Bilton [antikvár]

Chapter One (Four months before the incident) The lifts at Globe Newspapers were incredibly quick, but on the other hand they made you feel sick. On the tenth floor the doors opened with a sucking sound to reveal June Brown. 'Adrian Day.'' she said. 'Er yeah,' I replied suavely. I followed June Brown down a wide, white corridor with oil paintings. We passed an open door, and I fleetingly noticed a small man standing still with his hands in his trouser pockets and saying, 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fiick.' The oil paintings were intensifying now, and statuettes were starting to appear. There was a peculiar inside-out quality to Globe House in that the nearer you got to its editorial heart the less it seemed like a newspaper office and the more it seemed like some sort of rambling country house. 'How ?iMr Piper this morning?' I asked June Brown as we pounded on. 'Stressed out,' she said, flatly. It had been a silly question; the product of sheer nerves. I had read so much in the media magazines about the man June Brown personally assisted that the prospect of seeing him incarnate was very intimidating. Harry Piper was a journalist of the old school, or, to put it another way, an alcoholic. Yet he was also a master of lifestyle features, with a whole string of lifestyle regulars to his name, starting with 'Just My Cup of Tea', in which celebrities talked about whether they put the milk in first or whatever. Now, as