A Coffin from Hong Kong / Гроб из Гонконга. Книга для чтения на английском языке

As a police officer he was about as useful as a hole in a bucket[15 - he was about as useful as a hole in a bucket – (разг.) проку от него было как от козла молока]. Luckily for him there had been no major crime in Pasadena City since he had got his appointment. This affair would be the first murder case since he had been upped to Detective Lieutenant from a desk sergeant in a small, unimportant cop house along the Coast.

But I’ll say this for him: even though be hadn’t the brains to solve a child’s crossword puzzle, he certainly looked the pan of an efficient tough cop as he breezed into my office with Sergeant Pulski, his side kick, trampling along in his rear.

Sergeant Pulski was a big man with a red fleshy face, small vicious eyes and two fists that seemed to be itching all the time to connect with a human jaw. He had less brains than Retnick if that is possible, but what he lacked in mental equipment, he made up in muscle.

Neither of them looked at me as they came in. They went into my office and stared for a long time at the dead woman, then while Pulski was going through the motions of being a police officer, Retnick joined me in the outer room. He now looked a little worried and a lot less breezy.

“Okay, shamus[16 - shamus – (разг., ирл.) частный детектив], give with the story[17 - give with the story – (разг., уст.) выкладывайте, что тут случилось]”, he said, sitting on the desk and swinging his immaculately polished shoes.

“She a client of yours?”

“I don’t know who she is or what she’s doing here,” I said. “I found her like that when I opened up this morning.”

He chewed on his dead cigar while he stared his hard cop stare. “You usually open up this early?”

I gave him the story without holding anything back. He listened. Pulski who had finished acting the police officer with the boys in my office, propped up the door-post and listened too.

“As soon as I found out the bungalow was empty, I came straight back here,” I concluded. “I figured something was going on, but I didn’t expect this.”

“Where’s her handbag?” Retnick said.

“I don’t know. While I was waiting for you to arrive I searched for it, but couldn’t find it. She must have had one. Maybe the killer took it away with him.