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

again.'
The sergeant's face clouded over. 'I see ... and your competitors would
know about this system?'
'Oh, they all work much the same way,' Gemma remarked. 'Not always as
secure, perhaps, but that, let us face it, is their own look-out. If they
really had wanted to hurt us they'd know a hundred better ways. In fact,
officer, losing the papers is causing us far less trouble than all this
absolutely disgusting smearing they've done all over the actual computers -'
'Ah yes, miss,' said the sergeant, his face resolutely rigid. 'Very
nasty, that - unhygienic and all. As if it really did hit the fan ... Well,
you should be able to get it cleaned up soon enough; the photographers will be
through with it any time -'
'Photographers?' demanded Rouse. 'Good God, man, my terminal looks like
the wall of a Lime Street lavatory! What'll a photograph of that tell you?'
The CID man met him with a superior smirk. 'Maybe quite a lot, sir. You
see, it's not random, er, smearing; there's definitely patterns in it. Not
writing or anything, but... well, signs, I suppose, though we don't know what
they mean yet. In fact, I'd like everyone to have another look at them, all
the staff, before you clean them off; they might mean something to somebody,
you never know. There's one in particular, too, that has ... something else.
We might start with that one - fourth door in on the left.'
All the heads turned in one direction - towards me. 'It would appear to
be your week, Steve,' sighed Barry. 'Shall we go? And Gemma love, will you
tell Judy to let the cleaners know they can start soon?'
We crowded into my office. Dave was already there, sitting on the
overturned filing cabinet and chain-smoking to drown the stink,
unsuccessfully. With assorted mutter-ings of disgust we all crowded round the
sergeant as he gingerly turned my terminal this way and that. 'No suggestions?
Ah well. How about this, then?'
The police had warned us not to touch the terminals, and we'd needed no
discouraging; I hadn't looked closely at what dangled there. Even now it just
seemed like more filth, a patch of matted feathers stuck together with
something revolting, right in the centre of the screen. I looked at him and
shook my head.
'Funny,' he said. 'You're the only one they favoured with that. And it's
not more crap, that stuff; apparently it's blood, quite fresh. But mixed into
a paste with something - some kind of flour, the boys think. Labs should tell
us more.'
We stared at the ugly thing in uneasy silence, thinking each other's
thoughts. Blood? Where from? What? Or whom? Then a new voice, soft and
tentative, broke into our thoughts.
'Sah? 'scuse me, sah?' Smiles of relief broke out, and we turned away
thankfully. This was the head of our cleaners, a plump cheerful creature in
her fifties, all calm and motherly good nature. She seemed like the living
antidote to the upheaval around us.
'Oh, Mrs Macksie,' began Barry distractedly. 'So very sorry we've had to
drag you and the girls in! But you see
'Ah, thass' all right, sah!' she said sympathetically. 'It's terrible, ain't
it? But we clean it up orright, you see! Now wheah you want us to -' She
stopped, or rather she choked; I thought at first it was Dave's overpriced