"Brookmyre, Christopher - Boiling A Frog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brookmyre Christopher)

'Yeah. All right.'
'You better tell me where you are.'
'Sure. It's 14 Dublin Street. Graham on the buzzer.'
'14 Dublin Street. Graham.'
'Thanks, Andrew. I owe you big-time.'
Aye, damn right you do.'


... J.C. CODE RED . . . J.C. CODE RED . . . PETER L IN
BIG BOTHER... SAYS IT'S A JOB FOR E.D. . REQUESTS
E.D. AT 14 DUBLIN ST ASAFP ... NAME ON BUZZER
GRAHAM...

'Of course I'm bloody bitter, Ian. So would anyone be. I feel
like Debbie Reynolds in Singing in the Rain. It's my work
behind the scenes that's keeping the show on the road, but
it's been made crystal clear they don't want me out in front
of the audience.'
Elspeth had another sip of her mineral water. Beadie's
cigar smoke was bothering her throat, and the over-sugary
dessert had left a stickiness in her mouth. Midway through
the last sentence, it had caused her voice to catch in that
phlegmy way that made her sound like Elmer Fudd. She
was talking too much, she knew, but with the unaccustomed luxury of an
attenfive ear before her, it was beyond
her will-power not to take advantage. Usually she was the
one who had to do all the listening, the taking note, the
thinking about other people's problems. And for what, she
was increasingly asking herself.
'Och, I suppose I ought to try and be more philosophical
about it. The irony's not easy to miss, that's for dead sure:
the wages of spin. I've put all my energies into the great
New Labour voodoo of politics-by-presentation, making
the packaging as important as what's in the box, so I
shouldn't be so surprised when they decide I'm not saleable
and sexy enough for the front benches.'
'Whoever said you weren't sexy, Elspeth? Tell me, I'll
lamp him one.'
'Oh, piss off, Ian, I know what I look like, and I know what
you think I look like too. "Thirty-five going on sixty," I overheard you
saying once, back when we were at the Recorder.'
Beadie blushed a little, which she took to be almost
touchingly deferential. In his tabloid days he had regularly
said far more vicious things than that, to his underlings'
faces, and was not known to be kept awake in later years
by remorse. The memory of him firing a pictures editor by
screaming at the enfire newsroom to 'tell Security to get that
spastic-looking cunt out of my sight' was one that never left
anyone who witnessed it (and no doubt, knowing Beadie,
that was probably the idea).