He turned towards her then. She saw to her amazement that his cheeks were wet. ‘Don’t they say that’s actually the worst epitaph you can give anybody?’ he asked, attempting a smile, which didn’t really work. It stretched his lips but failed to reach his eyes.
‘No epitaph – you’re not dead yet, Mike Fielding,’ she said quietly and surprised herself somewhat by reaching out a hand to touch a tear-stained cheek. She knew it was probably the whisky as much as anything that was doing this to him. Nonetheless …
He took her hand and kissed it gently. Suddenly, awkwardly, she was in his arms and their lips had met. He tasted of whisky and tobacco but the sensation was wonderful from the beginning. He felt so good. Rough round the edges. Soft in the centre. Afterwards she was never quite sure how it happened, the two of them in the middle of a police station embroiled in a clinch. His tongue pushed her lips apart. She gave him hers. His grip tightened round her. She felt him hard against her. He pushed her back against the wall, his hands sought her breasts and she heard his little gasp when he touched a hard nipple. His hands pushed her legs open and simultaneously somehow pulled her skirt up round her waist. The fingers of one of his hands sought for her. She knew that she had become ready, couldn’t believe it. She also knew that with his other hand he was starting to unzip his flies.
Then a moment of sanity gripped her. She managed to prise his mouth from hers and, pushing his hand away from her, said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mike. No.’
He stopped at once, pulling back from her, breathing heavily. ‘God, I’m sorry, Joanna,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I’m really sorry. It was just that …’ He paused, as if not knowing quite how to go on.
She shook her head. ‘It’s all right, I know what you’re trying to say, I feel exactly the same.’
He had one hand on his trousers. He was trying to cover the bulge in his crotch, she realised suddenly with some amusement. He glanced at her in surprise. ‘You do?’ he enquired.
‘Yes. I must be barking, but I want you like crazy. Only not here, you daft bugger. This is your office, remember. It’s in Heavitree Road police station and the place is crawling with cops. Didn’t you know?’
He grinned the disarming grin and started to laugh. His face was still tear-stained and his hand was still covering the bulge in his trousers.
In spite of the absurdity of it she wanted him more than ever. She reached out, pulled his hand away and replaced it with her own. She felt his whole body tense. He was very hard. She realised she could hardly wait. It was madness but she felt as if she had no choice. ‘I do have a hotel room,’ she began.
‘So what are we waiting for?’ he asked in a very low, husky voice.
On the way out Jo noticed a photograph on his desk of a pretty, red-haired young woman holding a baby in her arms. She assumed that was Mike Fielding’s wife with one of their children. She didn’t really want to think about his wife, any more than she wanted to think about her husband.
She left the station first, having arranged that he would follow her a few minutes later and make his way separately to her hotel. There was, after all, no need to advertise their intentions. Once they were in her room it was as if suddenly they had both made time to do the thing properly.
Without any of the desperate urgency he had displayed earlier Fielding sat beside her on the edge of the bed and kissed her face, her eyes, her cheeks, her neck before their lips met again. And that too was more gentle, more lingering. ‘Will you undress for me?’ he asked.
She nodded, stood up and took her clothes off. Just like that. She had no sense of embarrassment, she didn’t play around, turn it into a striptease, simply took off her clothes and stood before him naked.
‘You have a beautiful body,’ he said in that same low voice.
‘It’s a miracle,’ she said. And it was, too, the way she lived.
‘My miracle,’ he told her.
She hadn’t expected him to be soppy at all about sex.
‘Lie down, now,’ he instructed.
Again she did as she was told, the excitement rising in her.
She lay down beside him and immediately he pushed her legs apart and buried his face in her. He didn’t touch her with his hands at all. It was immensely exciting. And he carried on and on, until she began desperately to want him inside her and told him so. She needed that in order to reach a climax. She nearly always did the first time.
After what seemed like for ever he pulled his face away from her. She braced herself for what she expected to come next. Instead he wriggled up the bed and lay beside her. His lips brushed hers lightly. She could smell and taste her own sex.
She reached for him. He pulled slightly away.
‘I’m afraid I’ve lost it,’ he said. He was still wearing his trousers, which was fairly ridiculous. She realised there was no hardness there at all now.
‘Do I put you off that much?’ she asked lightly.
‘The opposite,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was the whisky. I can’t understand it. I’m like a fucking machine usually.’
She giggled.
So did he. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘Can I stay with you? In the morning it will be different, I promise.’
‘Shouldn’t you go home? What about your wife?’
He shook his head. ‘She’s used to me,’ he said.
I’ll bet she is, poor cow, thought Joanna. But she wasn’t really in a position to be moralistic. And she certainly didn’t want him to leave.
He undressed and she saw that he had a good body too, long and rangy, and covered with a down of sandy hair just a little darker than the hair on his head. He kept his underpants on, which made her smile, crawled into the bed beside her and wrapped his arms round her. Within minutes she could hear his breathing slow and become more shallow and even. He was asleep. It took her longer. She was too excited to fall asleep easily. She needed sexual release quite badly, but it appeared that she was going to have to be patient.
Ultimately, though, she did not have to wait until morning after all. Having fallen eventually into a fitful sleep lying on her back, some time during the night she was woken by the weight of him on top of her. She opened her eyes. His face was inches away from hers and he was smiling at her. They had left the curtains open and there was a full moon. She could see him quite clearly.
He looked very happy, suddenly, and very intent on what he was doing. ‘God, you’re wet down there,’ he muttered appreciatively. In the next second he was inside her.
She came almost at once and he muttered encouragement to her. She managed another orgasm before he reached his own climax and she had never felt quite so fulfilled. He did things to her that were entirely new to her. He had no inhibitions and neither did she. Not with him. In the past there had always been something holding her back from complete sexual abandon. Not with him, there wasn’t. With him she just felt so at ease. They lay together afterwards, limbs entangled, at peace. They barely spoke. They did not need to.
It was the best sex she’d ever had. By far. It was in fact so superior to anything she had experienced before that it was almost like the first sex she’d had in her life. At the age of twenty-eight for God’s sake. She really could not explain why – but the fact remained that it was so wonderfully, stunningly, amazingly good that it frightened the living daylights out of her.
Fielding felt much the same way. He left her shortly after dawn. And he didn’t want to. He wanted to fuck her all day. And then all night. And then all the next day. Actually, he didn’t think he was capable of even one more time. But, he liked the idea of trying.
He felt elated and bewildered. How many women had he had? He’d long ago lost count. All shapes and sizes and ages. Even a couple of professionals. Most of them willing and eager to play any kind of sex game he fancied. Getting laid had, after all, always been just about his number one aim in life. That and the job, of course. Work as hard at seducti
on as he did and you were bound to get your share of success. So how was it that he had never felt like this before? How come sex had never been as good as this before? Come to that, he thought, smiling to himself, how come he had never been as good as that before?
He couldn’t understand it. He shook his head to clear his brain. He really had to be sensible about this. Best not to see her again, probably. He had enough problems, after all. The last thing he needed was an affair with a Fleet Street journalist. He’d cool it, that was the only thing to do, he reckoned.
Meanwhile Joanna lay in bed reliving the night she had just enjoyed. She was not in the mood to be sensible at all. Her whole body glowed and she wanted more of it. She wondered how long she could string out her trip to Devon, and began to torture herself thinking of the kind of sex she and Fielding might have the next time – which she sincerely hoped would be very soon.
Then the phone rang. It was the news editor, Reg Foley, calling from his home at just after 7 a.m. to tell her that the editor wanted to buy up James Martin O’Donnell.
Joanna was not enthusiastic. She still thought Jimbo was a guilty man, didn’t like the idea of her paper throwing money at him.
‘He’s been acquitted, Jo,’ said Foley. ‘That makes him innocent, OK? Anyway, it’s what the editor wants, so let’s give him what he wants, shall we?’
Taylor was already on the case but naturally Tom Mitchell wanted his chief crime correspondent to mastermind the buy-up attempt – which meant Jo was needed back in London pretty damn smartish. So that was one question answered. Her trip to Devon was over already. She would certainly not be seeing Fielding again that day and she had no idea how long it might be before she did.
Obediently she packed her small bag. Before leaving the room she called Fielding at Heavitree Road. He hadn’t arrived yet. Well, it was still not quite eight o’clock. She left a message, in what she hoped was a businesslike manner, saying that she had been called back to her office in London and would he please phone her there later that day.
He didn’t phone. Not that day. Not the next day. Not all week.
Joanna was offended. She left a second message at Heavitree Road. Then she phoned twice more without leaving a message at all. She supposed she would have to accept that for him she had just been another quick lay. After all, she knew his reputation well enough. She had even told him that. Why should she think for a moment that their one night in the sack would have been any different for him than all the other times. She had thought so, though. And that was the problem. For her, certainly.
Apart from any other considerations, his silence made her feel cheap. Fortunately she had little time to dwell on it. The Jimbo O’Donnell buy-up took all her time and energies. First she was involved in the negotiations and then, when the Comet succeeded in outbidding its rivals, Mitchell assigned her to do the interviews.
In spite of her feelings about O’Donnell it was always exciting to be at the sharp end of a big story and Jimbo was the sharp end all right. They took him to a remote hotel on the outskirts of Epping Forest in order to keep him away from the opposition until the series the Comet planned to run had been published. Joanna was booked into the room next to Jimbo and found that she was quite grateful that a Comet photographer was also booked into the hotel, plus another reporter whose job was primarily to act as a kind of extra minder.
There was something about the way the man looked at her which she found deeply disturbing. His attitude to her as a woman bordered on contempt. He had reverted to what seemed to be a penchant for wearing tight T-shirts to show off a torso which seemed to have become even more muscular during his stay in prison. Not to mention his horrible tattoo. He also wore overly tight black jeans and had an unpleasant habit of periodically and quite blatantly adjusting his crotch while staring at her challengingly. More than ever Joanna was convinced that he was guilty as hell, a sex monster who had got away with a truly dreadful crime – but in order to do her job she tried not to think about that.
Jimbo treated her to a predictable diatribe about his innocence and the police persecution that continually dogged him and his family. But among it there was some very good stuff, some pearls, in fact.
I AM NOT THE BEAST OF DARTMOOR, MY WRONGFUL ARREST NIGHTMARE, screamed banner headlines in the Comet when the paper ran the first instalment of a three-part serialisation of the Jimbo O’Donnell story just six days after his acquittal. ‘I’d never hurt an innocent girl. I’m no sex monster. Just because some of my family have records, we’re always persecuted. They said I raped before but she led me on. If it was rape it was only date rape. And I was just a kid. I could never kill etc., etc.’ It was the story everybody wanted and Joanna was a good interviewer. She had coaxed Jimbo into talking about the earlier rape conviction, thus allowing the paper to print material it might otherwise have considered legally unwise.
She returned to the office on the day that the third and final instalment ran. Her job was over, the story written and published. The Comet no longer needed to mind Jimbo. The paper had successfully completed its scoop. Tom Mitchell was well pleased. Public demand had been such that the print run had been substantially increased. In the evening she went to the Stab to celebrate. It was always immensely satisfying to have a few drinks in Fleet Street pubs when you knew you had pulled off the big one – even if it was a buy-up, which invariably lessened the thrill a little for Jo.
It was nine days, now, since she had spent that one night with Fielding. Still no word. She didn’t let herself think about it. She was on a roll, after all.
Paul Potter was in the bar and he bought a bottle of champagne, which they shared. But Jo left alone, the only way ever for a slightly drunk woman reporter to leave a Fleet Street pub, if she had any sense.
There was a car parked on the double yellow right outside and as she stepped on to the pavement its passenger door swung open, blocking her way. An arm reached out and a hand fastened round her wrist.
Alarmed, she almost cried out, then she realised who was in the car. It was Fielding. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Are you stalking me or something?’
‘You should be so lucky, darling, get in the car.’
He sounded angry. She hesitated. He half pulled her into the vehicle. ‘I’ve been reading that shit of yours, I just wanted to tell you to your face what I think of you.’
She stiffened. This was the man she had been aching to see for over a week, but she had never imagined meeting him in this mood. Suddenly she felt very sober indeed. She made herself respond in an even voice, as if she were not at all concerned. ‘And you’ve driven all the way to London specially, have you?’ she asked casually.
‘Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t drive across fuckin’ Exeter to see you.’
‘I see.’ She struggled to keep calm.
‘You’re just scum like all the rest of the hacks,’ he hissed at her. ‘How could you pay money to that perverted bastard? How could you give him a platform for his twisted bloody lies? How could you?’
She felt as if he had hit her. ‘It’s my job,’ she said.
‘Yes, and your job stinks.’
‘Really,’ she said. ‘Unlike yours, then. At least I don’t go around planting evidence on people.’ She got out of the car as she spoke and started to walk swiftly away from him.
He was too quick for her. He was alongside before she had even thought about breaking into a run. He grabbed her by one shoulder and pushed her against the pub wall. He looked absolutely furious. His eyes were blazing. He half shook her. ‘You bitch,’ he hissed at her through clenched teeth.
For a moment she really thought he was going to hit her.
Then the expression in his eyes softened, and the change in him was so fast that she was completely taken by surprise. He leaned forward and began to kiss her.
She responded at once, kissing him back with all her might, her body out of control. His hands found their way inside her jacket, she felt his fingers tighten round her breasts, his
hardness shoving into her just as it had done the first time.
Almost as abruptly as he had begun, he stopped, pulling away from her. They stood on the pavement both breathing hard, looking at each other.
‘I really didn’t intend to let this happen again,’ he said quietly.
She didn’t reply, but reached for him, putting one arm round his neck, and drew his face to hers.
All too soon he pulled away again. ‘We’re standing outside your office pub, that’s even worse than Heavitree Road police station, isn’t it?’ he enquired, his voice lighter now, his tone mischievous.
‘You’re dead right it is,’ she replied. It was too. The extraordinary thing was she would probably have let him fuck her right there against the wall before she had even considered the implications.
‘This time I’m the one with the hotel room,’ he said, very serious again.
She just nodded and followed him to his car.
Unlike Fielding, she did make some effort to remember she was still married. She left his hotel at 4 a.m. and got a taxi home, creeping into the spare room where she spent most of her nights now anyway.
Alone in the small single bed, she put her hand between her legs and remembered the pleasure she had so recently experienced. God, why was it so good? She really had no idea, but it had been even better than the first time. And it wasn’t over. Fielding had told her that he had to spend two more weeks in London. He had been sent to town to work on the London end of a long-running fraud case. It mostly involved endless boring days poring over records in Company House and he assumed he had been assigned to the operation so quickly after the O’Donnell trial principally in order to get him out of the firing line back in Exeter. He had also told her that he was already the subject of an internal inquiry following the allegations made against him in court.
The hotel wasn’t much, just about the cheapest available, but she supposed they were lucky he wasn’t in a section house. Apparently there had been no room. The sex had not been affected by the insalubrious surroundings. It had been, if anything, even better than before. Fielding had asked Joanna if she could join him for the rest of his time there.
A Kind Of Wild Justice Page 13
