"Hutchinson, Dave - Tir-na-nOg" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hutchinson Dave)

"He shouldn't have told you a lot of those things," Benedict says. "That stuff about nanotech was still in R&D seven years ago."

"And of course I went straight to your competitors and told them everything he told me, which is why I'm so wealthy now."

We are sitting in our room at the hotel. She's sitting on the bed, I'm sitting on my sleeping bag on the floor, looking up at her, which nicely sums up our relationship.

"He was naked, you know," she says, looking over to the window.

"Excuse me?"

She looks at me. "Hey. He knocked out the video system at Grantbridge but we had some still cameras set up as well and he couldn't interfere with them, so we got one photo of him when he walked out. He was stark naked except for an orange wig."

I stare at her.

She cocks her head at me. "Any thoughts on that?"

I find myself smiling. "He was embarrassed about going bald."

Benedict sighs. Idiot Monkey. Clown Monkey. Not worth taking seriously. "That's how we know about the bafflers. We could have worked it out from what happened, constructed a synthesis of events, but the photo clinched it. He was covered in wires and little boxes and Christ only knows what. We found them later in the trees two miles from the house."

"So he wasn't naked." I hug my knees to my chest. "Wig, wires, little boxes. Sounds a bit overdressed, now you mention it."

She looks at me a moment longer, then examines the back of her hand and says nonchalantly, "Why did you keep hanging up on him? When he rang you?"

I get up, walk to the corner of the room and switch on the little kettle. "Lots of reasons."

"He sounded desperate."

"He was drunk, Benedict. He was drunk, he hadn't bothered to get in touch with me for seven years, Louise and I were going through a bad patch, I was having a really shitty time at school." I shrug. "I kept hoping he'd call back, but he never did."

"And you didn't try to get in touch with him yourself."

"I didn't have a number."

She shakes her head. "And you call yourselves friends."

"I seem to remember something about your security men not letting him give out his phone number."

"Hey never struck me as someone who did as he was told."

Hands in pockets, I perch on the windowsill. Outside, just beyond the glass, the birds are arrayed on the telephone wires, singing their little hearts out into the evening. I wonder briefly if Benedict would lend me her flechette pistol so I can blow the little sods away.

"You know he was drinking heavily?" she says.

"He's always drunk heavily, even when he was doing the keep-fit stuff. And don't tell me he's just gone bonkers. He's always been a bit manic-depressive." To my consternation, she puts her head back and howls with laughter. She has an astoundingly dirty laugh. I'm amazed and irritated in roughly equal measures. "I'm glad you find it so funny."

"Manic?" she laughs. "Your friend isn't manic-depressive. He's maniac-depressive."

I look at her until she stops laughing. When the kettle boils, I unplug it.