Читать книгу Kawanga - Jack Halliday - Страница 11

CHAPTER SEVEN

C.J. sauntered over to the sink, filled a glass with water, gulped it and squinted out the window.

“I think we’re involved,” he called over his shoulder, smiling, waiting for her reply.

“Yeah; that’s what they call it in the movies,” Rita hollered in from the living room.

“So what are we supposed to do now? Get married?” she laughed.

“Beats me black and blue” he said, turning to face her. He leaned against the sink, the enamel creasing his elbows.

“It’s sure going to be strange at work now. I can’t even imagine working together; can you?”

“Let’s don’t even think about work,” Rita mused, tossing her head back against the couch cushion, peering down her nose at him, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

“O.K, let’s don’t,” he replied.

* * * *

It wasn’t that Bonnington was inept, not in the slightest. On the contrary, he was a veteran policeman with thirty years of experience. He’d seen a lot; experienced a lot. He’d drunk enough “stake-out” tea to float an ocean liner. No question, dues had been paid, beats walked, respect earned, by the proverbial, “blood, sweat and tears.”

This case was just different.

For one thing, he didn’t know—not actually—what he was looking for. A high ranking British official had simply hired him on the basis of his record. He was to retrieve a piece of “property,” presumably a document of some kind, which had very possibly made its way to Australia.

No, it hadn’t been wise to drink away most of his life’s earnings and “piss it away” at a dozen pubs in London’s east end. But that was behind him now; now he had to succeed—this once—and earn the nest egg his indulgence had hatched prematurely.

His mind raced in time with the train as it made its way to Heathrow. How had his career come to depend on this: a “pre-retirement send-off,” an anticlimactic “one for the road?”

He closed his eyes, let his head slump against the cool window pane. The lights striking his closed lids merged with a tired reverie of the trip he was embarking upon. A trip to what was once an English convict’s last stop, what was now, instead, an island paradise.