The Quorum Read Online Free

upping my holdings in an Italian cable channel by only two per cent, and by buying, through a third party, the studio and editing facilities GLT have currently put on the market to get fast cash. Years ago, in one of those grand tax write-off gestures, slices of the Mansions pie were given in name to those GLT sub-divisions and when they separate from the parent company, the slices go too. Then, all I’d have to do to get a majority ownership would be to approach the production team and the cast and offer to triple salaries in exchange for their continued attachment. I might have to change the name of the programme slightly, say by officially calling it The Mansions, to get round GLT’s underlying rights.’
    Tiny pulled open a drawer and took out a neat bundle of fifty-pound notes. He tossed it across his broad desk and it slid into Sally’s lap.
    ‘Buy yourself a frock,’ he said.
    In the lift, there was something wrong with a connection. The light-strip buzzed and flickered. Sally had a satisfaction high but also an undertone of nervous guilt. It was as if she had just taken part in a blood initiation and was now expected to serve forever the purpose of Kali the Destroyer.
    * * *
    As usual, there was nothing on television. She flicked through the four terrestrial channels: Noel Edmonds, tadpole documentary, Benny Hill (ha ha), putting-up-a-shelf. Like all Mythwrhn employees, she’d been fixed up with a dish gratis as a frill of the alliance with Derek Leech, so she zapped through an additional seven Cloud 9 satellite channels: bad new film, bad old film, Russian soccer, softcore in German, car ad, Chums commercial disguised as an AIDS documentary, shopping. After heating risotto, she might watch a Rockford Files from the stash she’d taped five years ago. James Garner was the only TV private eye she had time for: the fed-up expression he had whenever anyone got him in trouble was the keynote of her entire life.
    The telephone rang. She scooped up the remote, pressing it between shoulder and ear as she manoeuvered around her tiny kitchen.
    ‘Sally Rhodes,’ she said. ‘No divorce work.’
    ‘Ah, um,’ said a tiny voice, ‘Miss, um, Ms, Rhodes. This is Eric Glover... Connor’s Dad.’
    She paused in mid-pour and set down the packet of spicy rice.
    ‘Mr Glover, hello,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make...’
    There was an embarrassed (embarrassing) pause.
    ‘No, that’s all right. Thank you for the flowers. They were lovely. I knew you were Connor’s friend. He said things about you.’
    She had no response.
    ‘It’s about the accident,’ Eric Glover said. ‘You were a witness?’
    ‘No, I was there after.’ When he was dead.
    ‘There’s a fuss about the insurance.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘They can’t seem to find the van driver. Or the van.’
    ‘It was overturned, a write-off. The police must have details.’
    ‘Seems there was a mix-up.’
    ‘It was just a delivery van. Sliding doors. I don’t know the make.’
    She tried to rerun the picture in her mind. She could see the dazed driver crawling out of the door, helped by a young man with a shaved head.
    ‘I didn’t suppose you’d know, but I had to ask.’
    ‘Of course. If I remember...’
    ‘No worry.’
    There had been a logo on the side of the van. On the door.
    ‘Good-bye now, and thanks again.’
    Eric Glover hung up.
    It had been a Mythwrhn logo, a prettified bird-woman. Or something similar. She was sure. The driver had been a stranger, but the van was one of the company’s small fleet.
    Weird. Nobody had mentioned it.
    Water boiled over in the rice pan. Sally struggled with the knob of the gas cooker, turning the flame down.
    * * *
    A couple of calls confirmed what Eric Glover told her. It was most likely the van driver would be taken to Charing Cross, where Connor was declared dead, but the hospital had no record of his admission. It was difficult to find one nameless patient in any day’s intake, but the nurse she