"Pawson, Stuart - The Picasso Scam" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pawson Stuart)

"No! I don't want a priest... I am a priest." The voice was a
thousand miles away now, or was I just thinking it. "I am not a
priest, I am ... Priest... Charlie Priest. Detective Inspector Charles
Priest of the ... '

That smell. I could remember what it was. When we were kids we played
cowboys and Indians. You had to lie on the ground and count to fifty.
When you'd been shot. When you were dead.

There are some names you forget instantly and some that you hear once
and they are engraved on the inside of your skull for ever. It was
three years earlier that I had first come across Aubrey Cakebread, but
I knew there was no need to write the name down. Once afflicted there
was no cure, like herpes.

We were driving over the Tops from Lancashire back to Yorkshire after
interviewing a prisoner being held at Oldfield. I had Nigel Newley
with me. Nigel was a graduate recruit seconded to CID as part of his
crash course in becoming a wonderful British bobby. He was handsome,
athletic, had a decent mind and spoke like a BBC news reader He was
with me because nobody else at Heckley nick could stand him.

We had been entertained by the Oldfield boys all part of Nigel's
training, of course and it was late. My ancient Cortina estate was
protesting at the gradients. The interior was filled with exhaust
fumes and the smell of an abused clutch.

"A Cortina!" exclaimed Nigel. "How come you drive a clapped-out
Cortina?" For a Southerner he didn't mince his words.

"It came cheap," I said.

"I see. You mean it's all part of your cover so you can bust a gang of
fluffy-dice thieves."

"Don't be insolent. The Cortina is a fine, reliable vehicle. At this
very moment there are thousands of housewives snuggling up to their
husbands, dreaming about the romantic evenings they used to spend in
the back seat of their first company Cortina."

I crunched it into second for the last hairpin. A few moments later we
crested the brow and the car sighed with relief. The fumes cleared and
we enjoyed the night air.

"When I say cheap I mean really cheap," I told him. "Like free I had
it given."

"On your pay, and single, I would have thought you'd have something
flash," he replied.