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

discriminated on just about everything except race. It said something for our
good sense, if not so much for our social conscience. The only employee who'd
been caught up in any fracas at all recently seemed to be me. And no way was I
about to mention that, not something I couldn't be sure had even happened.
Even if it had, those huge thugs weren't West Indian, anyhow.
They'd been burglars, though. Or something illicit, anyhow, something
they cared enough about to spill out lives. Some motive that wasn't
immediately obvious ... any more than it was here, either. The police were
visibly writing the whole thing off as the work of drunks, druggies or kids,
who had just happened to descend on us, found nothing worth stealing and
wrecked the place out of spite. They'd keep their ear to the ground, but...
I couldn't accept that. The unease that was dogging me grew stronger,
darker, clutched hard at my heels. It lurked there behind my thoughts, all
through the rest of the day that should have banished it, hectic but
reassuring. A kind of minor spring filled the office as the air grew sharp and
piny with disinfectant, then heady and flowery with scented polish, and at
last cool, clean and neutral as the air conditioning took hold; in the
background phones trilled cheerfully and printers chattered and whizzed like
bright insects, restoring our records to hard copy. Normality burst out like
an impatient seedling, stiffened and blossomed into the status quo,
sunflower-bright. The smooth speed of it was awesome, like watching a
time-lapse film; we had an efficient business here, and a committed workforce.
It should have reassured me. It didn't. Two break-ins that wouldn't go away,
both strangely motiveless - and with one other obvious connection, namely me.
Not one little bit did I like that idea, and I couldn't make sense of it.
Suppose I really had been followed, that night - but I'd got to my car, and
away. No other car had followed me out of Tampere Street, not even Danube
Street. They might have caught the number, but somehow I didn't see them using
the police computer to trace me. And then they'd have had to follow me not
only home, but to the office next day; and why bother? Why hit the office,
when they could have got to me personally at home? No, it was a daft idea; but
daft or not, it was getting under my skin. If I could find some way of
distinguishing the two incidents, some reasonable explanation for one or the
other ...
First things first. Modus operandi. The office raid must have been a
swift and well-planned affair, to do so much damage without attracting
attention. Not so the other; in fact, it could hardly have been sloppier. What
were the raiders up to, muscling up to the front door like that on the
flimsiest of pretexts? Why would anyone want to break into a warehouse that
way - with a murder added, and out on the open street, when with an ounce more
planning they could have kept everything behind closed doors? Because they
wanted their victim to be found outside? As if - almost as if they were trying
to establish beyond all doubt that it was a burglary. And ruthlessly enough to
snuff out a life for corroborative evidence.
Now that rang a bell. I'd come across cases like that; where somebody was
trying to use the break-in somehow ... to account for something. Something
that wasn't there, and should have been. Or something that was, and shouldn't
-
'Jesus, yes!'
I couldn't help exclaiming aloud. A chill wind of certainty blew through