"Crombie, Deborah - A Share in Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Crombie Deborah)


Drystone walls ran like pale runes across the brilliant
green of pasture, where luminous sheep nibbled, unconcerned
with their importance in the composition. The scene
seemed set off in time as well as space, and gave him the
sensation of viewing a living tapestry, a world remote and
utterly unattainable. The clouds shifted again, the vision
fading as swiftly as it had come, and he felt an odd shiver
of loss at its passing.

The last few weeks' grind must be catching up with him,
he thought, shrugging away the faint sense of foreboding.
New Scotland Yard didn't officially require newly promoted
Detective Superintendents to work themselves into early
coronaries, but August Bank Holiday had slipped easily
into September, and he'd gone right on accumulating his
time off. Something always came up, and the last case had
been particularly beastly.

A string of bodies in rural Sussex, all women, all similarly
mutilated--a policeman's worst nightmare. They'd found
him in the end, a real nutter, but there was no guarantee
that the evidence they'd so painstakingly gathered would
convince a bleeding-heart jury, and the senselessness of it
took most of the satisfaction from finishing up the mountain
of paperwork.

"Lovely way to spend your Saturday night," Gemma
James, Kincaid's sergeant, had said the evening before as
they waded through the last of the case files.

'Tell the recruiters that. I doubt it occurred to them."
Kincaid grinned at her across his littered desk. Gemma

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wouldn't grace a poster at the moment, her face white with
fatigue, carbon smudge like a bruise along her cheekbone.


She puffed out her cheeks and blew at the wisps of red
hair that straggled into her eyes. "You're just as well out
of it for a week. Too bad some of us don't have cousins
with posh holiday flats, or whatever it is."

"Do I detect a trace of envy?"