"Gill, B.M. - Death Drop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gill B M)

She returned in about five minutes with a bottle of whisky and a jug of hot water.

"As you're so cold you'd be wise to take it hot -- but I've ice if you'd prefer it that way." She took two tumblers out of the sideboard. "How do you want it?"

"Up to now I've been keeping myself sober."

"For God's sake, why?"

Because, he thought, I've been walking in enemy territory. Instinct told him that no longer applied -- at least not here.

He took one of the tumblers and held it out to her. "I'll have it neat."

They drank in silence. Hers was well diluted. Each time she replenished his glass he made a token protest which she ignored. He didn't remember the point at which she got up and left the room. He didn't hear the front door closing behind her. When she returned towards the middle of the afternoon he was asleep on the sofa, his shoes kicked off, ''his tie loosened. There was a grimy swollen look about his face as if he had wept.

When Jenny hadn't returned to the school by three, Brannigan phoned the flat in Nelson Street. It seemed to him quite likely that Fleming had declined her company and gone for a long walk on his own. In similar circumstances he thought he would have done that himself. It was a long shot that they were in the flat together. He hoped she hadn't brought him home. It was thoughtless of her not to keep him informed.

Jenny heard the phone ringing and went into the hall and looked at it. It kept on ringing and she leaned against the wall with folded arms and made no move to answer it.

Fleming, forced into wakefulness by the bell, stumbled off the sofa and went into the hall. Answering phones was a conditioned reflex even when in a semi-stupefied state. For a moment or two he couldn't remember who Jenny was. A shaft of sunlight through the transom window above the door blazed like fire in her short red hair. She moved out of its beam.

The phone stopped.

"You didn't answer it.''

She shrugged. "It was probably a recall to duty."

""Duty?" He was still very unclear about everything.

"School."

He remembered. The pain had a different quality now. The numbness had become a dull ache. He was no longer cold. The room had become uncomfortably hot and his body felt sticky with sweat. He had drunk too much -- or perhaps not enough.

She smiled at him. "The bathroom is the second door on the right. Have a shower while I brew up some black coffee. Later, there's some braising steak doing quietly in the cooker." " "You're being very kind." The words came out automatically, but he meant them. Each moment lived in this, the most terrible period in his life, had been made almost bearable by her care.

When he returned to the sitting room he felt fresher and able to form the words with some clarity.

"Did David ever talk about me -- to you?"

She couldn't with honesty remember. "David talked about times and places. You lived in Oxford. I think?"

"Yes, briefly. And then we moved to Stroud in Gloucestershire."

"A cottage on the edge of the Cotswolds?"

"Yes, that's it." He took the coffee from her and declined sugar. "He described that to you?"

"Not exactly." She tried to find the right words. "A kids' party. Balloons. Only not a kids' party -- balloons--just that sort of feeling about a place. The way he looked when he spoke, it was the way he looked, not the words."

"Super."