ThornyDevils Read Online Free Page B

would never speak to him again but that’s journalism: headlines before emotions. Concheetah was becoming an unreliable puppy anyway. It would be no loss. He would just have to avoid that end of town for a while, in case he got attacked by a stiletto or a flying handbag. Then again .
    The deadline was the event that all journalists lived by and were controlled by. They didn’t live from day to day— not tonight, darl, I’m having a deadline —they lived from deadline to deadline, and each one of them had his or her own way of dealing with the impending event. Some faced it down like an enemy assault, while others tried to distract themselves with idle chatter with colleagues, or cups of coffee and chain smoking. Like death and taxes, a deadline was a certainty. There was no escaping it.
    How did Peter Clancy deal with a deadline? Face it down, meet it head on, but only after having another cup of strong coffee, shuffling through files, talking to colleagues, having another cup of coffee and listening to Bob yelling from his office: You’d better pull your finger out, Clancy! It always worked. That’s what great editors were. Part martinets, part psychologists. Forget girlfriends, best friends, parents, lovers; the greatest relationship a journo would have ever have would be with a great editor. Robert Damien Xavier Connolly was such an editor.
    Peter was dealing with those thoughts and just mapping out his story on the word processor when the door of Bob’s office flew open and a familiar rasping bellow blasted out of it like a sand blasting machine scouring rusted metal.
    ‘Peter!’ Bob stood in the doorway, or rather blocked it with his ample girth: ‘Get your arse in here.’
    ‘What the?’ Peter retorted. ‘I’m on a deadline. I’m working my arse off here.’
    ‘This won’t take long.’
    Peter stood up and noticed that Bob was wearing a tie. Bob wearing a tie only meant one thing: he had had a meeting with the owner of the paper. The office rumours were true. He was walking slowly towards Bob’s office when a chill suddenly came over him. The wind of change .
    He should have been filled with trepidation when he entered Bob’s office but he and Bob had a good relationship. They had never had a cross word—strong differences of opinion occasionally, but never a full-on argument. They had a matey banter with each other that had developed out of mutual respect. It was a marriage made in journalistic heaven.
    Bob had a cigarette in his mouth and another lit in an overflowing ashtray when Peter entered the smoky office. He squashed into his chair, a ream of documents on the desk in front of him. He loosened his tie but Peter still felt nervous. The Owner was a faceless man who seemed to reside on another planet. You never saw him but his presence was always at the paper. He only thought of the circulation figures, the advertising, not the stories or the people who wrote them. Peter had noted that Bob had been to more meetings of late than normal. From office rumour, he knew that circulation and advertising had dropped off.
    ‘You look nervous,’ Bob observed as he watched Peter shuffling his feet.
    ‘You’ve been to another Owner’s meeting. Should we be worried?’ Peter smiled weakly.
    ‘Why don’t you take a seat,’ Bob replied. ‘You’re making me as nervous as a nun in a brothel.’
    Peter eased himself into a rickety chair and sat with his arms folded across his chest.
    ‘Will you relax?’ Bob guffawed, grabbing a Jameson’s whiskeybottle from a desk drawer and two glasses. He poured out the whiskey until it nearly reached the brim of the glasses and handed one to Peter.
    ‘ Slainte ,’ Bob held up his glass and threw back most of the whiskey. Soon after which his bloated face turned a deep crimson.
    Peter unfolded his arms. ‘ Slainte .’ He followed suit, although he raised his glass carefully and took a slow sip. Champagne and whiskey. He didn’t want to be too hammered before he