"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 15 - The Touch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

It was a transit hotel, ten minutes off the M25 and twenty from Gatwick
Airport. Ideally situated, it was used by air crews and passengers alike as a
sojourn and watering hole before, between, and after flights,- a busy place
usually. But at 4:30 on a misty November morning, normally it would be
fairly quiet.
Not now, however, for the crying of a child—its piteous wailing and
intermittent shrieking from one of the rooms—had warranted the night
security officer's investigation. Following which, and despite that he was
in shock, shaken to his roots by what he'd discovered, he hadn't been
able to get to a telephone quickly enough.

Inspector George Samuels of the Metropolitan Police—twenty-seven
years old, seventy inches tall, raven-haired, with large ears, piercing grey
eyes, and a small cynical mouth,- a man who preferred wearing his uniform
to casual "civilian" trappings—was referred to caustically by his fellow offi-
cers as "a highflyer" and "something of a whizz kid," if not in the detection
of crime. His father had "connections," and it was an accepted fact that
having risen rapidly through the ranks—by what his peers generally con-
sidered suspect means or machinations—the young Inspector still wasn't
above blowing the whistle not only on police officers of like or lesser rank
but also on his superiors, or taking credit for the work of his juniors, or
greasing up to anyone perceived as a possible future rung in the ladder of
his ambitions.
 NECROSCOPE: THE TOUCH 13
As a practical policeman, however, he lacked that certain something
and would usually go by "The Book" because his hours on the beat had
been drastically curtailed by his accelerated promotions. But as anyone
who did it the hard way would surely attest, "The Book" (notoriously
long on chapter and verse) is almost by definition short on experience.
For example: "blood," probably the most important aspect of evidence, is
referred to objectively and clinically, becoming just another word in
"The Book." But as a physical, tactile reality blood is sticky, has a disturb-
ing smell, and is invariably terrifying to victims and observers alike when
it pulses in dark crimson spurts from the sliced arteries of warm, shuddering
bodies . . .
Tonight the Inspector had tasked himself with "visiting" (in fact spy-
ing upon) late-shift commanders in various police stations in the city's
suburbs and outlying districts, and had conveyed himself in an unmarked
police vehicle as far out from the centre as Reigate, where moments after
four-thirty he had entered the local station right on cue, albeit inadver-
tently, as the call for police assistance came in.
The mobile patrols and standby were already busy, dealing with two
traffic accidents and a domestic dispute, and so the Inspector was obliged to
cover the incident himself. The scene of the problem, whatever the prob-
lem was—about which the Desk Sergeant was uncertain, because accord-
ing to him the telephone message had been badly garbled by the shocked,
babbling, almost inarticulate caller,- though Samuels suspected that this lack
of pertinent information was more likely due to gross inefficiency on the