A Kind Of Wild Justice (11 page)

‘Spare me the clichés. I do know your reputation, you know.’

‘What reputation?’

‘Don’t be a prat. That reputation you have for being unable to stop yourself jumping on anything in skirts.’

‘You flatter yourself.’

‘Smug bastard!’

‘Anyway,’ he began, running an eye appraisingly over her trouser-suited figure, ‘I’ve never seen you in a skirt.’

He grinned again. He was good company. And when by the end of the evening he had still not made a pass at her, she didn’t really know whether she was disappointed or not. She’d had every intention of turning him down, of course. But that wasn’t quite the point.

Joanna stayed in Devon for the best part of a week, returning to London only when it became obvious that there was no chance of an early arrest. She asked Manners to stay on for a little longer just to keep an eye on things. At least, then, she wouldn’t have to look at the bloody man every day, she thought.

She left Dartmoor right after lunch, having filed an early story and manoeuvred herself into a situation where she would not be expected either at the office or the Yard. This meant that with a bit of luck she could be home in Chiswick soon after four o’clock. She wanted to get there early and make a special effort for her husband, something she knew she didn’t do nearly often enough.

As she drove, Jo reflected on her marriage to her childhood sweetheart. She and Chris had been an item since, aged seventeen, she had surrendered her virginity to him in the back of a Mini Cooper. Now that had been a feat of some agility. The thought of it still made her smile in spite of everything. And, as so often happens with young people discovering sex together for the first time, Chris and Joanna fell head over heels in love. They married when she was nineteen and he was twenty-one. So they had already been married for eight years, and they were no longer a match made in heaven.

Joanna felt that she had moved on in life, that she had moved into worlds Chris had never got close to. She didn’t believe that made her superior or even that her world was superior. In fact, on a bad day she would often concede that Chris’s life and career were a damn sight more useful than her own. It was just that he seemed to have stood still. Chris taught at a primary school near their home in Chiswick. She had little doubt that he would remain a teacher throughout his working life. That was the kind of man he was: content with his lot; dedicated in his way, but unambitious. She had no illusions about him. She didn’t even expect him to make deputy headmaster. Ever. And it might have been his chosen career, dealing with small children day in and day out, which gave him the kind of stick-in-the-mud naivety that was beginning to irritate her. He was always infuriatingly sure that his ideas, mostly formed in extreme youth, and his ways of going about things were the only right ones. Sometimes she felt that not only had he no concept of what her life was all about, but that he actually worked at keeping it so. Certainly
he made it quite clear that he didn’t like journalists. They distorted the truth, misled their readers, ruined people’s lives. There was no talking about it with Chris. There was no middle ground.

She sighed. Since she had become a crime reporter he had increased his circle of most loathsome people to include policemen. She didn’t think she’d ever even heard him voice an opinion on the police until working with them became a daily part of her job. Then he decided they were crooks and villains equal to the criminals they were supposed to be catching. His only problem was making up his mind which was the lower form of life, hacks or cops.

Her problem was that she still loved him. She couldn’t help it. They went back a long way. And, in spite of everything, she was pretty sure he loved her too. After a week away she was determined at least that their first night together would be a good one.

The traffic was mercifully light. She was in Chiswick High Street at 4.15, parked the MG on a double yellow and nipped into Porsche’s fish shop where she bought two large Dover sole, Chris’s favourite. There would be potatoes and vegetables at home, Chris always kept the house well stocked with those, so all she needed to make the night special was a bottle of champagne, swiftly acquired from a nearby off-licence, and some flowers. One of the few things she bought regularly for their small but attractive cottage just off Turnham Green was flowers. Chris said it was because they hid her clutter. He was more than half right. She knew she was a lousy housekeeper. She left almost all of that sort of stuff to him, in fact, but she did like her flowers and she bought a big bunch of white roses, his favourite again, from a street seller.

She was at home soon after 4.30. Brilliant, she thought. Loads of time. She knew Chris was teaching games and wouldn’t be home until six. She found vases and arranged the roses in the dining room, the living room and, feeling optimistic, the bedroom. Then she peeled potatoes. She was going to make a really creamy mash. Chris loved mashed potato. She inspected the vegetable cupboard and, deciding on a simple green salad, easy and good for them, selected a crisp-looking lettuce, some cucumber and a green pepper. When she had finished chopping she made a dressing, then went to have a bath and change her clothes.

She felt relaxed and refreshed when Chris arrived. ‘Hi, darling, miss me?’ she called as she heard his key in the lock.

His response was a barely audible grunt.

Joanna’s smile of greeting faltered, but she carried on anyway. She walked towards him and wrapped her arms round his neck. ‘Dover sole on the grill, mash with full cream ready to go, champagne in the fridge. Do you love me or what?’ she challenged him.

He grasped her wrists with both his hands, flinging her arms away from him. ‘You’d better invite one of your lovers round, then, hadn’t you, ’ he told her.

‘What?’

‘Well, there’s not much point in wasting champagne on me, is there? I can’t get you a job or a story.’

‘What the fuck are you going on about?’ she demanded, instantly regretting her use of the four-letter word. It just slipped out. But she knew how much it annoyed him.

‘Keep that language for the scum you work with,
will you? I’ve told you before it’s got no place in my home.’

‘Will you please stop being so dammed sanctimonious and tell me what has happened, because it’s obvious something has.’ Joanna’s heart was pounding. What was going on?

He smiled. It was completely mirthless. ‘Some of your chums have being filling me in on your extramarital activities – all in the name of duty, of course,’ he told her, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

‘In English, please,’ she responded.

‘Please don’t try to be superior all the time, Joanna, it doesn’t suit you, really it doesn’t.’

She hated it when he talked to her as if she were one of his six-year-old pupils. But she made herself not respond. Instead, she waited.

‘I’ve had some phone calls from someone explaining to me exactly how you get your stories,’ he said eventually.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ exploded Joanna. ‘Come on. Tell me about it, please.’

She reached for his hand and this time he did not shy away from her touch, which at least was something. He allowed her to lead him to the kitchen table.

‘There’ve been a series of calls while you’ve been away,’ he said in a flat, expressionless voice. ‘The theme’s been the same each time. That you’re a slut who’ll do anything to get a story – particularly sleeping with policemen. Any policemen at all.’

She was staggered. ‘Who made these calls to you?’ she asked quietly.

He shrugged, not looking at her. ‘I don’t know, do I? The caller didn’t leave his name, surprisingly enough!’

‘Chris, for God’s sake!’ she said again. ‘Have we come to this? You’ve let some nutter making anonymous phone calls get to you?’

‘How would you like it?’ he countered. ‘Joanna, what am I supposed to believe? I don’t see you for days on end, you’re away on some story or other and then, when you are at home, you’re out till all hours drinking with your alleged police contacts. How do I know what’s going on?’

‘It’s my job, Chris,’ she said mildly.

‘Some job,’ he responded. ‘And who’s making these calls? Some of your so-called colleagues, I suppose. You work with such charming people, Joanna, don’t you?’

Now
that
she was inclined to agree with and she opened her mouth to tell him that she had a damned good idea who was making those calls. In fact, there was only one person she could think of who really hated her that much: Frank Manners. But she changed her mind. Things were getting to the stage where the less Chris knew about her work and the people she worked with the more chance she had of at least a tolerable home life. ‘I don’t have a clue who could be making these calls,’ she lied. ‘And I would sincerely hope it isn’t someone I work with. Look, there’s a guy I know at the Yard who specialises in sorting out moody phone calls. I’ll have a word with him. Maybe he can get a tap put on the line or something.’

‘I don’t want a tap on my bloody phone line, Joanna,’ her husband shouted at her.

‘Oh, stop being so damned unreasonable, Chris. What the hell do you want, then? You want this sorted, don’t you? It’s obviously upset you.’

‘Yes, it bloody well has upset me. What I want is for my wife to stop behaving like some kind of tart. Then I wouldn’t have to put up with stuff like this, would I?’

All Joanna’s good intentions disappeared in a wave of righteous indignation. ‘You pious prig,’ she shouted at him. ‘Cook your own fucking supper. I should be in the office anyway.’

She was nearly through the front door when he called after her, ‘There’s one copper in particular, isn’t there? A bit of a favourite of yours.’

‘What the hell are you going on about now?’ demanded Joanna.

‘Detective Sergeant Mike Fielding. He’s your latest, isn’t he? I’ve seen him on the news. A real smooth operator. Just your sort. Going places, no doubt. Bit different from a poor bloody schoolteacher.’

‘Believe what you want to believe, you bloody fool.’

Joanna slammed the door behind her and headed for her car. If there was anything more infuriating than getting that kind of treatment from your husband when you really had done absolutely nothing to deserve it, she didn’t know what it was. She had lapsed a couple of times since she and Chris had been married, but considering how young they had both been when they had tied the knot she didn’t think that was too bad. There had never been anything consequential with anyone else and she was pretty sure that Chris had lapsed once or twice, too. But she was also pretty sure that he had never had anything amounting to an affair either.

Funnily enough, she had believed for years that she and Chris had rather a good marriage. Better than a
lot she saw, anyway. But recently they seemed barely able to be civil to each other and she really didn’t think it was her fault most of the time. Sometimes she wondered if Chris was jealous of her success in her career, but she supposed that was a touch arrogant of her.

She left the house at 5.45 p. m. and pulled into the
Comet
car park around 6.20. She had actually been in the same room as her husband for little more than five minutes, she thought wryly. World War Three had broken out in about as many seconds. So she had left Chiswick early enough to beat the bulk of the theatre traffic and her journey was a reasonably easy one.

In the newsroom the day was just building towards its climax. Daily-paper offices in 1980 were noisy, smoky places where nobody cleared their desks and everyone tried to talk to each other at once, always at full volume, often while simultaneously conducting a phone call and frequently while also typing – still on clattering manual typewriters, of course.

So why was it she always felt as if she had been given an intravenous shot of adrenalin every time she entered the building – particularly in the evenings? It was her favourite time there. Indeed, it was every true newspaperman and -woman’s favourite time because that was when the deadline was tightest, the fever pitch ran hottest and the presses were getting ready to roll. The news desk and the back bench were the hub of the paper at night. Passing the desk, she heard Andy McKane, the night news editor, on a call to a reporter apparently making a check call. Andy was one of the old-fashioned sort, a tough-talking Scotsman, convinced that any journalist who hadn’t done a stint north of the border had not completed
his apprenticeship and should always be treated with grave suspicion. As should most women journalists, of course, whatever their pedigree. ‘When I want ye to know how I am, old boy, I’ll tell ye, all right,’ she heard him say in his thick Glasgow accent.

He must be talking to one of those new kids, she thought. Only a reporter who was very new and green would ever begin a check call to McKane with the social nicety of asking him how he was. She chuckled to herself. It was McKane who was famously responsible for a 1 a.m. call to a former showbusiness editor of the
Comet
, the only point of which appeared to be to slag off one of her staff. The woman had apparently listened more or less silently for some minutes, no doubt just hoping McKane would go way. Eventually she decided she should show some sort of support for her man and had told the night news editor, ‘Oh, come on, Andy, Ron’s done some bloody good stuff lately.’

McKane hadn’t argued with that. Instead, he replied in his guttural Glaswegian, ‘Huh, only because you sit on his fucking lap and squeeze his fucking balls.’

The next day the showbusiness editor had approached McKane just as the editor was walking past. ‘Andy, when you said that Ron had only done some good stuff lately because I sat on his fucking lap and squeezed his fucking balls, did you mean by way of punishment or encouragement?’ she had asked in a loud, clear voice. Her timing had been impeccable. The newsroom had erupted in laughter. McKane had had the grace to flush slightly. The showbusiness editor’s response had been spot on, of course.

The same woman, who was almost six feet tall, had
once effectively dealt with a diminutive reporter who, upon returning from a heavy lunchtime session in the pub, had beerily informed her that he wouldn’t half like to give her one, as he so charmingly put it. She had drawn herself up to her full height and replied, ‘Well, if you ever do and I find out, I shall be very angry.’