"Guy N. Smith - Sabat 3 - Cannibal Cult" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

'Nobody can escape from here, dead or alive,' the small deputy stated, as
though he had rehearsed the sentence word for word schoolboy-fashion.

'Then there is a conspiracy afoot,' the other was desperately trying to force
himself to believe some logical explanation. Nevillon had been evil, had
communed with the devil and eaten human flesh. Yet dead, he was as other
corpses; he could not be otherwise. His magic had died with him.

'We shall have to inform the Surete and conduct an inquiry.' The governor
walked quickly back towards the door. He shivered, it was icy cold in here and
the strip-lighting seemed to have dimmed. Perhaps it was his imagination.
'Until then nobody must enter this chamber.' He locked the door behind them.

The inquiry into the disappearance of Louis Nevillon's corpse was conducted
jointly by the prison authorities and the Surete. Everybody was interrogated
from the governor down to the most junior warder, but in the end no conclusion
was reached - except by four men who kept their opinions to themselves.
Monsieur Gallon, the infamous French executioner, the padre, and the two
warders who had been in attendance at Nevillon's death. They remembered the
murderer's final words as his head lay on the block.

'On the third day I shall rise again. I shall live and you will fear my
comingr

The body of the Beast of France had vanished into thin air, Louis Nevillon had
spoken the truth.

He would live again.
CHAPTER TWO



SABAT'S BROW furrowed into a worried frown. He shook his head slowly, stroked
a finger down the long scar on his left cheek, a memento from his SAS days
that still seemed to smart on odd occasions. His dark eyes narrowed, his lips
compressed into a thin bloodless line. Tall yet muscular beneath his dark
suit, he gave the impression of a coiled spring, latent power that was not to
be trifled with.

He read through the short, almost insignificant, passage at the foot of an
inside page of the Telegraph a second time. EXECUTED MAN'S BODY DISAPPEARS

The corpse of Louis Nevillon, guillotined in Paris last week for mass murder,
is reported to have disappeared from the execution chamber. A Surete spokesman
declined to comment on it.

Which meant that the French authorities were baffled; they rarely commented on
failures. The newspaper fell from Sabat's fingers and he stared vacantly out
of the window, did not see the dense shrubberies which gave his WestHampstead
house its seclusion; saw only in his mind a grey-haired man with aristocratic