Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

She drove straight to the scene of the crime at Blackstone. There was plenty of activity and it wasn’t difficult to find the spot where Angela Phillips was believed to have been abducted, but the area was cordoned off and there was little to see, so Jo drove on to the missing girl’s farmhouse home. It was almost seven o’clock by the time she arrived, but the earlier rain had cleared, and it was a warm and pleasant evening. There was a single uniformed police officer standing at the end of the lane which led to Five Tors Farm. The pack were staked out all around him. With some difficulty Jo found enough of a grassy verge to park her car just about off the road. As she climbed out she narrowly avoided a rather large cowpat and wrinkled her nose with distaste. Sidestepping smartly, she was vaguely aware of admiring glances from one or two of the waiting journalists, not directed at her, she was quite sure, but at her car, which was an absolute beauty: British racing green with gleaming wire wheels.

Joanna was tall and slim, with mid-blond hair that hung straight and sleek halfway down her back — a legacy from her teenage years during the hippy-influenced sixties and early seventies. However, she thought her hair was lank and boring, and was all too aware that her slim figure owed more to cigarettes and nervous tension than healthy diet and exercise. Although she wasn’t pretty, she had a good strong face, high cheekbones, clear skin and nice eyes. And she certainly didn’t have an inferiority complex, not about anything. But it simply did not occur to Joanna that her appearance was particularly attractive. And certainly the behaviour towards her of most of the men she had dealings with did nothing to alter that.

She picked her way carefully across the narrow road to the assembled group. The countryside was great when you were driving through it in a nice warm car or looking out of the picture window of a luxury hotel, Jo thought, as she glanced around her. However, though she might not be mad about it, unlike many city folk she did at least understand that the countryside did not look after itself. The big Devon hedges all around her had been freshly manicured, the farm lane was no rough track but a tarmac driveway flanked by imposing granite pillars, the gate, standing open, was painted immaculate white. The Phillipses obviously kept their land beautifully, and had the money and workforce to do so. Their farmhouse was hidden from the road, but Jo imagined that the family lived in some style. Through the gateway opposite she could see a sweeping view of Dartmoor, hazy and purple in the evening light, its unique tors, those piles of granite boulders at the summit of sharply pointed hillocks, piercing the skyline a bit like falling-down church spires. It was a lovely spot, Jo admitted grudgingly to herself.

There were about a dozen men standing around, talking and smoking, at the lane junction. Some were obviously camera crews and radio reporters; others, she guessed, were local reporters and regional men for the nationals, and there were already a couple of Scotland Yard press corps lads who had rather irritatingly got there before her. But then, she had wasted time trying to smooth things over with her husband before leaving. Chris had not been best pleased to have one of their rare Sundays together interrupted. Male hacks rarely seemed to have those kinds of problems with their wives.

Harry Fowler, the Comet area man, who she knew had covered the earlier press conference, was also already there, as she had expected him to be. She was the only woman, as she had also expected.

Harry looked across and gave her a slightly uncertain wave. Fortyish, a little on the plump side, pleasant-faced, you could tell almost by looking at him that here was a man who had found his niche in life in a part of the world he loved. She had met him before, of course, and he was a nice enough guy without any of the chips on his shoulder of the London crime lads she had to work most closely with. But he would be well aware of the furore her appointment had caused in Fleet Street.

The Scotland Yard reporters already at the scene, Nick Hewitt and Kenny Dewar, were two of the most contemptuous of her after her own alleged colleagues. They were watching her arrival with expressions of amusement and disdain. Patronising bastards, she thought. And, from the expression on his face, it was clear Harry Fowler didn’t know quite how to deal with any of it. She decided to take the bull by the horns and strode towards him, trying hard to display a kind of confidence she was not really feeling.

She had to walk straight past Hewitt and Dewar, and she made sure her steps did not falter as she wished them a curt good evening.

‘My God, the Comet ’s sent in the heavy brigade,’ announced Hewitt with a derisive laugh.

And both quickly and loud enough to be sure she was still well within earshot, there followed Dewar’s clear stage whisper: ‘You know something, Nick, I’d like to give ’er one really hard and bite ’er lip till it bleeds.’

Joanna ignored both comments. Women who couldn’t stand the jolts were not expected to join the Street of Shame. She knew the rules and how to live by them.

Harry Fowler, however, began to look even more ill at ease.

Joanna pretended nothing had happened. ‘All right, Harry? Anything new?’

Harry smiled uncertainly. ‘Hi, Joanna. Not a lot. I expect you know they’ve got the boyfriend in Okehampton nick.’

Joanna shook her head. That information was obviously too fresh to have made any of the radio news bulletins she had listened to on the way down. Harry would already have passed it on to the news desk, of course, but although the MG did have one of the new car phones, linked by radio to a Post Office operator, it was unreliable. The reception had proved to be almost non-existent outside the London area and she hadn’t talked to her office since setting off.

‘They say it’s just routine,’ said Harry. ‘But he’s been in there since three this afternoon apparently. The word is that they found the boy’s motor near where the girl disappeared. I’ve got a stringer over there on a watching brief.’

Joanna felt her excitement wane a little. If the boyfriend was guilty this might not turn out to be quite as big a story as she had anticipated. It was certainly likely to be cleared up quickly.

‘We might get something else soon,’ Harry continued. ‘Fielding’s supposed to be coming out to speak to us any minute.’

Joanna nodded. She knew who Fielding was. She had already been given the names of the principal investigating officers when the news desk had called her at home. She took a packet of Marlboro from her jacket pocket and offered Harry one.

‘No thanks, given it up.’ He tapped his abundant torso in the vague region of the heart.

Then she remembered. He’d been off work for six months following a bypass operation. Now back on the job on a story like this, something nice and stress-free, she thought wryly, lighting a cigarette as she leaned against the nearest parked car and settled in for a wait.

She hadn’t even finished her smoke when a squad car approached from the direction of the farm and pulled to a halt at the end of the lane. Two large men climbed out of the back seat. Both were well over six feet tall, but while the first to emerge was thickset and fleshy with dark hair and a swarthy complexion, the second was long and lanky with light sandy hair, which flopped over his face as he moved. The dark swarthy one, who was wearing a particularly ill-fitting brown suit, looked as if there were a million other things he would rather be doing. The fair lanky one, snappily dressed in a trendy navy-blue linen jacket and immaculate dark-cream trousers with what looked terribly like Gucci loafers on his feet, gave the impression that he was thoroughly enjoying himself.