Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)
and darted into the last section of the barn that wasn’t ablaze. Several horses were rescued, but the only gang members they found were already dead. Some of them half burned, others merely shot and left to die.
There was no hope of fighting the fire. The ancient wood and the oil-based paint crackled and burned like petrol. It put out such heat that Swan’s men were soon forced to back off or be broiled alive.
“What happened?” Swan demanded of his lieutenant. “Looks like they had it out among themselves,” Morris said. Swan considered that. Before the arrests in Durban, rumors had been swirling that suggested the gang was fraying at the seams. “How many dead?”
“We’ve found five. Some of the boys think they saw two more inside, but they couldn’t reach ’em.”
At that moment gunfire rang out.
Swan and Morris dove behind the Packard for cover. From sheltered positions, some of the officers began to shoot back, loosing stray rounds into the inferno.
The shooting continued, oddly timed and staccato, though Swan saw no sign of bullets hitting nearby.
“Hold your fire!” he shouted. “But keep your heads down.”
“But they’re shooting at us,” one of the men shouted.
Swan shook his head even as the pop-pop of the gunfire continued. “It’s just ammunition going off in the blaze.”
The order was passed around, shouted from one man to the next. Despite his own directive, Swan stood up, peering over the hood of the truck.
By now the inferno had enveloped the entire farmhouse. The remaining beams looked like the bones of a giant resting on some Nordic funeral pyre. The flames curled around and through them, burning with a strange intensity, bright white and orange with occasional flashes of green and blue. It looked like hell itself had risen up and consumed the gang and their hideout from within.
As Swan watched, a massive explosion went off deep inside the structure, blowing the place into a fiery scrap. Swan was thrown back by the force of the blast, landing hard on his back, as chunks of debris rattled against the sides of the Packard.
Moments after the explosion, burning confetti began falling, as little scraps of paper fluttered down by the thousands, leaving trails of smoke and ash against the black sky. As the fragments kissed the ground, they began to set fires in the dry grass.
Seeing this, Swan’s men went into action without delay, tamping out the embers to prevent a brushfire from surrounding them.
Swan noticed several fragments landing nearby. He rolled over and stretched for one of them, patting it out with his hand. To his surprise, he saw numbers, letters, and the stern face of King George staring back at him.
“Tenners,” Morris said excitedly. “Ten-pound notes. Thousands of them.”
As the realization spread through the men, they redoubled their efforts, running around and gathering up the charred scraps with a giddy enthusiasm they rarely showed for collecting evidence. Some of the notes were bundled and not too
badly burned. Others were like leaves in the fireplace, curled
and blackened beyond recognition.
“Gives a whole new meaning to the term blowing the loot,” Morris said.
Swan chuckled, but he wasn’t really listening, his thoughts
were elsewhere; studying the fire, counting the bodies, working
the case as an inspector’s mind should.
Something was not right, not right at all.
At first, he put it down to the anticlimactic nature of the evening. The gang he’d come to make war on had done the job for
him. That he could buy. He’d seen it before. Criminals often
fought over the spoils of their crimes, especially when they were
loosely affiliated and all but leaderless, as this gang was rumored to be.
No, Swan thought, this was suspicious on a deeper level. Morris seemed to notice. “What’s wrong?”