"Michael Marshall Smith - Missed Connection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Michael Marshall)

MISSED CONNECTION

by

Michael Marshall Smith



Lawson was already regretting the decision to go shopping by the time he was standing in line waiting to buy a ticket
for the tube. All but one of the time- and labour-saving automatic ticket dispensers was either closed or unable to give
change, and it was all he could do not to let out yelps of irritated despair at the inability of those in front of him to
understand the process of getting the machine to yield up its wares. The station seemed to be unusually full of
squalling children and jabbering mad people, and the flu which he'd thought in decline was thriving in the damp
mildness of the winter afternoon. All in all he was beginning to feel like death cooled down, and he was barely on step
one of the afternoon.
His ticket finally obtained, Lawson walked through the subway to the steps down to the Victoria line, where a
discouraging number of people were already gathered. He'd realised before venturing out of the house that going into
central London the Saturday before Christmas was a bad idea; but several weeks of late nights at the office with no
time to take lunch-breaks meant that virtually none of his nearest and dearest had yet been ticked off the present list.
The fact that so many other people from Finsbury Park alone were going in at the same time boded very ill for the state
of London proper.
But he had his route planned, and knew which exactly shops he was going to. Damage limitation. Essential.
Simply meandering about on a day like today was a recipe for disaster. You had to go in, buy what you wanted, get
out and go on to the next one. Then go home immediately, at least an hour ahead of the general exodus. Only way to
do it. Feeling rather like a commander in the field maximising his chances of surviving a difficult and potentially
dangerous mission, Lawson walked up to the very far right end of the platform, until he was up against the wall by the
side of the tunnel. Experience had shown that when people came on to a platform they either stood exactly where the
entrance put them, or walked about twenty yards either side. Very few bothered to walk all the way to the end of the
platform: thus it was in the very end carriage that one stood the greatest chance of not having one's lungs imploded in
the crush. Commuter-savvy: one of the very few skills one acquired by living in London.
With what Lawson had come with suspicion to recognise as the Victoria Line's characteristic efficiency, a tube
pulled into the station within less than a minute. It wasn't especially crowded, but тАУ he thought as he climbed into the
particularly non-full last carriage тАУ it could have been. Actual results were not really the point. The point was that the
tube, fearsome and irritating though it was, could be understood as a system.
Once understood, mastered.
Settling into one of the seats near the double doors he ran over the rather vague ideas he had for presents for his
mother and sister. They were the difficult ones; everyone else's had been decided months ago. Neither were easy to
buy for: his mother because she seemed to have just about everything she wanted; his sister because Lawson had no
clear idea what she thought or felt about anything whatsoever. He tried to remember if she'd expressed an interest in
anything in particular (or indeed anything at all) during the past year, but found himself unable to concentrate, the
problem continually slipping away from him.
The carriage was hot and humid, and his flu made Lawson feel dislocated and strange, as if he wasn't properly
engaging with what was around him. It was a feeling he associated with being drunk, a state he disliked. It was all the
more disconcerting because his mind at the same time felt quite sharp and alert. Throughout the last week at work he
had felt like this, which had worried him. It was all too possible to forget something, to fail to get to grips with a
problem and realise its significance, whilst still apparently being in control. Whitehead would keep coming in and
reminding him to do things. He did this all the time, even when he knew Lawson was on top of his work. When he felt
like this, however, Lawson found it difficult to remember if he'd been told before, or if he'd actually done the things he
had to. He normally worked on the principle that if Whitehead didn't start chivvying him about something, it wasn't a
problem. But what if he had hassled him already, and he'd forgotten about it? It was all rather unsettling.