"Quintin, Jardine - Autographs in the Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quintin Jardine)

1


Christmas comes early in London. So does closing time.

The couple stood on the edge of the pavement and looked along Oxford
Street; it was just over an hour before midnight, the lights were shining,
their tableaux stretching all the way along towards Marble Arch. Buses
and taxis flowed along Regent Street towards the Circus, business picking
up again as the pubs began to empty.

'Jeez,' the tall man murmured. 'It's a shallow and inhospitable place,
this. Damn near two months to Christmas and the fairy lights are on show
already. Yet try and get a drink after eleven and you've no chance. To
paraphrase an old Frankie song, London by night is a God awful sight. ..
even on a Friday.'

'Come on now,' his companion laughed. In her high heels she stood
only three or four inches shorter than his six feet two. She was golden
haired, stunningly beautiful in classic contrast to his rugged, life-formed
features, and her pale blue eyes seemed to reflect the sparkle of the pageant
light. Her voice was full and mellow, that of a contralto in her prime, refined
and with the faintest trace, if one listened closely enough, of a Scottish
accent. 'Glasgow was just the same when we were youngsters,' she said,
'but without the bright lights.'

'I never cared, when you were around.'

'No,' she countered quickly, a chuckle in her throat, 'nor when the other
one was, either. You made your choice; and from the way you were talking
about your daughter tonight, you've never regretted it.'

Suddenly, for the first time that evening, he was sombre. He hunched his
broad shoulders inside his Barbour jacket, his sigh expelling a great cloud
of breath into the frosty night. 'Regret is your enemy,' he said. 'If you give
in to it, it can destroy you. It's a waste of time anyway; you can't change
the past.'

'But would you, if you could?' she asked him.

'Why? Would you? The way you say that makes it sound as if I dumped


you, yet I've always understood that our breaking up was a joint decision.'
She reached up and adjusted his tie, looking at the knot, rather than into
his eyes. 'Then, sir, that just shows you how good I am at my job. Oh, I
didn't make a fuss when it happened. I was a big girl; I put on my mature
face and agreed with all the common sense you talked.' She put a fingertip
between her breasts. 'But in here, my little heart was breaking.'