In Too Deep by Portia Da Costa Read Free Book Online Page A

raise at least some of these issues at the next meeting myself, to assuage my guilt. I jot down everything I can remember, but all the while there’s the tick, tick, ticking of a compulsion gathering.
    The shredded paper bags are in the basement, where the archive is. The archive is where Daniel Brewster’s workstation is. If I can’t have Nemesis, at least I can be proactive on the Professor McHotstuff front. He can only reject me again, and then, at least, I’ll know for certain that fancying him is a dead end.
    As one of the readers’ advisors, I have carte blanche to secure my desk and go down to the stacks in search of books for subject requests. So I roll down the cover and walk smartly to the ‘No Entry’ door that leads downstairs. The Borough Library archives and the area housing the stacks are a strange place, much of it bearing no resemblance to the more modern buildings upstairs. These are cellars belonging to old houses that were bulldozed to make way for the library complex. The lighting is odd and yellowy, and there’s an atmosphere part gentleman’s club, part abandoned nuclear bunker. A lot of the staff don’t like coming down here and will do anything to avoid it. But I’m rather fond of the place, especially lately.
    Or rather I was, until, on a whim, I touched Daniel Brewster’s cock.
    There’s old carpeting on the floor, so my steps are muffled to near silence. I discharge my ostensible reason for coming down, dumping the shredded paper and returning a couple of volumes I snatched up as a pretext. And then I pause, trying to frame a cheery greeting and a light, throwaway reference to yesterday that will get us over the hump of awkwardness and back on to a more promising path towards, well, towards something.
    Daniel’s carrel is empty. But he’s been here, and he’s clearly coming back. His tweed jacket is hung on a hook on the end of one of the stacks. Precious texts on the Wars of the Roses are lying open across the broad wooden table. You would think as a historian he’d be a touch more respectful of such rare tomes, but maybe he’s got other things on his mind, eh?
    There are also a lot of sheets of handwritten notes scattered hither and thither, along with two newspapers, each open at the crossword and Sudoku page. His high-end laptop is glowing with what looks suspiciously like a solitaire battleship game, rather than a learned treatise. Curiously, there are not one but two large magnifying glasses, set atop a heap of computer printout, and as well as a couple of roller-balls and some pencils there’s a rather beautiful fountain pen lined up beside an open stenographer’s notepad.
    Fountain pen?
    The area is awash with more light than illuminates the whole of the rest of the archive. Not for this scholar the ancient practice of scribbling and squinting by flickering candlelight. Several high-watt Anglepoise lamps shed clear bluish light provided by special daylight bulbs. Professor Hottie likes things bright and easy to see.
    So do I. But where the hell is he? Probably ferreting about at the far end of the long complex of smaller archive rooms. So I take the risk of drawing closer and taking a better look at his things.
    And the handwriting of the notes.
    I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s not a bit like the elegance of Nemesis’s lettering. It’s quite sharp, large and vigorous, expressing a hugely confident intelligence in its author. And the bits that are written by fountain pen are in black ink, not blue.
    The archive is almost silent apart from the occasional tiny chatter of the laptop’s hard disk and the distant humming of electricals , and the air is heavy with the weight of knowledge and dust. But suddenly I detect something else. A distinct buzzing sound. It’s almost exactly the same pitch as my vibrator and instantly my mind presents the weirdest of pictures. Has Professor Hottie got a secret vice he indulges in, down here in the bowels of learning? Or