"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 1 - Defilers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Twenty-odd years ago he had been full of fire and zest-also ouzo, and Metaxa!-but then something
had happened that changed him, turned his life around. He was a lot more serious now, far more
studious and thoughtful. But if his hard-bitten, down-to-earth police colleagues in Athens knew
what he studied, and what Manolis researched almost to obsession in what little spare time his
duties allowed him . . . well, they might find it peculiar, to say the least.
"We should get her out of there, onto a table," Eleni Barbouris told him, after removing the
sheet. "She's not so cold I can't cut. In fact the cold should help keep down the odours. You see
the swollen abdomen, all bloated from immersion? There will be gasses. . ."
He knew what she meant. As a boy in Phaestos on Crete, he had seen a

dead dolphin washed up on the beach. A large animal, seven feet long by four wide (because it was
so badly swollen), it had been too heavy to move. Local firemen wanted to burn it, but they had
thought it must be full of salt water, which would only hinder the burning. Best to let the water
out first.
But then, when one of the men pierced the dolphin's belly with the pick end of his fireman's axe-
The creature literally exploded! With a great hissing, farting and shuddering-a veritable
vibration of dead, rubbery flesh-the thing had split open like an overripe melon, showering every


file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20E-Branch%201%20-%20Defilers.txt (23 of 263) [2/13/2004 10:10:51 PM]
 file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20E-Branch%201%20-%20Defilers.txt

onlooker, including the young Manolis and his village friends, with a geyser of rotten vileness!
The awful stench had seemed to last for days, and his mother hadn't been able to wash it out of
his clothes. . .
"You'll perform an autopsy?" he said, backing off a pace.
"You've seen plenty of them before, I'm sure," Eleni answered. "Or is it that people don't die in
peculiar circumstances in Athens?"
"This one's been in the water," Manolis said, and wrinkled his nose. "Gasses? I can do without
gasses."
Eleni was about his age, but time and the work hadn't been kind to her. Her hair was greying and
she seemed to have shrivelled down into herself. She was a small,-pale woman, but still very
capable, Manolis was sure. Moreover, he suspected that she wasn't nearly as cold or callous as she
liked to pretend.
"I have gauze masks," she said. "Soaked in eau de cologne, or maybe ouzo, they'll dilute the
smell. But they won't keep it out. Not entirely." Turning her head on one side, she looked at him
quizzically. "On the other hand, you don't have to watch at all if you don't want to. A queasy
stomach, perhaps?" There was no hint of humour in her voice,- no sympathy, either.
So maybe it wasn't pretence and Eleni Barbouris really was cold and callous! "I'll stay," he told
her, nodding. "But first let's invite the local boys to help us get her out of there ..."
After the village policemen had left-and they wasted very little time in leaving-Eleni got down to
it. First an external examination of the body. There was nothing to be done about the corpse's
head, but if the damage to the ears and lower face was the work of a propeller, there was scant
sign of any abrasions to the rest of the body. The neck was scarred on the left, where something
had gouged a groove half an inch wide and quarter of an inch deep in the puffy flesh between the
missing ear and the collarbone,- this might have been caused by the blade of a propeller, but
Eleni seemed dubious. The throat, however, was choked behind the missing mandible, probably with
weed, and the pathologist started there, cutting the windpipe to lay it open in twin flaps above
the clavicle.
Within the incision, near the top of the oesophagus, there was a dark mass that formed a solid