The Loyal Servant Read Online Free

few hundred signatures is going to stop the bulldozers moving in.’
    ‘What’s so terrible about a new school being built anyway? You’d think they’d be grateful.’
    ‘It’s not just a school though, is it?’
    Frank put his hands in his pockets and pulled a face. ‘Isn’t it?’
    ‘God, Frank – have you read none of my features?’
    He rubbed a hand over his chin looking like a man who wished he’d never asked.
    ‘It’s an academy . Repeat after me: academies are evil.’
    ‘OK – got that. Let’s get to the pub.’
    Angela made another attempt at vertical, this time employing a more gradual ascent. Thankfully the room stayed still and the contents of her stomach remained motionless.
    ‘Number one,’ she said, sticking a thumb in the air. ‘Academies are not accountable to the local authority.’ She waved an index finger at him. ‘Two: they headhunt all the best teachers from the surrounding schools.’
    ‘What’s wrong with—’
    She glared at him and he took a sudden interest in his shoes.
    ‘Three: they suck up cash that would have been distributed to other schools. Four…’ Her mind went blank. ‘Four escapes me for the moment.’
    Frank held up his hands. ‘Really, Ange – I get the picture. Just tell me what time to tip up and I’ll take all the photos you want – you can save the rest of the lecture ‘til then.’
    She pursed her lips and stared at him through narrowed eyes.
    ‘I promise you’ll have my undivided.’
    ‘Hah!’
    She’d been digging away at the academies story for weeks now and come up with nothing of any real substance. No nice juicy scandal to make her editor sit up and take notice. He was beginning to lose patience.
    ‘Come on, Ange – let’s get that drink. My shout.’
    Angela wrapped a scarf around her throat and shrugged on a raincoat, taking care to keep her head as still as possible. She edged gingerly around the desk and glanced over at Jason Morris’s empty chair. ‘Such a terrible waste. He had real talent, that boy.’
    Frank looked at his watch.
    ‘Do you know what he was working on?’
    Frank shook his head. ‘Why?’
    ‘Thought I might be able to pick up where he left off.’
    ‘Not content snatching a dead man’s drawers, now you want to steal his work too?’
    ‘I wouldn’t take all the credit. It’d be my tribute to him.’ She laid a hand against her heart. ‘You really don’t know what he was investigating?’
    ‘If you don’t know it’s not likely I would, is it?’
    Angela did her best to focus on Frank’s face. ‘I know how you lot like to gossip,’ she said. ‘Standing around all day waiting for a celebrity to flash an unsightly bit of cellulite at you.’
    ‘Is that how you think of me?’ He flashed her a smile. ‘I’m deeply wounded.’
    ‘You do know something, don’t you?’ She tottered over to him. ‘Come on, Frank – cough.’
    Frank held out his arms. ‘Would I lie to you?’
    ‘Whenever you get the chance.’
    ‘All I know, it was all very hush-hush. But then that’s the whole point, isn’t it?’
    Angela shook her head and immediately regretted it. The office pitched and rolled. ‘Whole point of what?’
    ‘Jason Morris was working undercover.’

4
    The squad car had a strange smell about it. Stale tobacco mixed with stale sweat and a trace of sick. The sick was stale too, Caroline decided. Anything fresher and she would have been gagging. PC Mills was sitting with her in the back while his colleague, the policewoman whose name Caroline kept forgetting, drove her home.
    It was well past 11pm when they left the department and the roads around Parliament Square were choked with traffic. Motorists hooted horns and flashed their high beams, quickly stopping when they spotted the police car. As they drove around the square, Caroline watched a peace protester running around the edge of the grass, his t-shirt pulled right up over his head, as if he’d just scored a last-minute winning goal in