All Was Lost by Steven Maxwell

Author:Steven Maxwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

32

Following the last GPS coordinates reckoned by the OBD software tracking Uncle Cy’s car, Sweet found himself on a dead and isolated farmstead in the rain. He got out of his car, a Jaguar, and roamed among the rusted remains of vehicles and farm equipment. Snapped cables and nylon rope pressed vermiculate in the mud. A gagging reek of sewage. He stepped over a sunken cast-iron engine block and crossed a track of mucky planks as he followed the sound of hammering and sawing coming from the back of the farmhouse. He tried the handle of a corrugated-tin door. The door scraped open and he stepped into a fetid and flyblown structure stinking of poultry feed and rancid meat and something else. Something worse.

He drew a Beretta pistol and a handkerchief from his jacket and walked slowly through the rooms, handkerchief pressed to his mouth and nose to block the miasmic stench. The hammering and sawing getting louder. Foxed and peeling wallpaper hung from cloudy walls soft with rot. Dusty corner cobwebs. A filthy mattress leaning upright against a window blocking the light. Depending from a chain in the ceiling was a small birdcage with a live chicken jammed up inside. A glass tank on a sideboard containing a giant huntsman spider, a truly monstrous abomination, great spindly legs twisted at the joints and splayed forward, crablike. Stacked boxes of medical supplies and an IV stand beside an infant’s fouled cot. He’d stopped before a closed door near the kitchen and was reaching for the handle when he realized the hammering and the sawing had ceased.

‘The fuck you doing in my home?’ A voice through gritted teeth. A voice so strained that spit foamed with its words.

Sweet looked up and pointed the gun at an old man in a rotten green boilersuit who’d emerged from the kitchen gripping a claw hammer. His eyes and nostrils were scaly with rheum, and his front was covered in blood and sawdust. It had congealed on his hands in dark clumps and between the folds of his weathered face.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I said what the fuck are you doing in my home?’

‘Looking for someone. Cy Green. Cyrus Green.’

‘Get the fuck out.’

‘He was driving a grey Land Rover.’

A sharpness in the old man’s watery eyes, a slight turn of his head.

‘You’ve seen him,’ Sweet said.

‘No. But I know who has.’

‘Who?’

‘The Banskin brothers.’

Sweet was briefly dumbstruck. ‘As in Dolan and Joseph?’

‘You know them?’

‘Of them.’

‘Well, that’s who was here.’

‘In that case it seems I’m looking for the Banskin brothers.’

‘You and me both.’ Tolmach wiped a leaky eye with the edge of his hand. ‘Took off out of here with my van.’

‘When?’

‘This morning.’

Sweet lowered his hand from the shut door but kept the gun trained on Tolmach. ‘Why were they here?’

‘Wanted my help.’

‘What kind of help?’

‘They were fucked up.’

‘What kind of fucked up?’

‘You see a blue-eyed horse on your way up here?’

‘I need specifics.’

‘Dolan was shot. Joseph—’

‘Wait.’ Sweet took out his pencil and notebook. ‘Go on.’

‘Dolan was shot in his forearm and his nose.

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