• Пожаловаться

Barry Maitland: No trace

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Barry Maitland: No trace» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. категория: Полицейский детектив / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

Barry Maitland No trace

No trace: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «No trace»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Barry Maitland: другие книги автора


Кто написал No trace? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

No trace — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «No trace», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

‘No more than usual. Weird messages are often sent to the gallery or my website.’

‘We’ll need to check all those. There’s also the possibility that Tracey’s been taken for money, a ransom.’

‘Is that what happened with the other girls?’

‘No, but it’s always possible that this is different. Just to be sure, we’ll set up some special equipment on your phone, and I’ll ask you to stay close to it for the next twenty-four hours. There’ll be a police officer on the premises for all that time. Well, I think we can go back downstairs now.’

The horde on the floor below had vanished. Rudd went to the kitchen area to put on some coffee. ‘I don’t understand why they had to search the house,’ he grumbled as he spooned out the powder.

‘We always do, in cases like this,’ Kathy said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of times a missing child has turned up asleep in a closet or beneath the stairs where they’d gone to play a game with their dolls.’ Or bundled up in the freezer, or beneath the floorboards, Kathy thought. There’s no place like home.

‘I just feel so helpless,’ Rudd said. ‘I should be doing something.’

‘Waiting is the worst of it,’ Brock replied.‘But the best thing you can do is stay here with DS Kolla.’

At that moment there was a commotion from the floor below, a man calling out in protest, a woman’s scream drowning him out, then footsteps crashing up the wooden stairs. A woman’s head and shoulders burst into view, thick black hair streaked with grey, a black cloak flapping from her shoulders.

‘The chief inspector!’ she cried, looking wildly about. ‘I must see him!’

Brock stepped forward, waving back the copper who had followed her.

‘The scream!’ she gasped.‘I heard the scream!’

Brock tried to calm her, but this only made her more agitated.

‘You must listen!’ she cried. ‘I heard her, the missing child, last night!’

Then she noticed Gabriel Rudd for the first time and flew at him. He flinched, standing rigid as she grasped him, babbling,‘Poor boy! Poor boy! But I understand, you know I understand. My little girl, my own darling.’

Seeing the look of disgust on Rudd’s face, Kathy stepped forward and, putting a firm arm around the woman’s shoulders, drew her away.‘Let’s sit down,’she said,‘and tell me everything. First your name.’

‘Betty Zielinski, and I have vital information.’

She was a neighbour, she said, a long-time resident of Northcote Square, living at 14 West Terrace. She leaped to her feet and made them follow her to the window, where she showed them her place, a narrow brick-fronted terrace house almost at this end of the block and barely fifty yards away. They could see the builders working on the roofs of the buildings beyond. The jam of people and vehicles hadn’t cleared from the square below, and faces turned up to look at them as they stood at the window.

‘At five minutes past two last night I was woken by a scream,’ the woman went on, her voice now dropping to a dramatic hush.‘A piercing scream. The scream of a female child.’

‘I see. Where’s your bedroom, Ms Zielinski?’

‘At the back, on the first floor.’

‘At the back?’ Brock sounded doubtful.

‘Yes… don’t you see? He must have taken her away down the lane that runs behind our terrace. That way he wouldn’t be seen in the square.’

‘Are you quite certain about the time?’

‘Yes, yes. I checked the alarm clock beside my bed. Five minutes past two.’

Kathy steered her back to a seat and asked her if she lived alone.

‘I live with my family.’

‘Did they hear anything?’

‘I’m sure they must have.’

‘What are their names?’

Betty Zielinski looked doubtfully at Kathy’s hand poised over her notebook.‘You want all of their names?’

‘How many are there?’

‘Oh, hundreds and hundreds.’

Kathy looked into the big, wondering eyes and said, ‘Maybe it would be best if I call and talk to them myself.’

‘That would be a very good idea.’

They thanked her and she seemed satisfied as Kathy led her back towards the stairs. At the top she turned back to Gabriel Rudd and said, ‘She knew, my dear. She told me. She was so brave.’

Rudd looked incredulous.‘Eh?’

‘What did she tell you?’ Brock said.

The woman turned her wild eyes to him. ‘Secrets. Special children have the second sight, you know. And Tracey was a very special child.’ Then she took to the stairs, her cloak flapping in her wake.

‘Batty Betty,’Rudd said, shaking his head. He slumped in a chair, seeming unnerved by the visit.‘That’s what they call her in the square. What she told you was rubbish. She has no family, she lives alone. The school kids in the playground call names after her and she complains to the teachers. Mad as a hatter.’

Kathy could imagine it, the children squealing with excitement at the mad lady in the black cloak, looking like a bat.

‘You don’t believe she heard something?’ Brock asked.

‘She probably dreamed it,’ he said dismissively, and Brock, remembering his own awakening that morning, was inclined to agree. All the same, he had noticed how closely Rudd had listened to the woman, especially when she mentioned the scream.

‘Did Tracey ever visit Ms Zielinski’s house?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘You didn’t mention that before. You said she goes to the cafe on the corner, but you didn’t mention Zielinski. I think we’ll check her house, just to be on the safe side.’

As Brock pulled out his phone Rudd got to his feet and wandered over to the window overlooking the square. He gazed down, then took something from his pocket and, opening the window latch, leaned out-too far out. Alarmed, Kathy hurried across to him. ‘What are you doing?’

He stepped back and closed the window again. In his hand he held a small silver camera, and he was smiling. ‘Taking pictures of them taking pictures of me taking pictures of them… Don’t worry, I wasn’t doing an Yves Klein.’

‘Who?’

‘The artist of the void,’ Rudd said carelessly, and strolled away. he window wasn’t locked.’ Brock and Kathy had left Rudd to drink his coffee and watch TV while they went downstairs to check the progress of the SOCO team in Tracey’s room. The crime scene manager, a middle-aged woman with a cheerful smile, gave them a verbal report. As with the other two abductions, there were signs of forced entry to the girl’s bedroom window. However, in this case, unlike the other two where force had been quite crudely applied, these traces were minimal. Scratches on the window latch suggested a tool with a sharp edge had been used to unfasten it from the outside, but a separate security lock was untouched, and appeared not to have been engaged.

‘Not locked?’ Brock said.

‘That’s right. It was latched but not locked.’

She’d noticed other differences between this and the earlier cases. With them, the girls’ bedrooms had been visible from adjoining streets and there was some evidence that the abductor, having targeted his victim, had watched her house to identify her room. In this case, though, the window looked onto a back courtyard which was screened from the rear laneway by a garage and wall, so it would have been much more difficult for the intruder to have observed the window. The woman also pointed out that the other two cases were much closer to each other than to Northcote Square, and the girls were both older than Tracey by several years.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «No trace»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «No trace» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


Barry Maitland: Chelsea Mansions
Chelsea Mansions
Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland: Silvermeadow
Silvermeadow
Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland: Babel
Babel
Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland: The verge practice
The verge practice
Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland: The Malcontenta
The Malcontenta
Barry Maitland
Barry Maitland: Bright Air
Bright Air
Barry Maitland
Отзывы о книге «No trace»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «No trace» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.