The Family Trade

At the end, there was another bench. Someone was seated there, contemplating something on the ground. Miriam walked forward lightly. “Olga?” she called.

Olga sat up when she was about twenty feet away. She was wearing a black all-enveloping cloak. Her hair was untidy, her eyes reddened.

“Olga! What’s wrong?” Miriam asked, alarmed.

Olga stood up. “Don’t come any closer,” she said. She sounded strained.

“What’s the matter?” Miriam asked uncertainly.

Olga brought her hands out from beneath the cloak. Very deliberately, she pointed the boxy machine pistol at Miriam’s face. “You are,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “If you have any last lies to whisper before I kill you, say them now and be done with it, whore.”

Part 4

Killer Story

Hostile Takeover

The interview room was painted pale green except for the floor, which was unvarnished wood. The single window, set high up in one wall, admitted a trickle of wan winter daylight that barely helped the glimmering of the electrical bulb dangling overhead. The single table had two chairs on either side of it. All three pieces of furniture were bolted to the floor, and the door was soundproofed and locked from the outside.

“Would you care for some more tea, Mr. Burgeson?” asked the plainclothes inspector, holding his cup delicately between finger and thumb. He loomed across the table, overshadowing Burgeson’s frail form: they were alone in the room, the inspector evidently not feeling the need for a stout sergeant to assist him as warm-up man.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Burgeson. He coughed damply into a wadded handkerchief. “ ’Scuse me …”

“No need for excuses,” the inspector said, as warmly as an artist inspecting his handiwork. He smiled like a mantrap. “Terrible winters up there in Nova Scotia, aren’t they?”

“Character-building,” Burgeson managed, before breaking out in another wracking cough. Finally he managed to stop and sat up in his chair, leaning against the back with his face pointed at the window.

“That was how the minister of penal affairs described it in parliament, wasn’t it?” The inspector nodded sympathetically. “It would be a terrible shame to subject you to that kind of character-building experience again at your age, wouldn’t it, Mr. Burgeson?”

Burgeson cocked his head on one side. So far the inspector had been polite. He hadn’t used so much as a fist in the face, much less a knee in the bollocks, relying instead on tea and sympathy and veiled threats to win Burgeson to his side. It was remarkably liberal for an HSB man, and Burgeson had been waiting for the other shoe to drop—or to kick him between the legs—for the past ten minutes. “What can I do for you, Inspector?” he asked, clutching at any faint hope of fending off the inevitable.

“I shall get to the point presently.” The inspector picked up the teapot and turned it around slowly between his huge callused hands. He didn’t seem to feel the heat as he poured a stream of brown liquid into Burgeson’s cup, then put the pot down and dribbled in a carefully measured quantity of milk. “You’re an old man, Mr. Burgeson, you’ve seen lots of water flow under the bridge. You know what ‘appens in rooms like this, and you don’t want it to ‘appen to you again. You’re not a young hothead who’s going to get his self into trouble with the law any more, are you? And you’re not in the pay of the Frogs, either, else we’d have scragged you long ago. You’re a careful man. I like that. Careful men you can do business with.” He cradled the round teapot between his hands gently. “And I much prefer doing business to breaking skulls.” He put the teapot down. It wobbled on its base like a decapitated head.

Burgeson swallowed. “I haven’t done anything to warrant the attention of the Homeland Security Bureau,” he pointed out, a faint whine in his voice. “I’ve been keeping my nose clean. I’ll help you any way I can, but I’m not sure how I can be of use—”

“Drink your tea,” said the inspector.

Burgeson did as he was told.

“ ’Bout six months ago a Joe called Lester Brown sold you his dear old mother’s dressing table, didn’t he?” said the inspector.

Burgeson nodded cautiously. “It was a bit battered—”

“And four weeks after that, a woman called Helen Blue came and bought it off you, din’t she?”

“Uh.” Burgeson’s mouth went dry. “Yes? Why ask me all this? It’s in my books, you know. I keep records, as the law requires.”

The inspector smiled, as if Burgeson had just said something extremely fu

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Burgeson said tensely. “What’s all this nonsense about? Who are these Greens and Reds you’re bringing up?”

“Seven years in one of His Majesty’s penal colonies for sedition back in seventy-eight and you still don’t have a fucking clue.” The inspector shook his head slowly. “Levellers, Mr. Burgeson.” He leaned forward until his face was inches away from Burgeson’s. “That dressing table happened to have a hollow compartment above the top drawer and there were some most interesting papers folded up inside it. You wouldn’t have been dealing in proscribed books again, would ye?”

“Huh?” The last question caught Burgeson off-guard, but he was saved by another coughing spasm that wrinkled his face up into a painful knot before it could betray him.

The inspector waited for it to subside. “I’ll put it to you like this,” he said. “You’ve got bad friends, Erasmus. They’re no good for yer old age. A bit o’ paper I can’t put me finger on is one thing. But if I was to catch ’em, this Mrs. Blue or Mr. Brown, they’d sing for their supper sooner than put their necks in a noose, wouldn’t they? And you’d be right back off to Camp Frederick before your feet touch the ground, on a one-way stretch. Which in your case would be approximately two weeks before the consumption carried you away for good an’ all and Old Nick gets to toast you by the fires of hell.

“All that Godwinite shit and old-time Egalitarianism will get you is a stretched neck or a cold grave. And you are too old for the revolution. They could hold it tomorrow and it wouldn’t do you any good. What’s that slogan—’Don’t trust anyone who’s over thirty or owns a slave’? Do you really think your young friends are going to help you?”

Burgeson met the inspector’s gaze head-on. “I have no Leveller friends,” he said evenly. “I am not a republican revolutionary. I admit that in the past I made certain mistakes, but as you yourself agree, I was punished for them. My tariff is spent. I cooperate fully with your office. I don’t see what else I can do to prevent people who I don’t know and have never heard of from using my shop as a laundry. Do we need to continue this conversation?”

“Probably not.” The inspector nodded thoughtfully. “But if I was you, I’d stay in touch.” A business card appeared between his fingers. “Take it.”

Burgeson reached out and reluctantly took the card.

“I’ve got my eye on you,” said the inspector. “You don’t need to know how. If you see anything that might interest me passing through your shop, I’ll trust you to let me know. Maybe it’ll be news to me—and then again, I’ll know about it before you do. If you turn a blind eye, well—” he looked sad—“you obviously won’t be able to see all the titles of the books in your shop. And it’d be a crying shame to send a blind man back to the camps for owning seditious tracts, wouldn’t it?”

Two women stood ten feet apart, one shaking with rage, the other frightened into immobility. Around them, orange trees cloistered in an unseasonable climate perfumed the warm air.