Читать книгу The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 70

Only the last word baffled him. It could have been any of RHEDIE, WHEDIE, WHEDAE, RHEDAE, or a number of weirder alternatives such as CHJKE which obviously made no sense at all.

He scratched his head. Search at… Judging by the context, the mysterious third word had to be a place name: search at somewhere. He looked up all the possible alternatives on his map, but he couldn’t find any. Suddenly remembering that there was a selection of local guide books for sale downstairs in the hallway of the boarding house, he raced down the stairs, bought one from the landlady which covered the whole of the Languedoc, and ran back to his room already flipping through the index. But none of the names existed there either.

‘Fuck!’ He hurled the book across the room. It burst open in mid-air with a flap of pages, crashed into the wall and bounced back into a vase of flowers on the mantelpiece. The vase toppled and smashed. ‘Fuck!’ he shouted more loudly.

Then a thought came to him that made his anger drop away, instantly forgotten. What about the codes that Rheinfeld had been repeating to himself in the recording? Would those give him an answer? He tore open the pad again and worked out the five letters. He almost laughed when he saw the result.