She wondered what they would have made of an era when a trolley laden with wine, beer and spirits used to be trundled weekly around the offices of the Comet, and senior executives were invited to choose supplies for their fridges and drinks cabinets. Free of charge, too. Even she, as chief crime correspondent, had had a couch and a fridge in her office. She didn’t qualify for the free booze, but it was common practice for those who did to order a few extra bottles in order to help out those who didn’t. Editorial meetings, particularly on Friday evenings, were inclined to turn into parties. On hot days in the summer the editor and his top men sometimes used to decamp for the afternoon to a swanky Thames-side hotel up near Maidenhead, from which, in the days even before faxes, they would edit the paper long-distance with the aid of a few extra telephone lines and a squad of swarthy despatch riders, laden with page proofs and bundles of subbed copy, running a motorbike shuttle service between the hotel and Fleet Street.
Nowadays, of course, alcohol was banned from the offices of the Comet. Even the editor had a fridge containing only soft drinks with which to entertain visitors.
She smiled nostalgically before reminding herself of the dangers of looking back at the past through rose-coloured spectacles. She made herself remember the appalling antics of Frank Manners and his cohorts. But even most of that merely widened her nostalgic smile. If you told the kids today, of either sex, the way the guys back then had behaved they wouldn’t believe it. After all, if a chap in an office nowadays made the most polite of personally admiring remarks to a woman colleague he was likely to get done for sexual harassment. ‘You’re looking good, Joanna. I bet you had a really great fuck last night,’ as a form of casual greeting would be quite beyond their comprehension.
Strange thing was that while she loathed sexism and certainly sex discrimination as much as the next woman, she did not remember being too discomfited by the things that had happened – until Frank Manners became completely out of control. But at least those guys were human beings, albeit often pathetic ones, and not pre-programmed robots. Joanna was not entirely in favour of political correctness. Apart from anything else, it was so damned dull.
She glanced at her watch. She still had the best part of an hour to kill before Paul would be ready to leave for the dinner party – if he didn’t decide to cancel at the last moment, which was not at all unknown, particularly if there was a big story on the go – and they didn’t get much bigger than the cracking of the DNA code, the day’s huge revelation that would be all over the paper the next morning.
She got up and walked to the coffee machine over by the elevator and helped herself to a decaff. She no longer drank real coffee after lunchtime. She reckoned decaff was probably every bit as harmful, but at least it didn’t keep her awake all night, tossing and turning.
Sipping from her polystyrene cup, she wondered why she bothered with the stuff at all. It tasted pretty much as if all the flavour had been removed along with the caffeine. She tried to clear her mind. Did she really want to get involved with the Beast of Dartmoor case again? Just hearing Fielding’s voice had bothered her much more than she would ever have expected it to. ‘Damn the bloody man,’ she muttered to herself, apparently louder than she had realised. A sea of silent heads turned towards her, then away again. Christ, she could remember a time when you’d hear screaming in the office and wouldn’t bother to look up. Nothing short of an actual physical punch-up caused any kind of stir in those days – and she’d seen a few of those too.
Upon reflection she decided it would be not only unwise but also dangerous to start delving into the case again. It really would be best to leave well alone. Absolutely no doubt about it.
She drained the last of her ghastly decaff, crushed the polystyrene cup in her fist and threw it at the nearest waste-paper bin. She missed and the cup slid untidily across the highly polished floor. A passing twelve-year-old, wearing an overly crisp white shirt, stopped, picked it up and put it neatly in a bin, glancing smilingly towards her as if he expected thanks or something. He didn’t get any. Joanna merely observed him without enthusiasm, her eyes only half focused, her mind twenty years away.
Of course she feared she wasn’t going to leave well alone. There was no real chance of that and had not been since she had taken Fielding’s call. She was going to get embroiled in the case all over again even though she honestly didn’t want to. She knew she was not going to be able to stop herself, so she might just as well get on with it.
Across the newsroom she could see young Tim Jones, upright in his chair, engrossed as usual in his computer screen. Tim, a bright diligent chap for whom Jo had considerable regard, was the Comet’s chief crime correspondent, the job Joanna had just landed when she first met Fielding. Jo’s title was now Assistant Editor, Crime. It didn’t mean a great deal in that she was not one of the three assistant editors allowed, along with the deputy editor, to run the paper at night and in Paul’s absence, which rankled a bit. Paul had apologised and said he didn’t feel able to give his wife that authority. However, she couldn’t grumble as she was primarily only a part-time columnist now.
She hoisted herself upright and walked over to Tim’s corner of the room. When she told him what she wanted he gave her a cheery smile – he always seemed to be cheery, bless him, but then he was still so young and new – and swiftly fished both a copy of the European Convention on Human Rights and Britain’s Human Rights Act out of his desk drawer. Trust Tim to be up to date.
‘Anything else I can help you with?’ he asked, as she turned away from him. Tim had a boyishly open face, very dark curly hair and even darker eyes, and was definitely far too handsome to be let loose in a newspaper office.
Jo thought of all manner of glib answers, muttered a ‘no thank you’ over her shoulder and made herself refrain from turning into the ageing female equivalent of all those tired old male hacks she’d had to deal with when she had been his age.
Back at her desk, she first opened the small purple Human Rights Convention booklet with its four white European stars on the front and turned to Article Four of the Seventh Protocol.
Paragraph One reaffirmed the right of all never to be tried again for an offence of which they had been acquitted.
Paragraph Two gave a proviso hitherto unknown in British law. There could be a retrial ‘if there is evidence of new or newly discovered facts, or if there has been a fundamental defect in the previous proceedings, which could affect the outcome of the case’.
As it happened Joanna thought there had been a number of fundamental defects in O’Donnell’s prosecution for the murder of Angela Phillips. But that was not what was at issue, nor was it ever likely to be. There was, however, certainly new evidence.
She studied the booklet carefully. Tim Jones had helpfully scribbled HRA alongside the articles which had been adopted into Britain’s Human Rights Act due, as Fielding had reminded her, to become law on 2 October 2000. Article Four of Protocol Seven was not among them. She was not surprised. She might not have been on a Human Rights course, and now that she was no longer actually an on-the-road crime reporter she might not be quite as on the ball in certain areas as she would once have been, but she was sure that had such a major change in the law been imminent she would not have missed it.
Nonetheless she turned obediently to the Human Rights Act itself and leafed through until she came to Section Six. ‘It is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention Right.’
Courts were public authorities all right. The law was invariably open to interpretation – but put those two clauses together and you had possibly the biggest fundamental change to the whole basis of British law since Magna Carta.
Joanna felt the familiar tingling in her spine that she invariably experienced when she was confronted by something special like this. Something which could be a really great story – which was inclined to overshadow all other considerations with her. She couldn’t help it. Never had been able to. She had bee
n born a natural newspaperwoman.
Nine
She made herself pull back then. Sleep on it. At least not do anything more, including talking to Paul who, apart from anything else, was not exactly likely to be delighted that she was back in contact with Mike, until she had had time to think things through properly. Fielding still seemed to know how to pull her strings in more ways than one. She wasn’t entirely pleased about that. But although she had been angry with him initially she realised suddenly that she was just as angry with herself. Predictably enough Paul had indeed dropped out of the dinner party at the last moment, leaving her to make excuses for both of them. She didn’t blame him, she knew well enough the pressures a daily paper editor was constantly under, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to go without him. She was grateful, actually, for time alone.
In her car on the way to Richmond – a state-of-the-art BMW now, the much-loved MG was long gone – she went over it all in her mind. If she took this any further there would be risks involved, both personally and professionally.
Risks for the Phillipses too. Was it fair for her to dig up the past for them all over again? Would they thank her, even if they did succeed in getting O’Donnell into court again? Would they think it worth it? She sighed. She rather suspected they would, but she also knew they would never be able to think about any of it objectively. That was what she must try to do. And it wasn’t easy for her, not with Fielding involved and not with the old journalistic adrenalin rush, which she hadn’t experienced in a long time, threatening to take over every other consideration.
Yes, there were all kinds of dangers. But on balance she was pretty sure Fielding could well have been right when he’d said a good barrister could swing it. You never knew what could happen once you ventured into a court of law, but the ammunition was all there. There had to be a way to get an admissible DNA sample out of O’Donnell and it really did seem that the Human Rights Act might be that way. Certainly Mike was right that a private prosecution of this nature would be staggering, ground-breaking stuff. The Comet could clean up. The Comet could also end up with egg all over its front pages. But by God, the whole thing was an exciting prospect.
By the following morning she had reached a decision. Perhaps the inevitable one. She would at least contact the Phillipses and sound them out, see if they would consider a private prosecution.
Over breakfast with Emily – well, cereal for her daughter but only tea for Jo, she never could face eating when she had just got out of bed – she planned how she would go about it. Fortuitously it was one of her days at home. Paul had already left in his chauffeur-driven car for a breakfast meeting. She didn’t know how he managed to work the hours he did. Vaguely she was aware that Emily was talking to her.
‘So can I, Mum?’
Oh, God, thought Jo, realising she hadn’t heard a word her daughter had said for some minutes. ‘Can you what?’
‘Oh, Mum! Can I sleep over at Alice’s tonight?’
Jo agreed that she could. Having paid her daughter such scant attention, she had little choice. She reached across the table and took Emily’s hand, trying to make amends. ‘And on Saturday we’ll go shopping, just you and me, maybe look for that new computer game you’ve been going on about.’
Emily beamed at her. Like most kids she was potty about computers. But Jo felt guilty. Why did she always seem to be buying her daughter’s affections? Emily was so bright, so precocious, sometimes it seemed that she didn’t need her parents for much else. That was ridiculous, of course. She was only eleven. And if she was overly self-possessed it was probably that the lifestyles of her high-flying parents had made her so. Which was maybe the main reason for Jo’s lurking feelings of guilt. She loved Emily to bits, but she just wasn’t the naturally maternal type. To make further amends Jo decided to drive Emily to school, instead of leaving it to the au pair as she usually did.
On return to the house she went to the little garden room she used as an office when she was working from home, sat down at her desk, reached into the bottom drawer, rummaged about there for a bit and finally retrieved a battered black-covered book held together with a rubber band so that its many loosened pages would not fall out. It was her old contacts book, 1980 vintage, painstakingly compiled long before the days of palmtop computers and electronic organisers, indeed, long before the days of computers at all in the newspaper world.
She leafed through the smudged, untidy pages until she came to P. P for Phillips. She had to play around with the code, which had changed over the years, but the number was still good as she had somehow expected it would be.
Bill Phillips answered the phone. He sounded like an old man, tired and slow. She realised he must be well into his seventies now, but she also knew how dramatically he’d aged after the loss of his daughter.
They’d all suffered, of course, the whole family and Jeremy Thomas. He’d been in trouble with the police on and off for years after his girlfriend’s murder. His attack on Jimbo O’Donnell outside Okehampton Magistrates’ Court had been merely the first of many outbursts of violence and vandalism, often enhanced by drink. Eventually he had crashed another car one night when he was drunk and that time he had not walked away. Jo knew that Jeremy’s parents had always blamed Angela’s murder, and their son having been at first suspected of it, for the dramatic deterioration in his behaviour and ultimately his death.
Bill Phillips remembered Joanna’s name as she had guessed he would. She thought he would probably remember the names of all the journalists and all the police officers who had been involved in his daughter’s case. The Phillipses had kept the press at arm’s length, but she had phoned often enough and written in the hope of getting close to them.
Not surprisingly, he did not seem pleased to hear from her. She knew he would also remember that she had been the reporter who had written the big series with Jimbo O’Donnell after he had been acquitted. Nonetheless she persevered. She asked Bill if she could drive down to see him.
He was unenthusiastic, to say the least. ‘What for?’ he asked in his dull, tired voice.
‘There’s some new evidence …’ she began. She didn’t have to tell him what the evidence was in connection with. There was only one thing it could be.
‘Then why haven’t the police contacted us?’
‘They don’t think you should be told. I do.’
She could hear him sigh. She knew what he was thinking. Much the same as she had thought earlier, only for him the pain would be so much more acute. Would he want to drag it all up again, relive the horror of it?
She knew that he didn’t have a real choice, though. Maybe, in a way, none of them did. The memories were too powerful.
She arrived at Five Tors Farm just after 1 p.m. The place was very different from the way she remembered it. Then the farm had been beautifully kept, hedgerows immaculate, gardens manicured, the farmhouse itself gleaming with fresh paint, sparkling windows, geraniums in tubs by the front door and all the other signs of tender loving care bestowed on a cherished home. The entrance had been impressive too, with that big white gate hanging from granite pillars, and an access lane which was more of a smart driveway with a smooth tarmac surface.
Now the gate, no longer white, had fallen from rusting hinges and the surface of the lane had broken up and was deeply pitted. It was all for the best that Joanna drove a BMW instead of the precious old MG, because she doubted if she could have manoeuvred the low-slung roadster safely along the lane and into the unkempt farmyard. The adjacent lawns were only roughly mown, the flower and vegetable gardens overgrown and in need of weeding, the farmhouse crying out for a coat of paint. She parked to one side of the yard by the stables, glancing towards them as she climbed out of her car. She thought they looked as if they were empty. Even the top doors to most of the boxes were closed. She could see no horses’ heads at the doors of those remaining open and neither were there any traces of the usual signs of horsy occupation. No hay or straw, no pile of drying dung.
She had heard that the Phillipses had got rid of all their horses after Angela’s death, finding the animals too painful a reminder of the young woman who had been perhaps the most enthusiastic horse lover in the entire family. It surprised her, though, that it seemed they still had not replaced them.
Mind you, she remembered what Fielding had told her, the air of neglect and abandonment which hung over the farm might not all be merely a legacy of their great tragedy. The Phillipses’ financial situation was not what it was, Mike had said. The family had no doubt been badly hit by the slump currently enveloping virtually the whole of Britain’s farming industry.
A young man wearing jeans and a T-shirt, cropped blond hair, fresh-faced, came striding out of the house, presumably having heard her car arrive. For a split second she took him to be Rob Phillips, but realised her mistake at once. Rob would be over forty now, like her. Funny how time stands still in your head sometimes. This must be his son, born prematurely a couple of months or so after Angela’s body was found.
He said ‘Hi’ in a non-committal fashion, adding, ‘I’m Les.’
Now it came back to her. The boy had been named after his dead aunt, Angela Lesley Phillips. A bittersweet reminder always for the entire family. Joanna felt sorry for him. Poor lad. What a burden he must have had to carry throughout his young life. He did not smile as he turned and led the way into the big farmhouse kitchen.
The entire family were sitting around the table. Bill Phillips had shrunk into a little old man. His wife Lillian had a lost look in her eyes. Rob stood up and shook her hand. He too had changed beyond recognition. You would expect a farmer approaching middle age to have leathery skin and a lined face, but you would also perhaps expect a certain glow of health brought about by the outdoor life. Instead, Rob looked tired and wan, almost ill. The strain sat heavily on him. He could easily have been a man in his mid-fifties rather than early forties. His wife, Mary, whom Jo remembered as being strikingly pretty, if just a little on the plump side, had ballooned. She wasn’t very tall and Jo guessed that she probably weighed sixteen or seventeen stone. Her once pretty features had disappeared into folds of fat round her neck.
A Kind Of Wild Justice Page 17
