Read Online Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller by Stephen Leather - Free Book Online

then you left. Is that correct?’
    Nightingale nodded.
    ‘For the tape, please.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘You tampered with a crime scene?’
    ‘It wasn’t a crime scene,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘So why destroy forensic evidence unless you wanted to hide your guilt?’
    ‘I wanted to avoid this,’ said Nightingale. ‘I wanted to avoid being given the third degree for something I didn’t do. I thought it would be easier just to walk away and not be involved.’
    ‘But you can see how what you did suggests that you had something to hide?’
    ‘I can see that, yes,’ admitted Nightingale.
    ‘So why didn’t you call nine-nine-nine instead of running away?’
    ‘He fell nine floors,’ said Nightingale. ‘He was beyond needing the emergency services.’
    ‘The police,’ said Chalmers. ‘Why didn’t you report it to the police?’
    Nightingale glared at the superintendent. ‘Because I wanted to avoid this.’
    ‘This?’
    ‘Being interrogated as if it was somehow my fault. It wasn’t. He jumped of his own accord. I don’t know why he did it, but he did, and nothing I did or said afterwards was going to change what had happened.’
    ‘You left a crime scene,’ said Chalmers.
    ‘It was a suicide and suicide isn’t a crime.’
    ‘But pushing someone to their death most definitely is,’ said Chalmers.
    ‘That’s not what happened.’
    ‘In which case you should have given the police the opportunity of deciding whether or not a crime had taken place.’
    ‘Are you going to charge me?’ asked Nightingale.
    ‘Not right now,’ said Chalmers, writing a note on his pad.
    Nightingale stood up. ‘Then I’m out of here.’
    ‘That’s up to you. But this isn’t over.’
    ‘It never is with you, Chalmers,’ said Nightingale.

11
    N ightingale walked out of the police station and lit a cigarette, then phoned a minicab firm. He had smoked half his cigarette when Jenny appeared.
    ‘Well, that was a waste of everybody’s time,’ she said.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Jenny, buttoning up her coat. ‘Just bloody-minded policemen.’
    ‘Who questioned you? The female cop?’
    ‘She was in the room but a uniformed inspector asked the questions. Some guy called Johnson. Do you know him?’
    Nightingale shook his head.
    ‘He was an idiot. They were trying this “good cop, bad cop” routine with the woman pretending that she was my new best friend and Johnson threatening me with life behind bars for helping you cover up a murder. Please tell me that all cops aren’t as stupid as that?’
    Nightingale blew a tight plume of smoke up at the sky. ‘It varies,’ he said. ‘Chalmers isn’t stupid but he’s got his sights set on me. What did you tell them?’
    ‘I said you pushed Harrison off the balcony and threatened to kill me if I told anyone.’ Nightingale’s jaw dropped and Jenny grinned and shook her head.
    ‘Don’t do that to me,’ he said.
    ‘Well, for goodness sake, Jack, what do you think I said?’
    ‘I just hope you told them what happened,’ he said. ‘Because that’s what I did.’
    Jenny sighed. ‘Please give me some credit,’ she said. ‘Anyway, if they weren’t happy with what we said they wouldn’t have let us go, would they?’
    ‘They can’t hold us without charging us,’ said Nightingale. ‘And they don’t have enough evidence for that.’
    ‘There you are, then,’ she said.
    ‘You told them about cleaning the flat, the fingerprints and all?’
    She nodded. ‘I figured I had to, right? If they’d looked at the CCTV footage then they must have gone looking for fingerprints and it would have been obvious that the place had been wiped clean. So yeah, I told them.’
    Nightingale nodded. ‘That’s good. At least we’re consistent,’ he said.
    ‘Do you think that’ll be the end of it?’
    ‘I hope so,’ said Nightingale. ‘But Chalmers will carry on sniffing around, that much I’m sure of. He’s