Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

She walked slowly towards her car, turning her thoughts back to the events of the last few minutes. What did it all mean? Could Mike really have been framed? He was never short of confidence. His argument about the laptop was deeply flawed. Maybe he had believed he had removed all traces from it and that it was safe. She reminded herself again of how even the love-bug hackers had been traced. Mike had always been inclined to be overly confident. If that was the case yet again then he had had no reason to destroy his computer. Jo still didn’t know what to believe. And that was a nice touch he had added at the end, hinting that maybe she had played a part in framing him. She didn’t think he really thought that, but you never knew with Mike.

One way and another she hadn’t learned very much; indeed, much less than she had hoped for and, in fact, had actually expected. Bugger all, to be honest. The visit had not given her what she had sought in any direction. She was no nearer the truth than she had been before she had seen Fielding. She couldn’t write anything, of course, until the trial was over, but he had told her nothing that would ever make much in the way of copy. Accused man says he’s been set up. Hold the front page.

Her mind strayed to their personal feelings towards each other. Jo wondered if his display of disappointed outrage could be yet another sort of excuse, another way of avoiding even the possibility of any kind of real permanent commitment.

She had told Paul that she had made her decision, that she would end her relationship with Fielding and stay with her husband. And she had meant it, every word of it, even before Fielding had been arrested. Paul had been right. She had too much to lose.

But if Fielding were still a free man, if he had ever pressed her to be with him full time in such a way that she had been able to believe it — well, she just didn’t know how she might have reacted. In spite of everything. Even including her daughter.

God, it was mad. But then, when it came to Mike Fielding she was quite barking. Always had been. Mixed up. Out of control.

She unlocked her car door and slumped in the driver’s seat motionless for a few moments, willing the tears to stop. Eventually they did and she started the engine.

There was no point in rushing back to the office. Instead, she drove, rather slowly for her, home to Richmond. She didn’t phone. Not the news desk. Not Paul. Not anyone. She had nothing to tell them, really. She chose the A303 rather than the M5 and M4. She didn’t feel like belting along at ninety miles an hour the way she usually did, invariably exceeding the motorway speed limit with a kind of studied nonchalance. She got stuck behind a succession of trucks and caravans on the bits of the A303 that were still just two- and three-lane, but she didn’t mind. She stopped at Stonehenge. The sun was just setting and the mysterious prehistoric monument, its giant pillars of stone commanding the sweeping landscape of Salisbury Plain, looked wonderful in the evening light. She parked in the car park, bought coffee from the snack bar and walked out across the access road, where she leaned on the fence and just took in the atmosphere of the ancient place for a little while. Delaying her return, really. God knew, she could do with a few mystic vibes.

At home she and Emily watched a video together. Some teen romance movie. Emily was getting to be disconcertingly into those kinds of pictures. Jo was so preoccupied that she hardly took in at all what the film was about let alone its title or whichever current teen idol it featured. Once it finally ended she agreed without protest that her daughter could stay up much later than usual in order to see her father at least briefly. The presence of a third person seemed like a jolly good idea anyway.

When eventually they were alone she gave Paul an edited account of what had occurred that day. At first, as if by unspoken mutual consent, they discussed only the professional aspects of her meeting with Fielding.

Eventually Paul broached the personal side. ‘So did you tell him it was all over between you?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. She hadn’t, of course, not in as many words, but it amounted to the same thing. It was all over, she had no doubt about that. Whether she liked it or not, in fact.

‘So you really have come to your senses?’

She wanted to slap him. The man could be so smugly arrogant. And always so cool. But she didn’t have the strength for argument and in any case he was impossible to argue with. He didn’t know how. ‘Yes,’ she said again.

If he thought her reactions curiously monosyllabic, he passed no remark. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I suggest we never speak of it again.’

Meanwhile Tommy O’Donnell gave the impression of being thoroughly smug. Interviewed by the Daily Mail — he still wouldn’t touch the Comet , of course — he made it quite clear just how delighted he was by Mike Fielding’s arrest. Whether or not the policeman really was guilty of hiring a man to kill his elder brother, which in any case the Mail dared not go into, seemed almost irrelevant, Jo thought when she read the piece.

The Phillips family also made no secret of their satisfaction at Fielding’s incarceration. ‘This man was more than anybody else responsible for O’Donnell’s first trial going wrong and what is happening to him is a kind of justice,’ said Rob Phillips in the Daily Mirror , and he continued in an interview which skated the edge of the sub judice laws: ‘We’ve always believed Fielding is capable of being just as evil as any of the villains he deals with every day. If he was responsible for James O’Donnell’s death, then I and my family can only be grateful to him for that. But he deserves to suffer, too. He has caused us endless heartache.’

Joanna managed to arrange another jail visit with Shifter Brown. It seemed curious to think that Mike was in the same prison, maybe in a cell just yards away from the visiting room. And seeing Shifter got her no further than had her visit there to her former lover. ‘Could it really have been Fielding who hired you?’ she asked him.

‘I dunno,’ he replied unhelpfully.

‘But what do you think, Shifter?’

‘I’ve given up thinking, doll. You do when you’re banged up in here.’

‘OK, Shifter, but what about the e-mails? They showed them to you, didn’t they? Will you tell me honestly whether they were genuine or not? You’d remember the wording surely?’

‘Listen, girl, I already told the Old Bill I’ve never seen ’em before — ’course, they know I probably wouldn’t tell them if I had, would I?’ Shifter grinned. He seemed to be almost enjoying himself. ‘Anyway, the filth always believe what they want to believe. Like a lot of bleeding cannibals, too, when it’s one of their own, aren’t they? Look. I like you, Joey doll, but I’ve given you your story. Our deal’s done and dusted. I’m not saying any more. I’d never have told you what I did if it wasn’t for my little princesses, would I?’

‘Just one thing — and I know its for the umpteenth time. Do you really not know who put the contract out? Have you really not got a clue? You wouldn’t be winding us all up, would you?’

‘Now would I do that, babe?’ Shifter replied. And he treated her to a big, juicy wink, just like he had in the restaurant all that time ago.

‘For God’s sake, Shifter,’ said Joanna, throwing her eyes heavenwards in exasperation.

Shifter smiled benignly.

A Shifter Brown wind-up in order to gain some cash for his family had always been a possibility, of course. He could have come up with the e-mail wheeze just in order to have a story to sell which did not break his precious code of never grassing. But was he that inventive? And could he really have been capable of planting the entire e-mail dialogue which had been found on Mike’s laptop?