"Barker, Clive - Sacrament (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

revealed itself, so it was the genius of the wild to make that revelation less than complete. The rogues and man-
eaters were dying out, one by one, but the mystery continued, undisclosed. And would continue, Will suspected,
until the end of the rogues and mysteries and the men who were fools for them both.






CHAPTER III




Cornelius Botham sat at the table with a hand-rolled cigarette lolling from beneath his blond feather moustache,
his third beer of the morning set at his elbow, and surveyed the disemboweled Pentax laid out before him.

'What's wrong with it?' Will wanted to know.

'It's broken,' Cornelius dead-panned. 'I say we hack a hole in the ice, wrap it in a pair of Adrianna's knickers and
bury it for future generations to discover.'

'You can't fix it?'

'Yes, I can fix it,' Cornelius said. 'That is why I'm here. I can fix everything. But I would prefer to hack a hole in
the ice, wrap it in a pair of Adrianna's knickers-'

'It's given good service, that camera.'

'So have we all. But sooner or later, if we're lucky, we'll be wrapped in a pair of Adrianna's knickers-'

Will was at the stove, making himself a ragged omelette. 'You're obsessing.'

'I am not.'

Will slid his breakfast onto a plate, tossed two slices of stale bread on top of it, and came to sit at the table
opposite Cornelius.

'You know what's wrong with this town?' Cornelius asked.

'Give me an A, B or C.'

This was a popular guessing game amongst the trio, the trick being to dream up alternatives more believable
than the truth.

'No problem,' Cornelius said. He sipped a mouthful of beer and then said: 'Okay. A, right? There aren't any
good-looking women in two hundred miles, besides Adrianna, and that'd be like fucking my sister. Okay? So,
B. You can't get any decent acid. And C

'It's B.'