The Bones in the Attic Read Free Page B

Imagine her coming home and finding a cobra curled up in front of the fire.” It was a topic, though, that he did not feel inclined to shatter by breaking the news of the skeleton. He postponed that without regret until they were in a more receptive mood.
    He was scheduled to do the local news bulletins on television during the morning and afternoon of the next day. As he went through from the Woodhouse Lane entrance to his studio, he paused to listen to his current bête noire talking on the phone in her office.
    â€œWell, get your fucking finger out,” she was rasping. “I told you what I want, Terry. I want that fucking program broadcast. It’s bloody brilliant, and it’s going to be shown. What the fucking hell are you, a man or a mouse?”
    Liza Pomfret belonged to one of the BBC dynasties. Not one of the visible ones, like the Magnussens or the Michel-mores, but traceably a Corporation dynasty. Her grandmother had been one of the high-ups in charge of early-evening magazine programs on television in the early sixties, and her father had been one of John Birt’s faceless apparatchiks in the nineties. As part of her grooming process Liza had been shunted up north into local broadcasting after a spell on one of the various holiday programs. One of the latter had been held up or canceled because a young reporter investigating an adventure holiday had been decapitated while emerging incautiously from a helicopter. Since she had arrived in Leeds, Liza had spent a great deal of her time on the phone pressuring her old colleagues to get it shown, behaving as if it were a combination of Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and Apocalypse Now and its loss would be a cultural tragedy.
    â€œApproach the family again, ” she was yelling, her face an ugly puce shade. “Put more pressure on them. Tell them it’s what Simon would have wanted.”
    Oh, yeah? thought Matt cynically. And the next thing we know, by a slip in the editing process, Simon’s beheading will be on TV for the nation to gawp at, earning itself a “First on terrestrial television” tag and splashed all over the tabloids.
    As he turned to continue his walk to the news studio, Vic Talbot, his producer, padded up behind him.
    â€œKeeping your eye on the opposition?” he asked softly.
    â€œOpposition?”
    â€œThe center forward of the other team.”
    â€œI don’t get you.”
    â€œYou’re playing for the local-chap-makes-good team, and she’s playing for the national highflyers team. With a bit of luck she’ll either shove her foot in her mouth or be swiftly translated to greater things in the great wen. Leaving you with your foot firmly on the ladder going up.”
    Vic said it encouragingly, even admiringly. It was the first time Matt had realized he was regarded as a man with a bright future at BBC North.
    Not long after the eleven o’clock news bulletin he was phoned by Sergeant Peace.
    â€œI’ve got one piece of positive information,” he said, “and the rest is very interim. The positive part—”
    â€œIs that the bones are human,” said Matt with a heavy heart. “You wouldn’t bother with anything further if they weren’t.”
    â€œTrue enough. Right, beyond that: presumably a child, around eighteen months or two years old, but they’re still cagey on the sex. And been there quite a time, though they won’t be naming any figure for a while yet.”
    â€œI could have guessed they weren’t put there yesterday,” said Matt ungratefully.
    â€œWe don’t much like guesses in this business,” said Charlie. “I’ve been doing a bit of rummaging myself. Elderholm was bought in 1977 by Mr. Farson—the elder one, that is—from Hannah Beeston, who was moving to a bungalow in Armley Ridge Road. She died of cancer in 1985.”
    â€œI see. So the date the bones came there is going to be very