"Folsom, Allan - The Day After Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Folsom Allan)

another hotel, small, like his own. Most of the windows were dark, but
a dim light showed on the fourth floor. Someone was reading, or maybe
had fallen asleep reading, or maybe left the light on when they went out
and hadn't come back yet. Or maybe there was a body in the room,
waiting to be discovered in the morning.,That was the thing about being
a detective, the possibilities for almost anything were endless. It was
only over time that you began to get a second sense about things, a
feeling of what was in the room before you entered, what you might find
when you did, what kind of person was there or had been there, and what
they had been up to. But with the severed head there had been no room
with a dim light showing. If they got lucky, maybe that would come
later. The room that would point to another room and finally to the
space that held the killer. But before any of that, they had to
identify the victim.

McVey finished the scotch, wiped his eyes and glanced at the note he'dd
made earlier and had already set into motion.
HEAD/ARTIST/SKETCH/NEWSPAPER/I.D.

AT Five in the morning Paris streets were deserted. Metro service began
at five thirty, so Henri Kanarack rlied on Agnes Demblon, head
bookkeeper at the bakery where he worked, for a ride to the shop. And
dutifully, every day at four forty-five, she would arrive outside his
apartment house in her white, five-year-old Citrodn. And every day
Michele Kanarack would watch out the bedroom window for her husband to
come out onto the street, get into the Citrodn and drive away with
Agnes. Then she would pull her robe tight about her and go back to bed
and lie awake thinking about Henri and Agnes. Agnes was a
forty-nine-year-old spinster, an eyeglass-wearing bookkeeper, and by no
one's imagination attractive. What could Henri see in her that he
didn't in Michele? Michele was much younger, a dozen times
better-looking, with a figure to match, and she made sure Henri got all
the sex he needed, which of course was why she was finally pregnant.

What Michele had no way of knowing, and would never be told, was that it
was Agnes who had gotten Henri the job at the bakery. Persuaded the
owner to hire him even when he had no experience as a baker. The owner,
a small, impatient man named Ubec, had had no interest in taking on a
new man, especially when he would have to undergo the expense of
training him, but changed his mind immediately when Agnes threatened to
quit if he didn't. Bookkeepers like Agnes were hard to find, especially
ones who knew their way around the tax laws as she did. So, Henri
Kanarack had been hired, had quickly learned his trade, was dependable
and did not constantly press for raises like some of the others. In
other words, he was an ideal employee and, as such, Lebec could have no
quarrel with Agnes for bringing him on board. The only question Lebec
had posed was why Agnes had been so willing to quit her job over so
nondescript and everyday a man as Henri Kanarack, and Agnes had answered
that with a curt "Yes or no, Monsieur Lebec?" The rest was history.