Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

From Bill Phillips there came a kind of strangled sound; it was actually a sort of dry, mirthless laugh. He looked up for the first time. She tried to avoid his eyes but could not. If there had been pain before, now there was agony in them. ‘No you’re not,’ he told her in a quiet, even voice without much expression. ‘No you’re not and please don’t ever again say that you are. You don’t know what sorrow is. You have to lose what we have lost to know. We’ve lost our daughter and our own lives too. Look at that boy there...’ He gestured at Les. ‘What’s he known in his life but our misery?’

She didn’t dare speak.

‘Why have you come here tonight?’ he asked sharply.

Her reply was honest. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘After another story for that so-called newspaper of yours, are you?’ he persisted.

‘No, this is off the record, I promise. I just wanted to see you...’ Her voice tailed off.

‘We’ve had enough of your promises,’ he told her. There was another silence before he spoke again, his voice even sharper, his look challenging. ‘You are going to honour our contract, you are going to pay up, I assume. Or will that be another broken promise?’

‘You won’t be out of pocket, Bill, I suppose that was the only promise I could make and have some control over. Of course the Comet will pay you, as agreed.’

She spoke with a confidence she did not feel. So far the paper had only paid a nominal £5000 to the family for interviews given once it had been decided to put a private prosecution into motion and before the court case. As ever, and apart from any other considerations, what further material they could publish, if any, would be severely limited by the man’s acquittal.

Costs had been awarded against the Phillipses. That meant they had to pay O’Donnell’s legal fees as well as their own and he, as ever, had fielded the dream team. The total bill, even though the case had not got beyond the committal proceedings, could well end up approaching £100,000 or so. Brian Burns was famous for quite extortionate fees, which had become a part of his mystique and which his clients always seemed to pay without a murmur because of his extraordinary record of success. And Nigel Nuffield did not come cheap, in spite of his bleeding-heart pretensions.

Joanna’s heart sank to her boots as she made herself consider it all. She dreaded Paul’s reaction. He had agreed to the deal being struck. She was not just a senior columnist on his paper but also his wife. This was the kind of mess that could bring editors down.

She had a feeling he might refuse to pay. And sitting at that kitchen table looking around at those sad, broken people, she wished the quarry-tiled floor would split in two and swallow her up.

They didn’t hate her, really. They just wanted someone to blame. After a bit Mary offered her a cup of tea. Jo didn’t actually want it, but gratefully accepted the olive branch. In the end she stayed for just over half an hour and when she left to begin her drive back to London Lillian was still weeping. Her sobs grew drier and drier as if she had no tears left, but she carried on going through the motions.

Jo had at one point quietly asked Mary if she thought maybe she should call a doctor for her mother-in-law.

‘No,’ the other woman had replied with forceful certainty. ‘She’ll be better just left alone.’ Then, pointedly she had added, making Jo feel smaller than ever: ‘We’ll all be better left alone now...’

That seemed to be her cue to go. And once she was safely in the cocoon of the BMW, Joanna found she had to take deep breaths in order to prevent herself breaking down. She rattled the powerful motor down the lane, not bothering even to attempt to avoid the potholes, and, much faster than she knew she should have done, hurtled past the assembled pack who were shouting out at her, desperate for a few crumbs from her table. As she pressed her foot a little further down on the accelerator, she wondered why on earth they should think she had any crumbs left after what she had been put through in the courtroom that day.

A photographer she knew vaguely and had never liked stepped out into the road in front of her, brandishing his camera. She accelerated even more and was mildly gratified by the surprised and frightened expression on his face as he was forced to leap into the hedge in order to avoid being run over.

She did remind herself, as she carried on in the direction of the A30, that there was nothing worse than poacher turned gamekeeper, and she lifted her foot, just slightly, off the accelerator slowing to an almost sensible speed. Her hands were shaking on the wheel. Her bottom lip was trembling and she had to fight like mad to prevent herself from bursting into tears. Apart from anything else, she was afraid that if she started, like poor Lillian Phillips, she would not be able to stop.

The A30 blended with the M5 just before Exeter and within half an hour or so of leaving Five Tors Farm the Exeter Services loomed ahead of her and she pulled off the road, telling herself that she might as well fill up with petrol straight away. There was, of course, another reason.

This time she intended to give in to her impulse. She didn’t have anything much more to lose anyway. She really did want to see Fielding. She used her mobile to call him. She guessed he would be in his office at Heavitree Road just as he had been on that other occasion all those years ago. For all sorts of reasons she did not dare turn up unannounced as she had then. Their relationship, whatever it was, and God knew she had no idea what it was, particularly as they had yet even to talk in person this time round, was now too public. They had somehow become almost as much a part of the story as O’Donnell and poor Angela Phillips.

But there was something else, too. Suddenly the memory of what had happened between them after that other trial, that long-ago acquittal of O’Donnell in Exeter Crown Court, had become overwhelmingly vivid. Once more, and after so long, she felt very strongly that only she and Fielding could help each other.

He answered his direct line at once. ‘I was hoping it might be you,’ he said quietly.

She was very slightly taken aback. Was he too thinking of that night twenty years ago? ‘Can you get out?’ she asked. ‘I thought we might have a drink.’

‘I’ve got a report to write. I’m in the shit over this, deeply in the shit.’

She interrupted him. ‘Me too.’

‘Yep,’ he murmured. ‘Story of my life, though, isn’t it?’

There was a slightly awkward pause.

‘Look, if I don’t have this report in the chief constable’s office by tomorrow morning I’m dead.’

‘It’s OK, you’re right, it was probably a lousy idea anyway.’

‘To hell with it,’ he interrupted suddenly. ‘Where are you?’

She told him.

‘Right. Not any of the pubs here.’

She understood his reasons well enough as he gave her directions to a pub she had never heard of. ‘See you there in twenty.’

She phoned Emily on the way, trying not to give any indication of how upset she was, but telling her daughter and the au pair that she would be late home and Emily shouldn’t even think about waiting up as she had school the next day.

Fielding was at the pub before her, sitting at a corner table nursing a pint. He’d taken his tie off and his jacket looked rumpled. She was reminded again of what a snappy dresser he had once been, always particularly noticeable in a member of a profession not known for sartorial elegance. He looked worn out and fed up. She was aware again of the disappointment and weariness in his eyes.

He got up and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Strange how natural that seemed. She accepted his offer of a drink and ordered a Diet Coke. She had a long drive ahead of her.