Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

‘Thanks, Mike, you’re a diamond.’

She could just hear his voice in the distance as she hung up. ‘Aren’t I, though?’ he murmured.

O’Donnell was formally charged the following morning with the murder of Angela Phillips, as Fielding had told Joanna he would be. He appeared briefly at Okehampton Magistrates’ Court and was remanded in custody. After that there was little coverage that the paper could give until the committal proceedings, which were expected to be a formality.

Nonetheless, Joanna drove down to Devon to be present at the committal six weeks later. She had been on the case from the start and she planned to see it through to the end, every step of the way.

Okehampton Magistrates’ Court was an unlikely grubby white bungalow of a building tucked away on the northern edge of the town behind the Co-op supermarket just where the Rivers West and East Okement merged. O’Donnell was brought from the Devon County Prison at Exeter in a black van with barred windows. He climbed out by the entrance to the court, a big, rugged, broad-shouldered man in his early thirties, wearing combat trousers and a tight black T-shirt which emphasised the impressive muscle definition of his upper body. The sleeves were short enough to display upon the biceps of his left arm a large and particularly unpleasant tattoo of the upper torso of a buxom young woman one of whose obscenely oversized breasts bore the word ‘love’ and the other ‘hate’. Yuck, thought Jo.

Apparently unbowed by what was happening to him, O’Donnell held his head high as the gathered crowd roared their loathing at him. His peroxide-blond crew-cut gleamed in the autumn sunshine. His eyes blazed beneath their heavy dark brows. There was no being covered up in blankets for this guy.

The car park outside the court, the road behind, and even the supermarket car park beyond that were teeming, and the mood of the crowd was not sweet. It was a fairly predictable reception for someone accused of a crime as horrific as this one. The crowd bayed for blood. The majority in government and, thank God, in Joanna’s opinion, within the police force were against the reintroduction of capital punishment. This lot would no doubt rip O’Donnell apart limb from limb, were they able to get to him.

She thought there could be four or five hundred people gathered into the area around the court. A lot of them looked like farming folk, who would have been more at home on horseback or leaning on a farm gate somewhere. Instead, they were screaming blue murder at James Martin O’Donnell, who was securely handcuffed to two policemen and surrounded by half a dozen or so more as he began the brief journey into the courtroom.

If he’d lowered his head or kept his eyes downcast it might not have been quite so provocative, Joanna thought. But, as the Nikon choir formed by dozens of cameramen burst into flashing, whirring action, O’Donnell glared coolly around him, belligerent, arrogant, contemptuous.

There was a yell of outrage, which she somehow heard above the collective noise of the chanting throng. A figure managed to force his way through the police guards and hurl himself at O’Donnell. The accused man’s big shoulders wrenched against the restraint of the cuffs round his wrists as he tried to defend himself. She could see the hands of the assailant raking O’Donnell’s face, reaching for his eyes as if the intention was to gouge them out, and then it was all over. Standing on the courtroom steps with her back to the wall, Jo had a grandstand view as three hefty policemen pounced on the attacker and he was led away. She got a clear glimpse of his face, then, and was almost sure it was Jeremy Thomas, Angela Phillips’ boyfriend. Silly boy, Jo thought to herself, but of course, not only had Jeremy had to deal with the loss of his girlfriend in such a terrible way, he had also had to put up with the anguish of having been suspected of the crime himself.

With the added excitement of the attack, the roar of the crowd reached a crescendo. O’Donnell tossed his head at them as he was finally hurried into the courtroom, almost as if he were a film star acknowledging the acclaim of his fans instead of a man standing accused of one of the most horrible murders Joanna had ever had knowledge of. She saw that there was a trickle of red running down his face. The attacker had drawn blood and the crowd loved it. Even execution would probably not satisfy this lot, the mood they were in, thought Jo. Certainly not if it was conducted humanely and in private. A public hanging might do, but better still, something like that lovely old Chinese way of doing things, death by slicing. Any government having trouble with its popularity should really consider that, she thought wryly.

With some difficulty she made her way into the court — there wasn’t time to file the story of the attack on O’Donnell without missing the start of the proceedings and, in any case, there was no need to do so yet; her deadlines were still hours away. Once inside, she instantly spotted Mike Fielding. He was wearing a beige linen suit — he was fond of linen, obviously — a maroon silk shirt, a tie which carefully blended both colours in varying shades and a smug smile. She had never known a policeman who dressed like him. As for his smugness, she hoped he was not overconfident. This was no ordinary crime and Jimbo O’Donnell was no ordinary prisoner. Certainly he was no ordinary sex offender nutter. He was different. His back-up was different too. She already knew that he had a top legal team defending him.

The attack on O’Donnell provided an early diversion inside the court as well as outside. O’Donnell’s lawyers made a big thing about their man getting first-aid attention. O’Donnell shrugged his big shoulders, asked for a handkerchief with which he wiped his face, said he’d be fine and grinned broadly at the magistrates. He was going to play to the gallery, no doubt about it.

After that the proceedings went according to plan. O’Donnell was committed for trial at Exeter Crown Court and was remanded in custody, of course. His lawyers knew better than to ask for bail; they’d never get it on a case like this.

As Jo left the court, Fielding was waiting in the foyer. For her? She didn’t know, but certainly he stepped forward smartly to her side and put a hand on her arm. ‘How’s my favourite hackette, then?’ he asked lightly.

His manner was flirtatious, as it almost invariably was with her, but again she was not really sure whether he was chatting her up or not. His body language and his words did not always match. On this occasion he stood much closer to her than necessary and he kept his hand on her arm in an almost proprietorial fashion as they walked together towards the door.

She decided to play it dead straight. ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ she asked him in a crisp businesslike way.

‘All the better for seeing you, as ever, Joanna,’ he said. And he grinned that grin, which would have been even more disarming if he were not so obviously aware of it. He was one of those men who appeared to think he was irresistible to women. There was a lot of that about, usually misguided. In Fielding’s case probably not so misguided, she thought, but she was beginning to find that irritating too. Her brief period of getting to like him seemed to have come to an end. But she didn’t want to antagonise him. He had already proved to be a most useful contact and it pleased her greatly to think that she appeared to have effectively stolen him from Frank Manners.

She was about to ask him if he would like a drink later when his radio pager bleeped. He studied it briefly. ‘Have to leave you, darling,’ he said. ‘Much as it breaks my heart.’

God he was an annoying man. She could only follow him out into the street where mob rule still reigned. Anyway, Fielding wasn’t the key to it today and she didn’t really have time for buttering him up.