Goodfellowe MP by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

off-balance, wrestled awkwardly with his thoughts.
    ‘Why should it be you?’ Corsa repeated. ‘Or is that too difficult a question?’
    ‘It’s an unfair question.’
    ‘Yes, but I’m sure you’ll manage.’
    Gooley returned his cup to the table, clearing the decks. He was a young man whose playing field of emotions stretched between enterprise and ambition, and the ground in between was exceptionally well trodden. He was not the sort of man to pass by an opportunity without launching himself at it with both kneecaps. It won him few friends, although the Herald’s City Editor might have counted himself amongst them, yet Gooley was still of an age where friends were little more than an audience.
    ‘OK. I’m a good journalist. I know the City, the institutions, how to gut a balance sheet.’
    ‘So do a hundred others.’
    ‘But far more important, I know men. City men. What drives them.’
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘Hunger.’
    ‘For fame?’
    ‘No, not in the City. Fame is for the gentlemen farther up the river at Westminster. That’s why they die poor and disappointed and in their own beds. In the City the hunger is for wealth. Money. Acquisition. And why so many of them die in other people’s beds. They’re warmer.’
    Corsa was amused. ‘You sound as if you’ve made quite a study of this. Something of an academic, are you?’
    It was the journalist’s turn to show amusement. ‘With my accent? You think I got that at university? No, Mr Corsa, I’m Oldham, not Oxford. Rugby league and Tandoori takeaway, that’s me, and I’ll waste your money on the finest claret only if it gets me a story. There’s nothing academic about me. I didn’t need books to understand the way the City men think. All I needed was a mirror.’
    ‘So we’re all avaricious, are we?’
    ‘Single-minded. Know what we want.’
    ‘And what do you want?’
    Gooley looked carefully around the penthouse. His eyes were not adjusted to appreciate the refinement, the glow of Lalique, the elegant discomfort of the Mackintosh chairs. He was simply lost in the size of it all. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got a hundred silk ties in your wardrobe.’
    ‘A hundred and fifty.’ Corsa exaggerated, but theyounger man’s eyes remained direct, disarmingly uncomplicated.
    ‘I want this, or something like this,’ he breathed. ‘I want to be part of it all. That’s why I want the opportunity to be your City Editor.’
    Corsa’s appreciation of the man grew. ‘But along with the opportunities also go responsibilities. To me. I’m very much a hands-on proprietor. The City is my world, too, and I don’t like being taken by surprise.’
    ‘Fair enough.’
    ‘I’m talking a two-way relationship. I tell you what I know; you return the confidence. I want to feel it’s a team effort.’ Corsa was an excellent player of this particular game, flattering his journalists and editors into subservience, leaving their professional integrity intact while ensuring they did precisely what he intended. ‘It’s not that I want any inside information, you understand, but I need to know you’ve got your finger on the pulse. That the stories you print are well founded and not simply dreamed up over lunch. Understood?’
    ‘Sharing inside information with you would be highly unethical’ – Gooley paused for no more than the beating of a wing – ‘if you were to use it. I feel sure our relationship would be based on a deep and mutual trust. If I were your City Editor.’
    ‘Good. Very good.’ Corsa mused, then made up his mind. The present incumbent could go chew nut buns. ‘Very well, Jim, in the spirit of mutual trust let me give you something. News which you will be the first to hear. Not for printing yet, but I want you to think about it. You know that the Granite Group isthe best damn company in the newspaper field, but the others are always snapping at us. And when these new European regulations come in there’s going to be one hell of a dog fight. So