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

The skull's empty eye-sockets seemed to be looking up at him from the
white card, which the cabin attendant had given him. 'Welcome to
Malaysia,' he murmured.
A significant part of Bob Skinner's police career had been spent
pursuing the drug dealers who had threatened the social fabric of
Edinburgh, the city that lay at the heart of his force's territory. The
bigger they were, the more he hated them, with his strongest venom
being reserved for those who peddled the most addictive substances in
the most vulnerable areas, the places where the poverty trap was at its
tightest, and where the perceived respite offered by spoon, flame and
needle was, for some, an irresistible lure.
The heavier the sentences the Scottish High Court had handed down
to those convicted, the wider had been his smile. But even he thought
that the Pacific countries were going too far in imposing the ultimate
penalty on the peddlers. At the same time, he recognised that much of
the global supply of hard drugs originated in the area, and that at least
the regional governments were showing the rest of the world that they
took the problem seriously.
His difficulty with their policy was that, invariably, the people who
fell through the trapdoor were the couriers, the mules, the foot soldiers,
but never the generals. In any war, the great majority of the casualties
come from the Other Ranks; in the global battle against narcotics the
story was just the same.
The Deputy Chief Constable planned to say as much in his speech to
the plenary session of the international conference at which he was
representing the police service in Scotland. He knew that his view would
not be popular with his Malaysian hosts, but that would not deter him
from putting it forward.
'They spell it out, sir, don't they,' said Detective Chief Inspector Mary
Chambers. 'A red skull and crossbones and "Death penalty for drug
trafficking", stamped on your landing card. That's a bit unnecessary,
heading in this direction, do you not think? There can't be a hell of a lot
of smack smuggled from Heathrow to the Far East.'
Skinner glanced sideways at her, taking in the plain, square face, the
forehead defined by close-cut dark hair which offered not a hint of
personal vanity. 'She looks more like a copper than any bloke I've ever
seen,' Andy Martin had said after her interview, and, the DCC had
conceded, he had been right.
'Maybe not,' he agreed, 'but a lot of the traffic into Kuala Lumpur
stops over at other airports in the region where consignments might be
loaded.'
'I hadn't thought of that, I suppose.' The woman spoke with a
pronounced Glasgow twang, a voice with muscles in it; her accent was
not unlike Skinner's Lanarkshire dialect, but it was rawer, not dimmed as
his had been by twenty years of East of Scotland life.
'I understand that,' he said. 'You've worked at the sharp end of the
business until now, just as I did, once upon a time. Operating in
Strathclyde you haven't had the bloody time to consider the global
aspects of the trade; you've been too busy dealing with the problems on
the streets. But believe me, it helps to have that broader understanding.