"Keith Brooke - Professionals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooke Keith)

about herself but when she's alone it gets her right here." He sank a hand
wrist-deep into his chest in the kind of melodramatic false-world display
that made Christian want to laugh in the man's face.
Instead, he tipped back in his fake seat and tried to make himself take
Brady's domestic entanglements with at least a degree of seriousness.
He hated to think that he had sunk this far. A few years ago he'd been on
the fast track with the National Police and the future had looked fine.
Even after rivals had got him thrown out on a minor misdemeanour he'd been
able to continue with undercover freelancing: corporate work and a few
unofficial jobs the Nationals didn't want on the record.
And now he was doing domestics.
"What exactly do you want me to do?" he asked. It was work, after all. "Do
you want me to build a case against her? Do you want me to provide answers
for anything she might have on you?"
Brady's chosen image showed nothing, but a protracted pause betrayed his
emotion. Eventually, he said, "I want you to trace her movements, find out
who she sees, what she does, where she's living. I want you to construct a
complete picture of her life and then I want you to help me draw up a
proposal I can put to her through her solicitors. I want a planned
reconciliation, a trial unseparation. I want her back, Mr Taylor, and I
want you to show me how to achieve that goal. Can you help me?"
"Can you pay?"
Brady nodded.
"Then I'll need some information … "

As Christian questioned Brady, he received onscreen a set of pictures
along with copies of all the relevant documentation. All the time he
struggled to find his way through the barrage of over-emotional pap for
some insight into the situation, some way forward.
Brady's first contract with Ellen Rinotti had been written up seven years
ago, when they were both working on plans for a new dam in what was then
still Nigeria. River Brady was chief structural engineer on the project;
Ellen was something of a drifter, filling in for an account handler on
paternity leave. They formalised their marriage only eight months later -
positively rash in such conservative times - and they started sex three
months after that. It was all in the contracts Brady copied to Christian's
workbase, nothing too unusual.
Christian studied the legalese carefully, grateful for his basic police
training in the elaborate hybrid language European law-firms used these
days. He tried to find something to snag his interest, but he knew that
when he started to get a thrill out of domestics he would be in serious
trouble.
"So why did she go?" He had to ask, although he might have phrased it more
sensitively.
"I have a lot of work on at present," said Brady. He was employed by a
Danish architectural consultancy now, based somewhere up in Essex.
"Deadlines, exacting requirements … a great deal of pressure. I get
absorbed. I neglect my social obligations."
Such obligations were written into the contract of marriage: if it came to
arbitration then Christian's client would have little room for manoeuvre.