A Kind Of Wild Justice (24 page)

So was Nigel Nuffield, it seemed, who was confident that the case was strong enough, and the new legal gobbledegook such that he would be able to convince the Okehampton magistrates without too much difficulty to commit Jimbo O’Donnell for trial at Exeter Crown Court. ‘Once he’s committed, we’ve got him,’ Nuffield told her. ‘Either on remand or in custody, he’ll be on a charge for rape and kidnap. That means the police will be legally entitled to get a DNA test from him whether he likes it or not. Finally we get PACE on our side.’ The barrister was also confident that once the private prosecution had secured a committal the CPS would step in and take over the case.

‘Between you and me I’ve been tipped the wink, Jo,’ he confided. ‘It is what happens ninety-nine times out of a hundred with a private prosecution after all. Once the likes of us have taken all the risks, done the spadework and demonstrated that there is a case to answer, then the Crown Prosecution boys are more than happy to step in. Doesn’t make sense for them not to.’

It was looking good, Jo thought. The CPS might not have been prepared to take on the case themselves, but to have made this commitment, albeit off the record, indicated that they must have confidence in the prosecution.

Nuffield then duly laid the indictment. He rang to tell her that it had not been necessary to take out a summons against O’Donnell, whose lawyers, almost exactly the same dream team as before, informed the court that their client would be appearing voluntarily.

The barrister seemed delighted that it was all going so well, but Joanna wasn’t entirely sure she liked the
sound of it. She had somehow expected Jimbo and his lawyers to try every trick in the book and out of it in order to prevent him even having to defend a prosecution at all.

Nuffield was his usual totally confident, benign, pompously public-school self. ‘When their bowlers give us something to worry about we’ll do so, Jo,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile we’ll just make sure our innings is unassailable. A daunting opening stand, that’s the thing!’

Jo didn’t understand cricket. The most she knew about the game was that when you were in you went out, and when you were out you came in. Nothing about that reassured her at all.

Unlike the Phillips family, who seemed to become increasingly buoyant as the date of the committal proceedings approached, just glad, perhaps, to be doing something to gain justice for their daughter after so many years, Jo became more anxious. Every instinct said something wasn’t right. She desperately wanted to know what the O’Donnells were up to. After a deal of thought she came to the conclusion that she had nothing to lose by at least attempting to see Sam O’Donnell. Her aim was to try to find out what he thought now about his elder son. Sam was still the Man. If he had turned against Jimbo that would have great influence on the outcome of the case, Jo reckoned. Apart from anything else, she would hazard a large bet that the O’Donnell money remained firmly in Sam’s control. She knew that was the way he ran his firm. She also knew that although he was knocking eighty, Sam was still very much in charge.

She called unannounced at Sam’s Dulwich home, aware that she wouldn’t be a welcome visitor. She was sure that if she had phoned first there would have been no invitation forthcoming. Not like the previous time. Information travels fast among police and villains. She had little doubt that the O’Donnells would have a fair idea of the part she was playing in the pending private prosecution. Officially the
Comet
remained in the closet and the Phillipses had kept their promised silence. But the O’Donnells were streetwise. In common with the
Comet
’s rival newspapers, they would have little doubt about the true situation as they saw exclusive after exclusive written by Jo for her paper.

The O’Donnell operation was now run almost entirely from Sam’s home, the big Victorian villa in a leafy Dulwich street. Sam had grown older. And he no longer had Combo, who had died five years earlier, to drive him around and pander to his every need. He spent little time at the Duke nowadays. Jo had heard that they’d even put a pool table in the famous back room. Sam’s house was currently a mix of home, office and shrine, where the faithful came to pay homage. Sam O’Donnell really was the nearest thing London had to a godfather. Jo was not surprised when Tommy O’Donnell opened the front door. Tommy had his own home nearby with his family, of course, but he was acknowledged now as Sam’s right-hand man rather than his older brother Jimbo.

Tommy, still in his early forties, was ten years younger than Jimbo. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, like all the O’Donnells, but he looked lean and spare, his light-brown hair, yet to show even a hint of grey, flopped over a protruding forehead, another
family trademark. Unlike his elder brother, however, there was nothing remotely thuggish about his appearance. Jo knew his reputation as the brains of the family. An intellectual O’Donnell was actually quite a worrying prospect. Tommy had won a place to grammar school, passed A levels. He was keen on education. Perhaps too keen. Tommy’s fourteen-year-old-daughter, Caroline, had taken an overdose of her mother’s sleeping pills and killed herself six months or so earlier, allegedly in a panic over her end-of-term exams. Jo always found it hard to believe that young people would commit suicide over their school work. But she knew they did. Tommy and his wife had, of course, been devastated by the loss of their daughter in such a way. Like all the O’Donnells, Tommy was a devoted family man, although Jo knew he also had a tough side. He was his father’s son.

Tommy’s eyes narrowed when he saw her standing on the doorstep. There was no visible security around the house. Jo assumed the O’Donnells didn’t think they needed it. Fear was one hell of a deterrent. It was hard to imagine who would take this lot on. Even the police hesitated – which had always been one of the problems.

‘You’re not welcome here,’ Tommy greeted her challengingly.

‘Look, I just wanted to talk. I know how you and Sam stand on crimes like this. Jimbo’s a black sheep, isn’t he? I want to see Sam. I’d like to know how he is dealing with this.’

Tommy stood with a hand on each hip, elbows akimbo, blocking the doorway. As if Joanna would be daft enough to try to barge her way in. That was never what reporters did, as it happened. They
wheedled themselves into people’s homes. They were sensitive in their approach, personable, well-dressed, easy of manner, full of wonderful self-deprecating stories. They used charm, not brute force. Their victims thought they were lovely and felt no pain at all – until the next morning’s newspapers plopped through the letter box. The old foot-in-the-door myth was exactly that. And in any case, to try it on an O’Donnell she, or any other hack, whatever their gender or size, would have to be totally and absolutely barking mad. Come to that she was probably pretty damned barking to try any kind of approach on an O’Donnell.

‘You’ve got no chance,’ Tommy told her laconically. ‘You ain’t seeing Sam and as for Jimbo, he’s been acquitted once and you lot have found a way of doing him again for the same crime. Now that can’t be right, can it?’

‘Last time your brother stood trial for murder. This time it’s kidnap and rape. Different crimes. Different evidence. One way and another Jimbo will be brought to justice. The law may have tied itself up in knots, but you can’t argue with DNA, Tommy, and you know that.’

‘Do I? What if, and I’m only saying what if, mind, Jimbo did have sex with that Angela Phillips. Who’s to say he didn’t pick her up on her way home, they get in the back of his truck and she’s as eager as he is, what about that, then?’

‘She was a seventeen-year-old virgin, Tommy.’

‘She’d had a row with her boyfriend. She wanted to get back at him. She went with Jimbo, then he dropped her off. Nobody can prove different.’

‘I know that story, Tommy, that’s what your
brother told DS Fielding when he went round after the DNA match was discovered.’

Tommy raised both eyebrows. ‘You two still close then, are you?’ he asked with a knowing leer.

God, she thought, was nothing private in her world? She ignored the inference. ‘It’ll never stand up in court,’ she told him.

‘It won’t have to,’ he said confidently and he winked at her again as he closed the door in her face.

Jo was highly disconcerted. She couldn’t take in that the family still believed Jimbo was innocent, she really couldn’t, but they were continuing to stand by him. Maybe it was just that they felt they couldn’t be seen to turn on one of their own. Certainly appearances would be a big part of it. And what did Tommy mean when he said with such confidence: ‘It won’t have to’?

Jimbo O’Donnell continued to protest his innocence in spite of what everyone concerned considered to be overwhelming evidence. Predictably he was pleading not guilty. Yet he had not waited to be summonsed before agreeing to appear in his own defence against the private prosecution. What was going on?

Jo had not seen Mike Fielding during the four months preceding the committal, although she had spoken to him frequently on the phone. She couldn’t help wondering what the detective would be like twenty years on, but the opportunity to find out did not seem to present itself and her involvement with the case, coupled with her normal workload and family obligations, such as they were, meant that she had little free time. Once or twice, belting up and down the motorway between London and Dartmoor,
she did consider arranging to meet up with him. But she never quite got around to it.

Later she also thought that maybe she had been putting off deliberately what was bound to be a strange and disturbing meeting. However, she reckoned Mike was probably keeping his distance from her for other reasons. He had already stepped out of line in the case. He probably felt he could not risk any further direct involvement.

Also, of course, she was totally preoccupied by all that was happening. At night she would lie awake sometimes, her stomach muscles clenched, wondering what the O’Donnells were up to, whether she had done the right thing. There was so much at stake. She knew the case that had been put together was a strong one and that Nigel Nuffield wouldn’t have taken it on were that not so. She also knew it wasn’t watertight. It explored a completely new avenue of law, for a start. There was bound to be an element of a gamble and a lot depended on Nuffield’s apparent invincibility. But what choice had any of them had? There would never be another opportunity to bring O’Donnell to justice for a crime that was already twenty years old, that was for certain.

On the day the committal proceedings began, Jo sat with the Phillips family at the back of Okehampton Magistrates’ Court waiting for O’Donnell to arrive. The place had not changed much, still little more than an extended white bungalow on the north bank of the River Okement, tucked away on the outskirts of town behind the same supermarket, which had now metamorphosed into a Waitrose, the proceedings still held in the unassuming room that also housed the meetings of West Devon District Council. Still the
rows of ordinary office chairs giving a vaguely inappropriate air of informality.

Outside there had predictably been a considerable gathering of press photographers and TV news cameramen, but few members of the public. It was certainly a very different scene from the near riot of twenty years ago. In spite of the
Comet
’s fanfare, in spite of the ground-breaking nature of this hearing, as far as the people of Devon went it seemed that the teenager’s murder was indeed history.

Except for Angela’s family, of course. Jo could feel the tension in each and every one of them. Bill Phillips sat staring straight ahead, his face giving little away except for a periodic nervous twitch of his right eyebrow. Lillian looked likely to burst into tears again at any moment. Rob Phillips kept licking his lips, as if he was thirsty. His wife Mary repeatedly turned her handbag round and round in her lap. Their son Les looked excited, expectant, eager even. But then, he hadn’t been through it all before.

Jo kept glancing towards the door. She had to admit to herself that she was waiting for Fielding’s arrival as much as for that of O’Donnell. Although the detective was officially not actively involved in the new case she knew he wouldn’t miss being there. He turned up just seconds before O’Donnell.

She was expecting to see him. And yet her first sight of him in twenty years made her catch her breath. Some things you never forget, that’s the trouble, she thought. He looked older, of course, his hair greyer and thinning, but he had retained his slim build. He was wearing a very ordinary grey suit, well worn and not particularly well fitting. That was different. He would never have been seen dead in a
suit like that when she had first known him. By and large, though, he didn’t seem to have aged badly. He hurried in, checking his watch, and walked right past her, heading for a couple of empty chairs towards the front. That was familiar. Fielding had always been in a hurry, had always arrived everywhere at the last possible moment.

Then he turned to look at her – directly at her, straight away. Maybe he had felt her gaze on him. Certainly he seemed to focus on her immediately and when their eyes met she saw, and it made her feel so sad, just how much disappointment and weariness there was in him. His physical frame might have worn well, but the man himself had changed a great deal. There was somehow no doubt about that. He smiled and raised a hand slightly in greeting as he sat down.

She was still studying the back of his head when a suppressed murmuring in the court indicated that O’Donnell was being ushered in. Lillian Phillips gave a low moaning sound. Out of the corner of her eye Jo noticed Bill Phillips take his wife’s hand in his and squeeze.

Jo had not seen O’Donnell for twenty years either. He too looked older and greyer. Fatter as well. She was struck by the way he had developed facial similarities to his now elderly father. Sam the Man, loyal as ever, keeping up appearances as ever, walked, leaning heavily on a stick, into the courtroom just behind his elder son. It would be important to Sam, to be seen giving family support, showing solidarity. He looked weary, though, every step obviously an effort. Well, the gang boss was eighty and his granddaughter’s death would have taken its toll, as well as the new charges brought against Jimbo. Both
father and son had the same folds of skin around the eyes, now, the same jowly features. Jimbo was much less the tough guy, that was for sure. But he’d clearly been groomed for the part again. He wore a dark business suit very similar to the ones he had sported twenty years previously. Just cut a little more generously.