A Kind Of Wild Justice (33 page)

‘I’m sorry, Mike,’ she said. He had been a hands-on
detective all his life. She knew how unhappy he must be about his new job.

He grunted, refilled both their glasses to the brim and ordered another bottle.

What the hell, she thought, taking another good long swig. She couldn’t remember when she had last had a real boozy lunch. And to think that she had been brought up in the days when a Fleet Street lunch wasn’t really considered lunch unless it ended after dark. In the summer. Any amateur can make lunch go on until after dark in the winter, the lads used to say.

‘So what about Shifter, then?’ she asked, eventually focusing on the subject she most wanted to talk about. ‘Are there any theories about who hired him?’

‘Oh, yeah. Theories by the hundredweight. But the same old suspects, none of which really hang together. Any one of the Phillipses, Jeremy Thomas’s family, they always reckoned Angela’s murder did for their boy. Even Sam the Man himself, secretly disgusted by Jimbo and afraid of what he still might do. I don’t reckon that myself, though, family’s family to Sam regardless. Anyway, he always was blind about Jimbo.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘I don’t have a clue, Jo, to be honest. Even if I thought it was, say, Rob Phillips, he’s a Dartmoor farmer, for Christ’s sake, who’s never been in trouble with the police in his life. How would he know how to set about hiring Shifter Brown or his like? Of course, Shifter’s done jobs before for the O’Donnells, but topping one of their own, however nasty a piece of work he is – I just don’t see it. There’s another possibility. Jimbo’s made enough enemies in his time.
It could still be somebody completely unconnected with the Angela Phillips case.’

‘But even Shifter believes he was hired for a revenge killing; he’s admitted that much, hasn’t he? Why else would he have taken Jimbo to Dartmoor and killed him the way he did? Shifter was told what to do, presumably. For Christ’s sake, he cut Jimbo’s dick off – the inference is obvious. If it wasn’t revenge for Angela, then it’s one hell of a coincidence.’

‘Unless all that was a smokescreen designed to deflect attention away from those really responsible. But as there’s nobody remotely in the frame apart from people involved in the old Beast of Dartmoor case, what would be the point of that? The more you think about it the more you keep going round in circles.’

‘Maybe Shifter will come clean eventually. He must know it’ll go easier for him.’

Mike shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of course. But you know his sort. Do their bird and keep stumm. It’s a way of life.’

They ate grilled sardines and fresh pasta, and began to reminisce about old times again.

‘Do you remember the day we came here and left before the main course?’ he asked her mischievously. She did, of course. They had eaten a starter of some sort and had suddenly become so desperate to be in bed together that they couldn’t spare the time for the rest of the meal.

She didn’t know whether she wished he hadn’t mentioned it or not. They were on the third bottle of wine now. He had drunk considerably more of it than she had. She was, however, mellow enough to accept that the attraction was still there. For both of them.
But she was admitting nothing. Not to him. ‘Vaguely,’ she said, as if in any case it were not very important.

Suddenly he became very serious. He leaned across and touched her hand. ‘I still regret that I didn’t leave home for you,’ he told her abruptly.

She studied him carefully, his eyes a little bloodshot now, his voice just very slightly blurred around the edges. The truth was, she suddenly realised, that she knew she still regretted it too, but she was dammed if she was going to admit it.

She did not respond to his comment. Instead, after a few seconds she said in an even voice, ‘I think we could both do with some coffee, don’t you?’

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘The only thing I could do with is you. Nothing’s changed there.’ He closed the fingers of his hand around hers.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear that kind of comment from him, not after all this time, it was a little too glib. She tried to withdraw her hand.

He tightened his grip.

‘Let go, Mike, please,’ she said, her voice calm.

If anything, his grip tightened even more. He leaned forward so that his face was very close to hers. She could smell the alcohol on his breath and the old attraction did not seem quite so strong after all.

‘How about we skip the coffee, for old times’ sake. My hotel’s ten minutes from here in a cab …’

Underneath the table she felt his other hand grasp her knee.

Suddenly she became very angry. It was as if she was overwhelmed by all the unhappiness he had caused her. She could not believe that he could be
quite so crass as to grab her and make a comment like that in the middle of a restaurant, particularly this restaurant. It really was the clumsiest pass she had ever been on the receiving end of and his excessive alcohol consumption was no excuse. A few minutes ago Joanna had felt warm and mellow, even a little elated, in his company. Now she was angry and humiliated. And she wondered if his choice of restaurant had been more than nostalgia, a deliberate ploy in some plan he had hatched to seduce her. Part of her fury, of course, stemmed from the knowledge deep inside that, had he handled it better, he might have succeeded. ‘Take your hands off me, you bastard,’ she told him very quietly. Her voice was very cold and so were her eyes.

He obeyed at once, holding the offending hands out towards her, palms up in a gesture of supplication, but still grinning the grin that she had so often found disarming and now, perhaps because he was half drunk and perhaps just because of her anger, simply thought made him look really stupid.

‘All I ever was to you was a cheap lay, wasn’t it?’ she enquired conversationally.

He began to protest.

She stopped him at once. ‘Save it and fuck off,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know why I had anything to do with you again.’ Then she stood up and walked out of the restaurant, leaving him sitting there, aware of his eyes boring into her back.

He didn’t try to stop her. Perhaps he knew that he really had gone too far. It gave her some small satisfaction to think that she had left him to pay a bill he could doubtless ill afford and that, taking into account the amount and quality of wine that
had been consumed, it would undoubtedly be quite substantial.

Fielding had one more day to spend in London before returning to his Exeter base. He knew what an idiot he had been in the restaurant. He’d downed a swift pint and a couple of large Scotches before even going there to meet Jo, and then he’d probably drunk the equivalent of two of the three bottles of wine he had ordered. It was getting to be disconcerting just how much he could drink nowadays without feeling much different from the way he felt when he hadn’t had a drink at all. But that kind of quantity was excessive even for him. He’d been deeply distressed by his dreary new appointment, which he’d been well aware he had absolutely no choice but to accept if he wished to survive at all, but that was no excuse.

At his desk on his first day back at HQ in Exeter he found it difficult to concentrate on anything much. Par for the course nowadays. There was always so much on his mind. His thoughts kept turning to Joanna. He made himself work through the morning at the various dull routine tasks which were now his lot, reminding himself that the way things had been going he was lucky still to have a desk. Even if it was at Middlemoor, and even if that was about all he had.

With a great effort of will he kept himself out of the pub at lunchtime, reasoning that it was time he kept his head clear for a while. Several times during the day he very nearly picked up the phone to call Joanna in London. Each time he stopped at the last moment. He didn’t think she’d want to hear from him. He bet she was going into the office every day. He knew that she was supposed only to work a three-day week,
but he also knew that Jo was desperate to come out on top in the Shifter Brown case. He had been intrigued to realise over the past few months that she was just as ambitious as she had ever been. She hadn’t changed a bit. She had so much in life, wealth, a family, an impressive professional track record, a column, which he suspected most of the other hacks envied, and day-to-day crime coverage was no longer her responsibility, officially at any rate. Yet she couldn’t bear to be beaten by the rest of the pack. She had to be number one. That was Jo. And she’d be pulling out all the stops right now to make sure she stayed number one. Mike managed a wry chuckle. He bet she was working seven days a week on this one, whether or not she was actually in the office. She wouldn’t stop trying. Not Jo. He knew her.

And he had surprised himself by the growing realisation that he would like to get to know her much better again. But he was afraid he had effectively scuttled his own chances. He hadn’t planned to make a move on Jo. Certainly not in the way he had. He couldn’t believe he had made such a damn stupid, clumsy pass at her. Throughout his life he had almost always got those things right. He had invariably been able to sense the moment. Know when to do and say what. And Joanna had been right up to a point – most of those women had never been anything other than cheap lays to him. But not her. Not Jo. She was wrong about that. Joanna remained the one woman ever really to have got under his skin. It was only now he had seen her again that he realised how little that had changed.

He had been speaking the absolute truth when he told her he wished he had left home for her. But he’d
had the opportunity and he’d baulked at it. He’d messed up Jo’s life then, he knew that, and it seemed pretty reasonable that she wouldn’t want to give him the opportunity to do so again. In any case, she was the woman with everything. Jesus, it was amazing she had any time for him at all any more. What was he, after all? Just a broken-down middle-aged cop working out his time for his pension.

And then he’d made that dumb pass at her.

Around five in the afternoon he decided to send her an e-mail apologising. He couldn’t bring himself to phone and doubted she’d take his call. But he was desperate to have some contact with her. He had never quite got used to the way e-mails disappeared into cyberspace – but it was better than nothing.

He really did want to see her again. Even if it could never be anything more than just lunch or a drink.

Joanna was at her desk trying to write her column, which should have been completed at least two hours earlier. This wasn’t like her, or she would never have lasted as long as she had at the top, even with a husband as editor.

Her mind, too, had been wandering that day and even though she was over her deadline she found it hard to concentrate on her writing. She was, as Fielding had thought she would be, preoccupied with landing a really big exclusive on the Shifter Brown case, but she was also thinking about him.

When her anger had subsided she had found herself dreadfully disappointed that the lunch had ended so badly. It had been his fault but, even though she knew it was silly, she was nevertheless upset by his
crass behaviour. Trouble was, Fielding could still get to her. No doubt about that.

And when an e-mail arrived from him she couldn’t help being pleased.

Hi, Jo. This is just a note apologising for my stupid behaviour in the restaurant. I must have been drunker than I thought. I can’t believe what I did and I hope you’ll forgive me.

I’d love the chance to make it up to you. Would another meeting be totally out of the question? Have lunch with me just one more time and I promise to keep my hands strictly to myself and not to do or say anything daft.

She had to smile. There was something schoolboyish about the message. She sat at her desk thinking for a moment or two when Tim Jones came over to tell her he had a call for her from someone who wouldn’t give his name saying he had information on the Shifter Brown case. ‘Deep throat will only speak to the “Sword of Justice” lady, he insists, and I’m afraid to transfer because I’ve lost two calls that way already today – I think the system’s playing up again,’ Tim went on.

She agreed to take the call on his line, got up from her chair and hurried across the editorial floor to Tim’s desk, with the young crime reporter ambling along just behind her. ‘More than likely a nutter but you never know,’ she muttered.

Shortly after Jo left her desk Paul came looking for her.

It had not taken her long to deal with the call.
Within four or five minutes she was quite certain that the caller was indeed a nutter with nothing constructive to tell her or anyone else. The majority of such calls were. But she’d learned early on that a journalist with any sense always took time to listen. The one you ignored was certain to be the big one. News desk assistants spent half their day listening to calls from readers, ninety-nine per cent of which were a complete waste of time. But a result once in a hundred times made it imperative that they all got heard.

When she returned to her desk Paul was standing behind her computer screen, staring at it, his face grim.

The Fielding e-mail was still on the screen.

This, she thought, is all I need. She opened her mouth to explain. A mistake in more ways than one.

Paul raised a hand to silence her. He would never have any kind of personal conversation with her in the public arena of the newsroom. ‘I need to talk to you about this week’s column. Would you come into my office when you have a minute, please, Jo?’ he requested mildly enough.

She nodded silently and, as he walked away, sat down at her desk, read the offending e-mail one more time and deleted it – as she should, of course, have done in the first place. Then, resigned to a difficult exchange, she made her way to Paul’s office at the other end of the newsroom.

By the time she got there Paul was already sitting in the big antique leather armchair behind his desk and he did not get up when she walked in. Neither did he ask her to sit down. She did so anyway. She was damned if she was going to stand before him like a
schoolgirl being given a telling-off by the headmaster.

‘I want you to explain to me exactly what that e-mail meant, Joanna,’ Paul demanded. His tone was chilly and precise.