"Smith, Guy N - Sabat 02 - The Blood Merchants" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

'Now I know you've gone crazy.' Sabat brushed slender fingers through his long dark hair, habitually stroked a long wide scar, a souvenir of his own SAS service. 'You've been hitting the bottle again, Clive.'

'No, I haven't. I'm perfectly sober, overworked and over tired but I'm sane and sober. Look, this is no leg pull, you know me better than that. It's desperately urgent and the Chief himself said that you're maybe the one man who can help us. Can we talk somewhere?'

'You'd better come round.' Sabat finally abandoned all his erotic thoughts and swung his legs off the bed. McKay was genuine. Al. He might be barking up the wrong tree but he was realistic. Sabat had known him too long to doubt him.

'I'll be round in quarter of an hour then.'

Sabat hooked the receiver back on its cradle and switched on the light. Slowly he began to dress, pulling on dark serge trousers, and instinctively checking the pocket of his jacket to ensure that the small .38 revolver which he always carried was still there. These last few months he hadn't gone anywhere without a gun. He was a target for vengeance that might come in a number of different ways and he was learning to live with it.

He sat on the edge of the bed staring fixedly at the white wall, saw in his mind a wooded mountainside, a wide clearing which even the birds and beasts of the wild shunned. For it was there that his own brother, Quentin, had sought refuge, a man so imbued with evil that he was known throughout half the countries of the world as 'Satan's henchman'; pursued by the forces of the law who secretly hoped that they would not catch up with him, relentlessly hunted by Mark Sabat. And it was in this clearing that the Final confrontation had taken place. Sabat shuddered, recalled how his own extraordinary powers of exorcism had" been overshadowed by those of the most evil man known to mankind; the exhumed corpses lying beside the three open graves, further proof of what Quentin was about to do, a master of voodoo, a houngan in exile attempting to raise his own followers from the dead, an invincible army to do his bidding.

Sabat smelled again the cloying putrefaction of open graves, experienced once more his own despair when he had fallen into one, looked up and seen his brother preparing to pulverise him with a woodcutter's axe; the stench of burned cordite, the .38 bucking in Sabat's hand, Quentin writhing on top of him, the final shot splitting that awful skull, stringing blood and brains on the damp walls of the grave like an old man's mucus.

It should have ended there and then, Sabat clambering out of the oblong hole, walking dazedly back down the mountainside. But it hadn't; somehow Quentin's own soul had merged with his own, good and evil in continual conflict inside a living entity, a man possessed, fighting within himself for survival. And still fighting.

And that was how it was now. Sabat, one time priest, latterly an SAS agent, until his indiscretion with that blonde Colonel's wife who wore black boots and liked to see her lovers cringe before her, had resulted in his recent return to civilian life, now found himself the victim of a dual role. At times the evil in him was too strong to resist and Quentin Sabat lived again; on other occasions the forces of evil were thwarted by his ruthlessness, his own desire for revenge on them. The pendulum swung and Mark Sabat could never be sure of himself, an exorcist, one with unbelievable psychic powers which might one day prove to be his own undoing. And now something was happening again!

Sabat heard a car draw up outside in the deserted north London mews, anticipated the ringing of the front door bell, opened the door to admit a tall, dark skinned, cleanshaven man with an angular face that rarely smiled. Right now Detective Sergeant Give McKay had little to smile about.

Thanks,' he accepted the whisky which Sabat handed him, an expression that could have been embarrassment on his suntanned features as he said, 'this is absolutely confidential, of course.'

'Everything with me is confidential,' Sabat replied. 'It works both ways.'

'Which is why I can ask you if you can throw any light on the disappearance of the Reverend Spode?'

'Is that what you've come to interrogate me about?' Sabat's tone was sharp, his dark eyes blazing like chips of flint. 'If so, I would have thought it would've kept for a more sociable hour.'

'No, no,' McKay sipped his drink, knowing better than to sit down in Sabat's house without being invited to do so. 'I just asked, that was all. Personal curiosity.'

'Which killed the proverbial cat.' Sabat's features relaxed, the eyes softened. 'But, for your personal information, the Reverend Spode, who wasn't very reverend at all, brought the wrath of his secret gods down on his own head. Shall we say they spirited him away to a hell that is worse than hell?'

'Enough said,' the other seated himself at Sabat's gesture, 'but I think this latest business is going to push Spode's disappearance into the oblivion files. Jesus, I've come straight from the police mortuary. Even the Chief nearly spewed his guts up. Four corpses, three hardened pros and a teenage girl.'

There'll always be a ripper at large.' 'This is no ripper, Sabat. Just one wound in each body, a neat round hole going through the neck into the jugular ... through which their blood has been sucked out!'

Sabat stared, refrained from saying anything so idiotic as 'you must be joking'. Instead he grunted 'all their blood?'

'No. Maybe a pint or so, it's hard to tell because three of them crawled along the pavement leaving a ghastly crimson trail in their wake. The fourth had been killed in a deserted house and the room resembled an abattoir, blood all over the walls and ceiling.'

'Definitely not a vampire then, even if such things existed. They don't spill blood around, just leave an anaemic corpse behind. Interesting, though.'

'You can say that again. The Chief's got to make a statement to the Press shortly and he's in a right stew. Another ripper would be bad enough but this could spread hysteria throughout London, maybe even further.'

'This doesn't sound my line.' Sabat produced a meershaum pipe from his pocket. An intermittent smoker, he often mixed cannabis with his short stranded tobacco; tonight, however, he stuffed the bowl with an aromatic commercial brand. It was not wise to divulge too many of his secrets to the law.

'Perhaps and perhaps not. But it's going to cause us a lot of embarrassment. There'll be a public outcry when the real facts are known and the Chief hopes it can be cleared up quickly. And that means you, Sabat!'

'I was under the impression,' Sabat blew smoke rings up towards the ceiling, 'that the police force resented my investigations. Only a short time-ago I was being warned off, threatened with dire proceedings for obstructing police investigations.'