Pokrewne

Start
Brosnan John Wladcy niebios Wojna wladcow niebios
Charles Knief [John Caine 02] Sand Dollars (v5.0) (epub)
Ball, John Virgil Tibbs 02 Totes Zebra zugelaufen
Becca St John [Protector 00.5 The Healer (epub)
Birmingham John Os czasu 001 Wybor broni
Collected Poems, 1937 1971 John Berryman
Czerwone kapturki numer 1, nume John Katzenbach
[Eric John Stark] Enchantress O Leigh Brackett
Doctor Who The Mutation of Time John Peel
Cheryl Holt Promise of Pleasure (epub)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Chanya loves her too, of course, and when a Thai girl loves, she tells all.A tuk-tuk passes, spilling black pollution from its two-stroke engine.They used to be a symbol of Thailand: three wheels, a steel roof on vertical struts, and a happy smiling driver.Now they’re a tourist gimmick catering to a diminishing number of tourists.So far the new millennium has not delivered much in the way of new; instead we have a certain foreboding that a return to old-fashioned grinding poverty might be our share of globalism.Kimberley hasn’t noticed this yet—she’s been here only two days, and already the work ethic has gripped her.She’s not seeing the tuk-tuk or even its pollution.“I’m not going to use our guys to copy the DVD,” I say.She looks at me.“That kind of thing is produced in very limited numbers, sold to a specialized international market.” She is still looking at me.I feel blood rising up my neck, into facial blood vessels.“This is a poor country.” Still the look: I have to come clean.“They would sell it.”She turns away to save me from her contempt.A couple of beats pass, then briskly: “I’m okay now.How are you going to copy it?”“I’m not.I’ll put it in my pocket.You can use the business center at the Grand Britannia to e-mail it straight from the disk.”She waits in the public area while I go back to retrieve the disk: five point seven megabytes of distilled evil.Out on the street she pauses to stare at a young monk in his early to mid-twenties.He is tall, and there is an exotic elegance about him incongruous with the Internet café he is about to enter.“Using the Net is frowned on by the Sangha, especially in public areas, but it’s not a serious offense.Often monks use it to check Buddhist websites,” I explain, glad to talk about something lighter than a snuff movie.“Is he a regular around here? Somehow this doesn’t seem like the kind of place a monk would want to hang out.” Kimberley feels the need for small talk too.“I saw him for the first time yesterday.I don’t know which wat he’s attached to.”2In Dr.Supatra’s underground kingdom rotary saws and twenty different varieties of knife hang on the walls, from meat cleavers to the finest stilettos.I haven’t told her about the DVD yet; actually, I haven’t told anyone except the FBI and Chanya, which doesn’t say much for Thai integrity, does it? Not that I don’t trust Supatra.In times when honor is hard to come by, those who possess it tend to do so in great measure.Supatra is as incorruptible as I am.The reason I didn’t tell her about the video is that I didn’t want to prejudice her mind.I introduce her to Kimberley.Dr.Supatra looks at her a little suspiciously; we’re all somewhat weary and wary these days of the Western superiority complex; but Kimberley is not quite like that anymore.We met on a case here in Bangkok about five years ago when she was a hormone-haunted manhunter.She’s a lot sadder and wiser these days.She’s even learned enough about Thai customs to press her hands together and raise them to her lips in a not-bad wai that acknowledges Supatra’s superior status in terms of age: she’s over fifty, no taller than five feet, slim and stern in her white laboratory coat.Now that Kimberley has shown humility, Supatra is prepared to open her heart, and she’s leading us out of the lab to the vault.As she walks with her head held contemplatively to one side, a technique that somehow compensates for her lack of height and makes it seem as if she is the tallest person around, she asks, “So, Sonchai, do you know who the victim is?”A wince crosses my features so fast, Supatra doesn’t catch it.Kimberley does, though, with those merciless blue eyes.“I checked her prints on the national database.A girl called Damrong, from Isakit.”“A prostitute?”“Of course.”“Hm.”We have come to death’s filing cabinet, about one hundred man-size drawers set into a wall.Without needing to check the number, Supatra goes to one at about knee height and beckons to me to pull.It’s heavy but pleasingly mobile; a medium-to-hefty tug starts the drawer rolling, and Damrong comes out headfirst.Another wince on my part.Supatra assumes it’s my sensitive nature; the FBI has other ideas.Even bloated in the face by the effects of asphyxiation, she still impresses.You can see the perfect line of her jaw, her high cheekbones, the Egyptian slant to her eyes, the infinite range of smiles available to those thin but sensual lips, the perfect white teeth, even that extraordinary something…Who am I kidding? Of course the strangling has hideously altered the perfect balance of her features, bloating them almost beyond recognition; the others see only an ugly corpse—their minds are not prejudiced by prior knowledge.When the drawer is fully extended, though, there is no doubting the perfection of her limbs, the fullness of her breasts, the firm but yielding thighs.Her pubic hair has been shaved, and there is a silver ring set in one of her labia.The tattoo in the area of her navel is an unremarkable serpent coiling around a sword.Despite myself, I cannot help reaching out to her limp left wrist and turning it: a thin whitish scar no more than an inch long from a longitudinal cut into a minor vein.Dr.Supatra nods.“I saw it.An old wound.If it was an attempt at suicide, it was not a very serious one.”“Yes,” I say.Supatra has done a not-bad job with her stitching, which is famously neat.My eyes want to gloss over the great Y cut across the top of her chest, all the way down to her pelvis.All the organs have been removed, something I’m finding hard to assimilate, especially with the FBI now concentrating on my face rather than on the corpse.“So,” I say, swallowing, “what can you tell us?”“About the cause of death? In this case what you see is what you get.She died of strangulation by a nylon rope about one centimeter thick.The orange rope your men found around her neck is the rope the perpetrator used: the fibers correspond.There is no competition for cause of death—all her organs were in perfect condition, and there were no signs of other wounding or any viral or bacterial agents that might have contributed in any way to her demise.”“No signs of forced penetration?”“None at all.It seems as if a lubricant was used.Of course, that does not necessarily mean intercourse was consensual, merely relatively painless.”“Sperm?”A shake of the head.“Both vagina and anus had recently been penetrated, one assumes by a penis, in which case a condom must have been used [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]