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

him just how little time was needed, as well as providing a
highly educative demonstration of the difference between
a brawl and an assault. Five seconds, five fractures, would
be a fair account.
The feeling of vulnerability was almost paralysing. In
here, there was no protection and no sanction. If someone
wanted to hurt you, he was going to hurt you. After all,
what were they going to do to the perp? Throw him in
jail?
Parlabane eventually calmed himself with the rationale
that this was merely shitty timing: just because he saw this
on his first morning didn't mean it happened every morning. Rather
unhelpfully, it happened the next morning too,
but as the mutterings he overheard suggested the incidents
were related, he made a nervous bet with himself that day
there wouldn't witness a hat-trick, and was proved right.
Fear would subside (though its baseline would be higher
than on the outside). Monotony would replace it. Tedium,
indignity and inconvenience were far more tangible torments than personal
harm. The time would pass slowly, but
nonetheless it would pass. Three months. Canter. 'Fucken
Tam o' Shanter 2000-style', as the toilet-wall sages put it.
But with these threads thus disentangled, it was easier
to see what was at the morass's core, and understand the
hardest, most painful part: that none of his real problems
were on the inside: this was merely where his problems had
taken him. He couldn't put them right while he was stuck
in here, but worse still was the fear that he wouldn't be able
to change anything once he got out, either. The fear that
being here didn't simply prevent you putting your life back
together - being here told you it was already too late.
An old friend of his, Tam Mclnnes, had served seven
years for his part in a string of high-stakes and very
high-profile burglaries. Tam had once told him that prison
wasn't where you were punished: prison was just where
they kept you until your real punishment was ready. The
world Tam had left behind was no longer there when he got
out again, and he didn't recognise much of what he found.
That was why a lot of guys found it so difficult to readjust,
and consequently why a lot of them ended up right back
inside. It was also why Parlabane was not ready to open
that envelope.
He appreciated that he could hardly compare Tam's
seven years to his paltry term (fuckin' three moon - Nigel
Tranter!), but equally, he had recently been granted a vivid
perspective upon just how quickly irreparable damage
could be inflicted in this place.


Parlabane and Fooaltiye had been forcibly separated the