Читать «Полёт фантазии, фантазии в полёте» онлайн - страница 120

In the morning Julia was awakened by Steve’s telephone conversation with Sarah. His voice was surprisingly sweet, when he asked Sarah to wait for him at 12 o’clock at the Royal Cafe where he would bring a brief-case for his Chinese friend.

«Dirty liar! What is he plotting, I wonder», — thought Julia as Steve’s Mercedes was creeping slowly along one of the narrow Soho streets edged with tiny Chinese restaurants. At last the car stopped and an ugly yellow-faced man silently passed Steve a black brief-case. Just for a fragment of a second Steve opened it, but it was enough for Julia to notice neatly packed plastic bags with white powder.

— «That’s it! You want Sarah to be a drug-trafficker. Just you wait!» — When Steve started the car Julia had already made her decision.

It was a bleak October morning when all the bright autumn colours had been eaten up by the grey drizzling rain and there was no hope of sun.

«Damn this headache», — Steve said to himself as they turned onto Trafalgar Square. «Never had such an awful headache in my life… Perhaps because I had no sleep last night. Damn this rain! Hate driving in the rain…» Steve saw the red traffic light and pressed the breaks. Or rather he wanted to press the breaks but his right foot refused to obey and stiffened as if glued to the accelerator. Steve tried again and again but with no result. He had a curious feeling as if someone else was sitting inside his head and hitting it with little hammers that sent wrong commands to his limbs. He made one more frantic effort to escape from the imminent collision with a big yellow truck, but in vain: some unknown force made him press the wrong pedal and at full speed his new silver-green Mercedes crashed into the truck.

Julia’s soul rushed out of Steve’s dead body like a cork out of the bottle and up she went, flying higher and higher as if she were a balloon until she reached the height of Nelson’s column.

The sight of London from this point was so fantastically beautiful that it took Julia’s breath away and for a moment she forgot about the accident.

It had just stopped raining, the sun showed itself from the clouds and the sky was a patchwork of white, grey and blue. And below was London, lying like a miraculous carpet of rich autumn colours: red and yellow, green and golden.

The second of an ambulance horn made Julia turn her eyes to the place of the accident.

— «What an awful sight!» — shuddered Julia as she saw a new silver-green car crashed into the side of a big yellow truck. Through the smashed windscreen she could see Steve’s deformed body stained with blood. The two policemen didn’t even try to take him out as he was positively dead.