A Kind Of Wild Justice

by Hilary Bonner

  Jo stared at Manners in amazement. ‘Not the James Martin O’Donnell?’ she asked.

  ‘The same,’ he responded, this time sounding just a little triumphant. And she didn’t blame him.

  Manners buzzed through to the news desk to give them the line, at the same time threading a sheet of copy paper into his typewriter and one-handedly typing a catchline in the top right hand corner – O’DONNELL.

  Although she was standing a good four or five feet away and the veteran crime reporter was using a standard telephone held to his ear, Joanna could clearly hear McKane’s roar. ‘Fucking great, Frank me boy! Right. I want every spit and fart. Got it?’

  As Manners began to write, Jo took a moment to consider the information he had obtained. There wasn’t a crime correspondent in the country who didn’t know who James Martin O’Donnell was – and not many members of the public, either, not if they ever read newspapers or watched TV. The O’Donnells were a criminal family of some stature. In the fifties and sixties the Krays had ruled the London underworld. By 1980 the O’Donnells were almost as big and had created around them the same kind of legendary personae. James Martin, known as Jimbo, was the eldest of old Sam O’Donnell’s brood. He was the natural successor to Sam’s dubious throne, although somewhere at the back of Joanna’s mind lurked the vague impression that there had always been something suspect about him. She couldn’t remember quite what.

  Sam was one of the last of the old breed. You didn’t more or less run the London crime scene for years on end unless you were quite an operator. And whatever you thought about Sam you had to have a grudging admiration for the man. He and his family were also the last people Joanna would have suspected of being involved in the Beast of Dartmoor case. The O’Donnells ran their rackets and pulled their strokes. They didn’t harm civilians. Journalists, coppers, villains, they all talked about civilians. Poor Angela Phillips was a civilian. She’d been hurt. And how!

  ‘Christ, Frank, raping and torturing an innocent kid, leaving her to die like that, that’s not an O’Donnell sort of crime,’ she said eventually.

  The older man was already typing steadily. He did not stop as he glanced up at her. He had that smug look on his face, which he always got when he was going to show off. That was all right. She had no objection whatsoever to Frank Manners in show-off mood. The man had a memory to die for, and his knowledge of criminals and often long-forgotten crimes was encyclopaedic.

  He was justifiably pleased with himself because he had got there first, but even though Jo would have liked, as ever, to be the one breaking the news, she was the head of department and preferred that any of her team should score, rather than the opposition.

  ‘Jimbo’s different,’ Manners told her. ‘He’s always had a reputation for being nasty with woman; word is he likes to knock ’em about. That’s how he gets his kicks. Back in sixty-nine he was jailed for rape. Served eighteen months. It was a big story at the time.’ He typed another sentence. Like almost all daily-paper journalists, Manners had perfected the art of performing several tasks at once.

  That was it! A rape conviction. Joanna remembered it now, but not the details. She waited for Manners to continue as she was sure he would. He was invariably unable to resist displaying his superior knowledge of what he regarded as his patch. After just a minute or so he began to speak again. ‘It was what they call date rape nowadays, or Jimbo would have got longer. He’d picked up this girl at a club somewhere and she’d invited him back to her place. She claimed he’d taken it for granted she would have sex with him and when she resisted he pulled a knife on her – that fits too, doesn’t it, the bastard always liked knives – knocked her to the floor and forced himself on her. Big strong boy, our Jimbo. But she didn’t report it for almost a year after it allegedly happened. She claimed that when she realised who Jimbo was she didn’t dare because she was too scared of the O’Donnells. He said she’d had sex willingly and there’d been no knife. But then, he would, wouldn’t he?

  ‘The jury convicted him on a majority verdict but it was never cut and dried. Hence the judge only gave him a fraction of the time he could have done. The girl was a right slag, too, and that influenced the judge as well, no doubt.’

  No doubt, thought Joanna wryly. It drove her mad when judges pointed out that the victim of a sex crime had been dressed in a provocative way, or worse still, that she wasn’t a virgin. The inference being that once a woman had surrendered her virginity that gave the rest of the male sex the right to do as they wished with her. The very idea made Joanna angry.

  ‘The conviction alone was enough to get him drummed out of the Territorials,’ Manners went on.

  Joanna started involuntarily. ‘Say again!’

  ‘Thought you’d pick up on that. Yep, he was in the Territorials and yep, he did annual training up at Okehampton camp several times. Jimbo’s always been a military freak. Crazy about the army. Wanted to join the regulars, apparently, only the old man wouldn’t have it. From when he was a kid James Martin was the apple of Sam’s eye. And he never accepted that the boy had done a rape, of course. Never. You know Sam the Man. Like some fucking Mafia godfather. Built everything on respect, has Sam. Has his own strict moral code. Doesn’t prevent him fitting the old concrete boots on his so-called chums every so often, but that’s just business in his book.’

  Joanna was silent for a few seconds, thinking. ‘So it really looks like Jimbo’s going to be charged, then, does it?’ she asked.

  ‘I reckon so. But what do I know? You’re the one with the special police contacts now, aren’t you?’ Frank’s voice turned into a sneer and he put heavily sarcastic emphasis on ‘special’, making his inference abundantly clear.

  It had to come, of course. Manners could never behave like a reasonable human being towards her for more than five minutes or so on the trot. ‘Fuck off, Frank,’ she remarked conversationally, turned her back on him and headed for her office where she slammed the door behind her.

  Soon after she had arrived in Fleet Street, young, eager, and terrified, Joanna had been introduced to the Daily Mirror’s legendary agony aunt Marje Proops, not a woman to be trifled with, who had given her advice on dealing with the chauvinists of Fleet Street, which she had never forgotten. ‘Smile at them sweetly, dear, and if that fails just use the “F” word.’

  Jo found she was smiling at the memory as she tried to put a call in to Fielding. Predictably, he was not contactable. She spoke to a constable at the incident room who assured her he would pass on her message for the detective to call her as soon as possible. She did not, however, have high expectations. And she was genuinely surprised when he called back little more than half an hour later. ‘Can you tell me how sure you are?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t make a habit of arresting people without good reason, Joanna,’ he replied rather prissily. He sounded cocksure again, more the way he had been when she first met him.

  She knew all too well that getting a result did that to policemen. Even when they had a dead body on their hands. ‘For God’s sake, Mike …’ she began irritably.

  ‘Fucking sure,’ he interrupted her suddenly. ‘Look, it fits like a glove. O’Donnell likes playing soldiers, always has done. Likes knives, too – we found a nice collection at his house. Also we know he’s been a regular visitor up on the moor. Oh, and he was seen on the Phillipses’ land the day Angela disappeared.’

  ‘You’ve got more than that though, surely?’

  ‘Fucking right.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Can’t tell you.’

  ‘OK, can you tell me what led you to him?’

  ‘Seems the shock tactics paid off. We had a call from a minor Dartmoor villain. He’d seen Jimbo hanging around Five Tors Farm on the day Angela was taken and recognised him at once. Apparently he’s done a bit of wheeling and dealing with the O’Donnells in the past, although he doesn’t like admitting it. Jimbo was tucked in behind a hedge and looked as if he was watching the farmhouse through binoculars. I
t all made sense because, unless he was a local, whoever abducted Angela had definitely learned a bit about her and her family, almost certainly been watching them. Our man was up to no good himself, as usual – sheep rustling is one of his favourite tricks and there’s been quite an operation going on around Dartmoor lately – that’s why he didn’t speak out before. And he certainly didn’t want to interfere with Jimbo O’Donnell. Said he backed off smartish when he spotted the bastard. Scared shitless of the O’Donnells, of course. All rogues are and with good reason. You don’t shop an O’Donnell lightly and in any case when Angela disappeared he couldn’t really see it as the kind of thing the O’Donnells would be involved in. Anyway, he was in two minds when the girl’s body was found and the kidnapping angle broke. Then, when you printed the story about how her breasts had been mutilated, he finally came forward. Got a kid that age himself. Said he couldn’t stomach it. Seems he told his missus then and she pushed him to speak out.

  ‘So there you are. As I said. Fits like a glove.’

  ‘It’s an unusual profile, though, isn’t it?’ queried Joanna. ‘An organised premeditated kidnapper who is also a vicious sex offender.’

  Fielding grunted. ‘O’Donnell’s always been a sicko,’ he said. ‘Abuse is what turns him on. And young girls are his weakness. The Met say he’s damned lucky to have only the one conviction for a sex offence. There was a particularly nasty rape of a teenage girl in his manor just last year, which they were sure was down to him. But neither the kid nor her family would point the finger, too damned scared of the O’Donnell mythology, they reckon.

  ‘The kidnap of Angela Phillips was planned and premeditated all right. O’Donnell may even have convinced himself that it was no different from the kind of job the rest of his family might take on. Sam rules with a rod of iron, you know, and keeps a tight hold on the purse strings. Jimbo would have loved to have proved to his old man that he was a major league operator in his own right – and make a few bob, too. But no doubt the bastard always planned to have his fun with Angela as well. And once he’d got hold of her, his true nature ran away with itself.’

  ‘Were you on the arrest team?’

  ‘Yup. Bowled up to the Smoke at dawn this morning. In and out. No need to get the Met involved, the boss said. I enjoyed that. Enjoyed the swoop on Jimbo too. Thought he was on his heels, didn’t he? He’s always been a piece of work, Jo. You know that, I’m sure.’

  ‘I do now, yeah,’ said Joanna. ‘You’ll be charging him, then?’

  ‘Fucking right.’

  ‘When?’ That was the million-dollar question. If O’Donnell was going to be charged that night the paper’s whole coverage would become sub judice and be severely limited. If not, they could run at least some of Manners’s juicy background. Although they would be unable to spell out the criminality of Jimbo’s family, because that would be highly prejudicial, a little innuendo can go a long way in a well-written tabloid splash and most readers would in any case know at least something of the O’Donnells’ dubious reputation, and be able to put two and two together. Even the Comet’s readers, thought Jo wryly. The paper would also be able to carry much of the additional information she had gleaned from Fielding.

  Fielding knew all that. He was a media man. Jo was already beginning to think he knew as much about media coverage of crime as he did about catching criminals. ‘You’re all right, it’ll be tomorrow morning,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Mike, you’re a diamond.’

  She could just hear his voice in the distance as she hung up. ‘Aren’t I, though?’ he murmured.

  O’Donnell was formally charged the following morning with the murder of Angela Phillips, as Fielding had told Joanna he would be. He appeared briefly at Okehampton Magistrates’ Court and was remanded in custody. After that there was little coverage that the paper could give until the committal proceedings, which were expected to be a formality.

  Nonetheless, Joanna drove down to Devon to be present at the committal six weeks later. She had been on the case from the start and she planned to see it through to the end, every step of the way.

  Okehampton Magistrates’ Court was an unlikely grubby white bungalow of a building tucked away on the northern edge of the town behind the Co-op supermarket just where the Rivers West and East Okement merged. O’Donnell was brought from the Devon County Prison at Exeter in a black van with barred windows. He climbed out by the entrance to the court, a big, rugged, broad-shouldered man in his early thirties, wearing combat trousers and a tight black T-shirt which emphasised the impressive muscle definition of his upper body. The sleeves were short enough to display upon the biceps of his left arm a large and particularly unpleasant tattoo of the upper torso of a buxom young woman one of whose obscenely oversized breasts bore the word ‘love’ and the other ‘hate’. Yuck, thought Jo.

  Apparently unbowed by what was happening to him, O’Donnell held his head high as the gathered crowd roared their loathing at him. His peroxide-blond crew-cut gleamed in the autumn sunshine. His eyes blazed beneath their heavy dark brows. There was no being covered up in blankets for this guy.

  The car park outside the court, the road behind, and even the supermarket car park beyond that were teeming, and the mood of the crowd was not sweet. It was a fairly predictable reception for someone accused of a crime as horrific as this one. The crowd bayed for blood. The majority in government and, thank God, in Joanna’s opinion, within the police force were against the reintroduction of capital punishment. This lot would no doubt rip O’Donnell apart limb from limb, were they able to get to him.

  She thought there could be four or five hundred people gathered into the area around the court. A lot of them looked like farming folk, who would have been more at home on horseback or leaning on a farm gate somewhere. Instead, they were screaming blue murder at James Martin O’Donnell, who was securely handcuffed to two policemen and surrounded by half a dozen or so more as he began the brief journey into the courtroom.

  If he’d lowered his head or kept his eyes downcast it might not have been quite so provocative, Joanna thought. But, as the Nikon choir formed by dozens of cameramen burst into flashing, whirring action, O’Donnell glared coolly around him, belligerent, arrogant, contemptuous.

  There was a yell of outrage, which she somehow heard above the collective noise of the chanting throng. A figure managed to force his way through the police guards and hurl himself at O’Donnell. The accused man’s big shoulders wrenched against the restraint of the cuffs round his wrists as he tried to defend himself. She could see the hands of the assailant raking O’Donnell’s face, reaching for his eyes as if the intention was to gouge them out, and then it was all over. Standing on the courtroom steps with her back to the wall, Jo had a grandstand view as three hefty policemen pounced on the attacker and he was led away. She got a clear glimpse of his face, then, and was almost sure it was Jeremy Thomas, Angela Phillips’ boyfriend. Silly boy, Jo thought to herself, but of course, not only had Jeremy had to deal with the loss of his girlfriend in such a terrible way, he had also had to put up with the anguish of having been suspected of the crime himself.

  With the added excitement of the attack, the roar of the crowd reached a crescendo. O’Donnell tossed his head at them as he was finally hurried into the courtroom, almost as if he were a film star acknowledging the acclaim of his fans instead of a man standing accused of one of the most horrible murders Joanna had ever had knowledge of. She saw that there was a trickle of red running down his face. The attacker had drawn blood and the crowd loved it. Even execution would probably not satisfy this lot, the mood they were in, thought Jo. Certainly not if it was conducted humanely and in private. A public hanging might do, but better still, something like that lovely old Chinese way of doing things, death by slicing. Any government having trouble with its popularity should really consider that, she thought wryly.

  With some difficulty she made her way into the court – there wasn’t time to file the story of the attack on O’Don
nell without missing the start of the proceedings and, in any case, there was no need to do so yet; her deadlines were still hours away. Once inside, she instantly spotted Mike Fielding. He was wearing a beige linen suit – he was fond of linen, obviously – a maroon silk shirt, a tie which carefully blended both colours in varying shades and a smug smile. She had never known a policeman who dressed like him. As for his smugness, she hoped he was not overconfident. This was no ordinary crime and Jimbo O’Donnell was no ordinary prisoner. Certainly he was no ordinary sex offender nutter. He was different. His back-up was different too. She already knew that he had a top legal team defending him.

  The attack on O’Donnell provided an early diversion inside the court as well as outside. O’Donnell’s lawyers made a big thing about their man getting first-aid attention. O’Donnell shrugged his big shoulders, asked for a handkerchief with which he wiped his face, said he’d be fine and grinned broadly at the magistrates. He was going to play to the gallery, no doubt about it.

  After that the proceedings went according to plan. O’Donnell was committed for trial at Exeter Crown Court and was remanded in custody, of course. His lawyers knew better than to ask for bail; they’d never get it on a case like this.

  As Jo left the court, Fielding was waiting in the foyer. For her? She didn’t know, but certainly he stepped forward smartly to her side and put a hand on her arm. ‘How’s my favourite hackette, then?’ he asked lightly.

  His manner was flirtatious, as it almost invariably was with her, but again she was not really sure whether he was chatting her up or not. His body language and his words did not always match. On this occasion he stood much closer to her than necessary and he kept his hand on her arm in an almost proprietorial fashion as they walked together towards the door.

  She decided to play it dead straight. ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ she asked him in a crisp businesslike way.