Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

No doubt the O’Donnells had already scoured their own dubious contacts nationwide before taking this step. They must have drawn a blank. That in itself was intriguing. In fact, the whole thing was fascinating. However, Joanna could not sit back and enjoy any kind of objective assessment. She was too involved. And the Daily Mail story was yet another kick in the teeth for the Comet .

At one point Sam O’Donnell damn near accused the police of having played a part in Jimbo’s disappearance. Fielding got a specific mention:

That detective down in Exeter is obsessed with getting my boy. It’s more than harassment. He’s stalked my Jimbo. That’s what ’e’s done. Stalked ’im. I know for a fact he was behind this so-called private prosecution. Him and that dammed woman from the Comet .

Joanna groaned. Here we go again, she thought.

Twice now, my boy’s been cleared of having anything to do with Angela Phillips’s death. Twice he’s had to stand trial. And that’s not supposed to be the law in this country.

The Mail had tried to get to Fielding, of course, doorstepping him, no doubt. The paper reported that he had refused to speak to them and the only other police comment was from a Met spokesman pledging that of course inquiries would be made in the normal way into Mr O’Donnell’s disappearance, but pointing out that he had not even been officially reported missing yet. There was a small picture of Fielding hurrying out of Heavitree Road police station looking extremely fed up and harassed.

On its leader page the Mail made it clear that it was not in any way supporting Sam the Man, many of whose business activities had frequently been the subject of police investigations, but the events leading up to O’Donnell’s disappearance must undoubtedly have some significance. If he were guilty of any involvement in the abduction, rape, or murder of Angela Phillips then police mishandling must surely be evident. If he were not guilty, and he had after all now been found innocent of all three charges in courts of law, then his father was probably quite correct in alleging harassment. Certainly Jimbo O’Donnell’s disappearance and the varied events leading up to it should be thoroughly investigated by independent officers.

It was all good stuff. But not for the Comet .

‘This whole story is turning into a fiasco, Joanna,’ Paul stormed at the end of morning conference, giving her a roasting in front of the entire senior editorial team, which she was quite sure they all thoroughly enjoyed witnessing. The days when female staff were fair game for any kind of nonsense and sexual harassment in a newspaper office might be over — but an assistant editor and high-profile columnist who was also the editor’s wife fell into a unique category, and to see her lampooned in this way was bound to be regarded as excellent sport.

‘First we get publicly humiliated. Now the opposition is running rings round us. Again. I let you have a free hand with this one, Jo, because I believed you were on top of it. Let’s see if we can’t retrieve something out of this mess, shall we?’

It was fair comment. Joanna could not argue with him and did not.

Instead, she went to work. She had already called the O’Donnell house, in fact, had done so when the first edition of the Mail had dropped the previous night. A Daily Mail reporter had answered the phone. She had not been surprised. The Mail had obviously done a deal. And in the circumstances the O’Donnells would hardly have come to her and the Comet .

She phoned Fielding. She had called him before, leaving messages at Heavitree Road and on his mobile message service that morning. He had not replied. This time she got lucky.

He answered his mobile at once.

‘Another fine mess,’ she began.

‘I don’t know what you’re worried about, the rubber heel boys are over me like flies again,’ he said. He meant Complaints and Discipline investigators.

And she wasn’t surprised to hear it. Or all that interested. She had her own troubles. ‘Christ, Mike, you could have called me yesterday when the Mail got on to you.’

‘For God’s sake, Joanna. Don’t you think maybe I had something else to think about?’

There was none of the unspoken warmth between them that there had been that evening at the Exeter pub. They were both under too much stress. The mess was getting worse rather than better. In normal circumstances Jo could imagine nothing she would like better than to think that O’Donnell might have come to a sticky end at the hands of some of his particularly venomous cohorts. But these were not normal circumstances.

It seemed that she and Fielding were getting blame thrown at them at every step.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly.

He mellowed a little. ‘Look, if I hear anything and if I possibly can, I’ll call you,’ he told her before saying an abrupt goodbye.

She pondered for a moment. She dared not call the Phillipses. That relationship was over for good. Paul was still refusing to pay the family and she had to realise that by his own standards he had good reason not to.

She had even been forbidden by Paul from explaining the situation to them. ‘Joanna, there was no contract between this newspaper and the Phillipses,’ he had reminded her repeatedly. ‘That is the legal truth and we’re sticking to it. Classic denial. It worked for Jimbo O’Donnell and it’ll work for us.’

That had made her feel even more of a rat, of course, but what could she do?

‘It would be madness for you even to try to contact them, Jo,’ he had continued. ‘You must see that. If they’ve got any sense they’ll have a lawyer in on the act now. They’ve probably been told to tape any conversations they have with you or anybody representing this newspaper. You really mustn’t even discuss it with them.’

She had known he was right, which made it harder.

He’d put a hand on her arm, continuing more gently, ‘Look, Jo, I know you feel bad about this and so do I.’

She hadn’t been convinced of that, but she let it pass.

‘There’s just no alternative. At least we tried to help them, tried to bring O’Donnell to justice. Nobody could have predicted that it would all go pear-shaped again.’

She hadn’t been convinced of that either. Her own and Fielding’s judgements had so far proved to be faulty in every aspect of this case. And Nuffield had turned out to be a huge disappointment.

For once she did as she was told. She dodged all phone calls from the Phillips family and never called them back. Eventually they got the message.

Both she and Paul had since received letters from a firm of Exeter solicitors saying that they represented Bill and Rob Phillips who were planning to take them to the Press Complaints Commission and sue them for breach of contract if they did not pay the costs of the court case as agreed.

Paul said they didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of winning such a case and, anyway, he’d have a large bet that when it came to it they wouldn’t take the risk. ‘Let’s face it, they can’t afford to, can they?’ he remarked.

Joanna squirmed inside.

As for the Press Complaints Commission, Paul went on to say that he would be more afraid of them if he paid the Phillipses than if he didn’t. Inasmuch as any editor was afraid of the Commission, he concluded.

Again she had been forced to agree with him, even though she didn’t like it. Everything about this whole case continued to leave a nasty taste in her mouth.

Paul was proved right. There had so far been no follow-up to the letter from the Exeter solicitors. It seemed likely that the Phillipses were indeed not going to proceed with their threat to sue the Comet . But Joanna had got one prediction right. When they finally realised they were not going to get any more money out of the Comet without one hell of a fight, the family decided to go as public as possible, giving an interview to a local news agency, which put out their story to all the nationals.