A Kind Of Wild Justice

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t have a clue, Jo, to be honest. Even if I thought it was, say, Rob Phillips, he’s a Dartmoor farmer, for Christ’s sake, who’s never been in trouble with the police in his life. How would he know how to set about hiring Shifter Brown or his like? Of course, Shifter’s done jobs before for the O’Donnells, but topping one of their own, however nasty a piece of work he is – I just don’t see it. There’s another possibility. Jimbo’s made enough enemies in his time. It could still be somebody completely unconnected with the Angela Phillips case.’

  ‘But even Shifter believes he was hired for a revenge killing; he’s admitted that much, hasn’t he? Why else would he have taken Jimbo to Dartmoor and killed him the way he did? Shifter was told what to do, presumably. For Christ’s sake, he cut Jimbo’s dick off – the inference is obvious. If it wasn’t revenge for Angela, then it’s one hell of a coincidence.’

  ‘Unless all that was a smokescreen designed to deflect attention away from those really responsible. But as there’s nobody remotely in the frame apart from people involved in the old Beast of Dartmoor case, what would be the point of that? The more you think about it the more you keep going round in circles.’

  ‘Maybe Shifter will come clean eventually. He must know it’ll go easier for him.’

  Mike shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of course. But you know his sort. Do their bird and keep stumm. It’s a way of life.’

  They ate grilled sardines and fresh pasta, and began to reminisce about old times again.

  ‘Do you remember the day we came here and left before the main course?’ he asked her mischievously. She did, of course. They had eaten a starter of some sort and had suddenly become so desperate to be in bed together that they couldn’t spare the time for the rest of the meal.

  She didn’t know whether she wished he hadn’t mentioned it or not. They were on the third bottle of wine now. He had drunk considerably more of it than she had. She was, however, mellow enough to accept that the attraction was still there. For both of them. But she was admitting nothing. Not to him. ‘Vaguely,’ she said, as if in any case it were not very important.

  Suddenly he became very serious. He leaned across and touched her hand. ‘I still regret that I didn’t leave home for you,’ he told her abruptly.

  She studied him carefully, his eyes a little bloodshot now, his voice just very slightly blurred around the edges. The truth was, she suddenly realised, that she knew she still regretted it too, but she was dammed if she was going to admit it.

  She did not respond to his comment. Instead, after a few seconds she said in an even voice, ‘I think we could both do with some coffee, don’t you?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘The only thing I could do with is you. Nothing’s changed there.’ He closed the fingers of his hand around hers.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear that kind of comment from him, not after all this time, it was a little too glib. She tried to withdraw her hand.

  He tightened his grip.

  ‘Let go, Mike, please,’ she said, her voice calm.

  If anything, his grip tightened even more. He leaned forward so that his face was very close to hers. She could smell the alcohol on his breath and the old attraction did not seem quite so strong after all.

  ‘How about we skip the coffee, for old times’ sake. My hotel’s ten minutes from here in a cab …’

  Underneath the table she felt his other hand grasp her knee.

  Suddenly she became very angry. It was as if she was overwhelmed by all the unhappiness he had caused her. She could not believe that he could be quite so crass as to grab her and make a comment like that in the middle of a restaurant, particularly this restaurant. It really was the clumsiest pass she had ever been on the receiving end of and his excessive alcohol consumption was no excuse. A few minutes ago Joanna had felt warm and mellow, even a little elated, in his company. Now she was angry and humiliated. And she wondered if his choice of restaurant had been more than nostalgia, a deliberate ploy in some plan he had hatched to seduce her. Part of her fury, of course, stemmed from the knowledge deep inside that, had he handled it better, he might have succeeded. ‘Take your hands off me, you bastard,’ she told him very quietly. Her voice was very cold and so were her eyes.

  He obeyed at once, holding the offending hands out towards her, palms up in a gesture of supplication, but still grinning the grin that she had so often found disarming and now, perhaps because he was half drunk and perhaps just because of her anger, simply thought made him look really stupid.

  ‘All I ever was to you was a cheap lay, wasn’t it?’ she enquired conversationally.

  He began to protest.

  She stopped him at once. ‘Save it and fuck off,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know why I had anything to do with you again.’ Then she stood up and walked out of the restaurant, leaving him sitting there, aware of his eyes boring into her back.

  He didn’t try to stop her. Perhaps he knew that he really had gone too far. It gave her some small satisfaction to think that she had left him to pay a bill he could doubtless ill afford and that, taking into account the amount and quality of wine that had been consumed, it would undoubtedly be quite substantial.

  Fielding had one more day to spend in London before returning to his Exeter base. He knew what an idiot he had been in the restaurant. He’d downed a swift pint and a couple of large Scotches before even going there to meet Jo, and then he’d probably drunk the equivalent of two of the three bottles of wine he had ordered. It was getting to be disconcerting just how much he could drink nowadays without feeling much different from the way he felt when he hadn’t had a drink at all. But that kind of quantity was excessive even for him. He’d been deeply distressed by his dreary new appointment, which he’d been well aware he had absolutely no choice but to accept if he wished to survive at all, but that was no excuse.

  At his desk on his first day back at HQ in Exeter he found it difficult to concentrate on anything much. Par for the course nowadays. There was always so much on his mind. His thoughts kept turning to Joanna. He made himself work through the morning at the various dull routine tasks which were now his lot, reminding himself that the way things had been going he was lucky still to have a desk. Even if it was at Middlemoor, and even if that was about all he had.

  With a great effort of will he kept himself out of the pub at lunchtime, reasoning that it was time he kept his head clear for a while. Several times during the day he very nearly picked up the phone to call Joanna in London. Each time he stopped at the last moment. He didn’t think she’d want to hear from him. He bet she was going into the office every day. He knew that she was supposed only to work a three-day week, but he also knew that Jo was desperate to come out on top in the Shifter Brown case. He had been intrigued to realise over the past few months that she was just as ambitious as she had ever been. She hadn’t changed a bit. She had so much in life, wealth, a family, an impressive professional track record, a column, which he suspected most of the other hacks envied, and day-to-day crime coverage was no longer her responsibility, officially at any rate. Yet she couldn’t bear to be beaten by the rest of the pack. She had to be number one. That was Jo. And she’d be pulling out all the stops right now to make sure she stayed number one. Mike managed a wry chuckle. He bet she was working seven days a week on this one, whether or not she was actually in the office. She wouldn’t stop trying. Not Jo. He knew her.

  And he had surprised himself by the growing realisation that he would like to get to know her much better again. But he was afraid he had effectively scuttled his own chances. He hadn’t planned to make a move on Jo. Certainly not in the way he had. He couldn’t believe he had made such a damn stupid, clumsy pass at her. Throughout his life he had almost always got those things right. He had invariably been able to sense the moment. Know when to do and say what. And Joanna had been right up to a point – most of those women had never been anything other than cheap lays to him. Bu
t not her. Not Jo. She was wrong about that. Joanna remained the one woman ever really to have got under his skin. It was only now he had seen her again that he realised how little that had changed.

  He had been speaking the absolute truth when he told her he wished he had left home for her. But he’d had the opportunity and he’d baulked at it. He’d messed up Jo’s life then, he knew that, and it seemed pretty reasonable that she wouldn’t want to give him the opportunity to do so again. In any case, she was the woman with everything. Jesus, it was amazing she had any time for him at all any more. What was he, after all? Just a broken-down middle-aged cop working out his time for his pension.

  And then he’d made that dumb pass at her.

  Around five in the afternoon he decided to send her an e-mail apologising. He couldn’t bring himself to phone and doubted she’d take his call. But he was desperate to have some contact with her. He had never quite got used to the way e-mails disappeared into cyberspace – but it was better than nothing.

  He really did want to see her again. Even if it could never be anything more than just lunch or a drink.

  Joanna was at her desk trying to write her column, which should have been completed at least two hours earlier. This wasn’t like her, or she would never have lasted as long as she had at the top, even with a husband as editor.

  Her mind, too, had been wandering that day and even though she was over her deadline she found it hard to concentrate on her writing. She was, as Fielding had thought she would be, preoccupied with landing a really big exclusive on the Shifter Brown case, but she was also thinking about him.

  When her anger had subsided she had found herself dreadfully disappointed that the lunch had ended so badly. It had been his fault but, even though she knew it was silly, she was nevertheless upset by his crass behaviour. Trouble was, Fielding could still get to her. No doubt about that.

  And when an e-mail arrived from him she couldn’t help being pleased.

  Hi, Jo. This is just a note apologising for my stupid behaviour in the restaurant. I must have been drunker than I thought. I can’t believe what I did and I hope you’ll forgive me.

  I’d love the chance to make it up to you. Would another meeting be totally out of the question? Have lunch with me just one more time and I promise to keep my hands strictly to myself and not to do or say anything daft.

  She had to smile. There was something schoolboyish about the message. She sat at her desk thinking for a moment or two when Tim Jones came over to tell her he had a call for her from someone who wouldn’t give his name saying he had information on the Shifter Brown case. ‘Deep throat will only speak to the “Sword of Justice” lady, he insists, and I’m afraid to transfer because I’ve lost two calls that way already today – I think the system’s playing up again,’ Tim went on.

  She agreed to take the call on his line, got up from her chair and hurried across the editorial floor to Tim’s desk, with the young crime reporter ambling along just behind her. ‘More than likely a nutter but you never know,’ she muttered.

  Shortly after Jo left her desk Paul came looking for her.

  It had not taken her long to deal with the call. Within four or five minutes she was quite certain that the caller was indeed a nutter with nothing constructive to tell her or anyone else. The majority of such calls were. But she’d learned early on that a journalist with any sense always took time to listen. The one you ignored was certain to be the big one. News desk assistants spent half their day listening to calls from readers, ninety-nine per cent of which were a complete waste of time. But a result once in a hundred times made it imperative that they all got heard.

  When she returned to her desk Paul was standing behind her computer screen, staring at it, his face grim.

  The Fielding e-mail was still on the screen.

  This, she thought, is all I need. She opened her mouth to explain. A mistake in more ways than one.

  Paul raised a hand to silence her. He would never have any kind of personal conversation with her in the public arena of the newsroom. ‘I need to talk to you about this week’s column. Would you come into my office when you have a minute, please, Jo?’ he requested mildly enough.

  She nodded silently and, as he walked away, sat down at her desk, read the offending e-mail one more time and deleted it – as she should, of course, have done in the first place. Then, resigned to a difficult exchange, she made her way to Paul’s office at the other end of the newsroom.

  By the time she got there Paul was already sitting in the big antique leather armchair behind his desk and he did not get up when she walked in. Neither did he ask her to sit down. She did so anyway. She was damned if she was going to stand before him like a schoolgirl being given a telling-off by the headmaster.

  ‘I want you to explain to me exactly what that e-mail meant, Joanna,’ Paul demanded. His tone was chilly and precise.

  She was suddenly very irritated by him. She decided to go on the attack. ‘And I want to know what you were doing reading my bloody private e-mail?’ she countered.

  He sighed. ‘I came to see you to ask you where your column was; it is, as you know, very late and I looked at your screen in the vain hope that you might be working on it.’ He spoke with exaggerated patience. ‘Silly of me,’ he finished.

  She relented a little. She didn’t feel guilty about Fielding, but old habits died hard and she always felt guilty when she was late for a deadline. Deadlines were sacrosanct. On a daily newspaper it didn’t matter how brilliant your copy was if it was too damned late. ‘Look, Paul, it was nothing,’ she began. ‘We had lunch, he had too much to drink, he made a silly pass. Mike was apologising. For God’s sake, you read the damned thing.’

  Paul stared at her steadily. ‘You didn’t tell me you were having lunch with him,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Do I usually tell you everyone I’m having lunch with?’ she responded, trying not to react.

  ‘Mike Fielding is not everyone, not as far as you are concerned, Joanna,’ he said.

  ‘Paul, you’re making something out of nothing …’

  ‘Am I?’ he interrupted her. ‘When Private Eye ran their piece I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Absolutely. You know I did. Embarrassing though it was, I dismissed it out of hand. But now we have this …’

  She interrupted him then. ‘You gave me the benefit of the doubt? Honestly, Paul, I sometimes wonder who the hell you think you are.’

  ‘I think I am your husband, Joanna,’ he said. His voice was louder than normal and he didn’t sound quite as cool and controlled as usual. ‘And I think you’ve been forgetting that lately …’

  ‘I turned him down, Paul. I said no. No! OK?’ She spat the words at him. They had never indulged in anything remotely resembling a personal row anywhere in the Comet building before. She wondered vaguely if his secretary or anybody else could hear what was going on.

  ‘Yes, and why did you have to turn him down? That’s what I want to know,’ he stormed at her. ‘How exactly did you find yourself in that situation?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Paul,’ she said. ‘If we have to continue this can we at least do so at home and not in the bloody office?’

  He muttered something indecipherable. She’d had enough. She got up and left.

  If she had been angry with Fielding in the restaurant it was nothing compared with the anger she felt against Paul now. She had never been unfaithful to her husband. Not once during their eighteen-year marriage. In fact, there had never been anybody else since the first time she had slept with Paul. She had turned Fielding down, for God’s sake, and she told herself that she had never had any intention of doing anything else.

  Until now. She wasn’t sure quite what she intended now. Not after the ridiculous interrogation Paul had submitted her to.

  Several heads turned towards her as she walked back to her desk. She realised she was doing what they told her she always did when she was angry – the Bartlett Stomp, positively thumping her way across the newsroo
m. She slowed down and eased up – just a little. But her anger did not subside.

  To hell with it, she thought. She sat down at her desk, picked up her phone and dialled Fielding’s mobile number.

  He was in his car on his way home when he took the call, unusually having stuck to his plan to have a sober day. He was delighted to hear from her and told her so.

  ‘It’s OK about the restaurant,’ she said. ‘We’d both had too much to drink. You must have done to behave the way you did. No style at all, Mike, I have to tell you. Not like you!’

  Alone in his car, he smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’m losing my touch.’

  ‘What a relief for the women of the West of England.’

  ‘You flatter me.’

  ‘Indeed I do. Anyway, you’re on. Lunch next time you’re in town. How could I deny you the chance to make amends.’

  He took his left hand off the wheel and punched the air. ‘Yes,’ he shouted to himself silently.

  Aloud he said, ‘Great. I’ve got to come up again next week. Any chance?’

  They agreed on the following Tuesday and when their call was over he promptly called the inexpensive hotel he had so disastrously attempted to take her to after their previous lunch and booked it for that day.

  He had lied to Joanna. He had no call to be in London the following week. But he could take a day off and go up by train. Even though the hotel was reasonable by London standards it would be a pricey trip without any expenses to claim back. He didn’t care. There was no way he was not going to have a room booked. If the opportunity arose he wanted to be prepared. Maybe he was pushing his luck, but he had a gut feeling that might not be so. He couldn’t stop smiling as he continued his journey. Perhaps his pass had not been so clumsy after all.

  Fifteen

  Yet again they met in the same Italian restaurant. This time she was there before him and she wondered if that was significant. When he arrived the first thing she was somehow instantly aware of was that he had not been drinking. He had maybe decided that had been a mistake previously. He moved quickly and deftly across the restaurant towards her. He had always moved well for such a tall, rangy man. The second thing she noticed was his clothes. He was wearing a mid-blue jacket and darker-blue trousers. So was she. His face broke into a crooked smile the moment he saw her and he was still smiling when he sat down opposite her.