Unlike the Phillips family, who seemed to become increasingly buoyant as the date of the committal proceedings approached, just glad, perhaps, to be doing something to gain justice for their daughter after so many years, Jo became more anxious. Every instinct said something wasn’t right. She desperately wanted to know what the O’Donnells were up to. After a deal of thought she came to the conclusion that she had nothing to lose by at least attempting to see Sam O’Donnell. Her aim was to try to find out what he thought now about his elder son. Sam was still the Man. If he had turned against Jimbo that would have great influence on the outcome of the case, Jo reckoned. Apart from anything else, she would hazard a large bet that the O’Donnell money remained firmly in Sam’s control. She knew that was the way he ran his firm. She also knew that although he was knocking eighty, Sam was still very much in charge.
She called unannounced at Sam’s Dulwich home, aware that she wouldn’t be a welcome visitor. She was sure that if she had phoned first there would have been no invitation forthcoming. Not like the previous time. Information travels fast among police and villains. She had little doubt that the O’Donnells would have a fair idea of the part she was playing in the pending private prosecution. Officially the Comet remained in the closet and the Phillipses had kept their promised silence. But the O’Donnells were streetwise. In common with the Comet’s rival newspapers, they would have little doubt about the true situation as they saw exclusive after exclusive written by Jo for her paper.
The O’Donnell operation was now run almost entirely from Sam’s home, the big Victorian villa in a leafy Dulwich street. Sam had grown older. And he no longer had Combo, who had died five years earlier, to drive him around and pander to his every need. He spent little time at the Duke nowadays. Jo had heard that they’d even put a pool table in the famous back room. Sam’s house was currently a mix of home, office and shrine, where the faithful came to pay homage. Sam O’Donnell really was the nearest thing London had to a godfather. Jo was not surprised when Tommy O’Donnell opened the front door. Tommy had his own home nearby with his family, of course, but he was acknowledged now as Sam’s right-hand man rather than his older brother Jimbo.
Tommy, still in his early forties, was ten years younger than Jimbo. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, like all the O’Donnells, but he looked lean and spare, his light-brown hair, yet to show even a hint of grey, flopped over a protruding forehead, another family trademark. Unlike his elder brother, however, there was nothing remotely thuggish about his appearance. Jo knew his reputation as the brains of the family. An intellectual O’Donnell was actually quite a worrying prospect. Tommy had won a place to grammar school, passed A levels. He was keen on education. Perhaps too keen. Tommy’s fourteen-year-old-daughter, Caroline, had taken an overdose of her mother’s sleeping pills and killed herself six months or so earlier, allegedly in a panic over her end-of-term exams. Jo always found it hard to believe that young people would commit suicide over their school work. But she knew they did. Tommy and his wife had, of course, been devastated by the loss of their daughter in such a way. Like all the O’Donnells, Tommy was a devoted family man, although Jo knew he also had a tough side. He was his father’s son.
Tommy’s eyes narrowed when he saw her standing on the doorstep. There was no visible security around the house. Jo assumed the O’Donnells didn’t think they needed it. Fear was one hell of a deterrent. It was hard to imagine who would take this lot on. Even the police hesitated – which had always been one of the problems.
‘You’re not welcome here,’ Tommy greeted her challengingly.
‘Look, I just wanted to talk. I know how you and Sam stand on crimes like this. Jimbo’s a black sheep, isn’t he? I want to see Sam. I’d like to know how he is dealing with this.’
Tommy stood with a hand on each hip, elbows akimbo, blocking the doorway. As if Joanna would be daft enough to try to barge her way in. That was never what reporters did, as it happened. They wheedled themselves into people’s homes. They were sensitive in their approach, personable, well-dressed, easy of manner, full of wonderful self-deprecating stories. They used charm, not brute force. Their victims thought they were lovely and felt no pain at all – until the next morning’s newspapers plopped through the letter box. The old foot-in-the-door myth was exactly that. And in any case, to try it on an O’Donnell she, or any other hack, whatever their gender or size, would have to be totally and absolutely barking mad. Come to that she was probably pretty damned barking to try any kind of approach on an O’Donnell.
‘You’ve got no chance,’ Tommy told her laconically. ‘You ain’t seeing Sam and as for Jimbo, he’s been acquitted once and you lot have found a way of doing him again for the same crime. Now that can’t be right, can it?’
‘Last time your brother stood trial for murder. This time it’s kidnap and rape. Different crimes. Different evidence. One way and another Jimbo will be brought to justice. The law may have tied itself up in knots, but you can’t argue with DNA, Tommy, and you know that.’
‘Do I? What if, and I’m only saying what if, mind, Jimbo did have sex with that Angela Phillips. Who’s to say he didn’t pick her up on her way home, they get in the back of his truck and she’s as eager as he is, what about that, then?’
‘She was a seventeen-year-old virgin, Tommy.’
‘She’d had a row with her boyfriend. She wanted to get back at him. She went with Jimbo, then he dropped her off. Nobody can prove different.’
‘I know that story, Tommy, that’s what your brother told DS Fielding when he went round after the DNA match was discovered.’
Tommy raised both eyebrows. ‘You two still close then, are you?’ he asked with a knowing leer.
God, she thought, was nothing private in her world? She ignored the inference. ‘It’ll never stand up in court,’ she told him.
‘It won’t have to,’ he said confidently and he winked at her again as he closed the door in her face.
Jo was highly disconcerted. She couldn’t take in that the family still believed Jimbo was innocent, she really couldn’t, but they were continuing to stand by him. Maybe it was just that they felt they couldn’t be seen to turn on one of their own. Certainly appearances would be a big part of it. And what did Tommy mean when he said with such confidence: ‘It won’t have to’?
Jimbo O’Donnell continued to protest his innocence in spite of what everyone concerned considered to be overwhelming evidence. Predictably he was pleading not guilty. Yet he had not waited to be summonsed before agreeing to appear in his own defence against the private prosecution. What was going on?
Jo had not seen Mike Fielding during the four months preceding the committal, although she had spoken to him frequently on the phone. She couldn’t help wondering what the detective would be like twenty years on, but the opportunity to find out did not seem to present itself and her involvement with the case, coupled with her normal workload and family obligations, such as they were, meant that she had little free time. Once or twice, belting up and down the motorway between London and Dartmoor, she did consider arranging to meet up with him. But she never quite got around to it.
Later she also thought that maybe she had been putting off deliberately what was bound to be a strange and disturbing meeting. However, she reckoned Mike was probably keeping his distance from her for other reasons. He had already stepped out of line in the case. He probably felt he could not risk any further direct involvement.
Also, of course, she was totally preoccupied by all that was happening. At night she would lie awake sometimes, her stomach muscles clenched, wondering what the O’Donnells were up to, whether she had done the right thing. There was so much at stake. She knew the case that had been put together was a strong one and that Nigel Nuffield wouldn’t have taken it on were that not so. She also knew it wasn’t watertight. It explored a completely new avenue of law, for a start. There was bound to be an element of a gamble and a lot depended on Nuffield’s apparent invincibility. But what ch
oice had any of them had? There would never be another opportunity to bring O’Donnell to justice for a crime that was already twenty years old, that was for certain.
On the day the committal proceedings began, Jo sat with the Phillips family at the back of Okehampton Magistrates’ Court waiting for O’Donnell to arrive. The place had not changed much, still little more than an extended white bungalow on the north bank of the River Okement, tucked away on the outskirts of town behind the same supermarket, which had now metamorphosed into a Waitrose, the proceedings still held in the unassuming room that also housed the meetings of West Devon District Council. Still the rows of ordinary office chairs giving a vaguely inappropriate air of informality.
Outside there had predictably been a considerable gathering of press photographers and TV news cameramen, but few members of the public. It was certainly a very different scene from the near riot of twenty years ago. In spite of the Comet’s fanfare, in spite of the ground-breaking nature of this hearing, as far as the people of Devon went it seemed that the teenager’s murder was indeed history.
Except for Angela’s family, of course. Jo could feel the tension in each and every one of them. Bill Phillips sat staring straight ahead, his face giving little away except for a periodic nervous twitch of his right eyebrow. Lillian looked likely to burst into tears again at any moment. Rob Phillips kept licking his lips, as if he was thirsty. His wife Mary repeatedly turned her handbag round and round in her lap. Their son Les looked excited, expectant, eager even. But then, he hadn’t been through it all before.
Jo kept glancing towards the door. She had to admit to herself that she was waiting for Fielding’s arrival as much as for that of O’Donnell. Although the detective was officially not actively involved in the new case she knew he wouldn’t miss being there. He turned up just seconds before O’Donnell.
She was expecting to see him. And yet her first sight of him in twenty years made her catch her breath. Some things you never forget, that’s the trouble, she thought. He looked older, of course, his hair greyer and thinning, but he had retained his slim build. He was wearing a very ordinary grey suit, well worn and not particularly well fitting. That was different. He would never have been seen dead in a suit like that when she had first known him. By and large, though, he didn’t seem to have aged badly. He hurried in, checking his watch, and walked right past her, heading for a couple of empty chairs towards the front. That was familiar. Fielding had always been in a hurry, had always arrived everywhere at the last possible moment.
Then he turned to look at her – directly at her, straight away. Maybe he had felt her gaze on him. Certainly he seemed to focus on her immediately and when their eyes met she saw, and it made her feel so sad, just how much disappointment and weariness there was in him. His physical frame might have worn well, but the man himself had changed a great deal. There was somehow no doubt about that. He smiled and raised a hand slightly in greeting as he sat down.
She was still studying the back of his head when a suppressed murmuring in the court indicated that O’Donnell was being ushered in. Lillian Phillips gave a low moaning sound. Out of the corner of her eye Jo noticed Bill Phillips take his wife’s hand in his and squeeze.
Jo had not seen O’Donnell for twenty years either. He too looked older and greyer. Fatter as well. She was struck by the way he had developed facial similarities to his now elderly father. Sam the Man, loyal as ever, keeping up appearances as ever, walked, leaning heavily on a stick, into the courtroom just behind his elder son. It would be important to Sam, to be seen giving family support, showing solidarity. He looked weary, though, every step obviously an effort. Well, the gang boss was eighty and his granddaughter’s death would have taken its toll, as well as the new charges brought against Jimbo. Both father and son had the same folds of skin around the eyes, now, the same jowly features. Jimbo was much less the tough guy, that was for sure. But he’d clearly been groomed for the part again. He wore a dark business suit very similar to the ones he had sported twenty years previously. Just cut a little more generously.
The three magistrates came into the court almost immediately. Two men and a woman chairman. All three looked the part, sombre in manner, soberly dressed, their body language oozing superiority. If they weren’t pillars of the community they certainly believed they were. Jo frowned as she studied the woman chairman. There was something familiar about her but for a while she could not place it.
O’Donnell was represented by more or less the same legal team as all those years ago. Brian Burns was the lead counsel again. At the previous trial Burns had been something of a young blood, the golden boy of the legal profession. Now he was an elder statesman, his brilliance if anything even greater than it had been then. Some things don’t change, she thought wryly.
What became quickly apparent was that O’Donnell’s lawyers had briefed their client on a policy of total denial. It seemed ridiculous that knowing he was faced with such irrefutable forensic evidence the man could just continue to deny everything. But he did. Of course, he would know that the DNA evidence could not be used, not yet anyway.
O’Donnell’s admission to Fielding that he had had sex with Angela was not even on the agenda. It couldn’t be. The detective had been acting unofficially. There was no proper record of the interview. O’Donnell had at no stage made a formal statement. Jo didn’t even know if the confrontation would come out in court. It was certainly not part of the prosecution case and she assumed Fielding was hoping that it did not feature. She knew Nuffield was.
Brian Burns, of course, although a leading top defence lawyer, didn’t really believe in defence at all. He believed in attack. ‘Your Worships, I submit that my client has no case to answer,’ he began. ‘I intend to prove abuse of process. A private prosecution has been brought against Mr O’Donnell only because the Crown Prosecution Service has, quite correctly, turned down a police application to bring charges of kidnap and rape against him. As is a matter of public record, Mr O’Donnell has already, many years ago, been properly tried and acquitted of the murder of the unfortunate young woman in question and therefore by inference of any related offences. I further submit that to proceed at all with this case would be in breach of double jeopardy, hence unlawful.’
The chairman of the magistrates puckered her brows. Suddenly it came to Jo. She was Lady Davinia Slater, a well-known figure in the West of England whom Jo had first encountered in her local paper days when Lady Slater had tirelessly led a long-time campaign to prevent a reservoir being constructed on her beloved Dartmoor. Now a thin, bright-eyed, leathery-skinned woman in her mid-sixties, Lady Slater looked as fit and tireless as ever. She had always been fiercely independent, with her own strongly held beliefs and ways of doing things. Jo knew that Lady Slater could rarely be swayed by others and just hoped she would make up her mind against O’Donnell, because once this particular chairman of magistrates did make up her mind there would be no changing it.
Lady Slater shot a puzzled glance in the direction of the clerk to the court who promptly approached the bench. Magistrates rarely have much more than a lay knowledge of the law and are inclined to rely heavily on their clerks who, Jo reckoned, could become disproportionately important. It seemed this trio were much the same as most of their kind.
The clerk leaned close to all three magistrates and spoke in a low voice but in the relatively small and low-ceilinged courtroom Joanna quite clearly heard him use the dreaded phrase ‘part of the circumstance’. She groaned inwardly.
Nigel Nuffield, however, was swift to respond. ‘I must draw Your Worships’ attention to Article Four of the Seventh Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights which allows for “the reopening of a case in accordance with law and penal procedure of the State concerned, 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”. This clearly allows for exceptions to be made to the laws of double jeopardy
in circumstances which I submit are applicable in this prosecution. And, in view of Britain’s Human Rights Act which, as I am sure Your Worships are aware, came into force on 2 October …’
Lady Slater might not have been familiar with all aspects of the law but she was certainly familiar with the antics of lawyers. She picked up immediately on Nigel Nuffield’s convoluted phraseology. ‘Are you saying that this article is now law in the United Kingdom?’ she interrupted sharply.
‘No, Your Worship. It has yet to be adopted here. But I would also draw Your Worships’ attention to Section Six of the British Human Rights Act. “It is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention Right.”’
All three magistrates looked more bewildered than impressed, Jo feared.
Nuffield, determined, it seemed, to dazzle them both with legalese and his grasp of it, hardly paused. ‘I must also alert Your Worships to Section Two of the Act. “A court or tribunal debating a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention Right must take into account any judgement, decision, declaration, or advisory opinion of the European Court of Human Rights …”’
Lady Slater interrupted again, leaning forward, thin lips pursed in disapproval. ‘Did you say European, Mr Nuffield?’ she enquired.
‘Well, yes, Your Worship, but …’
‘And I think you just told us, did you not, that this Article Four of the Human Rights Convention, to which you referred, is not in fact the law of the United Kingdom?’
‘Well, not exactly, Your Worship, but the Act makes it quite clear that the rights laid down in the European Convention should be deferred to whether or not they are actually United Kingdom law …’
‘Not in my court, Mr Nuffield. I am presiding over an English Magistrates’ Court and until I am actually bound by European law I can assure you I have no intention of deferring to it.’
A Kind Of Wild Justice Page 19
