Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

‘No wonder there’s a fucking queue for her.’

Jo had no choice except to pretend she did not hear. But boy, did it make her mad. She did not repeat any of this to Paul. There was no point. She did not want to stir things up any more and she feared any intervention by him would just make matters worse. She just tried not to think about it.

But three days before their wedding she returned to the Kennington house they now shared, unusually a couple of hours later than her fiancé, to find Paul oddly angry. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from your old friend,’ he told her at once.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, taken completely unaware.

‘The same perverted creep who plagued you and Chris, I assume,’ he said. Paul’s lips curled in distaste. ‘You can guess the sort of thing, “Do you know how your girlfriend gets her stories? She just takes her knickers off.” More and worse. I don’t even intend to repeat it. It’s just sick.’

She was horrified. ‘Oh, my God, now the bastard’s starting on you,’ she blurted out. ‘I am so sorry. I promise you, Paul, I’ve not even seen Mike since you and I have been together.’

‘Don’t worry, I know that, darling,’ said Paul. He glanced at her with concern. ‘Jo, you didn’t think I was angry at you , did you? Absolutely not, I can assure you. If you think for one moment that I would let some twisted creep harm our relationship then you don’t know me very well.’

Jo thought he might still be right about that, but the more she did get to know him the more she was coming to like and respect him. And love, too, she supposed. He was some man, that was for certain. Paul was treating the kind of incident that could rock long-term marriages with cool disdain. He was angry. Yes. But he was also calm and thoughtful. She studied him with open admiration.

‘I have the advantage over poor Chris,’ he said. ‘In the first place I believe in you and trust you absolutely. In the second place I know that bastard Manners and, in spite of his somewhat pathetic attempts to muffle his voice, talking into a handkerchief or whatever, I am absolutely sure it was him on the phone. In the third place, I am in a unique position to deal with him.’ He smiled his enigmatic smile. ‘Now come here and have a cuddle,’ he commanded. Gratefully she went into his arms. Paul’s strength was such a comfort. His certainty such a relief. With him there seemed to be no problems that couldn’t be overcome with extraordinary ease. She felt the worries that had been beginning to settle on her shoulders again lift once more. With Paul she never seemed to have anything to worry about. To her annoyance she started to cry into his shoulder. But her tears came from relief and happiness.

‘That’s it, my darling. Cry as much as you want. You’re safe now. I’ll sort it out.’

Joanna was in the press room at the Yard the next day when a call came through on the Comet phone — a direct link with the news desk — summoning Manners back to the office for a sudden meeting with the editor. Later Tom Mitchell phoned Jo personally, as head of the crime department, to tell her that the older man had been offered, and had accepted, a redundancy package. He had been asked to clear his desk at once. Joanna knew perfectly well that early retirement would never have entered Manners’s head. He was the kind of old hack who would try to hang on by his fingertips long after his sell-by date because — one of the reasons Joanna’s appointment as chief crime correspondent had so incensed him — his job had always been his life. Actually, she wouldn’t knock him for that. It was true of some of the best. ‘What happened?’

‘I’m afraid that’s between me and Frank,’ said the editor.

‘There must have been a reason...’ her voice tailed off.

‘Private reasons, isn’t that what they say?’ said Tom and she realised she was getting nowhere.

For once the office gossip network got nothing either. She confronted Paul, of course, but as usual, he gave little away. ‘Now what could I possibly have had to do with it?’ he remarked. But the wide smile he treated her to was not as enigmatic as usual. In fact, it was decidedly self-satisfied. And the next time he made love to her he held her very tightly and told her that there was something she must always remember. ‘For as long as you and I are together nobody will ever harm you, Jo,’ he said. ‘I will always make sure of that, I promise you.’

She was beginning to realise that she was marrying a quite exceptional man.

Fielding only found out that Joanna had married again when he rang her office, for the umpteenth time, in yet another fruitless attempt to speak to her. Until that fateful moment he had been quite unable to believe that he would not be able to persuade her to see him again eventually. The secretary who answered the phone told him casually that she was on her honeymoon. Very carefully he replaced the telephone receiver. He was in love with Joanna Bartlett. He had really meant to leave his wife for her and still did not quite know why he had been unable to.

Joanna had been right about him. His feelings for her had been, still were, entirely genuine. And he had always intended to fulfil his promises to her. It was simply that somehow, when push came to shove, he just couldn’t. Joanna had been right in another way too. He had indeed never even told his wife about her. He didn’t know why he had not managed to do that either. He had meant to. And, more important, he did not know why he had lied to Joanna continually. The excuses — the distraught daughter, the dying mother-in-law — had been the easy way, of course, a method of smoothing his path, keeping Jo sweet. He had been unable to bring himself to face the upheaval required in order to commit himself properly to her and he had been terrified of losing her. So he had lied. Maybe if he had been honest with her he might have been able to keep her.

She had known he had lied, he was sure of it, known he had continually deceived her. And in the end she wouldn’t stand for it. He had respected her for that — more than he respected himself, that was for sure.

His life was becoming a complete mess. The internal investigation into Jimbo O’Donnell’s evidence-planting allegation against him had petered out, as Fielding had predicted it would, and he’d never even been suspended from duty. But he was quite sure that his high-flying career had been dealt an almost fatal blow. The word was always going to be that at best he was flawed and couldn’t be trusted, at worst he was bent. Certainly there had been no sign of his previously expected promotion coming through. Nor, he felt, was there likely to be for a very long time.

Now, with Joanna irrevocably out of his life, he could not imagine that he’d ever again be half the man he had once been. Not in any way.

Jo was married again. He was so stunned he had not even asked to whom. It was extraordinary. They had only been apart for four months and she was married already, and he didn’t even know who her new husband was.

All he knew was that he’d lost her. Really lost her. For ever.

Fielding did what he usually did. He reached for the whisky bottle.

Twenty years after the murder of Angela Phillips, the whole chain of events still seemed so vivid to Joanna at her desk in Canary Wharf. It had been the most important time of her life, really, in many different ways. And yet it was a part of her past she was not sure she wanted to delve into again.

Hearing Mike Fielding’s voice had somehow not been the surprise it should have been after so long. Maybe it was just that she had always half expected that one day their paths would cross once more.