"Hader, Mo - The Treatment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hader Mo)

Crescent to demand his money. It wasn't the first time, he'd told Caffery, and no, he wasn't afraid of Alek Peach, but he had taken the Alsatian with him anyway, and at 7.00 p.m. had rung the Peaches' doorbell.
No reply. He knocked loudly but still there was no reply. Reluctantly he continued into the park with the dog.
They walked along the back gardens of Donegal Crescent and were some distance into the park when the Alsatian turned suddenly and began to bark in the direction of the houses. The shopkeeper turned. He thought, although he wouldn't swear to it, he thought he saw something running there. Shadowy and wide-beamed. Moving rapidly away from the back of the Peaches' house. His first impression was that it was an animal, because of how furiously and nervously the Alsatian was barking, straining at the lead, but the shadow disappeared quickly into the woods. Curious now, he dragged the reluctant dog back to number thirty and peered through the letterbox.
This time he knew something was wrong. There was junk mail scattered on the hallway floor and a message, or part of a message, had been spray-painted in red on the staircase wall.
'Jack?' Souness said, over the roar of the helicopter above. 'What're ye thinking?'
'That he has to be in there somewhere,' he yelled, jabbing his finger at the park. 'He's in there.'
'How do you know he didn't come back out of the park?'
'No.' He cupped his hand around his mouth and leaned into her. 'If he did come out I can promise you someone's going to remember. All the park exits lead into main streets. The little boy's bleeding, probably terrifiedЧ'
'WHAT?'
'HE'S NAKED AND BLEEDING. I THINK SOMEONE WOULD PICK UP THE PHONE FOR THAT, DON'T YOU? EVEN IN BRIXTON.'
He looked at the helicopter. He had other good reasons to think that Rory was in the park - he knew the statistics on child abduction: most studies would predict that if Rory wasn't alive he would probably be found within five miles of the abduction site, less than fifty yards from a footpath. Other worldwide stats would tell a more chilling story: they'd predict that Rory wouldn't be killed immediately, that his kidnapper would probably keep him alive for anything up to twenty-four hours. They'd say that the motive in an abduction of a boy within Rory's age range would probably be sex. They'd say that the sex would probably be sadistic.
If Caffery had more than a passing knowledge of the habits and lifecycle of the paedophile there was a simple reason: he could reach back twenty-seven years into his own past and find a mirror image of this in another disappearance. His own brother, Ewan - the same age as Rory - had been sucked out of the middle of a normal day. From the back of the family house. Rory could be Ewan all over again. Caffery knew he should say something about it to Souness, he should take her aside right now and tell her, 'Maybe you should cut me out of this - give it to DC Logan or someone - because I don't know how I'm going to react.'
'WHAT IF THEY DON'T FIND ANYTHING?' Souness yelled.
'don't worry, they'll find something.' He lifted the radio to his mouth, lowering his voice and getting on to the helicopter commander's channel. 'Nine nine, anything happening up there?'
Five hundred feet overhead, in the dark cockpit, the commander moved as far forward as the corns lead, which tethered him like an umbilicus to the roof of the helicopter, would allow. 'Hey, Howie? They want to know how we're doing, Howie.' He couldn't see the air observer's face, hunched over as he was, his attention on the screen, the helmet obscuring his eyes.
'I'm struggling. Looks like an effing snowfield. Unless it moves it just blends in. Has to pretty much stand up and wave at me.' He tried switching so that heat showed black on his screen. He tried red, he tried blue, sometimes a different colour helped, but tonight the thermal washout was beating him. 'Can you give us some more right-hand orbits?'
'Rog.' The pilot nosed the helicopter over, turning in circles, both he and the commander looking out of the right-hand side of the craft at the dense wood below. The air observer narrowed his eyes on the screen. He moved the laptop joystick and under the cockpit, in the sensor pod, the gyroscopically mounted camera, deathly stable, rotated its cool eye across the park.
'What you got?'
'I dunno. There's something at about ten o'clock but. . .' Without depth perception it was difficult to tell what he was seeing on the screen, and every time they got near the helicopter made the leaf cover shift. He thought he had seen an odd, doughnut-shaped light source, about the size of a car tyre. But then the leaf cover shifted again and now he thought he'd dreamed it. 'Scheisse.' He leaned intently over the screen, moving his head from side to side, flicking the screen from wide field to narrow and back again. 'Yeah, maybe get them to have a look at that.' He tapped the screen. 'Can you see it?'
The commander leaned forward and looked at the
screen. He couldn't see what the observer was talking about but sat back and tuned the radio control into DI Caffery's loop. 'Ground unit from nine nine.'
'Yeah, have you got anything?'
'We think we might've got a heat source but we can't quite confirm. Do you want to have a look at it?'
'Will do.'
'Right, well, there's a pool, or a paddling-pool or something . . .'
'The boating-lake?'
'The boating-lake - and the forest starts, I dunno, two hundred metres away?'
'Yup - sounds about right.'
The commander leaned forward and looked to where the observer held his finger over the screen. 'If you could start at that edge of the forest and move in about a hundred metres . . .'
'Rog. Got you.'
The commander held his hand flat, instructing the pilot to hover, and the three crew members sat forward, not speaking, only the sound of their breathing in the headsets as they watched the glimmering forms of the TSG, the Territorial Support Group, streaming across the screen in the direction of the heat source.
'Right,' the commander muttered. 'Let's give them some help, shall we?' He threw a switch and powered up the Night Sun - the gargantuan spotlight dangling from the helicopter's belly. Thirty million candle power Ч it could burn through concrete at close range: the ground units followed it like the nativity star, yomping towards it through the trees. But on the screen the observer had lost the glowing ring-shaped heat source and now he was starting to wonder if he'd imagined it.
'Howie?' the commander said from behind. 'Are we in the right place?'
The observer didn't reply. He sat hunched forward, trying to relocate the source.
'Howie?'
'Yeah - I think, but IЧ'
'Nine nine from ground units.' Caffery came through on the radio. 'We're drawing a blank down here. Can you help us out?'
'Howie?'
'I dunno - I dunno. There was something.' He threw the screen into narrow field once more and shook his head. The noise of the engines and the rotor blades, the heat and the smells were oppressive tonight and he was having trouble concentrating. On the ground the TSG officers stood looking up at the helicopter, arms open. 'Shit,' he muttered under his breath. 'Howie, you sodding idiot.' He was going to have to back down. 'I - look - I don't knowЧ'
'OK, OK.' The commander was getting impatient. 'How are we for fuel?'
The pilot shook his head. 'About twenty-five per cent.'
He whistled. 'So we need to be going somewhere in about, what? Twenty minutes. Howie? What are we thinking?'
'Look, I - nothing. I imagined it. Nothing.'
The commander sighed. 'OK, I've got you.' He switched to the CAD controller's frequency. 'India Lima, we're low on fuel so we're going to slip into Fairoaks for a slurp. I think we've got a no-trace. Haven't we, Howie? Got a clear?'
'Yeah.' He ran a finger under his chin strap, uncomfortable. 'I guess so - a no-trace. I guess.'
'Nine nine to ground units, if you're clear down there so are we.'
'You sure?' DI Caffery sounded tense. 'You sure we're in the right place?'
'Yeah, you're in the right place but we've lost the source. It's a hot night - we're fighting interference up here.'
'Rog, if you're sure. Thanks for trying.'
'Sorry about that.'