Unholy Dying Read Online Free Page A

just down the road. I can tell you’ve heard something.”
    â€œWhen I say I know nothing about it, Cosmo, what I mean is I have no intention of talking about it to you.”
    Cosmo let out a rich chuckle. That’s what Brian thought!
    â€œI rather interpreted it as that. Unfriendly, that’s what I call it. You were always in the thick of things, Church-wise, Brian. I should think you even know the name of the bimbo concerned.”
    Again there was silence at the other end. But he hadn’t rung off.
    â€œWell,” resumed Cosmo, in a reasonable voice, “would I be getting warm if I suggested Julie Norris?”
    â€œCosmo, if you know so much—”
    â€œI’m guessing she isn’t the sort of single mum who’ll be in the telephone directory. I’d guess she lives in a grotty flat in a slum estate, full of nappy smells and greasy fish-and-chip paper—would I be right?”
    â€œI’m not involved with the girl, Cosmo.”
    â€œI’m not suggesting you are, Brian. Happily married as they come, aren’t you? That little episode with Mandy Miller on the switchboard at the Telegraph and Argus is long behind you, isn’t it? I shouldn’t think your wife ever even got suspicious, did she? Lucky man, you are, Brian.”
    He still hadn’t rung off. Cosmo could almost hear the sound of thinking. In the end, the reply he wanted came.
    â€œThey say she lives on the Kingsmill estate. . . . God, you are a bastard, Cosmo. I pity your wife and daughters.”
    Cosmo barked with laughter.
    â€œDon’t bother, Brian. You can’t pity them more than they pity themselves.”
    This time the phone at the other end was put down, and violently, but Cosmo’s smile as he replaced his own receiver showed that he knew he’d won a famous victory.
    Later that day, when the last editions were on the streets, Terry Beale and several of the other juniors on the paper—anyone, in fact, under the age of twenty-five—went to O’Reilly’s, the nearby Irish-theme pub, which was about as Irish as Cleethorpes, and had a convivial pint, as they often did at the close of their day. Terry, though, stuck to his usual orange juice.
    â€œWhat was old Cosmo up to today?” Carol Barr asked Terry. They had a common history of suffering at his hands.
    â€œCosmo? You mean apart from trashing my piece?”
    â€œDon’t make a big thing of that, Terry. We all know he trashes everybody’s pieces.”
    â€œTrue. I’m not claiming most-picked-on-victim status.” He thought for a moment, then added: “But the thing that hurts is that, from his point of view, and from the paper’s point of view, he was dead right. What I finally turned out was a better Chronicle story.”
    â€œThat may be,” said Patrick De’ath. “But Cosmo and the Chronicle are things of the past. Cosmo lives in a world of scoops and ‘Hold the front page.’ He’s a bit pathetic, a dinosaur.”
    â€œOh, and has journalism got beyond all that?” asked Terry bitterly. “Gone onward and upward to better things? It’s passed me by if it has. All I can see are British newspapers going further and further down into the sewers.”
    â€œYou’re wrong, Terry,” said Patrick, draining his Guinness.“The future isn’t with the tabloids—that’s why they’re increasingly desperate and hysterical. The future is with the broadsheets. That’s what people are turning to.”
    â€œAnd could anyone say The Times and the Guardian are what they once were?”
    â€œCut the philosophical stuff,” said Carol. “I asked what Cosmo was up to after he’d savaged your piece.”
    â€œHow would I know?” Terry asked.
    â€œDon’t play the innocent with me, Terry. I saw you passing back and forth behind Cosmo’s chair without good reason. It wasn’t the