Maxie’s Demon by Michael Scott Rohan

turning away, shot a glance back over her shoulder. ‘
Verdad!
And when that trouble boils over, you have but to call,
mi corazon!
’ Her eyes glittered in the gloom, and she snapped her longwhite teeth like a trap.
‘Estaremos alla!’
    ‘
Away!
’ said a harsh voice. They trotted towards the water’s edge, leaving me swaying, panting, mired deeper than I had been before. Darkness drifted across the water, and in it I suddenly saw the faint outline of the lugger’s mastheads as the sails soared up and billowed, and the bows swung out from shore. A distant voice drifted back to me as the shadowshape glided slowly out into the estuary, a shifting sketch in pale chalk on black. ‘Trouble comes, remember – and so do we!’
    Then there was silence, and the splashing of the waves. Oh yes, and me whimpering.
    The mud had eaten one of my trainers, and I had a fine time delving around for it. No sign – and I almost dropped the envelope. Hastily I caught it, and looked inside; and I began to sweatagain, though I was freezing. Fifty grand in hundreds, if it was a cent; Ahwaz’s fifty grand. He’d seen his big deal bushwhacked, and he’d had to do the runner of all time, and he’d lost his money; and I had it.
    I gibbered at thethought. The phone he’d accepted, but this – not a cat in hell’s chance, and I’d be the cat.
    I hugged the bills to my chest, but newspaper is better insulation. I hadto get out of here. Ahwaz might even come back now. But I was miles from anywhere with only one trainer, and for all the big notes I could brandish, I hadn’t nearly enough small ones to get back. Try giving a cabbie a hundred; chances are he’ll run you straight to the nearest cop shop. Unless he’s one of the East London minicab boys, in which case he’ll probably roll you on the off-chance there’smore.
    I swallowed painfully. There was money here, and maybe shoes, too. Wading in could only improve my jeans, so I clambered over the squidgy slickness of the inflatable and its horrid cargo. One I couldn’t touch, and anything he’d had would have been spoiled anyway; but the other had a heap of Dutch guilders and about a hundred in English cash, and his trainers were better than mine, thoughnot such a good fit. Then, looking away and making little mewing noises, I managed to rifle some of Fallon’s pockets for more.
    About five hundred in all, plus more guilders. More money than I’d set eyes on in a few years; but it felt cold and clammy as death in my fingers. There was something else about it, too, but I couldn’t think what, and I wasn’t about to hang around. I had a long walk ahead,especially as I didn’t dare go back to the road where we’d left Ahwaz’s van. Maybe I should have hopped that lugger and all, right enough.
    And thenthat nagging thought hit me clearly at last – the brigands or whatever they were, why hadn’t
they
rifled their victims? They’d chucked the drugs away. They’d left me the money. They hadn’t come for the cash, nor out of sheer public spirit either.
    So what had they come for?
    Me?

CHAPTER FOUR
Obey Signals
    A LL THAT MONEY , though, all that dosh. That was what really got to me, so badly I couldn’t worry about much else.
    Who’d it belong to? Who wants to know?
    I plodded across the marsh, almost blind, brain clacking away like a jet-propelled hamster wheel. Fallon wasn’t very likely to come back asking for it; mind you, if he did, he’d get it. No arguments,
at all
.
    Ahwaz– well, what I say is, when you run away from a dodgy investment you’ve got to take your losses. Sooner or later, of course, he’d stop running and start looking around for somebody to blame it on, and he’d probably start with me. Only he’d have to find me first.
    Fifty grand can take you a long, long way. He owed me it, too. All those jobs I’d done for him, all those lovely motors lifted – thepeanuts he’d paid me. A complete bloody thief, that’s what he was – a thief.
    And