A Kind Of Wild Justice

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘Do you think there will ever be anything to do with that bastard that I don’t want to know every spit and fart on? You talk to the man who topped O’Donnell, you get all this new stuff, and you don’t even contact me because it didn’t occur to you? What didn’t occur to you, Jo? That I’d be interested, or that I would care?’

  ‘Mike, I’m sorry …’ she began.

  He had begun to button up his shirt by then. She could tell she was going to get nowhere with him this afternoon. She had known that happen before with him, and with her first husband, come to that – although never with Paul who was too controlled. After lovemaking, just when you hope for tenderness and peace, the truth was inclined to come out. Any lurking resentment or bitterness surfaced.

  Fielding interrupted her again. Calm now, but icy cold. ‘Look, don’t worry about it. Why should you understand? Nobody else does. I can’t talk about it now, anyway. I’ve got to go, I’ve already stayed longer than I should have.’

  She was hurt, but she realised she had been completely thoughtless. After all, she had always known how much the Angela Phillips case had got to him. He had been genuinely moved by the poor girl’s fate and had wanted desperately to see her murderer brought to justice. But it was more than that. It had become personal for him, as it had for her. Certainly she had already been aware that Mike took O’Donnell’s two acquittals, and all the baggage that had come with them, personally. But maybe she had not realised before just how emotionally affected he still was.

  ‘Can’t you just stay a few minutes more?’ she asked. ‘I don’t like you leaving like this.’

  ‘No, I can’t, Jo,’ he said. He was no longer shouting; in fact, his voice was now quite soft, but as he spoke he pulled on his jacket and began to walk backwards towards the door. ‘It’s all right, really,’ he told her. ‘I’ll call you, OK?’

  Joanna pulled the sheet up tight to her chin and watched him go. There was nothing else she could do. Maybe another time he would talk to her reasonably about it all. She hoped so. She found that she was feeling very anxious suddenly.

  This was yet another side of Mike that, after all these years on and off, she had not really seen before. She knew he could be much softer than he seemed. She had learned that long ago. She knew so much about him. But she was deeply disturbed by the glimpse he had just given her of a level of obsession she had not suspected. She became very thoughtful and she did not like the path down which her thoughts were leading her.

  How far would this man, who still had such a hold over her, go to get what he thought was justice, she wondered. He’d know how to fix it, that was for certain. He was computer-literate too. But then, so would she, up to a point. So would many people whose lives had been blighted by O’Donnell and his terrible crime. How far would she go? If it was important enough, if she thought she could get away with it. She made herself think about that too. It wasn’t just Mike. Far from it.

  Nonetheless, as she showered and dressed, and prepared to drive back to the husband and child to whom she had given no thought at all during the time she had spent with her lover, she found herself growing increasingly uneasy.

  Mike had never liked to be beaten, had he? In order to get his man he had always been prepared to go that little bit further, push that bit harder …

  Seventeen

  Back in the office in Canary Wharf the next day and right through the following week, Joanna tried to concentrate her mind on her work. And particularly on any developments in the e-mail murder case. She hardly dared contact either the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary or Scotland Yard on this one – she had become a bit of a pariah in those areas, particularly as far as Detective Superintendent Todd Mallett was concerned – so Tim Jones was on the case. And all he could do was assure her that the police had made no further progress at all.

  They had, of course, gone back to Shifter’s house and searched it again. The only computer found had indeed been newly acquired and contained no hidden ‘contractor’ and ‘enforcer’ e-mail files and, in fact, nothing at all relating to Shifter’s dubious business.

  Shifter was extensively interviewed all over again by the police, but refused to reveal any more information about either the Swiss bank accounts or the e-mail correspondence. He also continued to refuse to reveal which cyber café he had used, but diligent foot-slogging inquiries by officers carrying photographs of the distinctive Shifter resulted in the staff of a cyber café not far from Brown’s home admitting that they were almost sure Shifter had used their computers on several occasions to go on-line. However, they had unfortunately recently upgraded their stock.

  ‘The police are not going to be able to trace the stuff beyond the dealer the caff traded with, not without a miracle,’ Tim told her. ‘Chances are it’s already been sold on through one of those street markets like the one Shifter bought his rigs from. That’s what usually happens.’

  Meanwhile Jo forced herself not to phone Fielding. She knew she should allow him to contact her in his own time. But after eight days she began to wonder if she would ever hear from him again.

  On the evening of the ninth day after their tryst in the Taunton motel Fielding finally called.

  Joanna felt that familiar physical lurch inside. She was just so relieved to hear from him. The sound of his voice still brought her up in goose bumps.

  ‘I’m sorry I was such a pig, sometimes everything seems to get on top of me,’ he told her at once.

  She reassured him. ‘It’s fine, Mike, honestly.’

  ‘Look, I can swing a trip to town next week, that’s if you still want to …’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘Oh, yes, I want to,’ she replied quietly. And she did, too. Deep, deep inside she could already feel the dull ache of anticipation.

  Their lovemaking seemed to become more and more urgent every time they were together. It was Fielding who took the lead. Again this time, once more in the downmarket Southampton Row hotel, he had no time for any niceties. There was no finesse. There were no preliminaries. He barely spoke to her and there was no foreplay. He just pushed her down on the bed, not even giving her time to undress properly, and entered her roughly without even taking his trousers off, just undoing his flies and thrusting straight into her. His eyes were fixed on the wall behind the bed, his teeth gritted in concentration, his features distorted in effort. And his face was coated in sweat. He held each of her wrists down above her head. He didn’t hurt her and yet there was a kind of cold brutality in his lovemaking. It couldn’t really have been called that. He just pummelled into her, apparently quite uninterested in how she might be taking it. Again he didn’t give her a chance, didn’t even seem to care. He did not pause until it was over for him.

  When he had finished he rolled off her straight away. ‘I’m sorry, next time will be for you,’ he muttered haltingly, his breath coming in great gasps still.

  He had never been quite like that before. She didn’t think she liked it very much. In fact, she was quite sure she didn’t like it. And yet – and maybe it was because of his desperation – she was immensely excited by it. Her desire, her need, seemed to increase with his disregard for it. And as in the motel in Taunton her own satisfaction, when he finally concentrated his attentions on her, seemed greater than ever. When she climaxed she thought she had never experienced quite such acute pleasure. Not even with him.

  This time it was a snatched early evening meeting. He had a police dinner to go to that night. And he dressed and left her in bed again, although she had to leave shortly afterwards. She was glowing, almost burning inside, and she just wanted a few more minutes luxuriating in the feeling.

  He came to the bed and kissed her firmly on the mouth before he left, tantalising her with his tongue. Making her whole body remember what it had just enjoyed. ‘It gets better every time,’ he told her with a smile, and he ran one hand down the entire length of her body lingering for just a few seconds over one breast and between her legs, before stepping back, shaking his head sorrowful
ly, turning and heading for the door.

  At least their parting was more pleasant than the last time, she thought, as he shut the door behind him. He had always been a moody bugger, and his mood the last time they had met had been very disconcerting. As had been the sex they had just had.

  Gradually the uneasiness that had been lurking ever since that afternoon at the Taunton motel overwhelmed her, forcing out all those nice warm feelings that came from great sexual satisfaction. She lay there thinking about the way these sea changes came over him, how he had shown that disturbing side of himself to her, and then she noticed his laptop computer on the small table by the window.

  She couldn’t stop herself. She dragged the sheet off the bed, wrapping it around herself, grabbed the little machine, sat down on the room’s only chair and switched on. It was password-protected, of course, but she felt she had at least a chance of second-guessing him, given time, which she had a reasonable amount of. She checked her watch. It was just past 7.30. Fielding wouldn’t be back until after midnight, she was sure, and as long as she was at home in Richmond before ten she would easily be there before Paul.

  However, she had been trying to break into the machine for only a couple of minutes when the door burst open.

  Fielding hurried into the room. ‘I had to turn the taxi round, I forgot my damned phone …’ He saw then that she was working on his laptop and stopped dead. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he asked very quietly, his voice full of menace.

  She felt a hot flush rise somewhere around the bottom of her neck, and spread across her throat and face until it reached her temples. She knew she must be bright red. She could think of nothing to say.

  ‘I asked you what the hell you thought you were doing?’ he enquired yet again, equally quietly.

  ‘I was just …’ Her mind was suddenly blank. She could think of no excuse. ‘Just looking for something …’ she finished lamely.

  He strode across the room and snatched the laptop away from her. He glanced at it, taking in that she had failed to gain access, shut it down and closed the lid. He did it all very quickly. She remained sitting on the chair, still wrapped in the sheet.

  He caught hold of her shoulder, his fingers digging into the flesh. ‘And what were you looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ She stopped, shook her head.

  ‘C’mon, Joanna, what did you think you were going to find?’ The fingers dug harder into her shoulder. He made her eyes water for the second time that evening. ‘C’mon, Joanna,’ he repeated.

  She had to tell him something. It might as well be the truth, she thought, in any case she didn’t have the wit at that moment to come up with anything else. ‘It’s the way you are about Angela Phillips and O’Donnell,’ she began. She saw his eyes narrow. His grip did not slacken. ‘All that stuff you told me the other night. You were right. I hadn’t understood. Not really. I hadn’t realised quite how strongly you felt about him, your job, all of it. Not until now. And I wondered … I wondered …’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘You wondered what, Jo?’ he whispered, his lips very close to her ear.

  She shook her head again and said no more.

  ‘You wondered perhaps if I felt strongly enough to do something about it all, is that it?’ He still spoke very quietly.

  His grip tightened yet more. His fingers were digging into her so hard it felt as if they were going to meet in the middle. That was something else she had not ever been so aware of before about him – his tremendous physical strength. She had found him physically threatening just once before, in the Exeter motel room, but that was nothing compared with this. She nodded. There was no point in pretending.

  ‘You wondered if I had hired Shifter, didn’t you? You wondered if I were the mystery e-mailer. And you thought you’d have a sneaky look around in my laptop to see what you could find …’

  There was real menace in him, but she supposed she could hardly blame him. She nodded once more.

  He snatched his hand from her shoulder. Involuntarily she glanced down and put her own hand there, as if to take the soreness away. She saw that his fingernails had drawn blood.

  He backed away from her, sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed and lowered his face into his hands. She still couldn’t think of anything more to say.

  When he looked up he seemed more sad than angry. ‘I can’t believe you would think something like that of me,’ he told her.

  She removed her hand from her shoulder and rested it against her forehead, took a deep breath and went for it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I started wondering about how far you would go to get O’Donnell. You’ve always been very determined, Mike, always been someone who wants to win. And this case, well, it’s always been the one, hasn’t it? Don’t they say that we all have one great love in life and a policeman has one great case? Good or bad. One case that overshadows all others. This was always yours, wasn’t it, Mike? And it’s always been a can of worms, hasn’t it? I just wondered how far you would go to close that can of worms, that’s all, I just wanted to know …’ she finished lamely again.

  ‘You could have asked me.’

  ‘I didn’t know how.’

  He grunted derisively. ‘So what about you, then?’

  ‘What do you mean, what about me?’

  He smiled humourlessly. ‘What about you, Joanna?’ he repeated. ‘This case got to you too, didn’t it, from the beginning, and in the end O’Donnell made a fool of you. He mocked you, didn’t he, humiliated you and that apology for a newspaper you work for. God knows, you don’t like being made a fool of. And in front of your peers …’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous Mike,’ she began.

  ‘Am I?’ he interrupted. ‘And you, I suppose, are not – ridiculous, offensive, insulting? I’m a police officer, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Yes, and a good one, always – but …’ The weak attempt at flattery proved to be a big mistake.

  ‘Save it,’ he said. ‘I really don’t want to know. If you can believe, even for an instant, that I’m evil enough to hire a fucking heavy to slice another man’s dick off and bury him alive then there’s not much point in anything any more, is there? Not between us, anyway.’

  To her immense irritation she felt tears forming in her eyes. She was suddenly overcome with guilt and remorse. Now that he was talking to her like that, sitting in front of her, the whole thing seemed absurd. Fielding was impetuous, yes. Impatient. Sometimes too willing to cut corners. Over eager to get a conviction. All those things. But a cold, calculated killer, albeit at a distance? No, he couldn’t be that. It was just not possible. ‘I’m so sorry, Mike,’ she stumbled. ‘I don’t know where I was coming from, I really don’t.’

  ‘Neither do I, Jo. Now you’d better get dressed and go. I’m certainly not leaving you alone in my room again. If you want to go through my pockets you’ll just have to do it while I’m here.’

  ‘Mike, please!’

  ‘Just get dressed,’ he told her, in such a way that there could be no more argument, no more discussion. Perhaps, she thought fearfully, not ever. Perhaps this time it really would be over.

  She drove home feeling thoroughly ashamed of herself. She had been cheating on her husband without compunction, she had been neglecting her daughter, maybe even endangering Emily’s secure future. She had been carried away by her affair with Fielding, it had taken over her life again just as it had done all those years ago. Hard as she fought against it, his fascination for her, which she had never been able to explain, had become all-consuming. And yet she was still able to believe that her lover could be guilty of arranging such a horrific crime. Able to suspect that of a man for whom she had been putting her marriage and her whole existence at risk.

  Joanna’s emotions were in turmoil. She found herself consumed with guilt over her behaviour towards both her family and her lover. She could not wait to get home to Richmond and sneak a look at her hopefully sleeping daughter, and maybe ev
en prepare a late supper for her husband, who she knew loved her – although she wished he wouldn’t always be so self-contained and controlled about it. At the same time she wished she could swing the car round, go back to Fielding, grovel her apologies and shag him rotten for the rest of the night.

  She took one hand off the steering wheel and thumped the passenger seat in frustration. What was wrong with her? She had a damned good life, a damned good husband, a lovely daughter, a lovely home, plenty of money. She was indeed the woman with everything. And yet again she had let this bloody case and that bloody man Fielding put it all under threat. The biggest threat, she knew, came from within her own head and heart. Fielding was under her skin again and half of her sincerely did not want him there.

  Her thoughts strayed to what he had said to her when she had more or less accused him of hiring Shifter Brown: ‘And what about you, Jo?’

  Laughable, of course. But any more laughable than her accusing him? And Mike did have a point, she supposed. There was nothing in the world she hated so much as being made a fool of. Even after all these years it irked her ever to be beaten, to be in any situation which she felt gave the opposition, particularly her rival crime journalists, reason to be able to gloat over her.

  She made herself focus on the case. That at least was a safer preoccupation than Fielding. For the umpteenth time she went over in her mind the list of people who might have wanted to take terminal revenge against James Martin O’Donnell.

  She knew that Todd Mallett and his team had questioned the Phillipses and the O’Donnells all over again since her e-mail killing story. Modern farming is a highly complex operation and, like so many farmers these days, the Phillipses virtually ran their whole business on computer. Apparently all the family were reasonably computer-literate. But were they streetwise enough to have found a killer on the Net and to know how to cover their footprints? It was also fairly laughable even to consider them coming up with a user name like ‘contractor’. And, at the end of the day, devastated though they had been by all that had happened to them and their daughter, would they really take the law into their own hands in that way?