"Night Warriors - 01 - Night Warriors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

Everybody looked at each other. In the end, Detective Warburg said, 'Nobody smokes, sir.'

'Jesus,' said the medical examiner. 'Only in Southern California.'

'Perhaps a cigarette-lighter, from one of the cars,' Henry suggested.

Detective Morris jogged off to the nearest car, and came back a minute or so later with his belly bouncing, and a glowing cigarette-lighter held up in his hand. He handed it to the medical examiner, and the medical examiner immediately touched it against the eel's raw neck.

There was a sharp sizzle, a sickly odour of burning; then the eel's jaws clamped convulsively tight and bit away the whole of the policeman's upper lip and nostril, dropping on to the ground in a sudden spurt of blood. The policeman let out a tight, choked shriek, his upper teeth hideously exposed, and Lieutenant Ortega had to wrestle him down against the sand.

'Plasma!' the medical examiner shouted. 'And you!' he ordered the injured policeman's partner. 'Take that head and cut the damn thing in half, and get your buddy's face out of its mouth!'

It took the medics less than five busy minutes to bandage the policeman's face and set him up on to a plasma drip, to reduce the effects of shock. While they worked, the policeman's partner manhandled a pair of bolt-cutters out of the trunk of his patrol-car, and nudged the eel's head around on the sand so that he could position it between the blades. He tried twice to cut it in half, but both times the head slipped out. Then Gil came forward and rested the head against the toe of his shoe, so that it wouldn't roll away. There was a sharp, crisp crunch, and the eel's skull was chopped apart. The medical examiner stooped down and extracted the bloody rag of flesh that the creature had wrenched away from the policeman's face.

'I want that bastard in a plastic bag,' he told Detective Morris. 'Head, tail, and anything else you can find.'

Lieutenant Ortega looked at his watch. 'It's almost seven. Let's get this beach cordoned off. Warburg - call for some back-up. I want a digging detail. If those eels killed that girl, I want them dug out and destroyed. I want the coastguard alerted, too. They'll probably want to put up a temporary ban on swimming. Morris, you go along wit h the M. E. I want the fastest post mortem in the history of the world.'

'Is there anything that we can do?' asked Henry.

Lieutenant Ortega stared at Henry as if he had never seen him before. 'You? Oh, you can go home. Give your name and address to Detective Morris here, he'll come and talk to you later. And, please, don't leave the area, not until you've made your statement. And don't talk to the newspapers or the television. This is one of those situations that causes panic, you understand me? I'd rather we kept the whole thing quiet, just for now.'

Henry said to Gil and Susan, 'That's it. I guess we can leave.'

Susan was very pale. 'I think I'm going to faint,' she said.

'Sit down for a moment,' Henry told her. 'Put your head down between your knees.'

While they waited for Susan to recover, Henry looked across the beach at the body of the girl they had found. From where he was crouching, next to Susan, he was unable to see the gaping cavity of her stomach; the girl could have been lying serene and naked in the mist, waiting for the sun to break through. She was really quite beautiful, Henry thought to himself, and somehow that made her death seem even more horrifying.

'I'm all right now,' said Susan. She tried to get up, and Gil gave her his arm.

Henry was watching the medics lift the girl's body off the beach, and zipper it up in a body-bag. Against the mist, the figures looked like an Oriental shadow-play. 'I never saw anything like that before in my whole life,' he said. 'Those eels - did you ever see anything like that? And I used to be married to an oceanographer.'

They walked up the beach together. When they reached the boardwalk, Henry suggested, 'Come and have a drink. That's my cottage, right over there. I expect you could use something to settle your nerves.'

'I think I want to get home, thank you,' said Susan. She glanced back down at the beach and her eyes were staring with repressed hysteria.

Gil asked her, gently, 'Where do you live? I could take you.'

'Do you have a car?'

'Sure, that Mustang convertible right across the street.'

'Okay, then, thank you.'

They walked off together, Gil and Susan, leaving Henry standing alone. After a while, Henry shrugged, and walked the sixty yards back to his cottage, unlocking the door with the key which he always kept around his wrist. He went through to the living-room, opened up the glass-fronted cocktail cabinet, and poured himself a very large vodka, straight up, no ice, and drank it.

He coughed as the vodka burned its way down his throat. Then he filled up his glass again, and walked over to the wide sliding windows which led out on to the balcony. He could see the police cars from here, with their flashing lights, and Lieutenant Ortega in his cinnamon-coloured suit. Further down the beach, towards Del Mar, two uniformed policemen were already dragging trestles across the beach, marked Police Line - Do Not Cross.