Unholy Dying Read Online Free Page B

attractions of his person that took you there.”
    Terry thought, then grinned.
    â€œI just like to know what the old bastard is up to.”
    â€œAnd what was he up to?”
    â€œA scoop of the most traditional kind, you won’t be surprised to learn. Some vicar or priest and a bimbo.”
    â€œThe vicar of Stiffkey lives on,” commented Patrick.
    â€œThe vicar of where ?” Terry asked.
    â€œStiffkey. Pronounced Stookey , spelled Stiff-key . Which is rather appropriate. His missionary zeal took him mostly among prostitutes, and he died in the lions’ cage of a traveling circus.”
    â€œI don’t believe it!”
    â€œGospel truth. They used him as their Communion wafer. You can imagine what a field day the papers at the time had with that story.”
    â€œWhen was this?”
    â€œBack in the thirties.”
    â€œAnd still it goes on. Vicars are still fair game.”
    â€œI’m not sure that’s so unfair,” said Carol Barr. “Anyone who sets themselves up as rather better than anyone else is asking for it if they show that in fact they’re pretty much the same. There’s the same interest in a bent copper.”
    â€œOnly bent coppers are always found not guilty by juries, unless they mistreat animals,” said Patrick De’ath. “Vicars are judged guilty by readers without a hearing.”
    â€œSo where is this vicar, then?” asked Carol, turning to Terry. “Local, presumably?”
    â€œPresumably. Actually, I think it may have been a priest. I heard the word ‘Father’ something or other. In other words, Cosmo is cobbling up the sort of traditional story that is thoroughly inaccurate and embarrassing and sells loads of copies.”
    â€œThat’s what we’re all meant to do,” said Carol.
    â€œDon’t defend the slimy little git,” said Terry, his voice becoming louder. “What he does—the sort of story he homes in on—is beyond the pale. He’s what journalism has sunk to. It’s what we all will sink to if we don’t go after something better.”
    If his friends were puzzled at the passion in his voice, they kept quiet about it. Patrick collected the glasses for a second round. And Carol Barr, meditatively chewing a bap that seemed to consist entirely of iceberg lettuce, wondered whether it was Cosmo, or Cosmo’s story, or Terry’s growing doubts about a career in journalism that had aroused something close to passion in the normally self-contained young man.

CHAPTER 3
Sink Estate
    Julie Norris gazed out the window of her ground-floor flat in the Council house on the Kingsmill estate on the outskirts of Shipley, the part nobody visited or went through. Immediately opposite was a patch of dumping ground. The tenants of one half of the semidetached that used to be there had misguidedly bought their house when the Council offered it to them at a knockdown price. When one died and the other was taken into a nursing home the property proved impossible to sell. Before the place had been on the market a month the local youth had moved in, smashing first windows, then doors. Before long the place was a total wreck. In no time at all the house became such a local eyesore and scandal that the tenants next door had to be moved elsewhere, and the shell of the two homes eventually demolished. Now the space where they had been was the dumping ground for ragged armchairs and sofas, old televisions, bags of household and garden rubbish, and all the detritus of modern living.
    Gary, playing on the floor in his usual boisterous manner,caught his thumb in the door and started to howl. After a minute or two of hoping he would stop of his own accord, Julie turned, crouched down, and took him in her arms.
    â€œÂ â€˜Bye, baby bunting,’ ” she crooned, remembering the old rhyme, “ ‘Daddy’s gone a-hunting.’ ”
    But she didn’t know