Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

Which left Tommy the undisputed head of the O’Donnell clan.

Todd found it very easy to put himself in Tommy O’Donnell’s shoes, to imagine the man’s reaction on reading his daughter’s diary. Todd had kids, bright, well-adjusted, happy young people who, as far as he knew, had never had to endure anything like this. They were alive, moreover. Todd could imagine only too well what Tommy’s feelings must have been.

Todd was a law-abiding, solid citizen. A police officer. But he knew he would have wanted to kill anybody who had harmed his children like this. And if that person were his own brother then his anger would have been even more terrible. Tommy O’Donnell’s brother had done unspeakable things to Tommy’s daughter. And the girl had been so traumatised by it that she had killed herself.

Todd was quite sure that Tommy O’Donnell would have happily killed his brother with his bare hands. That would probably have been his first instinctive coherent thought. But, like his father, Tommy understood the importance of keeping his hands clean. Tommy’s second instinct would have been to seek terminal revenge while protecting himself and the rest of his family. And nobody knew better how to do that than an O’Donnell. Not only would Tommy not have done the deed himself, but he would not have wanted to use a regular O’Donnell enforcer. He would definitely have hired an outsider.

There was considerable significance, too, in the date the diary had been deposited into the recycling bin — just a week before Jimbo had gone missing. Tommy would have made his plan by then, coolly worked out what he was going to have done to the brother who had so terribly betrayed him.

The more of the diary Todd read the more he became convinced that Tommy had hired Shifter. But there was, of course, absolutely no proof that he had done so and neither was there likely to be. He did wonder who, apart from Tommy himself, would have known about the diary to report its existence to the police. But even villains had confidants, he supposed. And sometimes allegiances changed. Another possibility was that whoever appeared to be pointing an anonymous finger at Tommy was actually trying to do Fielding a favour. Somebody close to Tommy who owed Fielding, perhaps. After all, Todd knew the odds were against even being able to charge Tommy with anything, let alone successfully try him. Nonetheless, he brought him in for questioning.

‘Yeah, I found the diary, course I did,’ he said. ‘And once I’d read it I sent it straight to the recycling bin. I didn’t want the missus to see it, did I?’

Tommy made his admission freely and immediately — as far as it went. Todd was not surprised. After all, the computer’s record of the date on which the document had last been read would have made it nonsensical for him to deny that he, or at least one of his family, had found it. And in any case Tommy knew that he did not need to deny it. If there was anybody who understood about circumstantial evidence, it was an O’Donnell. Particularly this O’Donnell.

After that it was downhill all the way. The interview with Tommy turned out to be as much of a waste of time as Todd had feared it would be.

‘Mr Mallett, I can’t describe how I felt when I found Caroline’s diary,’ said Tommy. His voice cracked a bit as he spoke and Todd did not doubt for a second that his emotions were one hundred per cent genuine. ‘I’d probably never have found it cos she had the file tucked away among her homework. Essays, and maths tests and stuff, and then... then... this horrible thing. But there was a printout, you see. It was among her school books. I look through them occasionally. I couldn’t believe I’d missed it before. And then, when I read it, well. Do you know I actually thought it was a story at first? But it wasn’t.

‘The truth is I hated Jimbo enough to kill him. Yes, I did. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t hire Shifter. I’d only just found the diary when Jimbo disappeared. I was trying to work out what to do about it. OK, I wanted to hurt him badly. But there was Dad to think about and the rest of the family. Poor Caroline was dead. I couldn’t help her. I was just working it out — then Jimbo was topped. It was nothing to do with me. Honestly.’

Todd did not believed a word of it. The whole episode had the O’Donnell stamp all over it. Revenge. Rough justice. That was the code they lived by. But Todd couldn’t prove a thing and he knew it.

However, the obvious implication remained — that Fielding was probably innocent after all and that his protestations that he had been set up might indeed be true.

Fielding’s case was further helped by a computer expert called in by his defence lawyer who questioned the validity of the e-mail evidence discovered by the police hackers, pointing out that it was totally feasible to send a virus into a computer memory which could plant all kinds of files there. It was technically quite possible that the e-mail drafts could have been fraudulently placed.

Finally the father of a twelve-year-old-boy in Scotland, apparently even more of a computer whizz than most twelve-year-olds, contacted his local police station. It seemed that the boy had discovered intriguing files buried in the memory of the second-hand hard drive his father had bought him from Glasgow’s famous Burrowlands computer market.

These included e-mail correspondence between ‘contractor’ and ‘enforcer’.

None of the e-mails was the same as the ones found on Fielding’s laptop. Nothing matched at all except the user names. Even the language employed was different. Police hackers were able to trace the origin of the ‘contractor’ e-mails. They had been sent, as Shifter had originally predicted, from another cyber café. And there, once again, the trail ended.

The case against Fielding began to look very weak indeed. A full police report was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service who promptly applied to Exeter and Wonford Magistrates’ Court to discontinue all charges in view of the changes in circumstances.

Mike Fielding was at once freed from jail.

Joanna followed the progress of events closely. Tim’s contact at the Yard turned out to be as good as he had promised and the young crime reporter acquired far more detailed information than was ever officially released, and indeed far more than could be printed.

Joanna was greatly relieved when the charges against Fielding were dropped. But she found she didn’t know how to deal with it when he called her twice on the day after his release and once more the day after that. On all three occasions she avoided his calls and failed to return them. But, maybe because she reckoned she owed him an apology, maybe because she was curious, or even because she still cared in spite of everything, she did eventually call him a week or so later. ‘I’m so glad you are free, and I am so sorry I doubted you,’ she told him at once.

Fielding’s heart lurched. He was so pleased to hear from her. He had feared he might never see her again. And regardless of all that he had said when she had visited him in prison, he wanted to see her very much indeed. He accepted her apologies. It still hurt, but not as much as being unable to be with her any more would hurt.

‘I suppose it must have been Tommy, mustn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ he replied. ‘Tommy always had a low opinion of his brother, you know. He wasn’t fooled like his father was. I’ve no doubt he thought Jimbo was a despicable human being. Although he might not have realised Jimbo was a paedophile, Tommy’s got the old-fashioned villain’s abhorrence of all sex crimes. He would have hated what Jimbo did. But that wouldn’t have been enough, of course. Family was different. When he discovered that Jimbo had been abusing his daughter, driven her to suicide probably, his Caroline, the apple of his eye and the whole O’Donnell clan — he’d never let Jimbo get away with that. Never. He couldn’t. It would go entirely against his nature.’