"Dave Hutchinson - Discreet Phenomena" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hutchinson Dave)

Pauline turned back to look at me. "Tell me about your wife."
I sighed. "It's private, Pauline."
"How does your wife feel about it?"
 "She feels the same way."
"Does she?"
By this time, we were leaning slightly across the table towards each other. "Yes, she does."
"Are you sure about that, Geoff?"
"Yes."
"Have you asked her?"
"No," I admitted. "I haven't."
She sat back, a self-satisfied look on her face. "Well," she said. "There you are, then."
"There's what?" Harvey asked, returning with our drinks.
"Geoff won't let me talk to his wife," said Pauline.
He looked at me. "Why not?"
"Because it's private," I said wearily, wondering why apparently intelligent people were unable to
understand what I was talking about.
"Oh, hell," Harvey said to me, while beaming his best smile at Pauline. "It's no big thing, is it?"
"It is to me," I said.
Harvey sat down. "Surely what Karen wants is more important, yes?"
I glared at him. He was only taking Pauline's side because he wanted to get her into bed, and under
normal circumstances I would have let it pass. But these were not normal circumstances.
"No," I told them both.
"Ask Karen," Harvey suggested. "How can it hurt?"
"How can it hurt?" I shouted at him. "Are you insane?"
"Hey," he said mildly. "Get a grip." He took a swallow of beer and shook his head. "Good grief."
"Do you think I'm over-reacting?" I demanded. "Is that it?"
"You just think about it," he told me in that lazy-eyed I'm-the-Lord-of-the-Manor way he adopted when
handing down judgements his tenants didn't like.
"No way," I said, shaking my head. "Absolutely not."

In the wee small hours of the next morning, I was woken by a thump and a desperate scrabbling noise on the
tiles above my head. There was a moment of absolute silence, then the sound of a large object sliding down
the slope of the roof, at first quite slowly, then with increasing speed. A tiny little voice, pitched inhumanly
high, pronounced a couple of syllables, then there was a bump, followed by a sort of thrashing thud on the
front lawn.
I got out of bed and lifted back the curtains in time to see an impossibly long-legged figure with arms that
reached down past its knees lift itself from the lawn, hop over the hedge, and stagger unevenly away down
the street.
I went back to bed. I always knew it was going to turn out to be a mistake, leaving beer out for Springheel
Jack.


3
The doorbell woke me at half past eight. I put on my dressing gown and took my hangover downstairs to yell
at whoever was on my doorstep, but when I opened the door Harvey and Pauline were standing there shoulder
to shoulder with identical looks of determination on their faces.
"Don't," I warned them.
"The little shit's doing it again," Harvey said. He looked furious; in all the time I had known him, there was
only one person who could make him look like that. My heart sank.
"It's important," Pauline told me.