"Dave Hutchinson - Discreet Phenomena" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hutchinson Dave) Dave Hutchinson
DISCREET PHENOMENA 1 The little blue car was moving so slowly that it barely made it over the top of the hill. I saw it edge up over the crest and half-expected it to stop and then roll backward out of view, like a sight-gag from a silent movie. But it didn't stop. Somehow, it kept moving. I was outside, topping up Jim Dawes's Jeep Cherokee up with unleaded. Jim was standing beside me, recounting the last grouse shoot he'd been to, but I wasn't really listening. I was watching the little blue car. Finally Jim fell silent and watched it with me. "That'll be another one, then," he said, putting his hands in his pockets. I removed the nozzle from the Cherokee's tank, closed the filler cap, hung up the hose, and went back to stand beside Jim. The car had made it over the crest of the hill and was starting to gain speed down the long gentle slope. Its right-side indicator was winking. Domino came out of the office and stood beside us. "Another one?" he asked. "Looks like it," said Jim. "How many's that?" Jim shrugged. "Six?" "Five," I said. "This is the fifth." The car reached the bottom of the hill and rolled sedately past us with only the sound of its tyres on the road. There was no one in the driver's seat. Or in the passenger seat. Or in the back seat. "Well," said Domino, and he set off at a quick jog. "New lad?" asked Jim as we watched Domino running after the empty car. "He's been here about a fortnight," I said. "He's not local." "Student, is he? Summer job?" "I suppose so. Something like that." Jim thought about it for a minute or so, while Domino caught up with the empty car, ran beside it, and in one graceful motion opened the driver's door and hopped inside. "Good runner, for a hunchback," Jim said finally. He was one of those big bluff Yorkshiremen who think that a reputation for plain-speaking gives them carte blanche to be rude. The little blue car stopped, performed a neat three-point turn, and came back to us. Domino steered it around behind Jim's Cherokee and stopped it with the handbrake. The indicator was still blinking. "Same thing," Domino told us as he got out of the car. He held up one of those little cardboard Christmas trees that are supposed to smell like pine forests. He reached back inside and pulled the bonnet catch. I lifted the bonnet. The engine compartment was empty. "How do they do that?" Jim said, shaking his head. Jim shook his head over the car for another twenty minutes or so, then he paid for his petrol and drove off. Domino and I pushed the blue car out of the way behind the office. I phoned Nigel, but he was out on a job, so I left Domino working on the accounts and went back outside and sat on my stool beside the pumps. It was one of those extraordinary days you get on Salisbury Plain in summer, when the sky goes a kind of blue-white colour and seems to hum with the heat. We had only had two cars in all morning, not counting the little blue one. I lifted the lid from the blue-and-white cooler-box beside my stool, took out a bottle of Budweiser, and levered the cap off with my Swiss Army penknife. Across the road, in the window of Mavis Burton's knitwear shop, the headless, armless torso of her one and only mannequin was wearing the same green tank-top it had been wearing the first time I had seen it, |
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