"Paul McAuley - Whole Wide World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

We're in a squad car in Walthamstow, waiting for the off to go in and seriously hassle this
pinko journalist.'
'Was sitting in the office waiting for the phone to ring too boring for you?'
'I have a weakness for journalists. And I didn't know I was going to get two fucking call-
outs on a Sunday.'
'I hope T12 isn't paying for your time on ADESS.'
'Don't you worry. Ross has a mate in the Bunker.'
'Because Rachel Sweeney will carpet you when she finds out.'
'It's off the books, Minimum. Stop trying to give me a hard time, you aren't built for it.
Now listen, you got your warrant card?'
'This is a favour you're about to ask me, isn't it?'
'Do a lap around the corner,' Pete Reid said, and gave me an address. 'It's a pick-up, that's
all. See the exhibits officer, grab the gear, in and out, bing bang boom, no problem. I'll
send a uniform with a car and an evidence kit.'
'Make that a pretty massive favour,' I said.
'In and out, what's the problem? Get the job done, and I'll have Ross here suck your dick
by remote control.'
That's how it began. I didn't know that it was about a suspicious death. I didn't know it was
about the dead girl in the silver chair. The information was only partial.
The poor young trees the council had put in along the road two years ago, those which
hadn't been snapped off by kids or poisoned by dog piss, were hanging their heads like
ballerinas about to faint. Cars smacked over speed bumps like boats on a choppy sea,
trailing music in their wakes. People sat on the balconies of council flats like spectators at
the Apocalypse. A very fat black woman enthroned on a red velour armchair held a little
electric fan under her chin. The noise of televisions and stereos pounded out of open
windows. I ran past a church, a discount off-licence with the no-nonsense offer of CHEAP
BOOZE painted across its steel-shuttered windows and a burly guard just inside its door,
burnt-out live/work flats carved from an old cinema which had started life as a music hall,
a row of almshouses. There had been hamlets in marshy fields here, once upon a time. A
priory. Country lanes in the drowsy shade of elms and oaks. Then a clutch of theatres,

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California Gold by John Jakes


houses creeping north, paved streets, factories and warehouses thrown up on either side of
the new canal. Fifteen years ago, artists and pop stars had made the area fashionable.
Developers had moved in, turning sweatshop garment factories into loft-style flats for City
workers flush with easy money. The InfoWar had wiped them out; now there was talk that
the artists might be moving back.
I ran over shattered paving stones, heat-softened tarmac. I ran past an old woman wrapped
in a heavy woollen coat despite the heat, a scarf tied tightly over a wig the approximate
shape and texture of a Brillo pad. She was pulling a wheeled shopping basket as slowly
and steadily as if ascending the north face of Everest. I ran past a couple of gangbangers
on the corner, as nervously alert as gazelles, eyes bloodshot from too much crumble.
Advance troops of the yardie gangs that were once again trying to push across the river on
to Turkish turf. They were serviced by kids on scooters and mountain bikes, kept their
stashes hidden, did their deals in burnt-out buildings, hidden from ADESS's sleepless
scrutiny. At night, their whistled alerts and signals permeated the neighbourhood like the
cries of curlews in some mournful marsh; every few weeks, one was found dead on some