Twenty years after the murder of Angela Phillips, the whole chain of events still seemed so vivid to Joanna at her desk in Canary Wharf. It had been the most important time of her life, really, in many different ways. And yet it was a part of her past she was not sure she wanted to delve into again.
Hearing Mike Fielding’s voice had somehow not been the surprise it should have been after so long. Maybe it was just that she had always half expected that one day their paths would cross once more.
He hadn’t said his name. He would have known he didn’t need to. Not to her. Not even after almost two decades.
‘Hello, Mike.’
It seemed a long time before he spoke again. Perhaps he was hoping she would continue. But he had phoned her. He could take the lead.
‘How are you?’ he asked eventually.
‘Fine. How are you?’
‘Oh. I’m fine too.’
Awkwardly polite, what a way for them to be after all that had happened between them, she thought. But then, eighteen years or so was a big chunk out of your life.
‘Something’s happened, though, something I thought you might want to know about, maybe help with …’
‘So you phone after all this time because you want my help, do you? Bloody typical!’ She wasn’t sure if she was angry or amused, or maybe just exasperated. He didn’t seem to have changed much, that was for certain.
He didn’t respond to her remark, but continued as if she had not spoken. ‘The Beast of Dartmoor – we’ve got a DNA match,’ he told her flatly. ‘And it’s O’Donnell.’
‘Ah!’ Again she wasn’t surprised. Like Mike she’d always believed in O’Donnell’s guilt and had never been able quite to forget the case, however much she pretended to herself that she had. She had been almost as involved in it as Mike had, perhaps always believed it would one day come back into her life again.
He told her all he knew, about the drink-driving arrest, the routine DNA swab, the computer picking it up.
‘Bang to rights, but I can do bugger all about it,’ he finished. ‘I don’t need to tell you about double jeopardy. The bastard can’t be tried again.’
‘No, but why don’t you guys do what you usually do in these situations?’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply, instinctively on the defensive, even with her, perhaps particularly with her.
She gave a small tut of irritation. ‘Get him for something else, of course. He can’t stand trial for murder again, but what about rape and kidnap? If O’Donnell’s guilty of murder he’s certainly guilty of both of those, and he’s never actually been charged with either.’
‘Doesn’t work, Jo,’ he said. ‘We tried. Put just that to the CPS and they threw it out. Still part of the original circumstances. Abuse of process. Not in the public interest after twenty years. Prospect of a conviction unlikely. Usual crap.
‘You’ve no idea how tough it is to get the Crown Prosecution Service to accept that kind of sidestepping nowadays. And the mess the law’s in over DNA doesn’t help. If they don’t have a precedent to look up in some dusty old book, lawyers don’t have a clue.
‘Apart from double jeopardy the biggest snag with O’Donnell is that you can’t use DNA obtained during one case, a drink-driving offence or anything else, come to that, as evidence in any other unrelated investigation. Section 64 of PACE. Bloody daft, if you ask me and high time it was changed – but there it is.’
Joanna leaned back in her chair. PACE. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Of course. She’d kind of known that part of what he had told her. But he was right. It was complex. ‘Presumably you haven’t still got the blood and urine samples taken when he was originally arrested for murder?’ she asked.
‘Destroyed on his lawyers’ instructions right after the case. Acquitted man’s right, as you know. And, God knows, he had the kind of legal team who weren’t going to miss that.’
‘You’ve checked, I suppose? It’s not unknown for those forensic boys to keep samples they should have destroyed, is it?’
‘No, it’s not. It’s a lottery, though. In fact it’s always a lottery whether or not samples from a twenty-year-old case are still in store. But if they had been we would have had a match come up before the drink-driving thing, because we went through every outstanding murder and rape on our books about three years ago and did DNA checks on all the suspects whenever there were samples still available – I think every force in the country has done it now. That’s why O’Donnell’s DNA, taken from Angela Phillips’s body, was already logged.’
‘And you can’t make him give a new DNA sample because the CPS won’t let you charge him with anything?’ She was beginning to remember now. PACE again. The police had the power to take non intimate-samples – like head hair or a buccal swab – without a suspect’s permission only under quite precise conditions, basically if he is charged with a recordable offence or is being held in police custody on the authority of a court.
‘Exactly.’
‘Of course, you could pop round and ask the wanker if he’d like to give a voluntary sample, to clear the matter up once and for all, as it were,’ continued Joanna.
Fielding’s laugh was mirthless.
‘You mean you don’t think there’s much chance of him co-operating?’ she queried ironically.
‘I’ve been round, actually … well, I just happened to be in his neighbourhood.’ Fielding paused. ‘Only it was unofficial, if you see what I mean …’
She saw. And she wasn’t surprised. He’d been told it was over, that there would be no further police action, but he couldn’t resist jumping straight in. ‘Brilliant,’ she said. ‘And how far did it get you?’
‘Not very. I just wanted him to know that I knew. That’s all.’
She could imagine it all too well. ‘Did he say anything?’
‘Smug as ever. Even if we could prove he’d had sex with the dead girl, so what, he said. Maybe she’d been a willing partner, maybe she’d begged him for it. Didn’t mean he’d killed her. I tell you, Jo, I nearly smashed his face in.’
‘You didn’t, though, I hope.’
‘Let’s just say it was a very close thing.’ He chuckled.
‘Mike, not even a jury would swallow that “willing partner” crap, surely. Not with what happened to that poor kid?’
‘I don’t think so either, but it’s irrelevant, like I’ve told you, certainly as far as police action is concerned.’ His voice suddenly became very earnest. ‘Look, Jo, I’ve gone over and over in my mind what we could do to get the bastard. I reckon there’s only one thing left. A private prosecution.’
‘But double jeopardy still applies. And the burden of proof is the same.’
‘Yes. I reckon he could be done for rape and kidnap in a private action, though. The CPS wouldn’t have to be involved and I believe a really good barrister could swing it. I really do. Particularly if we made sure that the committal proceedings were after October.’
‘What happens in October?’
‘The Human Rights Act finally comes into force in the UK,’ he said.
Of course. She should have remembered that. ‘But it won’t change double jeopardy, will it?’ she asked. ‘It’s supposed to be about protecting people’s rights, after all.’
‘Yes. But the rights of victims as well as suspected criminals, Jo. I’ve just been on a course. It’s mandatory for coppers now, it’s got to be, or the whole damned lot of us will end up being locked up instead of the fucking villains. You can start forgetting Westminster and the Law Lords. Think Strasbourg and Brussels. Mostly it’s a nightmare, but hard to believe as it may be, Europe’s actually come up with one thing that might help those of us who are at least supposed to be on the side of the good guys. Look it up. The Seventh Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article Four. Oh – and then go to Section Six of the Human Rights Act.’
‘OK,’ she said casually. ‘I’ll look it up. I don’t quite get where this conversation is leading, though. Why are you telling me all this?’
‘Because I want you to go to that poor kid’s family and persuade them to take out a private prosecution,’ he said.
‘Oh, is that all?’
‘Christ, Jo, you’re a bit heavy on the sarcasm today, aren’t you,’ he countered, the irritation clear in his voice.
‘You really don’t change, Mike,’ she murmured softly.
‘I was thinking just the same thing about you,’ he said.
‘OK, why do you want me to go to her family? Why don’t you go to them yourself? Do they know about the DNA match, has anybody told them?’
‘No, they don’t know and the brass have decided they shouldn’t be told. No point, too painful, some such bollocks. I don’t agree with it, but I don’t dare go against them. I’ve only got two and a half years to do for my thirty and I have enough blots on my record as it is.’
‘Maybe you have changed after all,’ she said, her tone lightly bantering.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I’ve just settled for what I’ve got. I’ve risked enough already. There comes a time. The Phillipses wouldn’t want to hear from me anyway; they blamed me, you know, left me in no doubt that they considered me responsible for the whole damn cock-up. I’m the last person to persuade them to get involved in another major court case, to drag it all up again.’
‘I don’t think they were exactly mad about me in the end either,’ she remarked wryly. ‘Not after the buy-up.’
‘Perhaps, but you didn’t have the same personal involvement – and you’ve still got clout.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, I’m damn sure they’d still like to see their daughter’s murderer get what’s coming to him, but whether or not they’ll be prepared to take on a case against him by themselves I very much doubt. Apart from the anguish of it, there’s the financial side too. A case like this could cost hundreds of thousands if it went wrong. I know they were wealthy people then, but I’m told their fortunes have changed considerably. I don’t think they’d dare take the risk. Not after all this time. I was hoping you might be able to get the Comet behind this one. Get the paper to finance it.’
‘Mike, for God’s sake. What planet are you on? Papers don’t throw money around like that any more.’
‘C’mon, Jo. They do if a story’s big enough. We both know that. You do a deal with this family and you get everything first. Think about it. It’ll be a huge ground-breaking court case and the Comet will be on the inside. All you have to do is pay the costs and it’s yours.’
‘Just like that,’ she responded.
‘Just like that,’ he repeated expressionlessly.
‘Well, it’s not just like that, Mike, not any more, not if it ever was. What if it all goes pear-shaped again? The CPS have turned you guys down. The risk factor of a private prosecution would be huge. Apart from anything else, there’s a big argument that, right or wrong, this case was buried a long time ago.’
‘I don’t think it ever will be, not for you and me,’ he said quietly.
He was right, of course, and perhaps it was that which made her so angry. ‘Oh, grow up, Mike,’ she snapped. ‘The case, you, me, everything – it was two decades ago, for Christ’s sake. It’s over. Anyway, even if I wanted to get involved again I honestly don’t think I would have a hope in hell of getting the Comet to back it, not in the present climate.’
She knew she must sound patronising. She knew how much he hated being patronised, particularly by her. But she still didn’t expect him to come back to her quite the way he did.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have any problem there, Joanna,’ he shot back at her. ‘After all, you are sleeping with the editor.’
The anger overwhelmed her then. ‘Fuck off, Mike,’ she told him.
Joanna put one hand to her head and glared at the telephone, which she had promptly slammed down on him. Just who did Mike Fielding think he was? How could he be so damned arrogant? How could he think he could just bowl back into her life with all his baggage? The whole O’Donnell business was his problem, not hers. She had just been a young crime reporter covering the case – not the detective who blew it wide open because, as usual, he was in too much of a hurry. For her it was history. She had a new life. She had the column she had always wanted, ‘Sword of Justice’, a weekly eulogy championing the rights of the individual against the restrictions of a government and a legal system which purported to be liberal but actually, in her opinion, encroached upon freedom more than any other in her lifetime. She was proud of ‘Sword of Justice’, even though she knew well enough it was little more than the Comet’s sop to great campaigning days long past.
She also had a family she was proud of, an eleven-year-old daughter who was the apple of her eye – and a husband. A husband who happened to be the editor. Anybody but Mike would have said, ‘After all, you are married to the editor.’ Not Fielding. He had always had a way with words. He could always out-snide the best. He could never resist going just that bit further than other people would.
Her eyes were drawn to the photograph on her desk. She and Paul, taken at their wedding reception. Both beaming at the camera. She was wearing a tailored cream silk suit. It still seemed very beautiful to her, as indeed it should have been. It was Paul Costelloe and had cost nearly £1000 even then. Her bridegroom had wanted the best for her. For them both.
She studied him closely. Even features. Average height. Mousy brown hair, thick and springy, slightly longer then than would be fashionable now. Horn-rimmed glasses. He was never a typical Englishman in any way. She always thought he had looked more like a Harvard preppie in those days, a real American WASP. He was glancing at her sideways, smiling proudly, shyly almost. He did not have the appearance of a remarkable man at all. He had never looked like one or, in his younger days at any rate, appeared to behave like one.
She switched her attention back to her own image in the photograph. The long mid-blond hair framing a thin person’s narrow face, her smile easy and wide, displaying even white teeth. She’d had them professionally scraped and cleaned four times a year then, in order to keep the nicotine stains at bay. That had been her big vanity. She hadn’t been able to stand the thought of yellow teeth, but she never even considered giving up smoking, not until years later. All too often it had felt as if only the cigarettes got her through the day. She looked happy in the picture and she supposed she had been happy, though what she actually remembered more than anything else was her sense of bewilderment.
She looked into her husband’s eyes in the photograph, masked by those thick-lensed glasses. She had often thought they must be very convenient to hide behind and once she had asked him if he really needed such thick lenses. He had laughed lightly and changed the subject. She had never asked again.
Absently she stretched out her right hand and placed the tip of her forefinger very precisely over his smile so that the lower part of his face was covered and you could only see his eyes. Masked by those heavy lenses they were, as ever, merely cool and fathomless.
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.
She hoisted herself upright and walked over to Tim’s corner of the room. When she told him what she wanted he gave her a cheery smile – he always seemed to be cheery, bless him, but then he was still so young and new – and swiftly fished both a copy of the European Convention on Human Rights and Britain’s Human Rights Act out of his desk drawer. Trust Tim to be up to date.
‘Anything else I can help you with?’ he asked, as she turned away from him. Tim had a boyishly open face, very dark curly hair and even darker eyes, and was definitely far too handsome to be let loose in a newspaper office.
Jo thought of all manner of glib answers, muttered a ‘no thank you’ over her shoulder and made herself refrain from turning into the ageing female equivalent of all those tired old male hacks she’d had to deal with when she had been his age.
Back at her desk, she first opened the small purple Human Rights Convention booklet with its four white European stars on the front and turned to Article Four of the Seventh Protocol.
Paragraph One reaffirmed the right of all never to be tried again for an offence of which they had been acquitted.
Paragraph Two gave a proviso hitherto unknown in British law. There could be a retrial ‘if there is evidence of new or newly discovered facts, or if there has been a fundamental defect in the previous proceedings, which could affect the outcome of the case’.
As it happened Joanna thought there had been a number of fundamental defects in O’Donnell’s prosecution for the murder of Angela Phillips. But that was not what was at issue, nor was it ever likely to be. There was, however, certainly new evidence.
She studied the booklet carefully. Tim Jones had helpfully scribbled HRA alongside the articles which had been adopted into Britain’s Human Rights Act due, as Fielding had reminded her, to become law on 2 October 2000. Article Four of Protocol Seven was not among them. She was not surprised. She might not have been on a Human Rights course, and now that she was no longer actually an on-the-road crime reporter she might not be quite as on the ball in certain areas as she would once have been, but she was sure that had such a major change in the law been imminent she would not have missed it.
Nonetheless she turned obediently to the Human Rights Act itself and leafed through until she came to Section Six. ‘It is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention Right.’
Courts were public authorities all right. The law was invariably open to interpretation – but put those two clauses together and you had possibly the biggest fundamental change to the whole basis of British law since Magna Carta.
Joanna felt the familiar tingling in her spine that she invariably experienced when she was confronted by something special like this. Something which could be a really great story – which was inclined to overshadow all other considerations with her. She couldn’t help it. Never had been able to. She had been born a natural newspaperwoman.