Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘She has to know? Jennifer, I mean?’

‘She already does, doesn’t she?’ Bentley pointed out.

‘I suppose so. Gerald should have told me.’

‘Gerald should have done a lot of things he didn’t.’

‘And not done a lot of the things that he did,’ picked up Rodgers, as the door closed behind the girl. He stood, looking down critically at the other man. ‘What the hell were you trying to do to me, about seeing that justice is done!’

They both laughed.

Bentley said, ‘Lomax must have had a dick like a donkey.’

‘And used it like one,’ agreed Rodgers. ‘You took a hell of a chance about a security camera. We don’t even know if there is one.’

‘She wouldn’t have known either. She was too arrogant.’ He grinned. ‘Just like one of those television films, wasn’t it?’

‘Lucky,’ insisted Rodgers.

‘But I was right about another woman, wasn’t I!’

‘You took longer than an hour to prove it,’ argued Rodgers.

Ceremoniously Bentley took a five-pound note from his wallet and handed it to the other man.

‘You could have done it under the hour,’ said Rodgers, accepting the bet.

‘I can’t stand superior cows like that: I enjoyed myself, bringing her down. That was worth five pounds. Can you imagine those legs locked around your neck?’

Rodgers offered the money back. ‘You were right, about the case itself.’

Bentley took his money back. ‘Wrapped and parcelled. We’ve got the classic woman-scorned scenario.’

‘What’s the voice in her head going to tell her now?’

‘That she tried but lost,’ said Bentley. ‘It’s a fucking nuisance we’ve got to go through things properly.’

‘That was part of it, wasn’t it?’ realized Rodgers. ‘Refusing any statement until she had a solicitor.’

‘Jennifer Lomax is a very cunning killer,’ judged Bentley. ‘We’ve got ourselves another good one here, Malcolm. It’ll run.’

For the second night in succession, Bert Feltham got a call at home from Humphrey Perry.

‘Things look very different,’ announced Perry. ‘There was another woman. It looks as if Jennifer Lomax found out.’

‘She’s faking the voice in her head?’ It still inevitably had to be a guilty plea but it could turn out better. No-one liked insanity.

‘Bentley wants to interview her tomorrow at the hospital. Your man’s got to be there with me, obviously.’

‘What time?’

‘Ten.’

‘There could be more mileage in this than we thought.’

‘Isn’t that why I have your home number?’

Perry was being wise after the event but Feltham didn’t challenge him.

Jennifer – Jennifer Stone as she then was – had been Enco-Corps’ leading London trader during her last two years with the firm: it had been one of Lomax’s early jokes that he’d fallen in love with her professionally long before he’d been attracted in any other way.

All traders have to ‘know’ markets, to be able to assess margins and percentages but the very best additionally can ‘feel’, to judge instinctively when a price has peaked and is about to fall or whether it has the buoyancy of a few more points or a commodity can go up a few more cents to attain that extra eighth or quarter per cent that turns a good position into a spectacular one. Jennifer could ‘know’ and ‘feel’ and had the added ability of a gambler able photographically to memorize every card played in a poker game: indeed, it was a soon abandoned party trick for her mentally to add and multiply and subtract complicated equations faster than people could compete on pocket calculators.

All of which still only made up part of the legend of Jennifer Stone. It was completed by an awesome determination to be the best – to overcome any opposition or obstacle – in any trading deal upon which she embarked. It was another of Gerald Lomax’s remarks that he’d had Jennifer in mind when he attached ‘for piranha fish’ to the description of the totally glassed office as a goldfish bowl.

The combination of abilities and attitudes made Jennifer special and without conceit or arrogance she knew it, like she knew she definitely wasn’t mad. To allow herself to think that would be the final abandonment, giving Jane the ultimate victory. And she’d never do that.

It had been good – fulfilling – to have an unusual, unique mind: to be different. Living as she’d lived after her marriage had never been quite enough. She’d never admitted it but she’d felt wasted, unused, when she’d finally accepted it would be untenable for her to remain on a trading floor controlled by her husband or work on another in competition against him.

Now she didn’t have that special mind any more. It had been stolen from her – invaded – and when she forced herself beyond the horror of Gerald’s killing and the numbing ebb and flow of exhaustion and the terrifying, unbelievable unreality of what was happening to her – ghosts didn’t exist! spiritual possession was nonsense! – Jennifer’s overwhelming feeling was of outrage, of being mentally raped.

She’d lost Gerald, whom she’d adored. She wasn’t going to lose anything more. She was going to defeat Jane – stop whatever it was being done to her – whatever it took, whatever she had to do to achieve it. She’d never lost anything upon which she’d set her mind in the past and she wasn’t going to lose now.

It took a long time for Jennifer to get to that conclusion. Jane was constantly with her every unsteady step of every weary thought, knowing each thought as it came, jeering and gloating over every one to goad Jennifer into the furious, even shouted, responses that were met with sighs and headshakes from the successive, guarding policewomen.

Bur Jennifer learned in the persistently interrupted, disjointed process.

It was unconscious at first, an impression rather than a proper awareness. Her bone-aching exhaustion triggered it, at Jane’s mockery of how grotesque she would look after the second utterly sleepless night she intended to impose: that and the physical sensation of numbness which Jennifer had imagined to be all part of the same fatigue. Until, that is, she made a different connection. The tingling, like the tingle of knocking the humerus in her elbow, seemed to precede by the merest fraction of a second the sound of Jane in her head. When there was no voice – a momentary gap in the possession – there was no numbness. It wasn’t a positive experiment – Jennifer then hadn’t learned enough.

In the evening of the second day, confronted with the agony of not sleeping again, Jennifer very positively experimented, waiting for a moment of normality when the nurses were fixing another drip before blurting, ‘Please give me something very strong tonight to make me sleep.’

The feeling at once suffused her. ‘ No! ’

Jennifer’s jaw hurt in her determination not to speak.

‘ No! You don’t want it! ’

‘There was a note from the night staff yesterday that you didn’t sleep,’ agreed one of the nurses. ‘You were… distressed.’

‘Please,’ gritted Jennifer, through clamped teeth, careless of the pain from her lip. ‘I need something… so tired… very tired…’

Jennifer’s skin was on fire, worse than ever before.

‘You all right?’ said the second nurse. ‘You’re very red.’

‘Just want to sleep.’ If she said anything about Jane they would dismiss her wanting a sedative as part of the madness: not give her anything.

‘ Say it! ’

Jennifer stayed rigid faced.

‘ Say it, damn you! ’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ promised the first nurse. ‘It should be all right.’

Jennifer’s shaking, which the nurses and the policewomen had become accustomed to, was from the physical effort of hanging on – of staying silent – until the nurses left the room. As soon as the door closed behind them Jennifer said, ‘Beat you.’ She spoke very quietly, her head sunk on her chest. The nearest policewoman looked, aware of the mutter but not hearing the words.