Грэм Мастертон - Famine

‘You don’t have to find anything specifically criminal. All we need is names, or account numbers. Anything that looks remotely unorthodox.’

‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘This is your party.’

They worked their way through the papers for forty minutes. Most of the notes and jottings were indecipherable, crowded with notes about tax law – such as ‘Arizona acct exempt under Code Sec 501(c)3??’ and ‘trnsfr to cemetery company poss?’ – and then there were columns and columns of figures, hardly any of them annotated or explained.

But after a while, Ed began to detect a distinct flow of correlated figures from one page of all these scribbled accounts to another. He pulled the desk lamp nearer, and switched on Peter Kaiser’s print-out calculator, and after five minutes of intensive button-punching, he said, ‘That’s it. I think I’m on to something.’

Della came across and looked over his shoulder. ‘See here,’ he told her, ‘this figure of 1.72 million dollars has been ostensibly transferred into a holding fund, to accrue interest while the Blight Crisis Appeal fund management decide how best it’s supposed to be spent. It’s been split six ways, and invested under the perfectly legal terms of the holding fund into six different agriculture-related industries. But if you look at the figures on this page here , you’ll see that a real-estate development company in Fort Myers, Florida, has been lent by six different sources a stun of money that amounts to 1.548 million dollars, which is 1.72 million dollars less ten per cent. There are only two names jotted down here – “Olga” and “Jimmy” – but God knows who they are.’

Della quickly looked through the accounts. ‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘But maybe it’s enough to point the FBI fraud people in the right direction. At least it’s something. Shearson Jones is usually so good at dusting over his tracks.’

She collected up the papers, folded them, and tucked them in the pocket of her robe.

‘Supposing Shearson notices they’re missing?’ asked Ed, replacing the desk lamp, and tearing the strip of paper off the calculator.

‘It won’t matter if he does. As soon as the Muldoons are up, and the alarms are switched off. I’m getting out of here, and fast.’

‘Where does that leave me?’

‘It leaves you right here. You’ll be safer that way. If Shearson thinks you’re implicated in stealing his personal papers, he’ll hang your guts on the outhouse door.’

‘You FBI agents have such a delicate turn of phrase.’ Della checked the office to make sure that everything was back where it was supposed to be. But she was about to switch off the desklamp when the door opened. Just like that, unannounced. And there, in a plaid cowboy shirt and BVDs, his eyes still blinking with sleep, was one of the Muldoon brothers.

For a moment, Muldoon stared at them both in total surprise, and they stared back at him, and nobody said a word. But then Muldoon turned back towards the passage and yelled out: ‘ Calvin! Calvin , c’mere! And bring the gun! ’

Ed made a rush for him. He managed to seize Muldoon’s right arm, and pin it behind his back, but Muldoon twisted around and punched him very hard in the ear. Ed said, ‘Shit!’ and lost his balance, banging his head against the door-frame.

Della unceremoniously pushed Ed aside, and struck Muldoon on the collar-bone with her elbow. Then she jabbed him straight in the throat with her rigid fingers, and he pitched backwards across the passage with a high whining sound, like a vacuum cleaner with its bag full.

‘Now – quick, for Christ’s sake!’ panted Della, and seized Ed by the hand.

Ed’s ear was still singing, but he jostled his way out of Shearson’s study, and down the passage, and across the living area. He barked his shin against a chrome coffee-table, and swore under his breath, but Della reached back and tugged at his sweatshirt to get him moving.

Calvin Muldoon popped out from a door beside the staircase, his pump-gun raised, his face white with surprise. Della snatched at the barrel of the gun, missed her grip, but chopped Muldoon in the kidneys with a short, vicious stroke of her right hand. Muldoon folded, and Ed hit him again, straight in the mouth. The gun dropped to the wooden floor with a clatter, and Ed reached down to pick it up.

‘Shearson!’ gasped Della. ‘He’s our only way out!’

Ed wasn’t sure what she meant, but he hauled himself up the staircase after her, and pelted along the landing just behind her, and they skated along the last few feet together and collided with Shearson’s double door at the same moment.

Della jiggled the door handle, but the doors were locked.

‘Shall I blow the lock off?’ asked Ed.

Della snapped her head around and stared at him as if he was mad. ‘Are you crazy? You can’t shoot locks off with a rifle! All you get is noise and smoke and bullets flying in all directions.’

‘Oh,’ said Ed, disappointed. ‘They always do it in the movies.’

‘In the movies they don’t have solid cedarwood doors.’

Behind them, Calvin Muldoon was already up off the floor and coming up the stairs. Ed turned around and pointed the pump-gun at him, along the length of the landing.

‘You come any nearer and I’ll blow your head off!’ he shouted, in what he hoped was a convincing tone of voice. Muldoon raised his hands, but still kept on coming, in a slow and sidling kind of a walk.

Just then, across on the other side of the landing, Peter Kaiser’s bedroom door opened, and there was Peter himself, in a white T-shirt with PK embroidered on it, and white shorts.

‘What the hell goes on here?’ he said, irritably.

Ed swung the pump-gun around and fired. There was an ear-splitting bang, and an Indian tapestry that was hanging only two feet away from the open door of Peter’s bedroom was ripped into black ribbons. Peter slammed his door shut instantly, and locked it.

While Ed was distracted, Calvin Muldoon tried to make a silent rush up the landing on tippy-toes, but Ed whipped the gun back around just in time, and levelled it at Muldoon’s head with an expression of such fierceness that the poor man was brought up short, teetering on his toes.

‘I warned you,’ Ed told him, harshly. Muldoon backed off, his hands raised high.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. Take it easy. I was only doing my job.’

Della meanwhile had been trying to pick Shearson’s lock. She was hunkered down in front of it, her teeth bared in a grimace of concentration, her fingers trembling as she tried to sense the levers inside.

Ed said, ‘Hurry up, will you? They’re going to go off and get guns of their own before we know where we are.’ Calvin Muldoon was already backing down the staircase, and Ed heard his brother call from the living area, ‘Are you all right, there, Calvin? Didn’t get yourself hurt, did you?’

Della said nothing, but reserved her attention for the lock.

Peter Kaiser’s door opened again, only an inch or so. There was a pause, and then Peter said, ‘Is that you Hardesty? Can you hear me?’

‘I can hear you,’ Ed told him.

‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Hardesty, but whatever it is you won’t get away with it. This house is locked up tighter than a prison.’

‘Let me worry about that,’ Ed called back.

Peter thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘If you harm Senator Jones in any way – and I mean this – you’ll have every police force in the country after you.’

‘He won’t be harmed, unless he’s stupid,’ said Ed.

‘You won’t get away with it,’ Peter repeated.

Della said, ‘Come on, you pig of a lock. Come on.’