped a pearl-handled knife and stabbed it gently, then touched the tip of the blade to his mouth. He tasted, spat and nodded. ‘That’s it.’ The driver produced a briefcase and opened it. ‘Give the man this. Bring back the envelope. Then get the others loaded up.’
I reached in for the fat envelope, puzzled. It wasn’t just for a middleman Ahwaz wanted me; he would have been safe enough with his goons. And he seemed desperate not to touch anything—
I stopped dead. He wanted me to. I didn’t have gloves on. He’d got a bag of heroin back there with my fingerprints on it, and nobody else’s. He’d have a few more in this heap. And he’d have me. With that kind of evidence he’d have me by the short and curlies; he could shop me to the cops with a plausible story, do me and get in good with them at the same time. I had a record, not a bad one, but with that kind of form who’d believe me? Chances were I’d go down till I was tripping over my beard. He could turn me in tomorrow, or keep me slaving away for him till doomsday because it would still be a shade better than prison. He could rule my life—
‘C’mon, c’mon!’ snarled Fallon. I must have frozen where I stood, and Ahwaz knew why, because I could hear him laughing.
I stopped him so fast he nearly choked. It was stupid, I shouldn’t have dared; but my blood was roaring in my ears. After what I’d been through these past two days I wasn’t half as scared of Ahwaz as I should have been; he didn’t glow green, for one thing. I’d been pushed too far. I jumped to the bank’s edge and stood there, teetering in the mud, with the envelope held high to fling.
‘This’ll sink like a bloody stone!’ I yelled. I saw the sudden movement in the boat, my blood froze, but I couldn’t give in now or they’d kill me anyway. ‘Even if you shoot me—’
I knew my mistake the moment I’d said it. Never give people ideas, especially those who don’t have too many of their own. Ahwaz was bright enough to hold back, but not Fallon’s goons. Somewhere out there two lonely brain cells met and cuddled, and the rifle swung up; I could see it clearly, a faint, dull gleam in the night, and I didn’t even have time to be afraid. I heard the shot, deep and strange and hollow, not at all the flat whip crack I’d expected. A wind sang past me, too close; but there was something wrong with it—
I felt nothing. But the rifle barrel flew up and discharged skyward with a shocking crash in that silent night, and the flame danced on the black water like fireworks. Then the rifle tipped down into it with a flat splash, and a bulky outline fell forward as if diving after, but landed writhing on the inflatable’s side. Fallon’s face, behind his scrubby beard, stood out pale in the shadows, eyes gaping in their deep sockets; but it was past me he was looking. There were no doors there, but it felt as if somebody opened one all the same.
There was another boat. This one you could see, though you wouldn’t be too happy about it – not because it had a searchlight or Customs markings, nothing nice and normal like that. You saw it by its own light, just a little, a glimmer, like sea phosphorescence. It was a sailing boat of some kind, not enormous, and it was gliding speedily in to shore with its two sails taut. The trouble was, there was barely a breath of wind. And what there was wasn’t blowing in that direction. And there wasn’t a soul to be seen on board.
Now at this point, of course, the sensible man gets going, and God knows I’d had plenty of practice only last night. But the moment I tried to move there was a noise like a hippo on heat, and the muck slurped lovingly around my nice new trainers, and I almost fell face down in the clag. I caught my balance, then wished I hadn’t. The mud might be safer. There were figures leaping ashore, dimly seen; there were shouts. Any minute now there’d be the helicopter with the searchlight, and the megaphone bellowing, ‘Armed police!’ They were running straight towards me.
But the sound of those shouts – not nice, respectable cop shouts, not even the Drug Squad. More like Manchester United fans – then suddenly I was covered in mud splatters and the stampede was parting around me and trampling past. Half-seen shapes, dim as ghosts but all too solid, in weird, patchy getups and streaming hair, waving ill-defined objects that glinted with dull menace.
Definitely United.
Fallon’s jaw was still dropping, and who could blame him? They moved. But his hand was already pulling out of his coat, and it certainly wasn’t empty, and there was movement in the boat. I was right in the line of fire – wasn’t I always? My knees knocked and I shrank inwards, wishing I could imitate a Flatlander – or the famous Oozelum bird.
The machine-pistol levelled right at the leading figure. But in the fragment of a breath between the aim and the firing he had somehow covered the ground between. There was a cutting flash and a wild yell, some word I didn’t catch, and something went up in the air. The pistol jerked and flickered red and yellow snake tongues, but downwards, at random, whipping up the marsh. Fallon wasn’t in a position to aim. In fact he’d rather lost his head altogether. The rest of him did a neat little jig step and fell in a gangling heap. The figures jostled around it and reached the boat.
Gorge rising, I heard that cry again, and then there was a shot, not the pistol’s popping or the rifle’s crisp crack, dull and heavy-sounding. Somebody screamed, abruptly cut off by a very nasty thudding, but I hardly noticed. This time I had heard the word they were crying, I could hear it again, drawn out, impossibly wild and bloodthirsty. They were all shouting it.
‘Maaaxieee!’ roared a rough male voice, as metal rang on metal with a shattering sound.
‘Que viva Maxieeee!’ That was a woman’s voice. Something heavy splashed over the side. There was a burst of happy laughter.
‘Maxie! Maxie hoch! Hoch!’ Air hissed out of something with a punctured squeal.
‘Que muera!’
‘A morte! A vittoria! Viva Maxissime! ’
And those were only the ones I could make out. Beating seven types of whatever out of the dope boys, and shouting my name.
Of course I was just standing there all this time, enjoying the night air, naturally. All this time, I decided afterwards, must have been about ten seconds, maybe fifteen at best. I think I coped pretty well, allowing for shock. I didn’t waste time having heart attacks or losing sphincter control or anything like that. No, I had one foot free and was literally taking my first step for flight when I realised everything had suddenly gone very still.
There was a hissing, deflating sound, and from about the same direction a faint bubbling moan that tailed away into nothing. Some way off in the marsh there were frenzied squelching noises, and in a brief glimmer on a muddy pool I glimpsed three figures splashing incontinently through it, making pretty good time for their bulk. Definitely it wasn’t Ahwaz’s day.
Or maybe it was; he’d got a good start. Like I said, not at all stupid.
That was when I realised I was still holding the envelope.
And then the shadowy crew came flowing back off the inflatable and splattering back through the marsh again. Right at me. They were around me before my foot hit the ground, or what passed for it here.
‘Hey, Maxie!’ said a harsh voice, and a hand thumped me kindly on the back.
‘Maxie bambino!’ Another woman’s voice, and hey, a long arm around my shoulders as I wheezed for breath.
‘Maxie! What’ve they done to you? You OK, lad?’
‘Mack-a-sie! Hey, he’s OK, huh? He’s brave, isn’t he not brave?’
They were all around me, poking me in the ribs, thumping me on the back, ruffling my hair and – I hoped this was the women – squeezing my buttocks, and taking my name generally in vain. The last time I had this much attention from anyone I was being beaten up by a Rasta gang, and the sensation wasn’t too different.
I fought for breath, caught it and regretted it. It was like ten o’clock in the peep show on a hot night. It even had th
e marsh lying down gasping. Whatever this lot did for amusement, bathing wasn’t part of it. But even as I noticed it, it was gone, and that really did make me look up.
I was surrounded. About eight of them, and at least two female, and that was as much as I could make out. Apart from the weaponry, and the blood. Then the moon came out, or maybe my eyes focused. I’ve seen more encouraging sights, even allowing for the mouldy light.
They really were festooned. They were panting, surprise surprise, and at every breath they rattled. They were wearing more weapons than clothes. The guy in front of me, a snaky-looking Oriental type with wiry hair fanning back from a low widow’s peak, was grinning, but the dagger in his teeth, threatening his droopy moustache, ruined the effect. He might have been wearing a few scraps of black shirt and trousers, paddy-field pyjama style, but the rest was belts and brassards, and an interesting pattern of dark stains.
The woman next to him definitely wasn’t wearing a shirt, but instead of one brassard she had a long whip wound around, with three or four pistols thrust into the thongs – big, heavy pistols, flintlocks even. She had some kind of cloth about her waist, but all I really noticed was the twin machetes tucked in it. With one in each hand already, that gave her a lot of edge. OK, she had earrings, but even those were little daggers, pretty businesslike ones that clanked against her steel collar. Her face was OK if you like them high-boned and hard, with streaks of straight black hair slathered to it, and flecks of blood to taste. She grinned, too.
The black guy beside her – he was wearing armour, a breastplate with a belly, and one of those fore-and-aft helmets like melon rinds, and long baggy trousers, white in the few bits not claimed by nasty-looking stains. He was grinning, as well. The night was alive with teeth.
‘Hey, Maxie!’ he said, in an absurdly high-pitched voice. ‘You sure are one lucky guy!’
‘Uh?’
‘E vero!’ said the other woman, rounder and curlier, shaking me genially by the shoulder. Rounder, curlier and strong as a horse. ‘Look, signor, see what we have got for you!’ They shuffled hastily back, as if they were showing baby the Christmas tree.
‘Erp,’ I said. The moon was still pretty grudging, but somehow I could see every little detail. The inflatable, half deflated in the shallows, its floats of reinforced fabric bubbling from half a dozen enthusiastic slashes. One limp arm sprawled over its edge, and a glimpse of a white, still face above, jaw sagging against the shattered stock of a rifle. A boot sticking up on the other side, at an angle that suggested a leg in it; what the leg was attached to, if anything, there was no telling. Another shape floating face down next to it, bobbing gently in the river wash. And on the ground, altogether too near for my liking, there was Fallon – the business end. He was grinning, too. In fact, he was in the pink. The split sack of white packets crackled gently in the faint wind.
‘Very nice,’ I said weakly. ‘Just what I’ve always wanted.’
Another of my new friends, a blond thug with a ponytail and a great cutlass slung across his back, kicked the sack gently. ‘All dis shit,’ he grunted Germanically, with an angelic smile. ‘All dose bucks. All for you, Maxie. Ain’tcha de lucky bastard?’
‘Wow,’ I said, hoping the rictus on my face looked like a delighted smile. ‘But look, guys, I mean I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, and gosh, I mean I really appreciate – but me and horse, I mean I never – it just doesn’t agree with me – and this much, getting rid of it – I wouldn’t know how – and anyhow,’ I added, encouraged by the lack of daggers at my throat, ‘I – don’t really approve of the hard stuff. At all. I mean hardly. Not at all,’ I added firmly.
A stunning blow struck me between the shoulder blades. So this was death?
‘Hey! Dat be truth!’
‘Arrr! Dead right, by Jenny’s—’
‘This is a hidalgo, he has principles! Viva el jefe!’
‘Right on, Maxie!’ Somebody kicked the sack, and about fifty very big ones sprayed expensively across the muck. I winced.
More thumps, with roars of idiot enthusiasm. ‘Sure, that stuff’s poison!’
‘Aye! Pitch it i’ the tide, me hearties!’ They fell on it with howls of moral outrage, ripping the sack apart, punting the packets out into the blackness, whacking them away with their swords like baseball bats, trailing snowy-white comets across the marsh. There were going to be some very happy frogs round here awhile, or maybe they’d just croak.
Whatever I thought about hard drugs, the sight of so much raw money flying away caused me acute physical agony, but I wasn’t about to try stopping them any more than I would a runaway bulldozer. I hugged the envelope tight to me.
‘A clean lad’ee be, Maxie!’ one shouted.
‘Sure, no way dat a real man make his pile!’ cried another. ‘Come avay vith us, baby!’
‘Si, como no?’ laughed one of the women. ‘Come away this night, now, share our roving fortunes!’
I don’t know what sort of sound I made, but it started out as ‘What?’
‘Arr!’ roared one of them. ‘Away, sail away, sling yer hook for a free life—’
‘De vind blowing in your hair—’
‘A girl on your arm—’
‘Due fanciulle! Every day a new one! Every day another place, another story! And a mountain of plunder! Yours to command! Yours if you’re our friend!’
‘Our brother! Join us!’
‘Our señor!’ This was a woman, wrapping herself around my arm. ‘Join us! Sail with us! You are of noble blood – lead us, and we shall follow!’
‘Command us! Join us! We are your strong right arm!’
I carefully lowered my foot into a new patch of mire, trying not to inhale too deeply. With all this dope flying around I must have got a sniff of it. My sight seemed to be going blurry. Lead them? I couldn’t even count them. About six I could recognise, including the women, no mistaking them; but there had to be two more, maybe three, because there was always a shifting little knot of them out of sight at the back. It was hard to tell; they buzzed about like hornets. And you couldn’t tell by their voices; one woman had a Spanish accent, another something like Italian, there was the School of Schwarzenegger character, but they seemed to come and go.
‘Now jus’ a moment here!’ I managed. ‘What’s this noble crap? How’d you – I mean, who says so, anyhow? And what do you want me for?’
‘You need friend, man!’ said one, in a conspiratorial hiss. ‘Friend who’ll help you get your dues, get back all the world’s taken from you—’
‘Si, si! Friends powerful and cunning and strong, an association of friends who will smooth your passage to riches and position—’
I managed to pin down that voice, a curly-haired creature wearing what was either about twenty lire’s worth of rags or something straight off the Milan catwalk. ‘Look, you’re not anything to do with this Lodge P2 or something, are you? ’Cause if it’s Italian politics I don’t want to know, right?’
‘It is no politics except your own, Maxie!’ said the Oriental guy smoothly, tugging his moustaches. ‘From here on in what’s good for Maxie is good for the world. Or we’ll know the reason why!’
The voices had a pull to them you can’t imagine, the women’s especially as they hung on to my arms and laughed. If I’d been maybe a year or two younger, a bit more impressionable, who knows? It was mad, it was scary – but so was the thought of going back, to Ahwaz and Chaddy and the rest. And if the pitch had been maybe just a bit more modern – like, nobody mentioned fast cars – then …
Who knows? I don’t. But I did know who I was – five feet and two inches tall, less than ten stone stripped, about as muscular as Aunty Mary’s canary and with a beak to match too. And I was supposed to go off and boss this gang of butchers, buccaneers or brigands or whatever?
‘Come’ee with us, skipper! Off aboard the lugger, and to our ship! Off to a life like no king’s ever dreamed of—’
‘Travel and adventure! Strange places and str
ange musics! Lust and wine and riches—’ That was the other woman, the straggle-haired Hispanic type.
‘Away from yer crappy little life hereabouts – away from every hurt and humbling—’
‘Pleasure and power, and we a sharp sword in your right hand, para siempre amigos verdaderos! To do your every bidding! Come now! Come! Come away, venid!’
‘Come with you?’ I mouthed, appalled. I couldn’t make out who that was. ‘You must be bloody mad. You are bloody mad! What are you, anyhow? Robert frigging Newton?’
‘Arhar, Maxie lad?’ The one I’d grabbed enquired amiably. I could see the whites of his eyes rolling. ‘Bloody mad, if you say so, skipper! Come along now, the lugger be just hereabouts!’
‘I’m not your frigging skipper!’ I protested. ‘And I’m sure as hell not getting aboard any boat of yours!’
‘Ah, but skipper—’
‘Maxie-eee! Mi jefe, mi corazon—’
They were all over me again, promising me this, that and the other. Quite a lot of the other, in fact. They wouldn’t take maybe for an answer, let alone no. It felt as if they were about to scoop me up and carry me off. I was cold and wet and terrified and I had half the marsh up my jeans, including some of the wriggly bits, and the last thing I wanted was to be shanghaied off to Nowhere Land aboard this lot’s lugger, whatever that was.
‘Look!’ I shouted, threshing my arms free and trying to pump up my courage. ‘Just – leave me alone, will you? Just – just bugger off!’
Slowly, drooping, they let my arms fall and shuffled back, looking like a dog that’s been told off. The blond man threw up his hands protestingly.
‘Hey, but de skipper—’
‘Bugger off!’ I was beginning to get bolder the less they responded. And angry, angrier by the moment. Something was sounding little warning bells in the back of my mind; the last time I got this angry, things had exploded. But nothing seemed to be happening here. ‘Look,’ I erupted, ‘you’ll do anything I say, will you? Then go on, hop it! Bugger off – or I’ll make you do it literally!’
Maxie’s Demon Page 6
