"Michael Scott Rohan - Chase the Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rohan Michael Scott)

strange experiences. To find they were just some kind of lunatic dream, or an
overlay on ordinary things - or to find they were real and still there ... I
didn't know which alternative scared me more. Inwardly I kicked myself for
ever looking up all that nonsense from the files; now Clare and Dave and Barry
must be wondering if I was some kind of nut. Come to that, I was wondering
myself. I'd do better to go home and get some sleep. It was as well I did,
because I was shot out of God knows what dream at about four-thirty in the
morning by the shrill braying of the phone. With a head like a carpentry shop
- eyes full of glue, mouth of sawdust and the sawblade screeching across my
brain - I struggled to make out what Barry was squawking about.
'Broken into, dammit! And smashed about! Badly, they say - the cops,
yes! No, not yet, I'm on my way down there this minute - I want you and Rouse
and Bailey and Gemma too - get hold of 'em, will you? And don't take no for an
answer - this could be really fucking serious, lad!'
But it wasn't, though no wonder the cops thought so. So did I, the moment
I walked in the door, and Gemma - our brass-bound and case-hardened head of
Transshipment - actually burst into tears. Somebody had gone through both
inner and outer back doors, shattering their central panels of wood and wired
glass without opening them, and so bypassed our rather basic alarm system.
There was an ominous stink in the air, a real pig-farm stench. Every office
door in the place was open, and through them spilled filing cabinets and
bookcases like so many prostrate corpses, strewn around with the ripped and
mangled remains of the papers and books they had held. Even the beautiful
Victorian bookcase in Barry's office had been thrown down, shattering a
coffee-table, and its collection of antique atlases and traveller's tales
ripped to shreds.
'Lovely books they were, too!' said the CID sergeant sadly, when the
department heads gathered there a few hours later. 'Worth a bob, too, any
idiot could see that. And yet you're sure none of them were nicked?'
'None!' said Barry between his teeth. 'Just bloody ruined like this!' And
he hurled the shreds of a heavy old binding at the wall.
The sergeant clicked his tongue sympathetically. 'But nothing else gone - just
like all the other offices. Didn't even touch your whisky bottles. Yet they
wiped out every bit of paperwork in the place!' You could practically see the
wheels working behind his eyes. 'Shipping business, eh? Import-export... a
high-pressure field is it? Kind of cutthroat competition? Lot of competitors?'
Barry shrugged. 'Not so many. And I know most of them - we do lunch, play
squash, that sort of thing. Always friendly. We're fixers, expediters, there's
plenty of elbow-room; sometimes we put business each other's way. You're not
suggesting ...'
'Well, sir - I mean, all your files destroyed, all your records - even
the bloody phone-books! That's bound to hold up your trading a bit, isn't it?
Could even -'
Barry guffawed. 'Put us out of business? Not a chance! Paper's just one
way we keep our records - and a pretty obsolete way at that. Everything that
matters passes through the computer system; that gets stored on discs, discs
are automatically backed up to hard disk and hard disk onto tape streamers,
all day, every day. And the streamer cartridges go into that little safe over
there; fireproof, the lot. Three different levels of media - and not one of
'em's been touched, in any office. All we've got to do is print it back out