"Quintin, Jardine - Head Shot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quintin Jardine)

She gave no sign of having heard him. 'Then he told me he was going
to shoot me in the back of the head. It would blow my face away, he said,
make a mess that would be a message as well. He said that he wished he
could be there when they found me.'
She took a deep breath. 'He laughed at the thought of it. That's how
sure he was of himself; he laughed as he got down on me, and then he
put it on the floor as he undid himself, he laid it right beside my face. He
invited me to look at the means of my own destruction, to understand it,
to feel its power. I remember thinking he was crazy, and looking at him,
too scared really to understand what he was saying. He was smiling, all
the time smiling. "Don't worry," he said, when he was almost ready.
"The best is yet to come."
'But he had got it wrong. He thought I couldn't move, but when both
his hands were busy, when he was . . .' She paused for breath. 'I made a
grab for it. I almost dropped it: that's how badly I was shaking, that's
how frightened I was. But I managed to keep hold of it, and to put it up
against his head, and to tell him to get off me.'
He looked down at her, waiting for her to finish. She was still perched
on the edge of her seat, her naked body shining silver in a shaft of
moonlight that flowed through a narrow gap in the curtains.
'And then .. . okay, I suppose you could be right. . . then, I felt it: I
felt the power that it gave me, power over him for a change. My hands
had stopped shaking, completely. I could hold the gun steady. I saw the
safety catch on the side, and I saw that it was off.
'He stopped laughing then. I pointed it at him and it was his turn to be
terrified. And yes, you're right, I wasn't frightened at all; not by then. I
just felt so angry, so tremendously, overpoweringly angry, at what he'd
done to me, and been going to do. I couldn't stop myself; I didn't want
to stop myself, and so . . .'
He finished for her. '. .. You blew his fucking head off. You had him
under control, but you fucking well shot him.'
Suddenly he bent and picked up the great gun from the floor; releasing
the magazine, checking it, then slipping it back into its housing in the
butt.
He knelt down beside the body, feeling the queasiness which always
overtook him when he confronted death, close up. He was glad that he
had switched off the light as he looked at the leavings of the man, lying
face up on the floor, in a dark puddle that had soaked into the rug on
which he had fallen. 'He wasn't kidding about the ammo,' he said. 'You
don't use this stuff to inflict flesh wounds. Shoot someone in the arm
with one of these shells and you'll blow it right off.' He glanced over his
shoulder, back towards her.
'You made a good job of it,' he said. 'You shot him right in the face;
took out his right eye and the bridge of his nose. No, this bastard will not
be bothering you again.'
He saw a shiver run through her shoulders; he knew that soon, she
would need sedation.
'This leaves us with only one small problem,' he continued.
'What's that?' she whispered.
'What the hell are we going to do with him?'