A Kind Of Wild Justice

by Hilary Bonner

  The People featured an almost equally hysterical outburst from Tommy O’Donnell. He more or less accused the entire Phillips family, Rob Phillips in particular, of involvement in the murder and even suggested that Mike Fielding probably had a part in it too. Joanna was only surprised that she didn’t merit a mention somewhere along the line.

  She thought the People was on by far the most dodgy legal ground, but who was going to sue? Certainly not Mike Fielding who in any case appeared just to want the whole thing to go away so that he could ensure the safety of his pension. And certainly not the Phillipses. They would not have the bottle for yet another court case, she was sure of it, nor the cash, come to that. And in any event, with Rob Phillips’s rantings coincidentally appearing in the Screws on the same day as the Tommy O’Donnell stuff was in the People, what sort of case would they have? If, indeed, it was a coincidence. She thought it probably more likely that they had known over at the People what the Screws was running. After all, from about Friday morning onwards every week half the aim of the news teams of the two big red-tops was to find out what the other was splashing on. And if they’d had early knowledge at the People of the Screw’s exclusive, that would have greatly influenced the advice of the paper’s lawyers and the decision of its editor.

  She called Fielding the next day. ‘Just wanted to see how you were doing.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ he said. ‘O’Donnell’s death has taken the heat off a bit.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Somewhat takes the attention away from all those claims about me pushing you guys and the Phillipses to get the private prosecution case against O’Donnell set up, doesn’t it?’ he said.

  Typical, she thought. He always saw everything in terms of how it affected him and his career, always had done. Jimbo O’Donnell being found dead with his cock in his mouth was no exception.

  And what did he mean ‘claims’? That was the trouble with Fielding, sometimes he seemed to bend the truth so much inside his head that he got to believe his own fabrication. Which was, of course, exactly what journalists were so frequently accused of. ‘Did you see all the stuff in the Sundays?’

  ‘Yup. Predictable, I suppose.’

  ‘I wondered if you knew how the investigation is going. Any progress?’

  ‘Don’t believe so. Not that I’m allowed to get a look-in, of course. One thing’s for sure, there’s a longish list of folk who wouldn’t have minded topping Jimbo.’

  ‘Yeah. And you are on it, according to his brother Tommy.’

  He chuckled drily. ‘The O’Donnells think everybody’s idea of justice is the same as theirs,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Well, I must admit I’m glad the twisted bastard’s dead,’ she replied. ‘I’m beginning to get quite a warm feeling about it, in fact.’

  ‘Yeah.’ There was a silence.

  Surely he had more to say than that? She waited.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said again, a little more life in his voice at last. ‘Come to think of it, so am I.’

  Fielding told himself that for him it was good news not to be involved in the case any more. Things seemed to be straightening out quite nicely. With Jimbo dead the Complaints and Discipline guys did indeed seem to be losing interest in him and the part he had played in the private prosecution. He knew he would be sure to be interviewed by the team investigating O’Donnell’s murder, and he determined that he would be respectful and to the point, and not let any of his personal feelings get in the way.

  Unfortunately he was called in by the senior investigating officer on an afternoon when he was least expecting it. He had spent far longer than he ought to have done that lunchtime in the pub and had also drunk far more than he should. Confident of spending the rest of the day doing nothing more challenging than the ‘paper shuffling’ of which he was so scornful, he had downed four or five pints of bitter, he couldn’t quite remember which, each after the first one accompanied by a large whisky chaser.

  To make matters worse, the senior investigating officer was Todd Mallett. Detective Superintendent Todd Mallett. Mike had known that, of course, but he had tried not to think about it. Apart from anything else, it really rankled that the other man, whom Fielding had always considered to be thoroughly inferior to himself as a police officer, had ultimately achieved a rank far senior to his own.

  Fielding had never doubted that he had both greater ability and greater intelligence, not only than Todd Mallett but than most of the officers he had worked with over the years. That made his failure to progress beyond the rank of DI all the more infuriating. Particularly as even he had to accept that the stagnation of his career was at least partly down to his own behaviour.

  Mallett interviewed Fielding himself, rather than delegating the task to one of the lower-rank officers on his team and Fielding knew that was a gesture of respect. But he still couldn’t help the way he felt. Particularly after that ill-fated lunchtime session. From the moment he opened the door to the second-floor office which Mallett, who was actually based at HQ at Middlemoor, had been allocated, Mike seemed unable to stop himself appearing uncooperative and belligerent.

  Mallett greeted him in his usual courteous, affable fashion.

  Fielding, in the sort of mood which ensured that even the other man’s affability irritated him, responded abruptly; ‘Right, what do you want with me, then?’

  He was aware of Mallett studying him appraisingly. Apart from anything else he supposed it would be highly optimistic to think that the detective superintendent would not notice that he had been drinking.

  Certainly when Mallett spoke again he was no longer affable. He had greeted Fielding pleasantly and informally, and addressed him as Mike. The interview suddenly turned very formal and not a little hostile. His own fault again, Mike knew.

  ‘I suggest, Detective Inspector, that you watch your attitude. There is no doubt at all in my mind that you have already gone against the instructions of your senior officers in passing on certain information, albeit through a third party, to the Phillips family, and that by then encouraging them in every way you could to take out that ill-fated civil prosecution you opened the whole can of worms which has led to James Martin O’Donnell’s death …’

  ‘Look,’ interrupted Fielding, ‘I’ve been through all that with the rubber heel squad. None of you can prove a thing.’

  ‘Really,’ said Mallett, leaning towards Fielding across the small table which separated them. ‘Well, that’s down to Complaints and Discipline, although I wouldn’t be quite so sure of yourself if I were you, Inspector. As it happens, all I am interested in is any leads you may have acquired during your extremely dubious and meddlesome “enquiries” which could help us find Jimbo O’Donnell’s killer.’

  The drink really got the better of Fielding then. Or maybe it was not just that. Whatever the reason, one of those flashes of the old devil-may-care stick-it-up-your-jumper Fielding, which he tried so hard to suppress nowadays, came roaring to the forefront. ‘For fuck’s sake!’ he yelled, jumping to his feet.

  Todd involuntarily swung away from him as if half expecting to be punched in the face. Fielding wanted to punch him, too, and only just held back. Pompous, patronising, sanctimonious bugger, he fumed. But fortunately he had just enough restraint and sense of preservation left not to say so. He couldn’t stop himself launching into the rest of his diatribe, though. ‘Jimbo O’Donnell was one of the most twisted, evil, perverted bastards ever to walk free from a courtroom. Now he’s got his. And you think I’m supposed to give a fuck who topped him? Well, I fucking don’t! The world is a better place this week because somebody somewhere had the balls to do to the fucker what the whole of the justice system of this country couldn’t do – put him somewhere where he can never harm some other poor bloody kid. There is such a thing as natural justice, you know, Detective Superintendent.’ He did his best to make Todd’s rank sound like an insult and succeeded fairly well.

  The other man eyed him impassively. ‘I think we
’d better continue this interview when you’re not so emotional, Mike, don’t you?’ he enquired eventually, informal again, but very cool. He returned to studying the papers spread out on his desk in a gesture which clearly dismissed Fielding who made gratefully for the door without another word.

  Outside in the corridor, Mike closed the door quite gently behind him and leaned against it for a moment or two. He had been surprised at how articulate he had been in the circumstances and was actually, on one level, quite pleased with himself.

  But then the full implications of his outburst struck him. ‘Oh, God,’ he murmured to himself. ‘If that fucker reports me on top of everything else that really will be the end of my fucking pension.’ And, weaving very slightly from side to side, he set off down the corridor, heading for the back door out of the station. The only further decision he intended to make that afternoon was which pub he was going to go to. He certainly had no intention of returning to his desk. He might as well compound his own felony, he thought.

  Anyway, he was just beginning to feel no pain, which more and more often was the only state he really liked to be in nowadays.

  A week later a professional London heavy called Shifter Brown was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Jimbo O’Donnell. There was no formal announcement because ultimately Shifter was released without any charges being brought against him. But the news leaked around the Yard like flood water seeping through a wall of sandbags. Only quicker.

  Joanna knew of Shifter Brown, although she had never met him. He was the kind of thug others hired to do their dirty work for them. Shifter would give a man a good going over for a hundred quid or so and throw in a broken leg or two for not much more. That was well known. Shifter looked the part. He was a big, muscle-bound guy in his early forties with thinning red hair and a broken nose. As a kid he had been a budding professional heavyweight boxer until a particularly vicious blow to the head dislodged the retina of his right eye and he had been banned on medical grounds from ever fighting again. After that it was back to the streets for Shifter. Officially he was a nightclub bouncer, standing patiently, trussed up in a dinner jacket outside some of London’s hottest nightspots, his thick neck threatening to burst open the collars of his shirts, which invariably seemed to be a size too small. But the word had always been that Shifter was up for extras. He had twice served time for GBH over the years. Nobody had ever been able to pin a murder rap on him, although he had been the primary suspect in at least two gangland killings, but there seemed little doubt that killing, too, was just a job for Shifter. All part of his business. The only difference was probably the price.

  After all, that was more or less how he had got his name. He had been christened Arthur Richard Brown. They called him Shifter because he shifted people.

  Reminiscent of the original prosecution of O’Donnell for murder, it seemed that just about all the police had against Shifter was circumstantial evidence. He had been seen at night by a witness bundling an obviously unwilling passenger, hands bound, the witness had thought, into the back of his white Ford Transit. The same van had been seen in Devon, parked, apparently empty, just off the army’s Dartmoor loop road by a range warden from Okehampton camp in charge of clearing the area for a night-fighting exercise. As a matter of record he had obligingly jotted down the van’s number before going on a quick recce of the area to ensure that the vehicle’s driver had not strayed into danger territory. On a further check visit to the spot where the Transit had been parked, the warden found that the vehicle had been removed and thought no more about it until after O’Donnell’s body was discovered, when he passed his invaluable information on to the police.

  If Shifter Brown really had bundled O’Donnell into the back of a van that way, then the vehicle could well hold forensic evidence which would convict him. However, when he was arrested Shifter simply claimed that his van had been stolen. And certainly nobody could find it.

  Intensive police interrogation failed to make much impression on Shifter. He was a pro. He said nothing. Even if he had believed that the police had enough to charge him and that fingering whoever might have hired him could help his case, Shifter was firmly of the ‘I don’t grass, governor’ breed. Ultimately the arresting officers had to admit they had insufficient evidence with which to charge Shifter and he was released after the maximum thirty-six hours in custody.

  A couple of weeks after that the inquest into James Martin O’Donnell’s death was held in Okehampton – once again in the familiar room in the grubby white extended bungalow which was the moorland town’s unprepossessing Magistrates’ Court. The verdict, of course, was death by unlawful killing.

  Joanna travelled down to Devon for the hearing, carefully avoiding telling Paul that she planned to be there. She somehow could not resist witnessing this final chapter in O’Donnell’s life and she knew her husband would not approve. He appreciated her contributions to the story and the additional information she was sometimes able to provide, but he still seemed to want her to back off from any public involvement.

  The Phillipses were not at the inquest. Joanna reckoned they’d had quite enough of courts – and of the police. She had not expected them to be there and would indeed have been horrified had she had to confront them.

  Tommy O’Donnell was there. He glowered at her across the courtroom but made no attempt to speak to her. His father Sam didn’t make an appearance and neither did Mike Fielding.

  Joanna knew that Mike, too, was being forced to take a back seat and thought that maybe he had in any case reached the stage where that was all he wanted to do.

  She called him on her mobile afterwards and they agreed to meet again at the same pub as before. She didn’t like to think about what was continually drawing her to him, but she had to admit it was something more than just what he could give her professionally.

  He looked even wearier and as if he had been drinking already, which was probably par for the course, she suspected. He arrived in a taxi. Gone were the days when policemen dared to take liberties others might not with drink-driving laws. In the present climate a drink-driving offence almost invariably meant instant dismissal. And the end of the pension, the prospect of which, as Mike had so frequently indicated to her, seemed to be about all he was looking forward to in life.

  In response to her query about his welfare he told her the story of his interview with Todd Mallett.

  She couldn’t help smiling. ‘How to win friends and influence people, the Fielding edition,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he responded. ‘Too much to bloody drink again, I suppose. Mind you, I always drink more when I’m bored and I’m bored rigid. It’s not just this case the bastards won’t let me near, you know. It every damn thing. They’re giving the impression they’re doing me a favour just by letting me work out the next twelve months or so for my thirty years.’

  Here we go again, she thought.

  He drank deeply from his pint, his second since they had arrived there ten minutes earlier.

  ‘So Mallett didn’t take any official action against you, then, or you wouldn’t have that to worry about maybe.’

  ‘No maybe about it. I suppose Mallett did me a favour really.’ He sounded very grudging, but then Jo knew enough about the relationship between the two men to understand how difficult Fielding must find it to accept their respective positions. ‘He didn’t report me. Just called me in the next day and suggested we do the interview all over again. Told me to consider that I was being given a final warning, though. Step out of line once more and he’d make sure I was out. And stuff my pension.’ Mike smiled wryly. ‘Anyway you don’t want to hear all that; all you want from me is information, isn’t it?’

  Was it her imagination or did he sound bitter yet again? She played it straight and spoke lightly. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘It’s OK, I know I owe you.’

  He’d told her that before, too. But, rather stupidly perhaps, she hoped that wasn’t the only reason he was helping h
er. And in any case, he might be a bit down and out by his standards, but Fielding was not at all beyond using her to pass on information he wanted to see in print. His reasons were invariably his own. He was the kind of man who had always had a private agenda, always found it hard to toe the official line. The difference was that when you were young and flying high, and cracking cases others couldn’t get to grips with, it was all right to be a bit of a maverick. When you were pushing fifty and drinking too much and you had lost that early flair, albeit because it had been knocked out of you rotten, then it wasn’t all right any more.

  She knew that and was honest enough with herself to wonder how she would be faring in her world were it not for her marriage to her editor. All too many of her peers had been either unceremoniously cast on the scrap heap when they were in their forties or early fifties, or else so badly humiliated they had felt forced to resign in order to save their sanity. And, all too often nowadays, without the buffer of the huge payoffs that had been pretty well standard right up to the early nineties.

  She studied Fielding sympathetically. She had to pity him, although she knew how much he would hate to know that. ‘You don’t owe me anything,’ she said flatly. If it was a lie, what did it matter?

  He grinned at her. In spite of everything the grin had barely changed. Extraordinary. Still to die for, still cheeky and challenging and warm and inviting all at the same time. It was just that she reckoned it was a pretty rare sight nowadays.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ he told her, and there was even that old hint of laughter in his voice. But he continued in matter-of-fact more serious tones, ‘Mallett’s convinced Brown did it, Jo. Don’t waste your energies on any other theories. I haven’t got a lot of time for Todd Mallett, but there’s little doubt he’s right.’

  She studied his face and his voice as he spoke. He had always been different when he talked about policing in this way. It was what he did, what he had once done so well. He sounded almost authoritative and sure of himself, the way he used to, even though this was not his case any more and any further unofficial involvement in it could only damage, if not destroy, the remains of his career.