"Kim Newman - The Serial Murders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

of washed-up boxers to do over a builder who put the bathroom taps in the wrong way. This is serious money
for a serious business."
Richard waved his friend quiet.
"It won't do," he said. "It's still too тАж weird."
"You don't want to let it go, guv. But if it's just killers with a gimmick, then this goes back to Inspector Price.
We're surplus to requirements."
"I mean weird in the strictest sense, Fred. Not merely bizarre and freakish, but occultтАФconcealed and
supernatural. I'm tingling with an awareness of it."
"Don't you reckon the professor might have something to do with that?"
"Cheek," said Barbara, smiling and sloshing Fred with a napkin.
"Very well," said Richard. "Fred, hie thee back to town and share this with Euan Price. Start the Yard moving
on this from the other end. Go after the putative clients of your phantom assassination bureau. See if the urge
to boast about getting away with it leads to indiscretion."
"What about you two? You'll continue the canoodling holiday?"
"We'll stay here, with the Barstows. There's something or someone we've not seen yet. Some big piece
which will fill in the jigsaw."
Richard's tea was cold.
┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖
VIII
June O'Dell knew how to make an entrance.
The company made an early start. Dudley Finn was pressed up against a wallpapered backdrop by a single
camera. He held a phone to his ear, though the dangling cord didn't attach to anything. Jeanne Treece
hoisted a large sheet of card ("an idiot board") on which one side of a phone conversation was written in
magic marker. Ben Barstow was getting news about Delia Delyght.
"We're tying off plot ends," Lionel whispered to Richard as Finn took one of many breaksтАФthe actor wasn't
as good at reading off the card as he had been yesterday at instantly memorising his lines. "Viewers have
written in asking what happened after the murder, so Mucus whipped up this bit overnight to reveal all. It's
how this show always goes. Big build-up, over months and months, nation on the edges of their three-piece
suites, a shattering sensational climax ├Ц then we drop the whole thing and move on. Once your plot is over,
there's no hanging around. No trial scene with an expensive courtroom set and guest actors in those ducky
wigs, no twelve extras on the jury. Just one side of a call. 'So, she's copped an insanity plea, eh тАж fancy that
тАж well, never mind тАж you're telling me she's going to be locked up in a loony bin for t' rest of her natural life?
Fancy that. We'll remember Delia Delyght for a long time in Bleeds.' Like fork, we will. That's all over, and
we're onto something else. Makes your head spin."
Finally, Finn got the speech down. As Lionel indicated, the actor had to repeat what had supposedly been
said to him by the non-person on the line, with interjected expressions of astonishment.
"It's the famous Phantom Phoner," said Barbara.
Richard knew the show had a habit of cutting into the middle of telephone conversations, without identifying
the unseen party, to get over plot developments while avoiding potentially costly scenes ("Morrie's
Boom-Boom Room Hot Spot has burned down to t' ground? In a mysterious fire t' police say might well be
arson? Eeh, I'm right astonished!") or to repeat the last week's bombshell for viewers who might have missed
an episode ("Brenda's up t' duff? By that coloured bloke who plays t' drums? Well, I'll be blowed!"). At the end
of the call, Finn had to hang the phone up out of frame. Since there was no cradle for the receiver, a
stagehand stood by with a weird little gadget that made the click sound (and was surely more expensive and
harder to come by than an actual phone).
Gerard Loss insisted Finn hasten over pauses where, logically, the Phantom Phoner should be speaking.
Finn had an actory spat about believability but was reminded which show this was and agreed just to read the
board. His last line, crammed close to the bottom of the card, was a cipher scrawl, "t'll be H to P w/ M h a't
tтАФBH!" Richard was worried that he knew instantly what that was about. Every Phantom Phoner scene in the
episodes he had watched concluded with Ben Barstow looking straight into the camera, shaking his head