Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

‘You don’t think there’s any doubt, then?’

‘Nope. But I’ll be astonished if it’s ever proved. Tommy knows how to cover his tracks. He’s had enough practice.’

‘Could he have framed you, do you think?’

‘He could have. He doesn’t like me, but I don’t think it would have occurred to him that he needed a scapegoat. And I’m not sure that O’Donnell is that clever. He’s bright enough, but whoever did me would have to be very clever indeed and a real computer whizz. Mind you, I reckon Tommy would probably have known where to find the right person for the job.’ He paused, then added mischievously, ‘Someone a bit like you, Jo, really.’

‘Don’t start that again, Mike. Apart from anything else I don’t have that kind of knowledge and you know it.’

‘No. I’m kidding. I just keep going over and over in my mind who might have done it.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘Nothing definite,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve made a few enemies in my time. There’d be quite a list of people who’d like to see me done up like a kipper. How many of ’em would be capable of doing it, though, is something else.’

‘So what do you think...’

He interrupted her. ‘Jo, when I called I didn’t want to talk about all this, particularly. I’ve just got to live with it now if I want any sort of future. And that’s what I wanted to talk about. My future. Our future. Us.’

‘I didn’t think there was an “us” any more.’ Her voice sounded distant.

‘There could be.’

His temper had cooled, of course. He wanted to see her again. It was always her he had dreamed about in prison. Always her in his thoughts when he woke up in the mornings with an erection, or half a one more often than not nowadays. It had really knocked the stuffing out of him, all this, in every possible way. He couldn’t explain how he felt. He couldn’t explain how mercurial those feelings were either. Maybe it was because the strength and longevity of his desire for her frightened him. One minute he never wanted to see her again and the next he felt that life wasn’t worth living without her. He couldn’t regret that it had all started with her again, there had been too much pleasure involved, even a little bit of joy. But so much bloody pain too. That seemed to be inevitable for them.

‘Sometimes I think you and me will always be an “us”,’ he carried on. ‘I was angry with you because you didn’t believe in me, and particularly when I was in the clink that was very important to me. But it hasn’t affected my feelings for you.’

‘Mike, your feelings change with the wind, I should have learned that twenty-odd years ago.’

Had she read his mind, he wondered. He couldn’t argue with her. He was well aware that she spoke the truth.

‘I met your wife when I was leaving the prison.’

‘Ah.’

‘She never even knew about you and me, did she?’

Typically he avoided the question. ‘Look, can we at least meet and talk?’

‘I doubt it. Talking has never been our strong suit, has it?’ she said, her voice heavy.

No, he thought. They never had time to talk much. Sex and their jobs. That had always been their bond. But it must have been more than that to have lasted all that time, to have been resurrected so easily.

‘We could try. If we are going to end this for good I really don’t want us to do it on the bloody phone.’

He heard her sigh. ‘Mike, there’s no point. Anyway, I don’t dare. For all I know Paul’s still having me followed. If you and I even met he’d find out, I’m sure of it, and if he did he’d divorce me. He’s told me so and I believe him absolutely. He won’t put up with it again.’

‘And would that be such a disaster, then?’

‘Mike, don’t be ridiculous. I have so much to lose. Including my daughter.’

‘Since when has your daughter been so damned important to you?’

‘Mike, that’s a terrible thing to say. Of course she’s important to me.’

‘Really? More important than your job and that flash house and maybe being Lady bloody Potter?’

He didn’t know why he was saying these things. The last thing he wanted to do was alienate her. He wanted to try again and yet he knew he was also doing his damnedest to destroy any chance of that. He was tying himself up in knots. Why was it so often like that with her?

When she replied he thought there was a slight quaver in her voice but she spoke very patiently, as if addressing a wayward child. ‘Mike, I don’t think you listen to yourself sometimes. In any case it doesn’t make any difference. It really is over for us now. It has to be.’

‘Why, so you can stay with a man you don’t love just because he’s a rich cunt?’

He knew he had shouted the last words. He had meant to be vicious but even as he yelled into the telephone he regretted it. Almost at once he began to stumble an apology.

It was too late.

There was a click as he opened his mouth to speak again and he ended up whispering the word ‘sorry’ into a buzzing receiver.

She had hung up on him.

Joanna sat on the edge of the bed in the cream and white bedroom of her Richmond home, staring numbly at the telephone she had just been using. It was typical of Mike to flare up like that. Nonetheless, she was stunned. She had never told him that she didn’t love Paul and in any case it wasn’t as simple as that. It was to Fielding, of course. He always saw other people’s actions in black and white even though his own were invariably anything but.

Joanna had ensured that she was alone in the house before she made the call and she was very glad of that. It was just before six o’clock in the evening. Emily was staying the night at a friend’s. The au pair was also out. Paul wouldn’t be home for hours.

So Jo could weep in private, weep for the end of the love affair of her life. It was the end. She had no intention of going back on her word. But God, it hurt and Mike’s words had hurt more than anything she could imagine. Far more, she thought, than he would ever suspect. She still did not think he truly realised just how strong an effect everything he said and did had on her.

There was no future for them. Maybe there had never been a chance of one. They carried so much baggage now it was impossible. Angela Phillips. Jimbo and Tommy O’Donnell. Shifter Brown. So many images flitted through her mind whenever she thought of Mike. Which was still most of the time. And yet the pair of them were eternally plagued by doubts. In every direction. Their lives together, inasmuch as they had ever been together, tainted with suspicion and betrayal.

Mike Fielding and Joanna Bartlett. An unlikely coupling caught up in a tangled web that was all too often of their own making.

She accepted absolutely now that Mike had not hired Shifter and that he had been framed. But she still didn’t trust him. How could she? She could never be sure of anything about him. He was so unlike Paul in that. You could always be sure of Paul.

She knew damned well that if she had gone along with him on the phone, told him what she suspected he had, at that moment at any rate, wanted to hear, told him she’d leave Paul, her daughter, everything to be with him, by the next day he’d probably have changed his mind.

She knew she had made the right decision. She just knew it. It was the only decision. But that didn’t make it any easier.

The tears came freely pouring down her cheeks. She’d done a lot of crying lately. But it never seemed to help.

She flung herself full-length on the bed and buried her face in the pillows. An era had ended for good. It was over. And so at last was the case of Angela Phillips and James Martin O’Donnell.

Even in her misery it occurred to her that there had finally been a kind of rough justice.