Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

She’d heard that Todd Mallett had finally closed down his investigation into Jimbo O’Donnell’s murder and Shifter Brown’s involvement — and the police never did that with an unsolved killing, even a partially unsolved one, unless they were damned sure they knew the truth but could do nothing about it. They obviously didn’t think they were ever going to prove anything against Tommy O’Donnell and that didn’t surprise Jo a bit.

Paul, typically, carried on as if nothing had happened. More or less. The previous week, however, he had axed her column. She assumed it was a kind of punishment and had told him so. That had been a mistake, of course. Her husband didn’t like confrontation or indignation. Emotional outbursts never got you anywhere with him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jo, it’s what’s called an editorial decision,’ he had told her. ‘There is no place for that kind of journalism in the tabloid world any more. It’s old-fashioned and you know it. You must realise how out of place “Sword of Justice” is in the Comet , and has been for some time.’

She did realise that, of course. That didn’t mean she liked it any the more. Paul had said she would remain an assistant editor, that he’d find a new role for her, but she really couldn’t see that working out. Her disappointment was far more than just for herself, however. She thought it a tragedy that all the great tabloid traditions were being eroded. The British popular papers she had once been so proud to represent were nowadays often not much different from America’s supermarket tabloids: just full of throwaway trash. She thought it was a shame. And so, she had always believed, did Paul, whom she had admired for at least appearing to try to walk the tightrope between the kind of journalistic standards now almost invariably ignored and the demands of the modern mass market. She was no longer even so sure of that.

Nonetheless she knew she had little choice but to settle for what she’d got. Which was a hell of a lot more than most people had, after all. Paul had been right. And Fielding, too, in an awful sort of way. She liked her lifestyle, she had got used to the luxury home and even Paul’s chauffeur-driven car, to never having to worry about money. She also loved her daughter desperately, even if she had yet to develop the kind of mother — daughter relationship she felt she should have with Emily.

She wasn’t happy, of course. All the old demons had been released. She would not forget Fielding no matter how hard she tried. Not ever. Or Angela Phillips, come to that. All of it would be with her always. And alcohol only ever provided temporary amnesia.

She resolved to cut down on the drinking and to rebuild her life. More than anything else she would concentrate on her family in future. The rest of it was over.

As part of this new resolution Jo made a huge fuss of her daughter over breakfast, drove her to school and promised she would be at home waiting when Emily returned in the afternoon. ‘And at the weekend we’ll do some shopping together, buy you some new clothes, and then maybe go to the cinema,’ she went on. ‘You can chose the film, Em. Would you like that?’

‘Oh, yeah! That would be great, Mum,’ replied Emily, with a level of enthusiasm which quite took Joanna by surprise.

Maybe, if she made a real effort, things would work out after all, she thought.

Marginally cheered, she later set off for St Bride’s in Fleet Street, the famous journalists’ church, for a memorial service for Andy McKane, who had died at the age of sixty-one of sclerosis of the liver. Which was exactly how she’d end up if she didn’t watch it, Jo reflected wryly.

McKane may have been a fearful old sexist, but he had also been an excellent news editor and a fundamentally good-hearted guy, beneath his bombastic chauvinism. In any case the memorial service provided a nowadays rare get-together for old Fleet Street hacks. Certainly she found she was looking forward to the diversion.

The turnout was extensive and across the board, as she would have expected for Andy. After the service there was the usual wake in El Vino’s wine bar during which, in spite of her morning resolution, Jo drank far more house champagne than she had intended to. By the time she decided, three hours or so later, that she really must leave if she were to have any chance of keeping her promise to Emily, she was feeling quite mellow.

Then she bumped into Frank Manners. Literally. The old crime hack who had once caused her such trouble turned abruptly away from the bar just as Jo was heading for the door and they collided. She hadn’t seen him since his enforced early retirement deal nineteen years earlier now and Manners, who must have reached his late seventies, looked to be in far better fettle than he deserved. His complexion was a little more florid, which might in any event have been down to his obviously well-oiled state, but other than that he had changed astonishingly little.

‘Good God, it’s the golden girl,’ he bellowed. ‘Got any other poor sod sacked lately?’

A slight hush fell in their part of the bar. Manners’s attitude hadn’t changed either, she thought. Why did he have to be such a bastard? He must have known he’d been asking for trouble after what he’d done all those years ago, surely. Remembering the shock and distress of it, the anger washed over her. ‘If you’ve got something to say, Frank, say it straight,’ she snapped. ‘If you hadn’t taken to making bloody poisonous anonymous phone calls you’d have kept your job for as long as you wanted it, and you know it!’

Frank stared at her in slack-mouthed bewilderment. ‘Have you finally gone totally and utterly barking mad, woman?’ he enquired. ‘I haven’t got the faintest idea what the fuck you’re talking about.’

She opened her mouth to make a suitably cutting reply. Something in his expression and in the way that he had spoken stopped her in her tracks. Suddenly she knew, with terrible devastating clarity, that he was telling the truth. She pushed past him, desperate to get away from the crush of noisy drinkers.

Outside she took deep breaths of the autumn air. Her brain was spinning. There was an all too clear alternative to the various assumptions she had made so long ago about Manners, which had just never occurred to her before. Now it seemed glaringly obvious. And she was horrified.

‘Oh, my God,’ she thought. ‘Paul!’

For the rest of the afternoon and evening Joanna operated on autopilot. She travelled home to Richmond in a kind of daze, somehow managing both to arrive there as promised before Emily and to go through the normal motions of family life. She cooked them both a meal and forced herself to sit down and eat with her daughter whose chief topic of conversation was Saturday’s planned shopping trip and how her life would be ruined unless, as well as new clothes, her mother bought her yet another trendy new computer game, which of course absolutely everybody else at school already had.

Joanna, totally preoccupied, found she kept drifting off, but after a while a thought struck her. ‘You like playing computer games, and going on the Net and stuff with your dad, don’t you, Em?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Her daughter’s face lit up. ‘He’s brilliant.’

‘Is he really?’

‘Oh, yeah. Dad can do anything on a computer.’

‘Anything?’

‘Pretty well. Alice Rivers’s father’s a real geek and he doesn’t know half as much as Dad.’

‘Bit of a super-hacker, is he then, your dad?’

Emily looked doubtful. ‘He said I wasn’t to tell,’ she said.

‘Tell what? I can keep a secret.’

Emily still looked doubtful.

‘Anyway, if it’s your father’s secret I expect I know it already.’