Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

Reluctantly she turned her attention to Manners, greeting him without enthusiasm.

‘You look quite radiant, darlin’,’ he told her. ‘Had a good fuck last night, did you?’

Manners spoke loudly and with a big smirk on his face. Nick Hewitt and Kenny Dewar chuckled appreciatively. Joanna suppressed a desire to slap all their faces. Then she remembered that Hewitt and Dewar would both have received the old midnight phone call after that day’s issue of the Comet had arrived at their night desks. She knew how pissed off that would have made them, particularly as it was her story, and immediately felt better.

‘Which is more than you’ve ever managed, I should imagine, Frank,’ she replied, and was rewarded with an appreciative chuckle from the Daily Express crime man. There were some good guys and Jo had a soft spot for Jimmy Nicholson, known as the Prince of Darkness because he invariably wore a Dracula-like black cape whatever the weather or occasion. He certainly liked women too. Jo had first encountered Jimmy Nic on the Spaghetti House siege, when Fleet Street’s finest were staking out the Knightsbridge restaurant in which a number of hostages were being held. Jim had walked up to a group of young women chatting with some fellow hacks in a nearby pub, introduced himself by name and added ‘I’m the big noise from the Daily Express .’ The extraordinary thing was they seemed to fall for it, too. On that job Jo reckoned she’d encountered Fleet Street’s first and only groupies.

She smiled to herself at the memory, then returned her full attention to the case in hand. ‘Right, Frank, if you can tear yourself away from your chums I’d like a word in private,’ she said. ‘I have a game plan that should keep us as far ahead on this one as we are already,’ she continued, smiling sweetly as she turned and headed towards the door.

Her remarks didn’t shut the others up, of course. She overheard, as no doubt she was meant to, Hewitt asking pointedly, ‘Anybody seen Fielding yet this morning?’

‘Having a lie-in, I understand,’ responded Dewar. ‘Exhausted, poor chap. ’Course, everybody knows the woman’s a raving nympho...’

This time Joanna held her tongue. Not only did women journalists only get their jobs through sleeping with the editor, they only got their stories through sleeping with their contacts. Wonderfully simplistic. Ability was never mentioned.

In a certain kind of mood Joanna even wished it could be like that. It would be a lot easier than working so bloody hard, she thought to herself wryly. Forcing herself to be businesslike and matter-of-fact, she started to discuss with Frank Manners how they could take the story forward.

The day turned out to be uneventful, however, and she was at her hotel early that evening when Fielding called her again and suggested a pint and a bite to eat, once more at the Drewe Arms. She agreed readily enough, but again there was something in his manner that left her unsure whether he wanted to give her a story or chat her up.

And as the evening progressed this was never really clarified.

‘I like you, you’re bright and I think you’re straight as well,’ he told her abruptly at one point.

‘Thanks very much,’ she said ironically. ‘How about you, are you straight?’

‘As a die,’ he said, flashing her the disarming grin.

She smiled back. ‘What am I doing here, Mike?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘This case has really got to me. You’re someone I can talk to,’ he said.

‘Spare me the clichés. I do know your reputation, you know.’

‘What reputation?’

‘Don’t be a prat. That reputation you have for being unable to stop yourself jumping on anything in skirts.’

‘You flatter yourself.’

‘Smug bastard!’

‘Anyway,’ he began, running an eye appraisingly over her trouser-suited figure, ‘I’ve never seen you in a skirt.’

He grinned again. He was good company. And when by the end of the evening he had still not made a pass at her, she didn’t really know whether she was disappointed or not. She’d had every intention of turning him down, of course. But that wasn’t quite the point.

Joanna stayed in Devon for the best part of a week, returning to London only when it became obvious that there was no chance of an early arrest. She asked Manners to stay on for a little longer just to keep an eye on things. At least, then, she wouldn’t have to look at the bloody man every day, she thought.

She left Dartmoor right after lunch, having filed an early story and manoeuvred herself into a situation where she would not be expected either at the office or the Yard. This meant that with a bit of luck she could be home in Chiswick soon after four o’clock. She wanted to get there early and make a special effort for her husband, something she knew she didn’t do nearly often enough.

As she drove, Jo reflected on her marriage to her childhood sweetheart. She and Chris had been an item since, aged seventeen, she had surrendered her virginity to him in the back of a Mini Cooper. Now that had been a feat of some agility. The thought of it still made her smile in spite of everything. And, as so often happens with young people discovering sex together for the first time, Chris and Joanna fell head over heels in love. They married when she was nineteen and he was twenty-one. So they had already been married for eight years, and they were no longer a match made in heaven.

Joanna felt that she had moved on in life, that she had moved into worlds Chris had never got close to. She didn’t believe that made her superior or even that her world was superior. In fact, on a bad day she would often concede that Chris’s life and career were a damn sight more useful than her own. It was just that he seemed to have stood still. Chris taught at a primary school near their home in Chiswick. She had little doubt that he would remain a teacher throughout his working life. That was the kind of man he was: content with his lot; dedicated in his way, but unambitious. She had no illusions about him. She didn’t even expect him to make deputy headmaster. Ever. And it might have been his chosen career, dealing with small children day in and day out, which gave him the kind of stick-in-the-mud naivety that was beginning to irritate her. He was always infuriatingly sure that his ideas, mostly formed in extreme youth, and his ways of going about things were the only right ones. Sometimes she felt that not only had he no concept of what her life was all about, but that he actually worked at keeping it so. Certainly he made it quite clear that he didn’t like journalists. They distorted the truth, misled their readers, ruined people’s lives. There was no talking about it with Chris. There was no middle ground.

She sighed. Since she had become a crime reporter he had increased his circle of most loathsome people to include policemen. She didn’t think she’d ever even heard him voice an opinion on the police until working with them became a daily part of her job. Then he decided they were crooks and villains equal to the criminals they were supposed to be catching. His only problem was making up his mind which was the lower form of life, hacks or cops.

Her problem was that she still loved him. She couldn’t help it. They went back a long way. And, in spite of everything, she was pretty sure he loved her too. After a week away she was determined at least that their first night together would be a good one.

The traffic was mercifully light. She was in Chiswick High Street at 4.15, parked the MG on a double yellow and nipped into Porsche’s fish shop where she bought two large Dover sole, Chris’s favourite. There would be potatoes and vegetables at home, Chris always kept the house well stocked with those, so all she needed to make the night special was a bottle of champagne, swiftly acquired from a nearby off-licence, and some flowers. One of the few things she bought regularly for their small but attractive cottage just off Turnham Green was flowers. Chris said it was because they hid her clutter. He was more than half right. She knew she was a lousy housekeeper. She left almost all of that sort of stuff to him, in fact, but she did like her flowers and she bought a big bunch of white roses, his favourite again, from a street seller.