A Kind Of Wild Justice Read online

  DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid. Minute threadlike molecules, each made up of two intertwined strands, which carry the unique genetic make-up of every human being. A sort of personal blueprint. Strange how quickly such an extraordinary development in science had become taken for granted. DNA had transformed police work, no doubt about that. Except in this case it made no difference. Suddenly there was irrefutable evidence of the guilt of a vicious perverted murderer, but there was bugger all anybody could do with it. That was the law for you. And sometimes it seemed to have very little to do with justice.

  After a few moments Fielding stood up and walked over to the window. It was Monday, 26 June 2000. A remarkable landmark day. Fielding had earlier watched the TV news and seen the announcement that scientists had cracked the DNA code. Soon they would be able to map out your body’s future for you, predict what diseases you were likely to develop and maybe prevent them. Perhaps even predict that a particular human being was liable to turn into a perverted monster like the Beast of Dartmoor. Fielding didn’t understand the half of it, but one thing he was damned sure of was that the law would get involved sooner or later, and would no doubt make an ass of itself as it had, in his opinion, with every other DNA development so far.

  He checked his watch. It was just gone seven, his favourite time of day in the police station at Heavitree Road, Exeter’s premier nick, which had been his base throughout the bulk of his service. Unless something really big was afoot, the evenings were usually quiet; he could clear his head, allow himself time to think. When he was alone like this at the end of the working day in the environment he was so familiar with, Fielding was inclined to feel as much at peace as he ever could. But not today. Today there could be no peace.

  It was hot, too. In Devon it had been one of the best days of a so far disappointing summer. Too hot to work, though, and the temperature had yet to drop much. Fielding’s first-floor office was small and airless. It looked over the car park and a broad patch of grass to the Heavitree Road beyond, one of the main arterials leading to and from the city centre. Exeter’s workforce was still wending its way painfully home and the slow-moving vehicles seemed to be creating their own heat haze. Fielding half imagined he could see their passengers sweating. Too hot for driving as well. His office window was open although it brought scant relief. Fielding tugged at his already loosened tie. A trick of the evening sunlight caused him to be able to see his own reflection in the angled glass.

  He was a big man, almost six feet three inches tall, but rangy rather than burly. He had thickened a little with the years, particularly round the waist, but had never had a weight problem and remained surprisingly trim and fit-looking for his age – which was knocking fifty now. It was a miracle, considering his lifestyle – and his drinking habits. He rubbed his chin reflectively, his fingers scratching over the stubble. By around sixish in the evening he could invariably do with another shave, really. He had always had a heavy beard, unusually so for a man with light sandy hair. Thinning hair, now, and greying. His beard would be grey too if he ever let it grow. Still, it could be worse. His father had been almost totally bald at his age. Thinking back twenty years made you wonder about ageing. Fielding knew he’d fared pretty well, certainly better than he deserved. He had retained the easy lopsided grin which, somewhat to his surprise nowadays, women still seemed to go for. He had never been a particularly handsome man but for some reason had always been attractive to women – and once he’d realised that, he had rarely been able to resist any opportunity that had come his way.

  She’d been that, to begin with, just another opportunity, a quick lay. Sex had been like getting a fix for him back then. Mind you, it was much the same now except he didn’t need it nearly so often. He’d rarely had much use for women other than sex.

  He had married his wife when she was twenty and he was nineteen. She had been pregnant, of course, and it had been 1970, for God’s sake. That was what you did in 1970. Ruth was all right. A pretty girl back then, with auburn hair so bright it made his look dull, the palest of skin and a ready smile. He had been at university when they’d had to get wed and she’d worked behind the bar in the pub they all went to. She’d carried on working, too, right up to and after their first child was born, getting her mum to mind the baby, all so that Fielding could finish his degree and fulfil his ambition of fast-track entry into the police force. That had been the plan, anyway. And whatever had gone wrong over the years had certainly never been Ruth’s fault. She’d brought up his children, turned them into almost reasonable human beings, in fact. And she’d put up with him. Pretended not to notice the bulk of his indiscretions. He knew that and he loved her. He supposed that he’d always loved Ruth in his own way. But the other one. Well, they say everybody has a single great passion in his or her life. The other one, she had been his, no doubt about it. And it was inextricably connected in his mind with the Beast of Dartmoor case. Delve into any one area of that and all of it came back to him.

  He could only think of one thing left to do about the Beast. And in a way this was a wonderful excuse to make the call he had half wanted to make for something like eighteen years. Half not. Certainly never had. Well, it wasn’t an easy call to make.

  Resolutely he squared his shoulders and walked back to his desk. ‘Right,’ he said out loud.

  He sat down in his chair and, once again, picked up the phone and dialled the same three digits of the London number he had begun to call earlier. This time he continued with the call. It was to the switchboard of a national daily newspaper.

  He could hear the tone clearly as an extension rang somewhere in a dockland building he had merely seen pictures of – not Fleet Street any more. He had had a sort of romantic affection for the Street of Shame, strange for a copper, but because of her, most likely. Impatiently he drummed the fingers of his free hand on his desk. He supposed he would end up with voice mail; that seemed to be the norm nowadays. He found himself rehearsing a message to leave and was mildly taken aback when a live human voice came on the line.

  ‘Joanna Bartlett.’

  Tones clear and precise. No nonsense. No ‘hello’ or ‘can I help you’. No embellishments at all. Fielding could not suppress a half-smile. It didn’t sound as if she had changed a bit. But then, he wouldn’t have expected her to.

  ‘Hi, Jo,’ he said quietly.

  PART ONE

  One

  It began in the summer of 1980 on one of those rare warm and balmy English days when even on Dartmoor the midday heat had been stifling and only the cool of nightfall brought welcome relief. Nobody was grumbling, though. It had until then been another miserable summer and, in fact, the coldest July for fifteen years.

  Angela Phillips lived with her parents, her brother Rob and his new wife Mary, at Five Tors Farm – so named, predictably enough, because, on a clear day, you could just see the rocky summits of five tors – on the edge of the moors not far from the lovely old granite-built village of Blackstone. Their home was a beautiful rambling Devon longhouse, one end of it converted to provide a more or less separate unit for Rob and Mary.

  A smart new stable block had recently been built on to the rear wall of the main milking shed, and from it could be enjoyed as fine a view over the moors as from anywhere on the Phillipses’ land. But during the late afternoon of that particular day, seventeen-year-old Angela noticed little of her surroundings as she fed her three horses, two hunters and a showjumper, and prepared to turn them out for the night in the adjoining paddock.

  Angela was going to the village dance with, for the very first time, a boyfriend. Her casual friendship with Jeremy Thomas, her brother’s best friend, had begun to turn into something else at the hunt ball the previous winter when he had unexpectedly kissed her during the last dance.

  Feelings Angela did not know she possessed had overwhelmed her. And since then Jeremy, and their occasional heavy petting sessions, had become a major absorption for a young woman who had previously shown little interest in anything
other than her beloved horses.

  The sun was just beginning to drop in the sky and Dartmoor glowed gloriously before her as she shut the paddock gate and turned to walk back to the farmhouse. Angela remained totally preoccupied with the evening ahead. After all, she had made rather momentous plans for it.

  In that very focused way teenage girls sometimes have, she had decided that the time had come to rid herself of the burden of her virginity, that she was going to do so in a proper bed and that tonight, as she knew Jeremy’s parents were away, was the ideal opportunity.

  So far Angela and Jeremy had conducted the physical side of their relationship almost entirely in the back of his car. Neither had parents of the modern liberated kind who would allow their young offspring to sleep with their girlfriend or boyfriend under their roof. An unfortunate attempt at a passionate encounter in one of Five Tors’ more remote copses, which had ended abruptly with a number of ants finding their way into her underwear, had put Angela off the idea of outdoor venues. Jeremy had been unusually grumpy when she had stopped him from going any further that day. She didn’t really blame him, though, because she had already learned enough about sex to know that she had led him on shockingly.

  Tonight she was not planning to stop him at all.

  She glanced at her watch as she made her way across the farmyard. She’d better hurry. It was well gone five, Jeremy was picking her up at seven, she had yet to wash her hair, and as she intended this to be such a memorable night it would probably take her much longer than usual to get ready. She had some new make-up to experiment with, too, which would take her ages to put on because she hardly ever wore the stuff.

  She also had a new outfit, the most grown-up she had ever owned. Normally Angela was not particularly interested in clothes, favouring jeans and baggy shirts on the rare occasions she was not wearing either her school uniform or jodhpurs. But she had persuaded her mother to take her shopping in Exeter to buy something special for the dance, traditionally held after the fête on the final day of Blackstone’s annual festival, which this year had fallen on the last Saturday in July and for which the weather had so mercifully cleared.

  Angela broke into a trot, ran through the farmhouse kitchen, ignoring her mother’s shouted protest when she failed to close the yard door behind her, and bounded up the stairs to her bedroom. She felt the excitement mount when she saw the black mini-skirted shift dress spread on the bed waiting for her. A pair of very high-heeled black patent leather shoes stood on the carpet alongside. Angela had shiny dark-brown hair and smooth, creamy skin, but she thought her hair was too curly and judged, quite correctly, that she was fairly average-looking, facially anyway. She also knew she had a truly great figure, honed to super-fitness by her riding activities, and that her legs were her best feature. Although only five feet four inches, most of her height was in her legs which, because they were so slim and well-proportioned, succeeded in looking much longer than they really were – and the extravagantly expensive sheer black tights she had bought out of her own pocket money would be the final touch.

  She bathed, and washed and dried her hair quickly, having decided not to attempt an elaborate new style and just to go for the clean, glossy look, but easing on the unfamiliarly sheer tights without ruining them took some time and she was as clumsy as she had expected to be with her make-up. However, after several attempts she eventually got it more or less right and regarded her appearance critically in the full-length mirror inside her wardrobe door.

  She thought she looked pretty darned good, but so different that she hardly recognised herself. She just hoped Jeremy appreciated the transformation. She had done it for him, after all. She didn’t know which she was looking forward to most, showing herself and Jeremy off to the village, or – whatever might happen afterwards. She gazed dreamily out of the window, again hardly seeing the view, and thought about her big, blond, handsome boyfriend, just two years her senior. She imagined them dancing the night away together, glowing warmly under the admiring glances of their friends and peers. Then she started to imagine what it would be like to ‘go all the way’ with him …

  A familiar throaty engine roar interrupted her reverie and she watched the souped-up red Ford Escort, which was Jeremy’s pride and joy, coast to a halt outside the kitchen door. He was clever with mechanical things and she knew that he had almost entirely rebuilt the car himself, painting a sporty gold flash down each side and adding oversized wheels.

  Angela glanced at her watch. He was actually five minutes early – as keen as she was, apparently. She turned away from the window, hurried out of her room and, in spite of her high heels, ran down the stairs almost as quickly as she had earlier run up them.

  Rushing through the kitchen, she called goodbye to her mother over her shoulder and was outside in the yard before Jeremy even had a chance to knock on the farmhouse door. Well aware that she was wearing rather more make-up than her mother would approve of, she didn’t want anything to spoil the moment when her boyfriend was confronted with her new look for the first time.

  Jeremy didn’t disappoint her. As she emerged, his face broke into a big, crooked grin and he took an exaggerated step backwards. ‘Wow!’ he said, then followed that with a loudly approving wolf whistle.

  Angela felt smug. So far everything was going according to plan. Jeremy knew nothing of his girlfriend’s ulterior motive in choosing an outfit far sexier than anything he had ever seen her in before. Nonetheless he beamed at her in that rather proprietorial way she found so disarming and escorted her to the car. Then, just as he started the engine, a waving figure emerged from the other end of the house.

  ‘Hey, wait for me,’ shouted her brother Rob.

  Angela adored Rob and was normally delighted to have his company anywhere – but not on this particular night. ‘I thought you were staying home with Mary,’ she muttered in a not too friendly manner as Rob jogged across the yard towards them.

  ‘Nope, she said I should go out and have some fun, bless her,’ responded Rob with a big grin.

  Angela didn’t reply.

  ‘Great, mate,’ said Jeremy enthusiastically. He and her brother had been close friends before Rob’s marriage. Since then, Rob had been completely preoccupied with his new bride and his achievement of making her pregnant almost certainly during their honeymoon. Indeed, it was this pregnancy which had kept both Mary and Rob more or less housebound, because Mary was not having an easy time of it and felt slightly sick almost non-stop – as she complained volubly.

  No wonder Rob was excited about a night out, Angela thought, feeling selfish for a moment.

  ‘C’mon, Ange, get in the back, I’ll never fit in there.’

  Instantly feeling irritable again Angela, in spite of her high heels and short, tight skirt, did as she was bid, somehow managing to manoeuvre her way through the gap between the two front seats. Her brother was exceptionally tall and gangly for a Phillips, a build inherited from their mother’s side of the family.

  ‘First night out with the lads since I got wed, no point in me driving as well,’ chattered Rob as he settled into the front seat alongside Jeremy.

  ‘I am not a lad,’ muttered Angela tetchily from the back.

  ‘I know that, you’re my baby sister,’ pronounced Rob mischievously, knowing full well how much it would annoy her.

  Angela bristled in silence. Then Jeremy made it even worse by laughing loudly. Angela was used to being the centre of attention – with both her family and her boyfriend. She didn’t like this at all. By the time they got to the village she was already in a thoroughly bad mood.

  ‘How about one in the Blackstone Arms?’ suggested Rob and, to her annoyance, Jeremy readily agreed. The boys were first out of the vehicle and headed straight for the bar, not even bothering to look over their shoulders to see if Angela was following them. As she climbed out of the car, hurrying in order not to be left behind, Angela caught the top of her right leg in the seat mechanism, snagging her tights. She cursed.


  The scene at the Blackstone Arms was very old-fashioned. But then the village of Blackstone was an old-fashioned place. The men were all propping up the bar, some already in distinct disarray, and the women, of all ages, were sitting at the tables and chairs which lined the walls, giggling into glasses of gin and tonic, and white wine.

  A group of local lads, apparently already well oiled, welcomed the newcomers noisily. Jeremy ordered himself and Rob a pint each, then finally seemed to remember Angela and offered her a drink too. She asked for a shandy. She occasionally drank wine or beer but, being only seventeen, the most she could get away with in her village pub was shandy – the low-alcohol kind, which was largely lemonade and came ready-mixed in a bottle.

  ‘I’m going to have a bloody good night,’ said Rob as he passed her the drink, which left Angela thinking gloomily that she doubted she would.

  She was pleased when two friends called her over and asked her to join them. That would show Jeremy. But he appeared not even to notice as she sat down at their table, tugging at her skirt in an attempt to keep the snag in her tights covered. It was then she noticed there was a smear of blood on her leg as well. That depressed her even further. She had made such an effort with her appearance.

  Morosely she stared at Rob and Jeremy over the too-fizzy weak shandy. Her two favourite men in all the world, apart, of course, from her father, and at that moment she thoroughly disliked both of them. They grew louder and louder, and the only attention they paid her was to offer periodically to replenish her drink and occasionally shout ‘All right, Ange?’ across the bar. She knew they hadn’t had an opportunity for a drink together in a long while. But she was still angry. She made an effort to talk to her friends, mostly about horses, until, almost two hours and several pints later, she finally persuaded Rob and Jeremy to move on to the dance.