Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

Jimbo’s appearance no longer bore any resemblance to the way he had looked at the committal proceeding and his behaviour was also completely different. The thuggish-looking peroxide-blond crew cut had gone. His hair, which was now mid-brown, presumably its natural colour, had been allowed to grow longer while he was on remand and had been neatly cut in conventional fashion with a parting to one side. The offensive tattoo on his arm was concealed. He wore dark suits, crisp white shirts and sober ties to court, and when he spoke he did so politely and with apparent respect for the proceedings. He no longer seemed to have an arrogant bone in his body. Jimbo had been given a complete make-over and had quite obviously been groomed in every way by people who knew exactly what they were doing.

Most of the evidence against O’Donnell was circumstantial, although some of it was quite strong, including that given by an ex-Territorial the police had called as a witness. He stated with absolute certainty that O’Donnell was among a group of them who had used Knack Mine as a hideout during military exercises. But the prosecution did not get off to a good start.

Jimbo admitted readily enough that he had been on the Phillipses’ land on the day that Angela Phillips disappeared, but claimed this was just coincidence. He had been camping, not for the first time, on a part of Dartmoor not far from Five Tors Farm, and had unwittingly strayed on to Phillips land. When the prosecution claimed that O’Donnell had been keeping the farm under surveillance, checking on the movements of Angela and her family, Jimbo denied it hotly. ‘I was birdwatching, that’s why I had the bins, wasn’t it,’ he said ingenuously. ‘I’m a twitcher, me!’

The very idea was so incongruous that Joanna had to fight against an almost irresistible urge to laugh out loud. However, when she glanced at the jury they seemed to be lapping it up. The concept of judgement by your peers, twelve good men and true and all that, left a great deal to be desired, she thought, not for the first time.

The prosecution barrister, Malcolm Bowman, a slightly plump, earnest young man with a disconcerting squint, did not give up.

‘You meticulously checked out the Phillips family,’ he persisted. ‘You appraised their property, you knew that they were a wealthy family well able to raise £50,000 in exchange for Angela’s life. You have been obsessed with the military from an early age, have you not, Mr O’Donnell, and you used your Territorial training when you planned this terrible crime, didn’t you?’

Jimbo stared straight ahead. ‘I don’t know what you mean, sir,’ he said.

‘You believed, because of your training, that you could deal with the logistical complexities of abducting and detaining a young woman against her will, did you not?’ said Malcolm Bowman. ‘And you had considerable local knowledge gained during your training at Okehampton camp.

‘We have heard from a reliable witness, Mr O’Donnell, that you had personal knowledge of the mine shaft where Angela Phillips’s body was found. You knew what an excellent hideout Knack Mine was, and I put it to you that when you abducted Angela Phillips it was already your intention to conceal her there.’

‘No, that’s not true, sir,’ responded Jimbo mildly but firmly. ‘In any case, if I ever did go to that mine when I was up at the camp, I just don’t remember it at all.’ He was so well briefed it hurt. Obviously acting under instructions, he just kept on calmly denying everything.

‘You tortured, raped and mutilated Angela there to satisfy your own perverted desires,’ continued Bowman doggedly. ‘And then, when your attempts to obtain a ransom for her failed, you callously left her in the mine shaft to die.’

‘No, that’s not true, sir,’ said Jimbo again, equally mildly.

Joanna knew that he had not left fingerprints on the little that had been found in Angela’s dreadful tomb and the best forensic had been able to come up with, in the days before DNA, was that the semen found in Angela’s body was from someone with the same blood group as O’Donnell. It was O Positive — the most common of the lot.

Malcolm Bowman was beginning to look frustrated and became even more so when he brought up the collection of knives found in O’Donnell’s apartment, none of which, Joanna already knew, forensic had been able to prove had been the weapon used to maim Angela.

‘They’re military memorabilia, sir,’ said Jimbo.

Bowman looked incredulous. ‘Memorabilia, Mr O’Donnell? You are talking about a selection of potentially lethal weapons, including one almost new army knife of a particularly vicious design.’

‘Well, they’re all memorabilia to me, sir. I’m very interested in the military, you see.’

‘And what exactly do you claim that you have used these knives for, Mr O’Donnell, if not to maim and kill?’

‘I’ve never used them for anything, sir. I just like looking at them.’

It was ludicrous, but once again the jury did not seem to think so.

There did appear, however, to be one irrefutable piece of evidence — and Joanna realised it was this to which Fielding must have been referring when he had refused to give her the details during their conversation after Jimbo’s arrest.

The prosecution claimed that a gold locket Angela Phillips was wearing when she disappeared had been found in O’Donnell’s London flat. This was not circumstantial. This was hard evidence. This could swing it. Joanna felt her hopes rise. She was aware of a kind of collective gasp from the public gallery behind her, where she knew Angela’s family were sitting, and even the jury looked impressed.

However, Jo’s hopes were quickly dashed again. The defence had an answer — and Mike Fielding was at the crux of it. The locket bore O’Donnell’s fingerprints clearly enough, and that was not in dispute, but it seemed that after claiming to have found it in a drawer in O’Donnell’s bedroom, Fielding had triumphantly brandished his trophy at the accused man and allowed him to take it from him. Jo could see Fielding almost visibly squirming when, having been asked to take the stand, he was confronted with this.

He tried unsuccessfully to fudge the issue. ‘Well, we found the locket, sir, no doubt about that, and whether or not Mr O’Donnell actually handled it...’

‘DS Fielding, you know perfectly well that Mr O’Donnell did handle the locket,’ persisted Brian Burns. He was tall, slim, handsome and authoritative, in brutal contrast to the unprepossessing Malcolm Bowman. ‘I suggest you tell the truth, Detective Sergeant,’ Burns continued. ‘There were other officers with you, were there not, who may not be as evasive as you are trying to be.’

Ultimately Fielding had no choice but to admit that he had allowed O’Donnell to handle the key piece of evidence. ‘I was excited by the discovery,’ he said.

‘You were excited, DS Fielding? So you allowed a suspect to handle a key piece of evidence and put his fingerprints all over it? Do you really expect this court to believe that?’

There was no answer. Burns did not push the point any further but continued by asking: ‘And what did my client say to you when you handed him the locket, Detective Sergeant?’

‘I didn’t hand it to him, he took it.’

Joanna felt almost sorry for Fielding. Didn’t he realise that everything he said seemed to be making the whole thing appear worse?

‘I see,’ responded Burns casually. ‘So, what did my client say when you allowed him to take the locket from you?’

Fielding looked defeated. ‘He said he’d never seen it before in his life.’

Joanna groaned to herself. This was going seriously pear-shaped. She, too, found it hard to believe that Fielding would have made such a silly mistake. The alternative was that he had planted the locket. He had been the first officer at the scene of the crime. If the locket had been with Angela in the shaft at Knack Mine, Fielding would have had ample opportunity to secrete it away — to have the locket up his sleeve, as it were, just in case a little extra evidence was needed later on. She had known it happen before.