‘That will have to be enough, then.’ He spoke in a rather faraway manner. However, she was used to this distance in him. He was colder than usual, but theirs had never been exactly a warm cosy relationship.
Four days later she received a visiting order to see Fielding. She took it straight to Paul in his office. She had always intended to do this. She accepted now that there was no way she could see the disgraced policeman without Paul knowing. Not ever again, probably. In or out of jail. So she might as well be up front about it.
‘Why do you want to do this?’ he asked in a level voice.
‘Two reasons,’ she responded. ‘First, I want to tell Mike to his face that it’s over between us regardless of the outcome of his prosecution. I tried to phone him before he was arrested but I never got through. Second, professional reasons, of course. He’s not going to talk to any other journalist, is he? And I honestly believe I will learn the truth if I see him.’
Her husband studied her silently for a moment or two. ‘I don’t want you to see him,’ he said eventually.
‘I can hardly fuck him in prison, can I?’ she burst out.
His eyes clouded over.
‘Look, Paul. I haven’t come here to ask your permission. I am going to see Mike. I told you I wouldn’t deceive you any more and I am keeping my word. I will never see Fielding again after this. But I am quite determined to do so this final time. I’ve given you my reasons. If you want to make something of it, you can, but I hope you will accept it.’
‘I could stop you.’ The usual cool voice. The usual unfathomable look.
‘No, you can’t, actually,’ she said, trying to sound equally cool. ‘You can start those damned divorce proceeding if you like, as you threatened you would, although I hope you won’t, but you can’t stop me.’
She left his office then, without waiting for a reply. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t divorce her. He would put up with this. After all, he had put up with far more. He wanted to keep her. He had fought for her. He could have done it in a more human fashion, of course, but Paul was Paul. In a way she was more than ever aware of the power she had over him. She also knew she must never abuse it again. But she could use it. And that was what she had just done. She had been honest, she had been direct and she had forced him to accept something he didn’t like.
Knowing Paul, though, she thought with just a flicker of amusement as she walked back to her desk, he would have started by now to consider the professional aspects of her planned prison visit. It would put the Comet well ahead of the game, no doubt about it. And Paul would like that very much indeed. No doubt about that either.
Two o’clock in the afternoon, the arranged time on the appointed day for Joanna’s visit, had seemed a long time coming to Fielding. He was angry with himself for looking forward to seeing her so much. He felt let down by her, as indeed he felt let down by all of them. He was on remand so he was wearing his own clothes. That at least was something. He wouldn’t have wanted her to see him in prison drabs. He hoped that nobody would see him in those, ever, but things were pretty bleak right now.
He didn’t have a mirror in his cell, which was all for the best, probably. He knew he looked dreadful.
Eventually they came for him. She was already sitting at one of those tables in the visiting room. Her turn to wait. But just for a few minutes, he supposed. He wished he didn’t react the way he did whenever he saw her. His heart leapt. And his body? Well, nobody, not ever, had had the effect on him that Joanna Bartlett had. When they had begun their affair again after all those years he had never thought it would still be like that, at least not quite so extreme.
He saw her glance up as they opened the door and he stepped into the room. She looked good. But then she almost always did. She had never been pretty. Striking, yes. Pretty, no. But she had aged well. She had good bone structure and fine skin. Her body was good, too. She worked at that and it showed. He couldn’t see much of it – she was wearing a loose linen jacket over a cotton shirt buttoned to the neck – but he had learned over the last few months just how good it was. By God he had. His belly muscles tightened slightly at the thought. She could pass for ten years younger than she was, he thought, which was more than he ever would again. Certainly after coping with all of this – if he did cope with it.
He saw the expression of shock that flickered across her face when she first saw him, and then how rapidly she recovered herself. He knew he looked grey and haggard. That famous prison pallor he had so often seen, which developed so astonishingly quickly.
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said as he approached her. She did not get up.
He did not attempt to kiss her, not even to touch her hand. Instead he swiftly sat down opposite her. ‘You know I can never resist.’ He actually tried to sound jaunty, he didn’t quite know why, but in any case he failed dismally.
‘Paul knows.’ She blurted out the words, as if she hadn’t intended to begin their conversation like this, but had not been able to stop herself.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘And?’ he asked.
‘He told me that if I carried on seeing you he would divorce me, sack me and turn Emily against me. He would, too. And don’t think he couldn’t.’
‘I’m sure he could. So what are you doing here?’
‘I told him I couldn’t fuck you in the visiting room of Exeter prison.’
He managed a wry half-smile. ‘Anything else?’
‘I also told him that it would be to the advantage of his bloody newspaper. That you wouldn’t be talking to any other journalists and in any case I would be more likely than anybody else to get the truth from you.’
He shook his head almost sorrowfully. He was supposed to have been the ruthless, dedicated career policeman, although that seemed almost like another world now. But Joanna? She was a real piece of work. She never forgot that she was a journalist, not for a second, and her husband, Mike felt quite sure, was of the same stock only more so. ‘You two are incredible, you know,’ he said.
She didn’t seem to understand. She was, as ever, he thought, far too wrapped up in her own curious world. ‘What do you mean?’
‘If you really don’t know, Jo, then there’s no point in my even trying to explain.’
She shook her head in a puzzled sort of way. ‘Look, we don’t have very long. I do need to know the truth, Mike. For myself. Bugger the paper.’
He studied her quizzically. Bugger the paper, he just didn’t believe. Not from her. Not from any of them, really, but particularly not from Joanna Bartlett. Hack through and through. Weaned on hot metal. ‘I told you before, if you need to ask me that question, then I don’t know what we were all about, ever,’ he informed her. And he felt the anger growing inside him. As usual he became angry with her more quickly than with anybody else. It was like that when you really cared for someone. It was for him anyway. ‘You’ve already confronted me once,’ he snapped at her. ‘You tried to hack into my computer yourself. You’ve made it quite clear that you believe I am capable of this. That’s your problem, not mine.’
‘I just want to know what I am supposed to believe …’
‘Do you?’ He was seething inside now, barely able to keep his temper in control. ‘You could start by asking yourself an intelligent question for a change. They found all that crap on my laptop and charged me on the strength of it. I’ve no doubt you know all about that unless you’ve changed beyond recognition. So why didn’t I chuck the damned machine? Throw it out with the rubbish, toss it into the sea at the dead of night at Exmouth or Dawlish Warren? Um? Ask yourself that. Which is more than anybody else will do, it seems. Even Shifter had the sense to trash his rig. Do you really think I would have kept a laptop containing files which could prove that I put out a murder contract, for God’s sake?’
‘Are you saying you’ve been set up?’
‘I don’t know, Jo. What do you think? Do you still think?’
‘Of course I do …’
‘Right, then thin
k about this. Not only have I been set up but could you conceive for one moment I would have been remanded in custody over this if I weren’t a copper? At least I’d be out on bail. What they’ve got on me is never going to stand up in court and the way they got it stinks. Can you imagine the outcry if fucking Todd Mallett had come marching into your office and commandeered your laptop?’
‘Well, yes,’ she began. ‘But you are a policeman and maybe the rules are supposed to be the same but I suppose …’
He interrupted her abruptly. ‘You’d better go, Jo. I’m sick of you and your half-spoken accusations. Just go.’
With one hand he beckoned to a prison officer and with the other he waved her away.
She knew better than to argue. She just stood up silently, turned and walked away from him, head bowed, glancing back at him over her shoulder only when he called out to her.
‘Are you sure you didn’t get into my computer that evening at the hotel, Jo? You’re good, aren’t you? You’re fast. Maybe you had time after all …’ And it had given him some satisfaction to see the shocked expression on her face before he rose wearily from his chair and headed for the door leading back to his cell. The way things were inside his head right now, sometimes it was almost a relief to be locked up.
Jo stared after him for a few seconds. What did he mean? Did he suspect that she had tampered with his laptop, planted the incriminating files? She was more confused than ever. And her emotions were playing ping-pong with each other again. She felt the damned tears he could always arouse more quickly than anyone pricking. How was it he could still do this to her, even when some of the things he had said to her displayed nothing more than contempt? It was bewildering.
Hurrying through the prison gates, she bumped into a small, plumpish, red-haired woman on the way in. Jo had been walking with her head down, trying to hide the tears which were by then starting to run down her face. The collision was entirely her fault. She had not been looking where she was going and she had walked straight into the other woman. Looking up, stumbling her apologies, she recognised with a start that she was Fielding’s wife. She had seen her photograph, on his desk that first time they were together and even in his wallet. It always seemed to fall out every time he removed his credit cards. Her colouring was distinctive, that bright-red hair which Jo, with a sharp stab of incongruous jealousy, thought was probably still totally natural, the freckles.
Ruth Fielding looked her full in the face. She had bags under her eyes and an understandable weariness about her. She was no longer anywhere near as pretty as she had been in the photographs. She showed absolutely no sign of recognition. ‘’S all right,’ she mumbled and said ‘sorry’ herself, the way the English do, even when they are not remotely to blame for whatever it is they are apologising for, then shuffled on through the gates.
Joanna had always suspected that Mike had never told his wife about her, despite all those convoluted stories about Ruth’s breakdown and their daughter’s despair. All of it, even the dying mother-in-law, was probably a load of nonsense. She had always half suspected that was probably the case but confirmation was nonetheless painful. Ruth Fielding had almost certainly never even been aware of her existence, she thought, never known of the affair which her husband had frequently claimed was the most important relationship in his life, more so, even, than his marriage.
Jo was high-profile, pictured regularly in her own paper, occasionally on TV, and had been so long before the notoriety she had gained through the part she played along with Fielding in bringing O’Donnell to trial in that ill-fated private prosecution. She and Fielding had even been pictured together in more than one newspaper, not to mention the innuendoes published in Private Eye. If Mrs Fielding had the slightest inkling that Jo and her husband had had an affair, then Joanna felt sure the woman would have had her features indelibly printed on her mind. After all, she had recognised Mike’s wife quickly enough, even though she had never met her.
She walked slowly towards her car, turning her thoughts back to the events of the last few minutes. What did it all mean? Could Mike really have been framed? He was never short of confidence. His argument about the laptop was deeply flawed. Maybe he had believed he had removed all traces from it and that it was safe. She reminded herself again of how even the love-bug hackers had been traced. Mike had always been inclined to be overly confident. If that was the case yet again then he had had no reason to destroy his computer. Jo still didn’t know what to believe. And that was a nice touch he had added at the end, hinting that maybe she had played a part in framing him. She didn’t think he really thought that, but you never knew with Mike.
One way and another she hadn’t learned very much; indeed, much less than she had hoped for and, in fact, had actually expected. Bugger all, to be honest. The visit had not given her what she had sought in any direction. She was no nearer the truth than she had been before she had seen Fielding. She couldn’t write anything, of course, until the trial was over, but he had told her nothing that would ever make much in the way of copy. Accused man says he’s been set up. Hold the front page.
Her mind strayed to their personal feelings towards each other. Jo wondered if his display of disappointed outrage could be yet another sort of excuse, another way of avoiding even the possibility of any kind of real permanent commitment.
She had told Paul that she had made her decision, that she would end her relationship with Fielding and stay with her husband. And she had meant it, every word of it, even before Fielding had been arrested. Paul had been right. She had too much to lose.
But if Fielding were still a free man, if he had ever pressed her to be with him full time in such a way that she had been able to believe it – well, she just didn’t know how she might have reacted. In spite of everything. Even including her daughter.
God, it was mad. But then, when it came to Mike Fielding she was quite barking. Always had been. Mixed up. Out of control.
She unlocked her car door and slumped in the driver’s seat motionless for a few moments, willing the tears to stop. Eventually they did and she started the engine.
There was no point in rushing back to the office. Instead, she drove, rather slowly for her, home to Richmond. She didn’t phone. Not the news desk. Not Paul. Not anyone. She had nothing to tell them, really. She chose the A303 rather than the M5 and M4. She didn’t feel like belting along at ninety miles an hour the way she usually did, invariably exceeding the motorway speed limit with a kind of studied nonchalance. She got stuck behind a succession of trucks and caravans on the bits of the A303 that were still just two- and three-lane, but she didn’t mind. She stopped at Stonehenge. The sun was just setting and the mysterious prehistoric monument, its giant pillars of stone commanding the sweeping landscape of Salisbury Plain, looked wonderful in the evening light. She parked in the car park, bought coffee from the snack bar and walked out across the access road, where she leaned on the fence and just took in the atmosphere of the ancient place for a little while. Delaying her return, really. God knew, she could do with a few mystic vibes.
At home she and Emily watched a video together. Some teen romance movie. Emily was getting to be disconcertingly into those kinds of pictures. Jo was so preoccupied that she hardly took in at all what the film was about let alone its title or whichever current teen idol it featured. Once it finally ended she agreed without protest that her daughter could stay up much later than usual in order to see her father at least briefly. The presence of a third person seemed like a jolly good idea anyway.
When eventually they were alone she gave Paul an edited account of what had occurred that day. At first, as if by unspoken mutual consent, they discussed only the professional aspects of her meeting with Fielding.
Eventually Paul broached the personal side. ‘So did you tell him it was all over between you?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. She hadn’t, of course, not in as many words, but it amounted to the same thing. It was all over, she had no doubt about that
. Whether she liked it or not, in fact.
‘So you really have come to your senses?’
She wanted to slap him. The man could be so smugly arrogant. And always so cool. But she didn’t have the strength for argument and in any case he was impossible to argue with. He didn’t know how. ‘Yes,’ she said again.
If he thought her reactions curiously monosyllabic, he passed no remark. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I suggest we never speak of it again.’
Meanwhile Tommy O’Donnell gave the impression of being thoroughly smug. Interviewed by the Daily Mail – he still wouldn’t touch the Comet, of course – he made it quite clear just how delighted he was by Mike Fielding’s arrest. Whether or not the policeman really was guilty of hiring a man to kill his elder brother, which in any case the Mail dared not go into, seemed almost irrelevant, Jo thought when she read the piece.
The Phillips family also made no secret of their satisfaction at Fielding’s incarceration. ‘This man was more than anybody else responsible for O’Donnell’s first trial going wrong and what is happening to him is a kind of justice,’ said Rob Phillips in the Daily Mirror, and he continued in an interview which skated the edge of the sub judice laws: ‘We’ve always believed Fielding is capable of being just as evil as any of the villains he deals with every day. If he was responsible for James O’Donnell’s death, then I and my family can only be grateful to him for that. But he deserves to suffer, too. He has caused us endless heartache.’
Joanna managed to arrange another jail visit with Shifter Brown. It seemed curious to think that Mike was in the same prison, maybe in a cell just yards away from the visiting room. And seeing Shifter got her no further than had her visit there to her former lover. ‘Could it really have been Fielding who hired you?’ she asked him.
‘I dunno,’ he replied unhelpfully.
‘But what do you think, Shifter?’
‘I’ve given up thinking, doll. You do when you’re banged up in here.’
‘OK, Shifter, but what about the e-mails? They showed them to you, didn’t they? Will you tell me honestly whether they were genuine or not? You’d remember the wording surely?’
A Kind Of Wild Justice Page 33
