"Peter F. Hamilton - The White Stuff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

"Fifty."

He sighed. "I'm all yours."

***
The next day he drove into the tarmac wasteland of his local hypermarket's customer park and shot into
a space near a trolley rack, tires crunching the litter of polystyrene wrappers.

"Wow, this is one totalled-out machine." The Nimbus's admirer was another girl: mid-teens, golden hair,
dirty fingernails and white jeans as tight as a tourniquet. "I just bet you could go supersonic if it wasn't for
those dumb speed limits."

He pointed to the newly installed LCD radar-trap warning on his dashboard. The girl shrugged and
moved on. Looking out across the hypermarket park he could see nearly all of the cars sported
micro-friction coatings. Several cars in the row behind him had their bonnets raised, with kiddie teams
slamming in zapper scramblers as though they were on a triple bonus productivity scheme. They also had
a runner. A twelve-year-old boy collected the cash from the older kids, then disappeared into a
graffiti-splashed alley at the rear of the park. A minute later he would reemerge with boxes of scramblers.

Nigel strolled over to the hypermarket entrance. Simon was sitting in his usual place beside the wire
baskets, wrapped in a thick Oxfam duffle coat despite the warm sun. Scuffed wraparound sunglasses
made him look like a washed up Terminator. He was playing his flute, a tired golden Labrador guarding a
threadbare cap with a few coins in.

"Morning, Simon."

"That you, Mr Finchley?" Simon asked.

"Indeed it is." Nigel found a coin and bent down as if to drop it into the cap. He made the coin chink
quietly, to disguise the fact that he kept it in his hand. It was a nothing- for-nothing world, in which Nigel
was prepared to donate to the blind beggar no more than the sound of his money.

"Thank you, sir."

"My pleasure."

As Nigel stood up he saw the runner on the other side of the road. He was sure the boy had looked
away quickly, a subliminal impression of a guilty start.

When Nigel had negotiated the maze of dingy backstreets at the side of the hypermarket he found the
other end of the alley was blocked by a hired Transit van. A young black man was sitting in the driver's
seat, flicking through a tabloid newspaper.

Nigel ambled past, snatching a glimpse of the runner returning to the car park, a scrambler box tucked
under each arm. Another young man stood beside the van's rear doors.

The pair of them could have been cousins of the redhead's boyfriend. There was something shared
between them; it wasn't so much a physical characteristic, more an attitude. Not arrogance exactly.
Confidence. They possessed confidence.
Unenlightened, Nigel moved on. If they'd got the whole day's cash taking in the van, they'd be nervous