"Alastair Reynolds - Signal to Noise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

A mean, little thought flashed through Mick’s mind. Bloody Andrea:
she’d always been one for dashing across a road without looking. He’d
been warning her for years she was going to regret it one day.

“How is she? Where did they take her?”

“I’m really sorry, sir.” The policewoman hesitated. “Your wife died on
the way to hospital. I understand that the paramedics did all they could,
but…”

Mick was hearing it, and not hearing it. It couldn’t be right. People still
got knocked down by cars. But they didn’t die from it, not anymore. Cars
couldn’t go fast enough in towns to kill anyone. Being knocked down and
killed by a car was something that happened to people in soap operas, not
real life. Feeling numb, not really present in the room, Mick said, “Where is
she now?” As if by visiting her, he might prove that they’d got it wrong, that
she wasn’t dead at all.

“They took her to the Heath, sir. That’s where she is now. I can drive
you there.”

“Andrea isn’t dead,” Mick said. “She can’t be. Not now.”

“I’m really sorry,” the policewoman said.

****

SATURDAY
For the last three weeks, ever since they had separated, Mick had been
sleeping in a spare room at his brother’s house in Newport. The company
had been good, but now Bill was away for the weekend on some ridiculous
team-building exercise in Snowdonia. For tedious reasons, Mick’s brother
had had to take the house keys with him, leaving Mick with nowhere to sleep
on Friday night. When Joe had asked him where he was going to stay, Mick
said he’d go back to his own house, the one he’d left at the beginning of the
month.

Joe was having hone of it, and insisted that Mick sleep at his house
instead. Mick spent the night going through the usual cycle of emotions that
came with any sudden bad news. He’d had nothing to compare with losing
his wife, but the texture of the shock was familiar enough, albeit magnified
from anything in his previous experience. He resented the fact that the
world seemed to be continuing, crassly oblivious to Andrea’s death. The
news wasn’t dominated by his tragedy; it was all about some Polish miners
trapped underground. When he finally managed to get to sleep, Mick was
tormented by dreams that his wife was still alive, that it had all been a
mistake.

But he knew it was all true. He’d been to the hospital; he’d seen her
body. He even knew why she’d been hit by the car. Andrea had been