Good Morning, Midnight Read Online Free PDF

teenager he’d fainted while watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show. On reviving and realizing the damage this was likely to do to his street cred, he had faked every symptom of every illness he could think of, causing a meningitis scare in his school and getting him confined to an isolation ward in the infirmary while they did tests. It had worked as far as his mates were concerned, but on joining the police force (which itself had been an act of denial), he had soon realized that if he fainted every time he had to enter a deserted property with only his torch for light, pretence of illness would get him thrown out as quickly as admission of terror. So he had learned to grit his teeth and keep his true feelings hidden behind the screen of pleasantries that got him his nickname.
    Now he remained stubbornly in his seat as his partner mounted the steps to the open door. Moscow House seemed to grow in bulk as he watched, towering high into the swirling mist where it wasn’t hard for his straining eyes to detect ruined battlements around which flitted squeaking bats.
    Then the mist came rolling down the dark facade as if bent on putting a curtain between himself and Alan Maycock.
    “Oh shit,” said Jennison again. What was worse, out here alone or in there with his partner?
    That part of his mind still in touch with reason told him that if anything happened to Maycock he’d have to go into the house anyway.
    With a sigh of desperation, he rolled his bulk out of the car, crushed the remnants of his fish supper into a ball and hurled it into the darkness, then jogged towards the house shouting, “Hang about, you daft bugger. I’m coming!”
     
5 A TIGHT CORK
     
    “What do they put these things in with? Sledgehammers?” snarled Cressida Maciver, gripping the bottle between her knees and hauling at the corkscrew with both hands.
    Ellie Pascoe smiled uneasily and glanced at her watch. Half-eight, two empty bottles lying on the floor, and they hadn’t even eaten yet. Nor could her sensitive nose detect any evidence of food in preparation wafting from the kitchen, and Cress was one of those cooks who couldn’t scramble an egg without sprinkling it with spices.
    But it wasn’t the thought of going hungry that caused her unease. It was the fact that on a couple of previous occasions, even with food, the opening of a third bottle had been closely followed by an attempt at seduction which came close to sexual assault. After the second time, Ellie had been ready with various stratagems to pre-empt the well-signalled pounce, and though their farewell hug sometimes came close to frottage, she had managed to escape without damage. Sober, next time they met, Cress seemed to have forgotten everything in the same way that, drunk, she clearly had no recollection of Ellie’s having confided in her that once, at university, curiosity and a determination not to appear repressed or naive had got her into a female lecturer’s bed, but the experience had done nothing for her and wasn’t one she had any desire to repeat.
    Usually she got a taxi home, but when her husband, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe had announced they’d need a baby-sitter as piles of neglected paperwork were going to keep him at his desk deep into the evening, she’d declared that what they lost on the sitter they could gain on the taxi and arranged for him to pick her up about ten-thirty, which was the usual danger time. Now the schedule was blown to hell, and as well as uneasy, Ellie felt cheated. She was very fond of Cress, and in matters of taste generally, politics sufficiently, and humour absolutely, they shared so much that their evenings together before the hormones took over were a delight which tonight looked like being cut well short.
    The assaults always occurred when Cressida was between men, which was pretty frequently. The intensity of her commitment was more than most could abide for long. The journey from feeling adored and cosseted to