The Sleepless by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

young hotshot from the Justice Department, Dean McAllister. He flew up from Washington the previous night so that he could escort Mr O’Brien back for the swearing-in ceremony.’ 
    ‘So, five. That shouldn’t have been too difficult to work out, even after a fire. Who’s the medical examiner?’ 
    ‘Raymond Moorpath at Boston Central.’ 
    ‘Moorpath? He’s in private practice these days.’ 
    ‘All the same, that’s where the bodies were taken, and Moorpath’s doing the honours. Special request from very, very, very high up. But you can’t deny that Moorpath was always the best, especially with fire fatalities. Good with floaters, too.’ 
    Michael thought for a while. Then he said, ‘You want a beer?’ 
    Joe shrugged. ‘So long as you’re having one.’ 
    ‘Come on through to the kitchen.’ 
    They left the studio. A sudden gust of wind blew a small blizzard of paper off Michael’s desk. The door banged behind them and they walked Indian-file along the narrow wooden bridge that led to the kitchen door, their feet making hollow noises on the planking. To their left, there was nothing but the grassy beach and the glittering sea. To their right, a steep flight of sunbleached steps led down to the sloping concrete front yard, where Patsy was hosing down their faded green Mercury Marquis, ‘6g vintage, and Jason was watching her, perched on the cinderblock wall, swinging his legs. Patsy looked up and waved and Michael waved back, and cheerfully called out, ‘How’s the carwash, honey?’ At the same time, however, he gave her the subtlest twitch of his head and bugged out his eyes, to tell her that he didn’t appreciate Joe’s presence here at all. 
    Patsy smiled and carried on hosing. Michael had never felt so close to anybody in his entire life, man or woman. He and Patsy laughed together; worried together; they practically breathed in and out together. He loved her, but the way they lived together day by day was very much more complicated than anything that he had ever called love before. It was complete physical and emotional and intellectual entanglement. 
    Patsy was only a hair’s-breadth taller than five-feet-two, with a shaggy carefree mane of sunbleached hair, and a sweet doll-like face, with china-blue eyes and a snubby nose and plump pink lips. Today she was wearing a tight pink-and-white striped T-shirt, which exaggerated her chubby breasts, and the tiniest pair of white cotton shorts, and fluorescent pink rubber boots. 
    The president of Plymouth Insurance Edgar Bedford had once disparagingly called her ‘Michael’s bimbo’. But in spite of her Barbie doll looks, Patsy was educated and funny and determined: and it was those qualities with which Michael had really fallen in love. Of course she was eyecatching and of course she was sexually exciting, and he loved that, too. But she could hold her own in any dinnerparty conversation about Mozart or Matisse or Guy de Maupassant; or the Big Bang theory; or politics and censorship; or rock’n’roll; or the ordination of women; or whether the earth was really warming up or not. 
    Michael and Joe went into the kitchen with its plain scrubbed table and its big old-fashioned sink and its tinkling ceramic mobiles of swans and yachts and vegetables. Michael opened the icebox and took out two bottles of Michelob, tossing one over to Joe. Then he sat astride a chair and unscrewed the cap of his beer and took a quick, uptilted swig. 
    ‘It definitely sounds like somebody’s trying to cover something up,’ he said. ‘The question of course is what, and whether it’s meaningful in terms of any insurance claim.’ 
    Joe said, ‘John O’Brien’s policy covers accidental death only. It specifically excludes suicide or homicide.’ 
    ‘And how much exactly is it worth?’ 
    ‘Two hundred and seventy-eight million dollars and change.’ 
    ‘So it’s obviously in Plymouth’s interest to show that he was killed deliberately, or that