"Ian Stewart - Environmental Friendship Fossle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Ian)

Under the single bed, with its thin, hard mattress--how do the Chinese sleep on those things?--was part
of a tusk. Looked like elephant, a young bull, sawn off at the thick end, two-thirds the length of the bed.
It was wrapped in pink tissue paper.

I lined up my wristband and took some photographs--bed, tusk, clothing, apartment. Painting of
elephant. Pink tissue paper.

Then I called the Agency, who would pick up the tusk, dust for prints, and take the apartment to pieces.
I was stuck there until they arrived, holding the fort in case someone came and took stuff away before
SCITES got there.
I stared at the walls, trying to put myself into Tsong's frame of mind ... If I'd wanted to hide something,
where ... ?

After a while, my eyes were drawn to the suspended ceiling. One lightweight tile looked dirtier than the
others, as if it had been handled, repeatedly.

I dragged a chair across, stood on it, and pushed the tile up into the roof-space above. The space was
shallow, and the glow from my wristband's screen showed it to be empty. The dirt was a red herring. But
I tried the other tiles in turn, slipping them out past their supports, and taped to the back of one of them
was an envelope. Inside the envelope was an old-fashioned metal key. Stamped on the key were the
digits 244, in Western characters.

I put the key back in its envelope, slipped both into my pocket, turned the flatscreen to a People's Rep
basketball channel, and settled down on the couch for the Agency squad to turn up.

It was a long wait.
****
"Salima--what kind of key do you think this is?"

She was used to me asking this kind of off-the-wall question, just as she was used to me trying to make
our relationship more permanent. She took the key between thumb and nail-varnished forefinger, turned
it over, held it at an angle to the light, as if it were some paleontological specimen. Perhaps it was.

"You don't see many metal keys these days," she said, her voice muffled by a soft taco.

I nodded. "Encryption is more effective."

"Right. But this is no antique, Mike. Looks fairly new, but well-used."

"What makes you think that?"

She put down the taco and sipped at her drink. She had a sensuous mouth. "Plenty of bright metal, but
also plenty of scratches," she said.

I thought about that. "Locker?"

"Yes. Could be a garage, but most likely a locker. Most of those still have metal keys. Too expensive to
change to cryplocks, and not much point anyway."

"That's what I think, too. A locker is a good place to keep something you don't want in your own home.