Читать онлайн «Ghostheart»
Автор Роджер Джон Эллори
Ghostheart
R. J. Ellory
Copyright © Roger Jon Ellory 2004
The moral right of Roger Jon Ellory to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Orion Books
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA
All characters in this publication are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN (hardback) 0 75286 059 3
ISBN (trade paperback) 0 75286 101 8
Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,
Lymington, Hants
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Beyond the writing of a book,
there are those who make it happen.
In this case, the usual suspects are as follows:
My agent, soundboard and co-conspirator, Euan Thorneycroft.
My assistant editor, compadre and text-buddy, Nicky Jeanes.
My editor, my friend, the modest genius, Jon Wood.
And to Robyn Karney, (aka Thelma)
for her balanced eye and faultless precision.
To all those whose words captivated my imagination:
Raymond Chandler
William Carlos Williams
Walt Whitman
Jerzy Kosinski
Rene Lafayette
Anita Shreve
William Gay
Stephen King
Tim O'Brien
and an unnamed hundred more . . .
To my wife and son, constant reminders
of all that makes life worth living.
William Carlos Williams - 'Paterson'
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter One
The sound from the street was bold, bellying up against the breeze like a bright colored streamer, and from the sidewalk vents the smoke and steam crawled like tired ghosts from the subway below. It was early, a little after eight a. m. , and from the boulevards, from the junctions and corners and storefronts, people emerged to meet the world as it surfaced from sleep.
Manhattan came to life, here on the Upper East Side. Columbia University, Barnard College and Morningside Park, bordered to the west by Hudson River Park, to the east by Central, and then the West nineties and hundreds, roads that skipped out in parallel lines - a mathematician's archipelago. Here was academia - the students and bookshops, the Nicholas Roerich Museum, Grant's Tomb and The Cloisters - and wrapped around it the smell of the Hudson River, the sound of the 79th Street Boat Basin and the Passenger Ship Terminal to the south.
