The Quorum Read Online Free Page A

spoke to remembered Connor without recalling anyone brought in at the same time. Sally had only seen the man for a moment: white male, thirties-forties, stocky-tubby, blood on his face. The production manager said none of the vans had been out that day and, yes, they were all garaged where they were supposed to be, and why are you interested? As she made more calls, checking possible hospitals and trying to find a policeman who’d filed an accident report, she fiddled with a loose strand of cardigan wool, resisting the temptation to tug hard and unravel the whole sleeve.
    April had dumped her bag and coat on her chair but was not at her desk. That left Sally alone in her alcove, picking at threads when she should be following through the leads Tiny had given her. She had a stack of individual folders containing neatly-typed allegations and bundles of photocopied ‘evidence, all suggesting chinks in the Great Wall of GLT. The presenter of a holiday morning kid’s show might have a conviction under another name for ‘fondling’ little girls. A hairy-chested supporting actor on The Euro-Doctors , considered to have ‘spin-off potential’ even after the failure of the parent series, was allegedly a major player in the Madrid gay bondage scene. And, sacrilegiously, it was suggested the producer of a largely unwatched motoring programme had orchestrated a write-in campaign to save it from cancellation. In case Sally wondered where these tid-bits came from, she’d already found an overlooked sticker with the DLE logo and a ‘please return to the files of the Comet’ message; checking other files, she found dust-and-fluff-covered gluey circles that showed where similar stickers had been peeled off. So, apart from everything else, she was in charge of Tiny’s Dirty Tricks Department. She wondered if G. Gordon Liddy had got sick to his stomach. This morning, she had thrown up last night’s risotto. She should have learned to cook.
    Bender popped his head into the alcove. When he saw only her, his face fell.
    ‘Have you seen Ape?’
    ‘She was here,’ Sally told him. ‘She must be in the building.’
    Bender looked as if he’d pulled a couple of consecutive twenty-four hour shifts.
    ‘No matter,’ he said, obviously lying. ‘This is for her.’
    He gave her a file, which she found room for on her desk.
    ‘She’s not really supposed to have this, so don’t leave it lying around. Give it to her personally.’
    Bender, a tall man, never looked a woman in the face. His eyeline was always directed at her chest. In an awkward pause, Sally arranged her cardigan around her neck to cover any exposed skin. The associate producer was a balding schoolboy.
    ‘We were all sorry about, um, you know...’
    Sally thanked him, throat suddenly warm. She didn’t know why Bender was loitering. Had April taken up with him again? Considering the vehemence of her comments, it was not likely. Or maybe it was.
    ‘If you see... when you see Ape, tell her...’
    There was definitely something weird going down. Bender really looked bad. His usual toadying smoothness was worn away. He had an angry red mark on his ring-finger. It had probably had to be sawn free, and serve him right.
    ‘Tell her to return the files ASAP. It’s important.’
    When he left, she decided to try work therapy. A minion named Roebuck was reputedly interested in being bribed to let Mythwrhn peek at GLT’s post-franchise proposals. He’d contacted Tiny and it was down to her to check his standing. Being suspicious, she guessed Roebuck was her opposite number in GLT’s Spook Dept trying to slip the consortium dud information. She only had a name and she wanted an employment history. There were several people she could phone and - since everyone in television had at some point worked for, or at least applied to work for, everyone else - her first obvious choice was Mythwrhn’s own personnel manager. If he had Roebuck’s CV on file, it might have clues as to his