A Kind Of Wild Justice (26 page)

How such a monstrous man could ever come across as endearing was beyond Jo. But he did, no doubt about it.

There followed a brief exchange with Lady Slater about how O’Donnell shouldn’t think for one moment that anything that happened in her court was Mickey Mouse and that he might yet find there was nothing Mickey Mouse about the powers it possessed either. O’Donnell grovelled a bit, but Jo suspected from the expressions on the faces of Lady Slater’s two fellow magistrates that his words had already had the desired effect, on them at least.

She didn’t like the way things were going one little bit. O’Donnell was good, no doubt about it. She dreaded to think about what might be coming next.

And she was right to dread it. Very skilfully Mr Burns led his client into continually stressing what was being presented as unfairness as well as the alleged illegality of the private prosecution.

Suddenly O’Donnell went off on a tack which Joanna had most certainly not been expecting. ‘It’s that DI Fielding, he’s always had it in for me,’ he
blurted out. ‘Came to see me, didn’t he, accused me of murder. Twenty years later, mind. And he had no right. No right at all. I’m innocent. I’ve been properly tried and proven innocent. I didn’t murder that Angela Phillips, I didn’t. And I didn’t kidnap her or rape her either. How many times have I got to prove myself against this Mickey Mouse stuff? Begging your pardons again, Your Worships …’

Joanna looked across the court at Fielding, saw him slump in his seat. She didn’t have long, however, to consider his discomfort before she too was targeted by O’Donnell. ‘It’s him and that woman Joanna Bartlett from the
Comet
,’ O’Donnell continued, actually pointing across the court at her. ‘They set this up. They set me up. It’s bleeding harassment, that’s what it is. The Phillips family didn’t take this case out against me. Not really. They did. She did, anyway. The
Comet
agreed to pick up the costs and more. It’s nothing to do with new evidence. They’re getting paid for it, that’s why they’re having another punt at me after all this time. For money. That’s why!’

There was, of course, pandemonium. Bill Phillips looked as if he’d been punched. His son lowered his face into his hands. Young Les looked stunned.

Joanna was horrified and shocked rigid. She really hadn’t expected this. Neither had Fielding. Paul had seen the dangers, but she had reassured him. She had been so certain of herself, or at least pretended to be. As for Nuffield – she’d got the impression that the bloody man thought he was invincible. Indeed, he had always seemed to be so. Jo couldn’t bear it. Was the inevitable blow to his invincibility going to come now? She feared it was.

The O’Donnells might have guessed about the
Comet
’s involvement, but how had they known it was Fielding who had put her up to it, she wondered. Perhaps they guessed that too. But there were many ways – not least that Fielding, so delighted that the case was going to happen, had boasted about his part in it to his colleagues. Particularly if he’d been drinking. Joanna assumed that he still drank. Probably more than ever.

Anyway the damage had been done now. These were bold tactics on behalf of the defence. They were also probably very clever ones. You could never underestimate the sanctimonious hatred the British public profess to have for the tabloid newspapers they read so avidly. And their sanctimony invariably knew no bounds if they found themselves in a position, as magistrates, or sitting on juries, where they felt they had these scurrilous rags and those who produced them at their mercy.

Unwelcome examples flashed through her head. Jo didn’t see how anyone in their right mind could have believed Jeffrey Archer’s ridiculous story that he had arranged for an intermediary to hand a bundle of cash to call girl Monica Coghlan on King’s Cross Station, not in return for her silence but out of the goodness of his heart.

But as far as the jury had been concerned the alternative was that the
Daily Star
, the most downmarket of all the British tabloids, had been telling the truth. Jeffrey Archer, bold and streetwise as ever, had correctly gambled that no jury would willingly allow that possibility.

By focusing on a tabloid newspaper’s involvement in his prosecution, O’Donnell was in effect playing
the role of an innocent man being persecuted by the press – with a little bit of help from a maverick policeman. And the magistrates, Jo feared, were lapping it up. She was still numb with shock and could hardly bear to think about the possible consequences.

It was all over that same day. The magistrates withdrew for just a few minutes shortly before four o’clock. Then Lady Slater delivered the verdict of the bench. In doing so, she predictably strongly criticised the
Comet
for its role in the débâcle. Mike Fielding also got a roasting for irresponsible behaviour, which Lady Slater decreed could indeed be regarded as harassment. She threw in all the relevant legal jargon – ‘part of the circumstances’ and so on – and concluded: ‘The laws of double jeopardy still stand in this country. In spite of the arguments of prosecuting counsel, it seems to this court unconstitutional that unadopted clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights should have any bearing on our proceedings and it is the magistrates’ inclination to adhere only to what is actually the law of the land until and unless a much higher court than ours rules otherwise.

‘However, in any event, the only new evidence offered by the prosecution is indeed, and will remain, inadmissible. There are no properly obtained DNA samples available in this case, nor can there be, in any circumstances, because of the manner in which the defendant was linked to the crime in question. We have no alternative, therefore, but to uphold the defence’s submission of abuse of process. We find that there is no case to answer and I duly dismiss the case.’

O’Donnell had got away with it. Again.

He and his mob had run rings around the law once more, and she and her newspaper had been made to look foolish. Jo supposed she had been naive to think that the paper’s involvement could be kept quiet. She certainly hadn’t expected anything like this, though. She was furious, but not nearly as furious as she knew her husband would be.

She sat for just a few seconds in a kind of stunned daze, only vaguely aware of Bill Phillips, his face like thunder, pushing past her and rushing out of the courtroom. The rest of his family followed at once. They did not try to speak to her, which was all for the best, because for just a few seconds she was not sure that she was able to speak. Slowly she stood up and began to make her way outside.

It was quite a cool, breezy late October day, but Joanna was sweating. She was wearing a woollen trouser suit and beneath the jacket her cotton shirt was sticking to her. Her face felt as if it were burning. She had previously not really given much thought to the consequences of this case collapsing. She had not allowed herself to think about it.

On the steps of the court she was confronted with the nauseating sight of O’Donnell giving one of his impromptu press conferences. His father was by his side as ever. Frail in body Sam might be, but his toughness and strength of character had not left him – as much of his earlier weariness seemed now to have done. Still leaning heavily on his walking stick, he used his free arm to clap his son on his back, beaming, openly triumphant. Extraordinary. Joanna continued to find it hard to accept that he could really believe in his elder son’s innocence, because she genuinely
thought that Sam the Man would find this kind of crime as repugnant as would almost everyone else. Surely the only explanation could be that Jimbo really was the old man’s blind spot and that when it came to his favourite son he truly couldn’t see what everyone else could so clearly. She knew that was what Fielding thought. Fielding. All she wanted to do was get away as quickly as possible, but the crush of bodies on the steps impeded her progress. She looked around for the detective. He was right behind her, as desperate to escape as she was, she suspected. Their eyes met briefly again. There was a blankness in his. His mouth was set in a firm, hard line. Come to think of it, he looked pretty much the way she felt.

Apart from anything else, O’Donnell had made certain that the link between them was public knowledge. And under privilege in open court too – which meant that the papers could print what they liked free from the restriction of the laws of libel.

With half an ear she was aware of O’Donnell’s slightly whining voice. She could catch only snatched phrases above the hubbub of the crowd but it was enough to know he was repeating yet again the now familiar story: ‘… I’m an innocent man. I’ve been persecuted … harassed … set up …’

Suddenly the pitch of his voice changed. ‘There they are, there they are now,’ he shouted, and this time neither she nor anyone else within a half-mile radius could have any difficulty in hearing him. ‘There they are!’

To her horror, she realised Jimbo was pointing at her and Fielding, his face screwed up in hatred as he spat out the words.

The gathered hacks and snappers turned as one
and surged forward towards them. Jo was about to learn the hard way what it felt like to be on the receiving end of this level of press attention. Suddenly a flash exploded in her face and she was dazzled, momentarily blinded. At almost the same moment someone lurched into her side. She stumbled, almost fell. A strong hand grasped her elbow, supporting her. She looked round. It was Fielding. He was half smiling, a wry, resigned sort of smile. She smiled her gratitude back. More cameras flashed.

Joanna Bartlett and Mike Fielding were no longer just a journalist and a policeman who had worked on the case. They had become an important ingredient in the whole Beast of Dartmoor saga.

All Joanna wanted to do was go home and hide. And for perhaps the first time in her marriage she quite desperately wished that she did not share her home with her editor. The large, impeccably furnished and decorated house on Richmond Hill was going to be no hiding place at all.

She had no idea where Nigel Nuffield had disappeared to so swiftly after the devastating verdict or, indeed, exactly how, but in any event she did not really want to see him. Not yet. She was too angry. Too defeated.

On autopilot she filed what story she could. The
Comet
’s news editor was a woman now, virtually unheard of twenty years earlier. And Pam Smythe’s measured approach was a far cry from that of the bombastic McKane and Foley, who had been traditional Fleet Street newsmen of a very different mould, but Pam was razor sharp and could be quite cutting enough when it was called for. On this occasion she actually sounded embarrassed. Banter was not what it was any more, but even the old guys would probably have held back in this situation. Joanna had screwed up big time and back in Canary Wharf they damn well knew it.

When she had finished her call to the office there was something else she felt she had to do before she could head home to the dubious reception which
inevitably awaited her. She set off across the moor to Blackstone to visit the Phillips family. They too had managed to make a quick getaway, somehow getting past the press pack and presumably driving off back to Five Tors. Jo didn’t really want to see them but she felt she could not just walk away from them on this dreadful day. The pack were gathered, just as they had so long ago, at the end of the farm lane, having no doubt already knocked several times on the farmhouse door and been sent away.

Joanna drove straight past them, swung her BMW into the yard and parked right outside the kitchen door, which was opened almost immediately when she knocked on it. They would have heard her arriving, of course, and recognised her car.

Rob Phillips beckoned her into the big kitchen where the entire family were, yet again, gathered round the kitchen table. Without being asked she pulled back a chair and sat down. Just as before. Nobody spoke to her. But at least they had allowed her in.

She glanced around her. Bill Phillips sat head down with his hands clasped round a mug of tea as if drawing comfort from the warmth of it. She could see that his fingers were shaking. He did not look up and for that she was quite grateful. She did not want to see how much more pain there was in his eyes.

Lillian Phillips was sobbing quietly. Joanna thought she had probably been in tears ever since the verdict was announced. Her daughter-in-law had her arm round her but had obviously given up trying to comfort her. What comfort could anyone give this woman, Joanna wondered. Lillian stared at her through her tears, a stare which was a mix of accusation and pleading.

Mary was tight-lipped. Eyes bright in their folds of flesh. She was deceptive. The fat made her look like a West Country version of jolly Ma Larkin. Her voice was a gentle Devonshire burr, but it had a hard edge when she broke the silence. She was, of course, as damaged as the rest of the family by the legacy of the terrible twenty-year-old murder and in reality her personality could not have been further removed from that of the carefree Ma Larkin.

But how could it have been any other way? How could anybody in this family ever be carefree again? As his mother began to speak she glanced at Les, the youngest of them, Angela’s nephew. The lad looked as if he was carrying the cares of the world on his shoulders. Unlike the others, he had not gone through anything like this before. This was his first taste of it. She thought the look of panic in his eyes came from the grim realisation that this had been the family’s one chance to put an end to it all, finally to bury Angela, as he had put it. Now he must know that there would be no end, that Angela’s ghost would probably haunt him for the rest of his life. Joanna couldn’t imagine the bleakness he must be feeling.

Mary Phillips’s words washed over her: harsh, deserved, expected. ‘What was the point of it all? What was the point of dragging it all up again? There is no justice in this country. We should not have listened to you, Joanna Bartlett. Look at the state mother is in, look at her. You did this to her, you and your precious policeman boyfriend. We trusted him before and he let us down. Now we’ve been let down again. By you. By everyone.’