"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 10 - Lost Years 02 - Resurgence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

It was lanson's turn to study the other, dour old Angus McGowan, whom he'd known for years. A living caricature! Typically a 'canny old
Scotsman,' hugging his knowledge as close to his chest as a gambler with his cards, or a rich man with his wealth. His rheumy grey
eyes - the eyes of a hawk for all that they were misted - missed nothing; his blue-veined nose seemed sensitive as a bloodhound's; his
knowledge (he'd been a recognized authority in zoology for all of thirty years) brimmed in the library of his brain like an encyclopaedia of feral lore.
Quite simply, as the Inspector was gifted to know men -their ways and minds and, in his case especially, their criminal minds - so Angus was
gifted to know animals.
Between the two of them, on those rare occasions when the one might call upon the other for his expert knowledge, it had become a game, a
competition, no less than the chess game they played once a week in the Inspector's study at his home in Dalkeith. For here, too, however
serious the case, they vied one with the other, trying each other's minds to see which would come closest to the truth. The beauty
of it was this: in chess there's only one winner, but here they could both win.
'Like a dog?' lanson looked again, deeply into McGowan's watery eyes, his wrinkled face. Old Angus: all five foot four or five of him, shrivelled
as last year's walnuts, but standing tall now with some sure knowledge, some inner secret that loaned him stature. Nodding, and careful to avoid
the bloodied snow, he went to one knee. Not that it mattered greatly - no need to worry about the destruction of evidence now, the
scenes-of-crime men had been and gone all of an hour ago - but Angus didn't want this poor devil's blood on his good overcoat
Looking up at lanson from where he kneeled - and had the situation been other than it was - the slighter man might well have
grinned. Instead he grimaced, tapped the side of his dripping nose with his index finger, and answered, 'Shall we say - oh, Ah
dinnae ken - a dog o' sorts? Shall we say, a dog, or a bitch, o' a different colour? Like maybe, grey?'
A great grey dog. Angus could mean only one sort of beast. Ridiculous! Except he wasn't given to making ridiculous statements.
Wherefore:
'From a zoo?' lanson gripped McGowan's shoulder as he made to straighten up. 'Or maybe a circus? Have you heard of an
escape, then? Has one got out?'
'One what?' The other was all wide-eyed innocence.
'Come now, Angus!' The Inspector tut-tutted. 'A wild creature of the snows, like a great, grey, handsome dog? You can only be hinting at a
wolf, surely?'
'Hintin', is it!' the other chuckled, however drily, and was serious in a moment. 'Ah'm no hintin', George. Ye want mah opinion? This was a
wolf, aye! An' one hell of a wolf at that! But escaped frae a zoo... ?' He shook his head; not in denial, more out of
puzzlement 'Ah've never come across a beast this size - no in any zoo in England, Scotland or Wales, at least. And as for yere
circuses - what, at this time of year? Certainly no up here! An' so, well, Ah really canna say; Ah mean, Ah wouldnae care to commit mahsel'.'
'But you've done exactly that,' the Inspector pointed out. The piece is moved, Angus. You can't put it back.'
'Wolf, aye!' the other snapped, more decisively now. 'But as for how she got here, her origin ..." He offered a twitch of his thin shoulders,
stamped numb feet, blew into cupped hands. 'If s your move, George. It's your move.'
'Me ... I say we move in out of the cold!' lanson shook himself, both mentally and physically, breathed deeply of the wintry air,
deliberately forced himself to draw back from the morbid spell, the dreadful fascination of the case - for the moment, anyway. For if
McGowan was right, which in all likelihood he was (or there again not, for after all, the Inspector did have information to the contrary), then it was
out of his hands. Murder by a man is one thing ... but by a dog, a wolf, or some other wild creature, then it becomes something else: a savaging, a
misadventure, simply a killing. (And what of a man and a dog?) But ┬л/McGowan was right then they'd need to call in a different kind of hunter
with a very different brief: to kill on sight!
Old Angus guessed what he was thinking - the latter part of it, anyway - and was quick to say, 'But first we must try to prove it
or narrow down the suspects, at least'
'Back to the house?' lanson ducked out into the open with his small friend close behind. The house he referred to was one of a
picturesque cluster standing some three hundred yards away across
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the footbridge. Once a great farm with outbuildings, now Sma' Auchterbecky housed a small community, scarcely a hamlet, in the
very lee of the mountains.
'Ah can make a few calls frae there, aye,' Angus nodded. 'D'ye see the telephone wires?"