The Mail, predictably, remained ahead. After all, they had the O’Donnells tied up and they were famously good at this kind of story. The Comet’s involvement with the private prosecution, however misguided it now seemed to have been, had until this latest development at least meant that the paper had been continuously ahead of the game. The Mail did not like to be beaten. Ever. Now it was firmly in front. The day after its initial exclusive the Mail carried a picture story of an old and frail-looking Sam O’Donnell, his walking stick to the forefront, outside the police station at which he had finally officially reported his son missing.
It was a brilliant image. However, the word was, in spite of official police protestation to the contrary, that Sam had been greeted with no great enthusiasm and there were few signs of any major police activity in looking for his son.
Joanna called Fielding again.
He had calmed down somewhat and seemed to be taking some pleasure at last from the prospect, however remote, that Jimbo O’Donnell might have come to harm. ‘You’re right, nobody’s rushing around on this one up at the Met,’ he told Jo. ‘But why should they? It’s not just that we all know the bugger’s a villain and of a particularly nasty kind, too. He’s also a grown man and, unfortunately, a free one. He’s not considered vulnerable – that would be a laugh. He could have gone anywhere off his own bat. There’s no evidence to show that he may have been taken against his will or harmed in any way – not like poor Angela.’ She had heard him sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘There’s no reason why there should be a major search on for him. He’ll go on the missing persons register, now that it’s been reported that he’s disappeared, and that will be about it. For a while, at any rate. Nobody could expect otherwise,’ he paused. ‘Except Sam the Man, of course,’ he reflected wryly.
Joanna’s discomfiture continued. Three days later Private Eye dropped with an uncannily accurate summary of Paul Potter’s public rollicking of his wife. In the notorious ‘Street of Shame’ section they referred to Potter as Smile in the Back and predictably dubbed Joanna his ‘pouting hackette spouse’.
Cracks are showing at last in the tabloid world’s dream marriage [pronounced the magazine with obvious satisfaction]. And Old Smile in the Back will be straight-faced indeed if any kind of scandal rocks his long-coveted desire for a knighthood – widely expected to be announced in the New Year’s honours list.
However, Potter needn’t worry. The Eye is assured that rumours of recent Ugandan discussions between the gorgeous pouting Lady Potter-to-be and DI Mike Fielding, her old flame now in deep water over the part he played in the revival of the O’Donnell case, are completely unfounded.
Joanna groaned inside when she, alone at her desk thankfully, encountered the barbed item in her early copy of the magazine. There was no telling how Paul would react. He too, of course, received the earliest possible edition of Private Eye, as did virtually everyone in newspapers. It was a bit like a house magazine, really. Paul would have scanned the rag already and read the piece. If he hadn’t, some kind soul would be sure to point it out to him.
She saw her husband several times during the day, including at morning and afternoon conference, but he made no mention of the Private Eye piece. She didn’t either, in spite of being well aware of occasional little giggling groups of staff falling into unnatural silence as soon as she approached. But she kept her own counsel, pretended not to notice, said nothing. Give nobody the satisfaction of seeing that you were hurt or in any way affected. That was one thing that had remained the same throughout all the changes she had witnessed within newspapers. If there was one thing worse than being the subject of a typically snide Private Eye piece, it would be to let the buggers know they had got to you – in particular the buggers who had been responsible for supplying the relevant information.
Though Paul did not mention the item to her that day, or even give any indication that he had read it, she knew him well enough to be quite sure that he had, and that this was the reason for him looking unusually tight-lipped. She dreaded the confrontation that was surely coming.
At home that evening, over a nowadays increasingly rare late supper together, Paul at last brought up the subject. ‘I’m absolutely fucking furious about that Private Eye piece, Jo,’ he told her, and she knew he really must be, because he so rarely swore.
‘I know. It is bollocks, though; I hope you realise that.’
‘What?’ He glanced at her with his eyebrows raised as if not quite following her train of thought. ‘Oh, you mean the Fielding stuff?’ Paul’s tone was very reasonable. ‘I don’t enjoy reading that sort of thing about my wife, but I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later after the court case. That damned picture everybody carried didn’t help. And you do insist on still remaining in contact with the man.’
‘He’s the best contact we’ve got on this; in fact, he’s about the only one left, Paul,’ she said.
‘Yes, I know,’ he countered. ‘You still have a fixation for him, though, I’m aware of that even if you’re not yourself. But I don’t really think there’s anything between you any more. And anyway, it’s not that which has made me so mad. It’s all that stuff from morning conference. If I knew which one of our guys had sold us down the river like that I’d sack whoever it was at once. Jesus!’
She couldn’t help a small smile. Paul’s reactions were rarely predictable. He never failed to surprise her and often to impress her.
The following day the law lords ruled that the appeal court which had overturned the murder conviction of Michael Weir had been wrong. This was the case which had been used as a precedent by the defence in the ill-fated private prosecution of Jimbo O’Donnell.
The appeal court’s judgement that DNA samples obtained during the investigation of one offence could not be used in an unrelated case had been crucial to the failure of the committal proceedings.
The law lords, however, were damning. ‘The austere interpretation which the court of appeal adopted is not only in conflict with the plain words of the statute but also produces results which are contrary to good sense,’ they said.
Too late, thought Joanna glumly. If only O’Donnell was in court now, that ruling could have made all the difference. But Jimbo had now faced every possible charge concerning the abduction and death of Angela Phillips. Double jeopardy was still the law. He couldn’t be tried again.
Four days later it all became academic. James Martin O’Donnell’s body was discovered on Dartmoor, not far from the disused tin mine which had become the tomb of the raped and murdered Angela Phillips twenty-one years earlier. He had been found early one morning by a group of ramblers and it was as if his killer had planned for him to be discovered. Jimbo had been buried in the shallowest of graves which, although in a remote part of the moor, had been only roughly filled in and was almost on the edge of the kind of track that was bound to be popular with walkers. The grave was so shallow that the heavy rains of the previous evening had washed away enough of the loose soil covering Jimbo for the fingers of his right hand to be left actually sticking out of the ground. It was this grisly sight that had alerted the ramblers.
O’Donnell was naked, his body caked with his own blood. And his cut-off penis had been stuffed into his mouth. Medical examination was later to prove both that his penis had been removed with a none too sharp knife shortly before his death and also that he had been buried alive.
Thirteen
Joanna learned of the discovery of O’Donnell’s body from Fielding. He might be out of favour with his bosses but Dartmoor remained his patch. The seasoned detective didn’t miss much.
She was stunned. It was something else she hadn’t expected. Was this story never going to roll over? In her mind she had half dismissed the whole business of Jimbo’s disappearance as yet another O’Donnell stunt. But he had been murdered, and in such a dramatic and significant way. Buried alive. His cock in his mouth. Found near where Angela Phillips had died. The first constructive thought that crosse
d her mind was that it had to be a revenge killing.
‘It’s going to be announced at a press conference later today, after he’s been formally identified,’ Fielding told her in a telephone call just after morning conference. He was at Heavitree Road police station. He spoke very quietly. She could understand that he did not want to be overheard. It was good of him to call her. She supposed it was for old times’ sake. Mind you, she had stuck her neck out on his instigation and, thanks to him, her head was almost as much on the block in a different sort of way as his. She deserved his help. That did not mean he would necessarily always give it. On this occasion, though, Fielding had come up trumps. ‘Tommy O’Donnell’s on his way to the mortuary in Exeter as we speak,’ he went on. ‘It’s a formality, though. We all know what O’Donnell looks like well enough. He hasn’t decomposed that much yet, and there’s that tattoo on his arm. I thought you’d like a lead on it.’
‘Thanks, Mike, I appreciate it,’ she told him. She did too. The Mail would already be working on it for certain. They would be keeping their grip tight on the O’Donnells. If Tommy O’Donnell was on his way to Exeter the chances were that a Mail team was hard on his heels – maybe even with him. She didn’t have the O’Donnells and she sure as hell didn’t have the Phillipses any more. All she had was one Mike Fielding.
She pumped him for any extra information he could give her. ‘Have you seen the body yourself?’ she asked.
‘Nope. C’mon, Jo, I’m off the case, aren’t I? If I survive this lot at all I’m not likely to be doing much more than shuffling papers till I can pick up my pension and get out.’
Not that again, she thought. But she passed no comment. After all, she did realise that her own financial situation was a very fortunate one.
There appeared to be little more that he could or would tell her. When she ended the call she realised that neither of them had expressed their feelings on O’Donnell’s death or the manner of it. Nor the significance of it. That was perhaps strange. For herself, she had been too shocked. She leaned back in her chair, stretching out her legs, and allowed herself the luxury of a minute or two to think over what she had just learned. She could not avoid a sense of satisfaction that Jimbo O’Donnell had met both an early and undoubtedly agonising death, but not nearly as much satisfaction as she would have obtained from seeing him found guilty of the murder or at least the kidnap of Angela Phillips and properly revealed as the monster he had undoubtedly been. As far as the law was concerned he had died an innocent man and she was almost surprised to find that still mattered to her.
However, she had no time for further philosophising if she wanted to make the most of the advantage she and the Comet had been given by Fielding. She reached for her phone and called through to Paul’s office.
‘Come in now, get news and pix and Tim Jones,’ he instructed. He meant bring in the news and picture editors along with Jones as chief crime man. Together they worked on the story all day, Pam Smythe directing her news team, Tim and his number two working through the Yard and their own contacts on either side of the law, and Joanna mercilessly exploiting whatever contacts she had left who might be able to help her on the story.
She spoke to Mike again a few hours later, to check on developments, homing in on every possible angle he might be able to give her that could put her and her newspaper ahead of the pack. ‘So it is a revenge killing, then?’ she asked. ‘For Angela? Is that what your lads think?’
‘’Course they do. Where he was found, the way he died, his cock in his mouth. Unless we’re just being made to think that.’
‘You’re getting complicated.’
‘Yeah. Well. I try to think round things, don’t I? Which is maybe why I was never going to make it big in the job …’
His bitterness and disappointment were never far from the surface, she thought. She stayed silent.
He continued after a brief pause ‘No. You’re right, Jo. Revenge for Angela is the number one theory. The Phillipses will be questioned, of course.’
‘You don’t think any of them would be capable of what was done to Jimbo, do you?’
‘As it happens, no, I don’t. And Jimbo O’Donnell was never short of enemies. But they’re obviously going to be on the list, aren’t they?’
Jo supposed so. She felt a sharp stab of pity for the family, together with a pang of guilt. If she and Fielding hadn’t opened the whole can of worms again the Phillipses would not be in this situation.
She had no time to dwell on it, though. She had work to do. And fast. The material was dynamite and she knew they had put together a really good package by early evening conference at 5.15 p.m. The official Yard announcement did not come until about half an hour before that. Fielding’s tip had given them a lead of the best part of a day. The Comet had been handed a huge advantage over its rivals, with the exception, she had little doubt, of the Mail. For about the first time since the whole thing had started again she allowed herself to feel a little bit pleased with herself. Just a little. And O’Donnell was dead, brutally murdered, which really was beginning to give her a nice warm feeling. Whoever had done the deed.
After the conference Paul gestured for her to stay behind. She knew he would consider the story the Comet would be putting to bed that night to be at least something of a recovery. And, indeed, he seemed to be in the best mood he had been in for some time. ‘I had lunch with Cromer-Wrong today,’ he told her cheerily. Ronald Cromer-Wright was the Comet’s senior lawyer. Naturally he was invariably known as Cromer-Wrong. Nicknames like that were traditionally every bit as much a part of Fleet Street life as of the gangland world. It was instantly reassuring to Jo that Paul had referred to the lawyer in the familiar vernacular. Had he not been quite so cheery she might have wondered a little uneasily, in view of her recent exploits, where this opening remark was leading.
‘Apparently Cromer-Wrong bumped into a rather well-oiled Nigel Nuffield at some chambers do who informed him that he would never be doing business with him or anybody else at the Comet for as long as you remained employed here, but refused to elaborate,’ Paul continued, sounding highly amused now. ‘Actually, I’m beginning to come round to your way of thinking, that maybe that’s no great loss. But Nuffield’s been paid by the Phillipses, apparently, so that’s not his problem. I just want to know what you did to him, Jo.’ Paul was grinning as if in anticipation.
This was almost like the old days, thought Joanna. ‘I told him he was an overpaid, over-hyped, patronising fucking bastard,’ she explained casually. ‘Oh, and I think I may have mentioned something about prancing about in a damned silly wig …’
‘I’ve told you before, Jo, about being afraid to say what you mean,’ remarked her husband solemnly. Then he started to chuckle. She could still hear him chuckling as she left his office, closing the door behind her.
Paul had always had a wicked sense of humour, buried as it all too often was beneath that cool, rather distant exterior, and it pained her that she, at least, seemed to be seeing less and less of it nowadays. He also had a liking for journalists who stood their corner and showed spirit. Even the one who was his wife, it seemed. By the time she reached her desk she was remembering all the reasons why she had married him in the first place.
Then, just before first edition time, he phoned down and asked her to come along to his office. She was still feeling buoyant – until he told her he was taking her byline off the main story.
‘Sorry, Jo, you’re too much at the heart of it all. The Phillipses might still sue. I can’t take unnecessary risks. And God only knows what the O’Donnells might yet come up with. I want to distance you from it all. Having your name all over the splash every time something new breaks on this one just won’t do.’
‘Fine, whatever you say,’ she told him crisply. She made no further comment, but she did slam the door to his office on the way out.
As she walked back to her desk she couldn’t help but think back to the days when in an unhappy situation like this the f
irst person she would have chosen to drown her sorrows with would have been one Paul Potter.
She told herself not to be so dammed stupid. If she hadn’t been his wife she doubted Paul would even have bothered to tell her about the byline, and she would have known nothing about it until the first edition dropped. It was utterly ridiculous that a byline should matter so much to her at her age and after all she had been through in newspapers, after all she had achieved. But it did matter, of course. Particularly when she was the one who had got the lead on the story. It was actually even more than that. This was her story, through and through, and had been from the very germ of the beginning of it to whatever decaying bones of it there were now. She had taken the flak when it had gone so badly wrong. She should also get any credit that was going. Even after all these years it was still important to her to be seen to be achieving, to be seen to be at the top of her particular game.
It mattered all right. And the day that it didn’t would be the day when she might as well not bother to continue even pretending to be a journalist.
The red-top Sundays had a field day. The News of the World homed in on Rob Phillips who gave a near-hysterical interview in which he said that O’Donnell had finally got what he deserved and that he only wished he had had the nerve to do the job himself. ‘What happened to O’Donnell is poetic justice,’ he said. ‘I just hope he died in agony and in terror, like my poor sister did. But no end, however dreadful, could ever be quite bad enough for that evil bastard.’
It was hard-hitting stuff. The fact that O’Donnell was officially an innocent man twice acquitted for crimes against Angela, including her rape and murder, in two different courts of law, received little attention. Because O’Donnell was dead, the Screws had a clear run at the story. You can’t libel the dead.
A Kind Of Wild Justice Page 23
