"Lumley, Brian - Necroscope - The Lost Years Volume 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

But too late now to cry over spilled milk. And anyway, the odds were that they already knew about Harry. On the other hand they would also know he was only a man, her human lover, and of no great concern to them. The Ferenczys would think so, anyway. And the handful of Drakuls were still in hiding. So, there was really no way she could have seriously compromised anything.
Still, as she pulled up outside the old house and dimmed her lights, B J. narrowed her slanted eyes and looked long and searchingh/ into her rearview -- and finally sighed her relief. There was nothing back there but the dark ribbon of the river, suddenly silvered by moonlight as a gap opened in the low cloud ceiling. Moonlight, aye, but two days past its full. In another moment the gap had closed and it was dark again.
BJ. got out of her car, locked it, and almost ran up the path to Harry's front door...
...But across the river and roughly opposite Harry's place, on the grass verge of the country road and hidden beneath the overhanging branches of tall trees, a second car sat in darkness and silence, with only the occasional tick, tick from an engine that was already cooling in the frosty night air.
The car was an old but reliable Volkswagen Beetle, whose driver had known from several previous visits the best place to park. For the next half-hour or so he would simply sit and watch, and wait for the lights to go out, then take his departure. But at first light he'd be back in time to see the girl leave. Nor was this any kind of weird longdistance voyeurism but simply his sinister job. For B J. Mirlu's habits were all-important to him -- especially in connection with the man she was visiting...
...And two hundred yards back up the same road, on the same grass verge, a third vehicle sat in darkness and silence; but Inspector George lanson was here for a very different reason. Not to spy on the girl -- not at all -- but on the spy. And to wonder what in hell old Angus McGowan thought he was up to!?
The Inspector was here by virtue of a series of coincidences, which was odd in itself because he'd never believed in them. His street was a no-parking area, wherefore he garaged his car the best part of a mile from home. Ex-constable Gavin Strachan lived only a short walk away but in the other direction; wherefore on leaving Strachan's place, lanson had taken taxis to and from BJ.'s. But on his way home -- still wrestling with this thing about old Angus's book -
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he had decided to pay the vet a visit.
It was rather latish, true, and McGowan didn't much care for visitors at any time, but lanson knew him for a night-owl and hoped he wouldn't mind. Also, he could disguise the real purpose of his visit by asking the vet about his zoo queries, how he was getting on with them...though why he would want to use such a subterfuge he couldn't quite say.
So he had taken the taxi to his garage, then driven himself to McGowan's place east of the city towards the sea. But as he'd driven into the poorly-lit street of tall dark houses where his quarry lived, he had been barely in time to see the man himself leaving in his battered Beetle.
It was the car that gave McGowan away (though again, why lanson should think of it in those terms was anybody's guess). Unless it was the way McGowan was crouched over his steering wheel, intent on his driving, staring straight ahead...his furtive attitude in general. Or not even his attitude but lanson's, the way he was beginning to feel about this whole damn business. A gut feeling, yes: a hunch. The instinct that sometimes makes a good policeman great -- and sometimes the thing that makes him feel guilty/too.
Be that as it may, lanson had turned his car around and used covert pursuit techniques learned twenty-five years earlier in the Metropolitan Police to follow the vet through Edinburgh's wintry night streets. Mercifully, there had been just enough traffic that he could stay two or three cars back out of sight without losing McGowan. Fortunate, too, that lanson's seven-year-old car was an anonymous brown model of which there were hundreds in the city.
But in a little while it had dawned on the Inspector that he was backtracking much the same route his taxi had taken from B.J.'s Wine-Bar -- returning in fact to BJ.'s Wine Bar! A wild guess, but it had proved to be an accurate one. And as he drove into the bar's district, lanson's gut-feeling had begun to knot into something else inside him.
Once there, McGowan had found a space in a line of parked cars some little distance from the bar. While he was engaged in manoeuvring into position, lanson had taken the opportunity to overtake and find a space of his own, from where he'd been able to keep an eye on his rearview and watch both McGowan's car and the street in front of the wine bar. Then for some fifteen minutes he had sat there rubbing his hands to keep the circulation flowing, and hoping that the heater wasn't running his battery low. But mainly he'd been wondering what was going on here.
What, old Angus doing some investigating of his own? That wasn't acceptable...McGowan was a vet, not a policeman! What was more, he so perfectly fitted BJ.'s description of a watcher who had been
seen on several occasions before the attack on Margaret Macdowell.
Deep in thought, the Inspector had been very nearly taken by surprise when a party of girls exited from the recess leading to the wine bar's entrance. They were well-wrapped against the cold and too far away for him to identify any of them, and in any case they had quickly split up and gone their own ways into the night.
It was approximately an hour since the Inspector had left the bar; obviously B J. had closed early. Well, that was self-explanatory; she had had little in the way of business to keep her open. But as the girls dispersed so old Angus's Beetle had pulled out and driven away in some haste, so that lanson must hurry to keep up with it.
And now where was the little man going? His route lay west on a fairly major road out of the city, so that once again lanson was able to sit back behind a car or two as he followed the distinctive shape of the Volkswagen to whatever was its destination. But as the flow of traffic dropped off and the night grew murkier yet, the Beetle turned onto a farm track, reversed and came to a halt And its lights went out
Two hundred yards behind his quarry, lanson hadn't thought that the track would lead anywhere. Perhaps McGowan had feared he was being followed and pulled off the road to test the theory. So the Inspector had turned in through an open gate onto a lesser track, turned about and pulled forward for a quick exit, and waited. The glint of the Beetle's windows had been visible through a near-distant hedgerow...
And by then there had been only a few vehicles on the main road, most of them heading into Edinburgh...
The next five minutes had passed slowly, until a silver-grey car had come speeding along the main road from tile direction of the city. As it passed McGowan's farm track so the Volkwagen's dipped lights had come on, and McGowan had turned back onto the main road. Following him, lanson had driven on dipped lights, too...
...And now he had been sitting here in this place for half an hour, and he was still wondering what was going on and what it was all leading up to. But there was old McGowan down the road, out of his car now and leaning on its curving rear end -- doubtless for the warmth from the engine -- and gazing through binoculars at the lighted windows of the house across the river.
Well, enough of this. lanson had just made up his mind to move on, go home, ask Angus about it tomorrow, when the lights in the house were suddenly turned down low. A moment later and Angus had got into his car and switched on the sidelights. And it was as much as lanson could do to squeeze down in his seat, out of sight, as McGowan turned the Beetle about on the narrow road and headed back his way. But as the car went by he couldn't resist it the urge to
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lever himself up a little and look directly at the driver. Angus McGowan, absolutely. But --
-- In that same moment McGowan looked back at him...and it was a different McGowan! How different, lanson couldn't say. He couldn't even say if the other had recognized him, probably not And he had only recognized McGowan because he knew it was him. But that look on the little man's face: the suspicion in those rheumy eyes -- those feral yellow eyes. The evil, aggressive, thrust of the man's jaw...
For a good three minutes after the car had gone the Inspector sat there, then finally gave himself a shake, started his car and crossed the river by the old bridge. On the far side he parked and walked as quietly as he could along a rutted service road to where the silver-grey car stood in front of the middle house. Just one car, the one McGowan had been following. lanson memorized the number plate, checked that he knew his exact location, went back to his car and drove home...
Half an hour earlier:
'I'm sorry I'm late,' BJ. breathlessly told Harry in his bedroom. 'I had to see to the takings, talk to the girls, lock up. I got here as quickly as I could.'
Harry was fully awake now but still hollow-eyed. The last week had been a trying time; in fact the last three months had been trying, even if he didn't know why. But there'd been this feeling of an impending something that had worked on his nerves like sandpaper. And looking at BJ. he knew that it hadn't been easy on her, either. Whatever it was. But:
She should level with me, he thought again wondering why.
B J. wasn't a telepath. The germ of the talent was in her, as it was in most of the Wamphyri to one degree or another, but it wasn't an art yet by any means. Still, perhaps she got something of what was on his mind.
'Harry, I'm sorry -- ' she started to say, and bit her tongue.' -- I mean I'm sorry that you're feeling down.'
'Sure,' he said, but without conviction. And changing the subject: 'Did you go away this last weekend? Did you go north?'
'Er, no,' she shook her head. 'I was busy, and -- '
' -- The weather?' He sought excuses for her. 'And the new year just in? We didn't have much of a Christmas, B J.'
Christmas? That was scarcely BJ.'s time! But still: 'Er, no,' she answered, "we didn't And I'm sorry. But you know how busy the bar is in...the silly season...' She tapered off.
'It's been a week, BJ.,' he said then. 'And a week before that and before that etcetera. In fact it's been this way for months. And when

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we're together you're always looking over your shoulder, avoiding my eyes, having...second thoughts?'
She had been standing there looking at him. Now her heart gave a mighty lurch as she flew into his arms, and said, 'Second thoughts? Not about you, Harry! No, not about you!'
Then say it' he held her tightly, mumbled into her hair.