"Brookmyre, Christopher - Boiling A Frog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brookmyre Christopher)

about as plausible as a stray tuppence lying unclaimed in
Aberdeen.
Fooaltiye, however, was a creature of either deeper faith
or greater vision. He hopped from the bed and scuttled
a couple of feet across the floor, reinforcing Parlabane's
Smeagol comparison.
'Fuckin' beauty, man'
Fooaltiye placed his prize on the tabletop. Parlabane was,
he would admit, a comparative ingenu in the world of serious drug usage,
but he felt confident enough in his limited
knowledge to be able to identify this treasured object as a
teabag. In fact, a retired teabag might be more like it, the
shrivelled and dried-out little thing having been pensioned
off to a dusty corner of the cell after an arduous and
over-long working life. Fooaltiye, to Parlabane's growing
incredulity, placed a Rizla next to the teabag before picking
the perforated paper open and dumping its contents on to
the skin. Or rather, half its contents, as it would clearly
be a shocking extravagance to waste the lot on just one
roll-up.
Implausibly, the improvised cigarettes did in fact have
the desired effect; or at least the effect desired by Parlabane,
which was to stop Fooaltiye talking for a while. what
they did for wraith-boy he couldn't care less. The smell,
predictably, was revolting; Parlabane found it hard to
think of descriptive comparisons, but was still sure that
if Jilly Goolden got a whiff, she'd be applying it to a new
cabernet-blanc varietal within the month.
The reason for Fooaltiye's silence was less the placebo
effect of his faux-fags than their stubborn lack of combustibility. The
sound of matches being struck and fizzing into
light soon established a near-rhythmic regularity, interspersed in
syncopation with fevered bouts of sucking and
disappointed 'fuck's sake's. The bugger was probably inhaling more sulphur
dioxide than whatever insipid fumes
could be drawn from the exhausted herbs, and it entertained Parlabane to
imagine it turning into oleum somewhere around Fooaltiye's tonsils, then
burning through his
vocal chords with a smoky hiss.
The sounds of doors slamning and locks turning echoed
from beyond the cell, resonantly audible now that Fooaltiye's
mouth was otherwise engaged. At first, Parlabane expected
each thump and clatter to herald the arrival of the warder
who would advise him of his security category and escort
him to his more permanent quarters. No-one came, though.
The sounds continued, merely the noises of a prison systematically getting
on with its business, of which he was
now a small and not particularly significant part.
Fear and humiliation had given way to banality and
tedium, and it was the latter two that truly brought home