"Smith, Guy N - Blood Circuit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

That's silly talk. A legend that has been embroidered over the years and . . . '

'No, it isn't.' She looked up at him and he read the fear in her expression, a terror that was eating deep into her. 'My ancester, Jasper Hammerton, was killed in an almost identical accident two hundred years ago . . . beheaded by a careless farmworker scything corn. And in the same month his son was killed when his horse threw him and trampled him! And his daughter Edwina . . . ' She began to sob.

'Don't think about them.'' He kissed her forehead. 'They're dead and gone centuries ago and there's no way of knowing how they really died.'

'Oh yes, there is! It's all written down in the parish records. You can read it for yourself in the church if you don't believe me.'

'And what about Edwina?' Kilby wished in the same second that he hadn't asked.

'Edwina got herself pregnant by the groom.' There was no mistaking the note of contempt in her voice. 'And that was when mongrel blood infiltrated the Hammerton line. She died in childbirth but in her death throes she cursed the Hammertons, that future generations should experience the tragedies that they went through. And my God, Steve, she was right. Just look what's happened to us now.'

Kilby thought she was on the verge of hysteria, wondered whether he ought to slap her, and drag her forcibly from this field of violent death. But even as he hesitated twin shafts of brilliant white light swung across the landscape, focused on them like the principal actors in the final act of a tragic play, held them for the audience to dwell upon their trauma. Kilby turned his head, saw the close-set headlights of the old Series I Land Rover, more vehicles following on behind, bumping their way across the uneven stubble.

'Here's Clyde,' he said, and added, 'and the police, too.'

Lee Hammerton stood watching in a daze as the Land Rover and three cars came to a halt, figures getting out, the engines maybe left running purposely so that she wouldn't be able to hear what was being said. John Clyde was pointing towards the baler; she knew what he was saying. 'He's in there, baled into a neat little square so that you wouldn't recognise what he was. He'll have to be scraped out.'

She turned away, retched, shook off Kilby's hand and he didn't clutch at her again. She was the boss now and if she wanted to go across there and look nobody could stop her. But she didn't want to look. Jesus, it wasn't as though she and the old man were close. If you looked at it realistically he had been a right bastard most of his life, long before her mother had died fifteen years ago. All he'd ever thought about was women, the flat slob! And motor-racing, a kind of prestige symbol. He'd wanted to win the IROC and put the name of Hammerton amongst the elite, that way the women would fawn around him. But he didn't have to go out there on the circuit and risk his neck. Instead he sent Justin. And now maybe Kilby, except that Steve wasn't quite in that class. Lambs to the slaughter, sacrifices to the Hammerton idol. Oh Christ, it was bloody funny when you thought about it, the great Craig Hammerton ignominiously sliced up and compressed into a chunk of unrecognisable raw meat, going out as small as he had come into the world. She hadn't loved him, she'd hated him, feigned adoration because in the end she knew it would bring her what she had now. And Justin hadn't been any better. She started to laugh aloud, heard herself above the drone of the idling engines.

'Stop it!'

Lee recoiled, almost lost her balance as the flat of Steve Kilby's hand hit her across the face.

'Damn you. Damn you, Steve Kilby!' Subconsciously she tasted blood in her mouth. 'Don't you ever dare touch me again, for any reason!'

The hands reaching out for her checked. Surprise on his face because he suddenly realised that she wasn't hysterical, just coldly ruthless. Even the fear in her eyes was temporarily gone, replaced by a fury that had him backing off.

'I'm sorry. I . . . ' He licked his lips, glanced away and saw a number of figures had clambered up onto the stationary baler.

'If I want to laugh I'll bloody well laugh.' She spoke softly, words that were loaded with venom yet barely audible. 'You've had it too easy, Steve, and from this moment on there are going to be a number of changes around here. And don't go pushing your luck. I'm going to win the IROC, not because Craig Hammerton would have wanted it that way but because that's the way I want it. And remember you're a driver, not the driver. I'll find the man I want to win the championship, you mark my words. Now I'm going back to the house. It's well past midnight and I need my sleep. Tell Clyde I'm not to be disturbed until morning.'

Steve Kilby stood and watched her walk away until she was lost in the darkness beyond the glare of the headlights. Now it was his turn to feel the nausea rising up in him, and not just because of what had happened to Craig Hammer-ton. In those few moments Lee Hammerton had undergone a frightening change, almost as though the girl whose bed he had shared had died alongside her father in the baler and a reincarnation had materialised in her shapely body without any physical change.

And now it was Steve Kilby's turn to experience fear, a mounting inexplicable terror that was eating into him like a fast-growing cancer. It had suddenly gone very cold and he shivered.









CHAPTER TWO



SLADE HAD not exceeded thirty-five m.p.h. for the last ten miles. Even on the wide straight stretches of country roads, the heather a deep purple in the sunshine, his foot pressure did not increase on the throttle. A steady trundling. An articulated Foden overtook him, a gesture of impatience on the part of its driver as he cut in abruptly, forcing Slade to drop down to thirty. The lorry picked up speed, forging ahead. Slade kept the Cortina at thirty, no incentive to move back up to thirty-five again.