The Kingdom of Bones

Начало книги

They were driving sheep through the middle of town again. The office window was open and Sebastian Becker could hear them from his desk. All through the afternoon Oakes, the bookkeeper, had been finding reasons to look down into the street. Now he had another.

Sebastian laid down his pen and tilted back his chair. His eyes hurt. He yawned and stretched and pressed the heels of his palms into them and wondered, not for the first time, whether he needed to be checked out for eyeglasses.

Then he realized what he was doing, and cut the yawn short as best he could.

He said, “Are you expecting someone, Mister Oakes?”

Oakes looked back into the office. “Only the boy with the bag from New York,” he said.

“The boy’s been and gone,” Sebastian said. “There was nothing that can’t wait until Monday.”

Oakes hesitated for a moment and then moved out of the slanting sunlight and away from the window. There were at least half a dozen other desks in the room, none occupied, but all of them piled high with paperwork. One chair had a waistcoat slung over the back of it. Another, a gun belt.

Читать дальше →