The next four months flew by in a kind of mad whirl for Joanna. Having made the case happen, she was determined to be at the heart of it. She felt that the Phillipses needed her constant support, there were meetings with Nuffield in London and there was her column to write – in which she mercilessly flagged the forthcoming prosecution as much as she could without too blatantly flouting the law. And then there was Emma, seemingly so self-possessed and independent, but whose very lack of reproach made Jo feel all the more neglectful as she spent far more time away from home than usual in the office or in Devon, and half the time when she was at home on the phone or tapping into her computer.
However, this was the kind of campaigning journalism she had always wanted to be involved in. And although it was draining, everything went remarkably smoothly. Until the committal proceedings at any rate, for which a date was eventually set, more or less according to plan, at the end of October at Okehampton Magistrates’ Court. The Phillips family, once they had made their decision, displayed determination and tenacity in bringing about their private prosecution and even began to show signs of looking forward to this first step in the legal proceedings which could ultimately bring O’Donnell to justice. Joanna was with them all the way.
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.
The three magistrates came into the court almost immediately. Two men and a woman chairman. All three looked the part, sombre in manner, soberly dressed, their body language oozing superiority. If they weren’t pillars of the community they certainly believed they were. Jo frowned as she studied the woman chairman. There was something familiar about her but for a while she could not place it.
O’Donnell was represented by more or less the same legal team as all those years ago. Brian Burns was the lead counsel again. At the previous trial Burns had been something of a young blood, the golden boy of the legal profession. Now he was an elder statesman, his brilliance if anything even greater than it had been then. Some things don’t change, she thought wryly.
What became quickly apparent was that O’Donnell’s lawyers had briefed their client on a policy of total denial. It seemed ridiculous that knowing he was faced with such irrefutable forensic evidence the man could just continue to deny everything. But he did. Of course, he would know that the DNA evidence could not be used, not yet anyway.
O’Donnell’s admission to Fielding that he had had sex with Angela was not even on the agenda. It couldn’t be. The detective had been acting unofficially. There was no proper record of the interview. O’Donnell had at no stage made a formal statement. Jo didn’t even know if the confrontation would come out in court. It was certainly not part of the prosecution case and she assumed Fielding was hoping that it did not feature. She knew Nuffield was.
Brian Burns, of course, although a leading top defence lawyer, didn’t really believe in defence at all. He believed in attack. ‘Your Worships, I submit that my client has no case to answer,’ he began. ‘I intend to prove abuse of process. A private prosecution has been brought against Mr O’Donnell only because the Crown Prosecution Service has, quite correctly, turned down a police application to bring charges of kidnap and rape against him. As is a matter of public record, Mr O’Donnell has already, many years ago, been properly tried and acquitted of the murder of the unfortunate young woman in question and therefore by inference of any related offences. I further submit that to proceed at all with this case would be in breach of double jeopardy, hence unlawful.’
The chairman of the magistrates puckered her brows. Suddenly it came to Jo. She was Lady Davinia Slater, a well-known figure in the West of England whom Jo had first encountered in her local paper days when Lady Slater had tirelessly led a long-time campaign to prevent a reservoir being constructed on her beloved Dartmoor. Now a thin, bright-eyed, leathery-skinned woman in her mid-sixties, Lady Slater looked as fit and tireless as ever. She had always been fiercely independent, with her own strongly held beliefs and ways of doing things. Jo knew that Lady Slater could rarely be swayed by others and just hoped she would make up her mind against O’Donnell, because once this particular chairman of magistrates did make up her mind there would be no changing it.
Lady Slater shot a puzzled glance in the direction of the clerk to the court who promptly approached the bench. Magistrates rarely have much more than a lay knowledge of the law and are inclined to rely heavily on their clerks who, Jo reckoned, could become disproportionately important. It seemed this trio were much the same as most of their kind.
The clerk leaned close to all three magistrates and spoke in a low voice but in the relatively small and low-ceilinged courtroom Joanna quite clearly heard him use the dreaded phrase ‘part of the circumstance’. She groaned inwardly.
Nigel Nuffield, however, was swift to respond. ‘I must draw Your Worships’ attention to Article Four of the Seventh Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights which allows for “the reopening of a case in accordance with law and penal procedure of the State concerned, 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”. This clearly allows for exceptions to be made to the laws of double jeopardy in circumstances which I submit are applicable in this prosecution. And, in view of Britain’s Human Rights Act which, as I am sure Your Worships are aware, came into force on 2 October …’
Lady Slater might not have been familiar with all aspects of the law but she was certainly familiar with the antics of lawyers. She picked up immediately on Nigel Nuffield’s convoluted phraseology. ‘Are you saying that this article is now law in the United Kingdom?’ she interrupted sharply.
‘No, Your Worship. It has yet to be adopted here. But I would also draw Your Worships’ attention to Section Six of the British Human Rights Act. “It is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention Right.”’
All three magistrates looked more bewildered than impressed, Jo feared.
Nuffield, determined, it seemed, to dazzle them both with legalese and his grasp of it, hardly paused. ‘I must also alert Your Worships to Section Two of the Act. “A court or tribunal debating a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention Right must take into account any judgement, decision, declaration, or advisory opinion of the European Court of Human Rights …”’
Lady Slater interrupted again, leaning forward, thin lips pursed in disapproval. ‘Did you say European, Mr Nuffield?’ she enquired.
‘Well, yes, Your Worship, but …’
‘And I think you just told us, did you not, that this Article Four of the Human Rights Convention, to which you referred, is not in fact the law of the United Kingdom?’
‘Well, not exactly, Your Worship, but the Act makes it quite clear that the rights laid down in the European Convention should be deferred to whether or not they are actually United Kingdom law …’
‘Not in my court, Mr Nuffield. I am presiding over an English Magistrates’ Court and until I am actually bound by European law I can assure you I have no intention of deferring to it.’
Christ, she’s a dyed-in-the-wool Euro-sceptic, thought Joanna. That was all they needed. She had to be, of course. A woman who wouldn’t allow her territory to be invaded by what had actually been a very necessary reservoir was highly unlikely to be impressed by the demands of Strasbourg.
Nigel Nuffield had his back to Jo, but she could tell that he was dumbfounded. You didn’t encounter the likes of Davinia Slater at the Old Bailey or the Law Courts on the Strand. The officialdom of London bowed more and more towards Europe, as indeed it had to do. But it wasn’t like that in Okehampton yet. This was factor X. Any idea originating in Europe had to be a bad one. Jo had not given that a thought and neither, she suspected, had Nigel Nuffield. Davinia Slater was a dinosaur in every respect and Jo hadn’t realised that magistrates like her still existed. They did in Okehampton, apparently.
The clerk saved the day, albeit only momentarily. He approached the bench again. Once more Jo was able to catch odd phrases: ‘Should be seen perhaps to take into account’. ‘Must be careful not to be unlawful’.
The furrow in Lady Slater’s brow deepened. However, she seemed to have been persuaded that at least her court should listen. Even if grudgingly.
‘Very well, Mr Nuffield. You may continue. I assume you are going to tell the court that you have new evidence sufficient to warrant the extraordinary measures you are suggesting?’
In reply, Nuffield asked the defence if O’Donnell would come to the stand.
‘Of course,’ responded Brian Burns smoothly. ‘We are all here today in the interest of justice.’ Nuffield ignored him as Jimbo made his way to the dock.
‘Mr O’Donnell, do you know what DNA evidence is?’ he asked.
‘Not really, sir, I just know I never did anything to that girl.’
‘DNA is a genetic blueprint. For example, were your DNA found in relevant samples taken from Angela Phillips, that would give absolute proof that at the very least you must have had sexual contact with her.’
Jo wasn’t quite sure what Nuffield was doing. He was skating on thin ice, that was for certain. She reminded herself that all the barrister had to do was persuade the magistrates to allow the case to go forward for jury trial.
Predictably Brian Burns rose to his feet at once to object. ‘I would remind the court that no attempt at any such DNA match would be either lawful or indeed possible in this case, as there are no admissible DNA samples available,’ he said. ‘Only DNA extracted specifically in regard to the particular charge my client faces could, of course, be admissible.’
Lady Slater’s frown deepened even more. The clerk approached the bench again and there was another conflab, this time in voices so low that Joanna could not catch a word.
‘This is surely not the alleged new evidence to which you earlier referred, is it, Mr Nuffield?’ the chairman of the magistrates asked eventually.
‘Partly, Your Worship,’ admitted Nuffield.
‘But I am advised that all such evidence is indeed inadmissible.’
Nuffield threw back his shoulders and projected his voice in his most theatrical and what he presumably thought his most impressive manner. ‘At this stage and in this court, yes, Your Worship. However, if Your Worship were to commit the defendant for trial this would allow admissible DNA samples to be taken from him. I have reason to believe that such samples would link him inexorably with Angela Phillips. That is the new evidence to which I have referred.’
‘But Mr Nuffield, you know very well that we can only pass judgement based on evidence which is admissible in this court.’
Of course he knew. But Nigel Nuffield also knew exactly where he was leading. ‘Indeed, Your Worship,’ he boomed. ‘I would therefore like formally to ask the defendant if he will voluntarily submit to a new DNA test, a blood test, perhaps, the results of which would of course then be admissible in any court. Surely, if he and my learned friend are to be believed then Mr O’Donnell would be anxious to clear up this matter without question.’
Jo thought that was a highly convincing ploy and Nuffield’s confident authoritative manner was awesome. This was a man with virtually no concept of failure.
However, before she could begin to share his apparent confidence a little more, Brian Burns was quickly on his feet. ‘Your Worships, my client would be more than happy to submit to a blood test, but unfortunately he has a phobia against needles. This is, as I am sure Your Worships knows, a medical condition, from which my client has suffered since he was a child.’
Joanna could barely believe her ears. This was farcical. Yet everyone in the courtroom seemed to be taking the protestation perfectly seriously. She remembered with foreboding the case of a famous Fleet Street columnist who had claimed needle phobia as a defence against a charge of refusing to take a blood test after being arrested on a drink-driving offence. He was acquitted.
Looking at big, burly O’Donnell in the dock, the thing was too absurd for words.
But Lady Slater, bless her, was at least not rolling over. ‘There are other methods of obtaining admissible DNA evidence, are there not, Mr Burns, and would your client not submit to those either?’ she enquired frostily.
Thank Christ, thought Jo. She mightn’t like Europe, but she’s no fool. Maybe Nuffield could still pull it off.
‘Your Worship, we both feel that my client has suffered enough indignities,’ replied Brian Burns. ‘This case has been trumped up against him by people who will not accept the proper verdict of a court of law twenty years ago. My client is an innocent man and as a matter of principle should not be submitted to further tests.’
All three magistrates looked unconvinced. For a fleeting moment Jo began to feel almost optimistic. She should have known better.
It was almost as if Brian Burns were playing a game with the court. Being a barrister, he quite probably was, Jo thought later. He played his trump card then. And it was an ace. ‘In any event, Your Worships, I would submit that even if a new DNA sample were on offer, and whether or not this were volunteered by my client or taken with or without his permission after his committal to trial, such a sample would still be inadmissible.
‘I must draw the court’s attention to the case of Michael Weir whose conviction for murder was overturned by the Court of Appeal in May this year on the grounds that although the prosecution had offered as evidence DNA obtained from a second sample taken when Weir was arrested for murder, without a first ineligible sample from an unrelated crime he would never have been linked to the murder scene.’
The magistrates looked a bit bewildered. The clerk approached the bench yet again. There followed two or three minutes of sotto voce mutterings and head noddings, once more quite inaudible.
The PACE ruling that DNA samples could not be used in any investigation other than the one for which they were acquired was bad enough – when you took it a stage further like this it made a nonsense of science as well as justice, Jo thought. But she had not known about the Michael Weir case and neither, she feared, had Nuffield. She reckoned the barrister had not done his homework as well as he might have. She suspected that Nuffield had long ago reached that stage in his glittering career where he no longer believed he could lose, and it suddenly looked to Jo as if this might be the case where this would finally work against him and all those who had risked so much to put O’Donnell in the dock again. Her heart sank.
The defence wasted no time in pressing home its advantage. ‘My client has waived his rights, appeared here today of his own free will …’ droned Brian Burns, spending several minutes repetitively pushing his point. Then he turned to O’Donnell, who somehow contrived yet again to create the impression of dignified injured innocence which had so irritated Jo all those years before, and asked him to explain to the court why he had pleaded not guilty.
‘Because I never touched that Angela Phillips, let alone harmed her,’ said Jimbo, who had patently expected the question. ‘I’m an innocent man. I’ve been acquitted once. I should never stand trial again, that’s my right. But they bring these Mickey Mouse charges against me, no disrespect, Your Worship, and if they weren’t Mickey Mouse there wouldn’t have to be a private prosecution cos the Crown would have done me, wouldn’t they? Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’
How such a monstrous man could ever come across as endearing was beyond Jo. But he did, no doubt about it.
There followed a brief exchange with Lady Slater about how O’Donnell shouldn’t think for one moment that anything that happened in her court was Mickey Mouse and that he might yet find there was nothing Mickey Mouse about the powers it possessed either. O’Donnell grovelled a bit, but Jo suspected from the expressions on the faces of Lady Slater’s two fellow magistrates that his words had already had the desired effect, on them at least.
She didn’t like the way things were going one little bit. O’Donnell was good, no doubt about it. She dreaded to think about what might be coming next.
And she was right to dread it. Very skilfully Mr Burns led his client into continually stressing what was being presented as unfairness as well as the alleged illegality of the private prosecution.
Suddenly O’Donnell went off on a tack which Joanna had most certainly not been expecting. ‘It’s that DI Fielding, he’s always had it in for me,’ he blurted out. ‘Came to see me, didn’t he, accused me of murder. Twenty years later, mind. And he had no right. No right at all. I’m innocent. I’ve been properly tried and proven innocent. I didn’t murder that Angela Phillips, I didn’t. And I didn’t kidnap her or rape her either. How many times have I got to prove myself against this Mickey Mouse stuff? Begging your pardons again, Your Worships …’
Joanna looked across the court at Fielding, saw him slump in his seat. She didn’t have long, however, to consider his discomfort before she too was targeted by O’Donnell. ‘It’s him and that woman Joanna Bartlett from the Comet,’ O’Donnell continued, actually pointing across the court at her. ‘They set this up. They set me up. It’s bleeding harassment, that’s what it is. The Phillips family didn’t take this case out against me. Not really. They did. She did, anyway. The Comet agreed to pick up the costs and more. It’s nothing to do with new evidence. They’re getting paid for it, that’s why they’re having another punt at me after all this time. For money. That’s why!’
There was, of course, pandemonium. Bill Phillips looked as if he’d been punched. His son lowered his face into his hands. Young Les looked stunned.
Joanna was horrified and shocked rigid. She really hadn’t expected this. Neither had Fielding. Paul had seen the dangers, but she had reassured him. She had been so certain of herself, or at least pretended to be. As for Nuffield – she’d got the impression that the bloody man thought he was invincible. Indeed, he had always seemed to be so. Jo couldn’t bear it. Was the inevitable blow to his invincibility going to come now? She feared it was.
The O’Donnells might have guessed about the Comet’s involvement, but how had they known it was Fielding who had put her up to it, she wondered. Perhaps they guessed that too. But there were many ways – not least that Fielding, so delighted that the case was going to happen, had boasted about his part in it to his colleagues. Particularly if he’d been drinking. Joanna assumed that he still drank. Probably more than ever.
Anyway the damage had been done now. These were bold tactics on behalf of the defence. They were also probably very clever ones. You could never underestimate the sanctimonious hatred the British public profess to have for the tabloid newspapers they read so avidly. And their sanctimony invariably knew no bounds if they found themselves in a position, as magistrates, or sitting on juries, where they felt they had these scurrilous rags and those who produced them at their mercy.
Unwelcome examples flashed through her head. Jo didn’t see how anyone in their right mind could have believed Jeffrey Archer’s ridiculous story that he had arranged for an intermediary to hand a bundle of cash to call girl Monica Coghlan on King’s Cross Station, not in return for her silence but out of the goodness of his heart.
But as far as the jury had been concerned the alternative was that the Daily Star, the most downmarket of all the British tabloids, had been telling the truth. Jeffrey Archer, bold and streetwise as ever, had correctly gambled that no jury would willingly allow that possibility.
By focusing on a tabloid newspaper’s involvement in his prosecution, O’Donnell was in effect playing the role of an innocent man being persecuted by the press – with a little bit of help from a maverick policeman. And the magistrates, Jo feared, were lapping it up. She was still numb with shock and could hardly bear to think about the possible consequences.
It was all over that same day. The magistrates withdrew for just a few minutes shortly before four o’clock. Then Lady Slater delivered the verdict of the bench. In doing so, she predictably strongly criticised the Comet for its role in the débâcle. Mike Fielding also got a roasting for irresponsible behaviour, which Lady Slater decreed could indeed be regarded as harassment. She threw in all the relevant legal jargon – ‘part of the circumstances’ and so on – and concluded: ‘The laws of double jeopardy still stand in this country. In spite of the arguments of prosecuting counsel, it seems to this court unconstitutional that unadopted clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights should have any bearing on our proceedings and it is the magistrates’ inclination to adhere only to what is actually the law of the land until and unless a much higher court than ours rules otherwise.
‘However, in any event, the only new evidence offered by the prosecution is indeed, and will remain, inadmissible. There are no properly obtained DNA samples available in this case, nor can there be, in any circumstances, because of the manner in which the defendant was linked to the crime in question. We have no alternative, therefore, but to uphold the defence’s submission of abuse of process. We find that there is no case to answer and I duly dismiss the case.’
O’Donnell had got away with it. Again.
He and his mob had run rings around the law once more, and she and her newspaper had been made to look foolish. Jo supposed she had been naive to think that the paper’s involvement could be kept quiet. She certainly hadn’t expected anything like this, though. She was furious, but not nearly as furious as she knew her husband would be.
She sat for just a few seconds in a kind of stunned daze, only vaguely aware of Bill Phillips, his face like thunder, pushing past her and rushing out of the courtroom. The rest of his family followed at once. They did not try to speak to her, which was all for the best, because for just a few seconds she was not sure that she was able to speak. Slowly she stood up and began to make her way outside.
It was quite a cool, breezy late October day, but Joanna was sweating. She was wearing a woollen trouser suit and beneath the jacket her cotton shirt was sticking to her. Her face felt as if it were burning. She had previously not really given much thought to the consequences of this case collapsing. She had not allowed herself to think about it.
On the steps of the court she was confronted with the nauseating sight of O’Donnell giving one of his impromptu press conferences. His father was by his side as ever. Frail in body Sam might be, but his toughness and strength of character had not left him – as much of his earlier weariness seemed now to have done. Still leaning heavily on his walking stick, he used his free arm to clap his son on his back, beaming, openly triumphant. Extraordinary. Joanna continued to find it hard to accept that he could really believe in his elder son’s innocence, because she genuinely thought that Sam the Man would find this kind of crime as repugnant as would almost everyone else. Surely the only explanation could be that Jimbo really was the old man’s blind spot and that when it came to his favourite son he truly couldn’t see what everyone else could so clearly. She knew that was what Fielding thought. Fielding. All she wanted to do was get away as quickly as possible, but the crush of bodies on the steps impeded her progress. She looked around for the detective. He was right behind her, as desperate to escape as she was, she suspected. Their eyes met briefly again. There was a blankness in his. His mouth was set in a firm, hard line. Come to think of it, he looked pretty much the way she felt.
Apart from anything else, O’Donnell had made certain that the link between them was public knowledge. And under privilege in open court too – which meant that the papers could print what they liked free from the restriction of the laws of libel.
With half an ear she was aware of O’Donnell’s slightly whining voice. She could catch only snatched phrases above the hubbub of the crowd but it was enough to know he was repeating yet again the now familiar story: ‘… I’m an innocent man. I’ve been persecuted … harassed … set up …’
Suddenly the pitch of his voice changed. ‘There they are, there they are now,’ he shouted, and this time neither she nor anyone else within a half-mile radius could have any difficulty in hearing him. ‘There they are!’
To her horror, she realised Jimbo was pointing at her and Fielding, his face screwed up in hatred as he spat out the words.
The gathered hacks and snappers turned as one and surged forward towards them. Jo was about to learn the hard way what it felt like to be on the receiving end of this level of press attention. Suddenly a flash exploded in her face and she was dazzled, momentarily blinded. At almost the same moment someone lurched into her side. She stumbled, almost fell. A strong hand grasped her elbow, supporting her. She looked round. It was Fielding. He was half smiling, a wry, resigned sort of smile. She smiled her gratitude back. More cameras flashed.
Joanna Bartlett and Mike Fielding were no longer just a journalist and a policeman who had worked on the case. They had become an important ingredient in the whole Beast of Dartmoor saga.