Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

He saw the expression of shock that flickered across her face when she first saw him, and then how rapidly she recovered herself. He knew he looked grey and haggard. That famous prison pallor he had so often seen, which developed so astonishingly quickly.

‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said as he approached her. She did not get up.

He did not attempt to kiss her, not even to touch her hand. Instead he swiftly sat down opposite her. ‘You know I can never resist.’ He actually tried to sound jaunty, he didn’t quite know why, but in any case he failed dismally.

‘Paul knows.’ She blurted out the words, as if she hadn’t intended to begin their conversation like this, but had not been able to stop herself.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘And?’ he asked.

‘He told me that if I carried on seeing you he would divorce me, sack me and turn Emily against me. He would, too. And don’t think he couldn’t.’

‘I’m sure he could. So what are you doing here?’

‘I told him I couldn’t fuck you in the visiting room of Exeter prison.’

He managed a wry half-smile. ‘Anything else?’

‘I also told him that it would be to the advantage of his bloody newspaper. That you wouldn’t be talking to any other journalists and in any case I would be more likely than anybody else to get the truth from you.’

He shook his head almost sorrowfully. He was supposed to have been the ruthless, dedicated career policeman, although that seemed almost like another world now. But Joanna? She was a real piece of work. She never forgot that she was a journalist, not for a second, and her husband, Mike felt quite sure, was of the same stock only more so. ‘You two are incredible, you know,’ he said.

She didn’t seem to understand. She was, as ever, he thought, far too wrapped up in her own curious world. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If you really don’t know, Jo, then there’s no point in my even trying to explain.’

She shook her head in a puzzled sort of way. ‘Look, we don’t have very long. I do need to know the truth, Mike. For myself. Bugger the paper.’

He studied her quizzically. Bugger the paper, he just didn’t believe. Not from her. Not from any of them, really, but particularly not from Joanna Bartlett. Hack through and through. Weaned on hot metal. ‘I told you before, if you need to ask me that question, then I don’t know what we were all about, ever,’ he informed her. And he felt the anger growing inside him. As usual he became angry with her more quickly than with anybody else. It was like that when you really cared for someone. It was for him anyway. ‘You’ve already confronted me once,’ he snapped at her. ‘You tried to hack into my computer yourself. You’ve made it quite clear that you believe I am capable of this. That’s your problem, not mine.’

‘I just want to know what I am supposed to believe...’

‘Do you?’ He was seething inside now, barely able to keep his temper in control. ‘You could start by asking yourself an intelligent question for a change. They found all that crap on my laptop and charged me on the strength of it. I’ve no doubt you know all about that unless you’ve changed beyond recognition. So why didn’t I chuck the damned machine? Throw it out with the rubbish, toss it into the sea at the dead of night at Exmouth or Dawlish Warren? Um? Ask yourself that. Which is more than anybody else will do, it seems. Even Shifter had the sense to trash his rig. Do you really think I would have kept a laptop containing files which could prove that I put out a murder contract, for God’s sake?’

‘Are you saying you’ve been set up?’

‘I don’t know, Jo. What do you think? Do you still think?’

‘Of course I do...’

‘Right, then think about this. Not only have I been set up but could you conceive for one moment I would have been remanded in custody over this if I weren’t a copper? At least I’d be out on bail. What they’ve got on me is never going to stand up in court and the way they got it stinks. Can you imagine the outcry if fucking Todd Mallett had come marching into your office and commandeered your laptop?’

‘Well, yes,’ she began. ‘But you are a policeman and maybe the rules are supposed to be the same but I suppose...’

He interrupted her abruptly. ‘You’d better go, Jo. I’m sick of you and your half-spoken accusations. Just go.’

With one hand he beckoned to a prison officer and with the other he waved her away.

She knew better than to argue. She just stood up silently, turned and walked away from him, head bowed, glancing back at him over her shoulder only when he called out to her.

‘Are you sure you didn’t get into my computer that evening at the hotel, Jo? You’re good, aren’t you? You’re fast. Maybe you had time after all...’ And it had given him some satisfaction to see the shocked expression on her face before he rose wearily from his chair and headed for the door leading back to his cell. The way things were inside his head right now, sometimes it was almost a relief to be locked up.

Jo stared after him for a few seconds. What did he mean? Did he suspect that she had tampered with his laptop, planted the incriminating files? She was more confused than ever. And her emotions were playing ping-pong with each other again. She felt the damned tears he could always arouse more quickly than anyone pricking. How was it he could still do this to her, even when some of the things he had said to her displayed nothing more than contempt? It was bewildering.

Hurrying through the prison gates, she bumped into a small, plumpish, red-haired woman on the way in. Jo had been walking with her head down, trying to hide the tears which were by then starting to run down her face. The collision was entirely her fault. She had not been looking where she was going and she had walked straight into the other woman. Looking up, stumbling her apologies, she recognised with a start that she was Fielding’s wife. She had seen her photograph, on his desk that first time they were together and even in his wallet. It always seemed to fall out every time he removed his credit cards. Her colouring was distinctive, that bright-red hair which Jo, with a sharp stab of incongruous jealousy, thought was probably still totally natural, the freckles.

Ruth Fielding looked her full in the face. She had bags under her eyes and an understandable weariness about her. She was no longer anywhere near as pretty as she had been in the photographs. She showed absolutely no sign of recognition. ‘’S all right,’ she mumbled and said ‘sorry’ herself, the way the English do, even when they are not remotely to blame for whatever it is they are apologising for, then shuffled on through the gates.

Joanna had always suspected that Mike had never told his wife about her, despite all those convoluted stories about Ruth’s breakdown and their daughter’s despair. All of it, even the dying mother-in-law, was probably a load of nonsense. She had always half suspected that was probably the case but confirmation was nonetheless painful. Ruth Fielding had almost certainly never even been aware of her existence, she thought, never known of the affair which her husband had frequently claimed was the most important relationship in his life, more so, even, than his marriage.

Jo was high-profile, pictured regularly in her own paper, occasionally on TV, and had been so long before the notoriety she had gained through the part she played along with Fielding in bringing O’Donnell to trial in that ill-fated private prosecution. She and Fielding had even been pictured together in more than one newspaper, not to mention the innuendoes published in Private Eye . If Mrs Fielding had the slightest inkling that Jo and her husband had had an affair, then Joanna felt sure the woman would have had her features indelibly printed on her mind. After all, she had recognised Mike’s wife quickly enough, even though she had never met her.