A Kind Of Wild Justice (21 page)

She sighed. As well as being a bloody great editor he was an attentive, caring husband and a brilliant father who managed to find time for both his wife and daughter in spite of holding down one of the most demanding jobs in the modern world.

Their daughter, Emily, was bright, well adjusted, healthy and self-possessed. Perhaps a little too self-possessed, but certainly she had so far given neither of her parents much anxiety about anything. Of course, Joanna realised that might all change when Emily reached the dreaded teens. However, perversely she knew, she sometimes found herself rather looking forward to having a petulant adolescent to deal with. Occasionally it felt as if life were just too well ordered.

The family lived in a dream home on Richmond Hill. Joanna spent three days a week in the office of the
Comet
and the rest of her time enjoying herself. House and daughter were undemanding. Both were impeccably organised, almost all according to her husband’s direction, and with the help of a four-times-a-week cleaner and an au pair who picked Emily up from school every day and supervised her until whichever parent returned first.

Joanna had never had reason for one moment to doubt the love of the man she had married, nor his commitment to her. Her friends thought she was immensely lucky and she knew she was. She supposed that she loved him too, but it was not something to which she gave much thought.

She ran her hands through her hair, still more or less the same shade of blonde it had always been although helped along occasionally by streaked
highlights, but now cropped short in a fashionable up-to-date style. She had put on some weight but her body was still in good shape – muscles firmish, no dreaded cellulite yet, thank God – maintained these days by regular workouts at the gym. People said she had changed little over the years. She had suddenly reached the grand old age of forty-seven, with another birthday approaching fast, although she really didn’t know how the hell it had happened, but a well-defined bone structure had kept her face from falling – so far, anyway. Her complexion remained clear, her skin lined a little around the eyes and mouth but still relatively smooth and unblemished. She supposed that one of the advantages of never having been a great beauty or even particularly pretty was that you didn’t change so much with the years. She certainly felt much the same as she had always done, but then, that was always the problem of ageing. You did feel the same, inside. She realised that she was tapping the heel of her left foot rhythmically on the ground. She felt disturbed, unsure of herself, for the first time in years. In fact, truth be told, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything much for some years.

She had probably been too close to the Beast of Dartmoor case, too aware of the way Fielding and the rest of the team had handled it.

Now, twenty years later, she couldn’t resist being intrigued by what Mike had told her, but one half of her didn’t even want to think about it, really didn’t want to get involved again. For many years she hadn’t allowed herself to think about the case or anything else that it represented to her. She had definitely not allowed herself to think about Mike Fielding – which had made for a considerably easier state of mind.

She had half convinced herself that she really had forgotten him, that both he and the case were completely over for her. She had been wrong on both counts and that had come as something of a shock.

Suddenly it seemed like yesterday. The bloody man could still get under her skin like nobody else. And the case that had brought them together had always been much more than just another story. The poor murdered teenager had got under her skin, too. As had James Martin O’Donnell. The thought of playing a part in at least achieving some kind of justice, after all those years, appealed greatly, albeit against her better judgement. The problem was that all of it was tangled up inside her head with her memories of Fielding and what he had meant to her.

She wasn’t sure that she wanted to risk becoming involved in anything which might affect the life she and Paul had built for themselves. They were, after all, the golden couple of the media world: attractive, rich and privileged. In demand at all the right dinner parties. Rumour had it Paul was up for a knighthood. That would make Jo Lady Potter. Potter. Not the sort of name that went all that well with a title, really, she pondered. But Paul wouldn’t mind. He had worked towards it in the way that he worked towards everything in his life. Quietly. Assiduously. He had been editor for twelve years now, by far the longest of any of the other tabloid editors and something of a miracle in the modern world. The knighthood would not be so much a reward for longevity, however, as for the
Comet
’s so far more or less unwavering support for the present prime minister – for whom bestowing a knighthood was a small price to pay to ensure the continuing brainwashing of the paper’s ten million or
so readers. Paul was also one of the few of the current crop of tabloid editors who had always managed to keep his nose clean.

He had to be the cleverest man she had ever met. There was little doubt about that. He remained deceptive in his manner, which was still quiet and relatively unassuming. Look him in those unfathomable brown eyes, though, and you got a glimpse of how exceptional he was. Theirs had never been a relationship born of great passion – not for her at any rate. They just fitted together, somehow. She always felt that she had found the right man. Certainly all her friends and family thought she had. She and Paul were generally regarded as having the ideal Fleet Street marriage. And she supposed they did. More or less.

She sighed and gazed out of the window. The
Comet
offices were on the twenty-first floor of the giant shining tower block known as 1 Canada Square. From her desk she could see right along the River Thames to Greenwich. It had been almost as good a day in London as in Devon. The sun had already set behind the distinctive dome of the Royal Observatory and had left a stunning afterglow. Streaks of crimson blazed across a darkening sky. The view was sensational. She looked around her. Her desk was at the far end of a huge open-plan room, as far away as possible from the editor’s office. After all, he was her husband. She preferred her own space.

The whole working area was clean and efficient-looking. There was very little clutter, the furniture new and streamlined, silent computers sitting on pristine desks. The atmosphere was calm and quiet. A bit like the editor, really. Rows of subs and
reporters sat staring at flickering screens, barely moving. Certainly not talking. There was no chatter, no noise at all. Just still heads and busy fingers. Even the litter was sanitised. Empty plastic salad boxes had replaced greasy fish and chip papers.

God, she could even remember the smell of the grubby old offices at the top of Fetter Lane. There had been an air-conditioning system, of sorts, which never seemed to work properly. It was always either too hot or too cold, and by about this time in the evening the air would be acrid, the odour of fish and chips and bits of decaying burger mixed with stale cigarette smoke, beery breath and the odd blast of whisky fumes. Why was it that she and all the other dinosaurs yearned for the old days? More than anything, she knew, it was the atmosphere of excitement which had hovered over them continually, like a great big cloud waiting to burst, and which somehow seemed to be lacking from modern newspaper offices. The sheer hubbub of the place had been so much a part of that. The way the whole building shook when the presses started up. The clattering typewriters, journalists who talked to each other, often shouting across the room, instead of sending e-mails. Internal e-mails really irritated her. She had once suggested to Paul that he ban the practice.

His response had been heavily sarcastic. ‘Ban in-house e-mails. A really good progressive idea that. What age are you living in, Joanna?’

Interesting, really, Paul accusing her of living in the past when here she was confronted with it and finding it not welcome at all. Far too disturbing.

Absent-mindedly Jo nibbled at a thumbnail. She had weekly manicures now, of course, but she still
couldn’t seem to stop herself biting her nails occasionally. She successfully chewed off a small piece of nail that had been irritating her and it dropped on to the sleeve of her jacket. She brushed it away. She was expensively dressed, as usual, in a sleek grey silk trouser suit, which would take her on to the chattering classes dinner party she and Paul were heading for later. There was no doubt she was in pretty good order for her age and she was probably fitter than she had been twenty years ago thanks to those gym sessions.

She had stopped smoking, of course. Hadn’t everybody? But she still drank just as much, maybe more. The media world might have entered a new puritanical age but she wasn’t giving up the booze even if she did seem to be surrounded by bright young things who thought a bottle of Mexican beer with a bit of lime shoved incongruously into its neck was the height of decadence and sophistication.

She wondered what they would have made of an era when a trolley laden with wine, beer and spirits used to be trundled weekly around the offices of the
Comet
, and senior executives were invited to choose supplies for their fridges and drinks cabinets. Free of charge, too. Even she, as chief crime correspondent, had had a couch and a fridge in her office. She didn’t qualify for the free booze, but it was common practice for those who did to order a few extra bottles in order to help out those who didn’t. Editorial meetings, particularly on Friday evenings, were inclined to turn into parties. On hot days in the summer the editor and his top men sometimes used to decamp for the afternoon to a swanky Thames-side hotel up near Maidenhead, from which, in the days even before
faxes, they would edit the paper long-distance with the aid of a few extra telephone lines and a squad of swarthy despatch riders, laden with page proofs and bundles of subbed copy, running a motorbike shuttle service between the hotel and Fleet Street.

Nowadays, of course, alcohol was banned from the offices of the
Comet
. Even the editor had a fridge containing only soft drinks with which to entertain visitors.

She smiled nostalgically before reminding herself of the dangers of looking back at the past through rose-coloured spectacles. She made herself remember the appalling antics of Frank Manners and his cohorts. But even most of that merely widened her nostalgic smile. If you told the kids today, of either sex, the way the guys back then had behaved they wouldn’t believe it. After all, if a chap in an office nowadays made the most polite of personally admiring remarks to a woman colleague he was likely to get done for sexual harassment. ‘You’re looking good, Joanna. I bet you had a really great fuck last night,’ as a form of casual greeting would be quite beyond their comprehension.

Strange thing was that while she loathed sexism and certainly sex discrimination as much as the next woman, she did not remember being too discomfited by the things that had happened – until Frank Manners became completely out of control. But at least those guys were human beings, albeit often pathetic ones, and not pre-programmed robots. Joanna was not entirely in favour of political correctness. Apart from anything else, it was so damned dull.

She glanced at her watch. She still had the best part of an hour to kill before Paul would be ready to leave
for the dinner party – if he didn’t decide to cancel at the last moment, which was not at all unknown, particularly if there was a big story on the go – and they didn’t get much bigger than the cracking of the DNA code, the day’s huge revelation that would be all over the paper the next morning.

She got up and walked to the coffee machine over by the elevator and helped herself to a decaff. She no longer drank real coffee after lunchtime. She reckoned decaff was probably every bit as harmful, but at least it didn’t keep her awake all night, tossing and turning.

Sipping from her polystyrene cup, she wondered why she bothered with the stuff at all. It tasted pretty much as if all the flavour had been removed along with the caffeine. She tried to clear her mind. Did she really want to get involved with the Beast of Dartmoor case again? Just hearing Fielding’s voice had bothered her much more than she would ever have expected it to. ‘Damn the bloody man,’ she muttered to herself, apparently louder than she had realised. A sea of silent heads turned towards her, then away again. Christ, she could remember a time when you’d hear screaming in the office and wouldn’t bother to look up. Nothing short of an actual physical punch-up caused any kind of stir in those days – and she’d seen a few of those too.

Upon reflection she decided it would be not only unwise but also dangerous to start delving into the case again. It really would be best to leave well alone. Absolutely no doubt about it.

She drained the last of her ghastly decaff, crushed the polystyrene cup in her fist and threw it at the nearest waste-paper bin. She missed and the cup slid
untidily across the highly polished floor. A passing twelve-year-old, wearing an overly crisp white shirt, stopped, picked it up and put it neatly in a bin, glancing smilingly towards her as if he expected thanks or something. He didn’t get any. Joanna merely observed him without enthusiasm, her eyes only half focused, her mind twenty years away.

Of course she feared she wasn’t going to leave well alone. There was no real chance of that and had not been since she had taken Fielding’s call. She was going to get embroiled in the case all over again even though she honestly didn’t want to. She knew she was not going to be able to stop herself, so she might just as well get on with it.

Across the newsroom she could see young Tim Jones, upright in his chair, engrossed as usual in his computer screen. Tim, a bright diligent chap for whom Jo had considerable regard, was the
Comet
’s chief crime correspondent, the job Joanna had just landed when she first met Fielding. Jo’s title was now Assistant Editor, Crime. It didn’t mean a great deal in that she was not one of the three assistant editors allowed, along with the deputy editor, to run the paper at night and in Paul’s absence, which rankled a bit. Paul had apologised and said he didn’t feel able to give his wife that authority. However, she couldn’t grumble as she was primarily only a part-time columnist now.