Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘Yes,’ agreed the detective.

‘I assure you-’ began Hall.

‘I’m not impressed by your assurances,’ snapped Jennifer. ‘Which we’ll discuss after this meeting. I want a nurse… a doctor… someone independent from all this.’

‘Mrs Lomax-’ tried Perry.

‘Get someone or get out!’

‘ They’ll think it’s the madness coming out.’

The assembled men regarded her solemnly, doing nothing.

‘You,’ isolated Jennifer, pointing to Perry with her unrestricted hand. ‘Go and get someone.’

Rodgers snapped off the recording as the solicitor left the room. Hall said, ‘This really is most unnecessary, whatever it is you want.’

Jennifer looked at him but refused to speak. There was some awkward foot scuffing from everyone except Bentley, who came close to overemphasizing the leg-stretched, arms-folded, seen-it-all-before condescension.

Within minutes, less maybe, Rodgers returned with Peter Lloyd. Jennifer guessed the physician would have been given an explanation from the detective inspector but before anything further could be said she gestured with the unencumbered arm and said, ‘Turn the tape back on: give a time and the circumstances.’

‘This really isn’t…’ persisted Hall. He wasn’t sure of himself, not in control any more, and appeared disorientated.

‘Do it!’

Rodgers did, formally re-establishing the interview. He did so looking uncertainly towards Bentley for guidance but before the senior detective could say anything Jennifer said to the doctor, ‘I want you to listen, to everything that’s said. I’ll call you to court to testify on my behalf, if this tape is tampered with: to swear to everything that’s going to be said.’

‘ He’ll think it’s paranoia: all part of your hearing-voices paranoia. ’

‘I really have more important-’ started the doctor.

‘No you don’t! It’s my life you’re trying to save, although not medically. Listen…!’ Jennifer turned directly to address the microphone in front of her. ‘The making of this tape is being independently witnessed by Dr Peter Lloyd, of St Thomas’s hospital…’

‘Very impressive, Jennifer,’ said Bentley. ‘You sure you can keep it up?’

‘Keep what up?’

‘Voices in the head, telling you what to do.’ It wouldn’t be difficult breaking this arrogant bitch down, any more than it had been to beat Lomax’s replacement fuck. Hall would probably cut him off, before he got a full confession but it wouldn’t matter. He’d have enough. Sometimes things were almost too easy.

‘I don’t choose to continue with this interview, despite the agreement of my lawyers. Who will not be my lawyers after today,’ announced Jennifer, talking directly into the microphone once more.

‘ Go on! I didn’t expect it to be as good as this.’

‘You’re right to be scared, Jennifer. I’m on to you. Know what your plan was,’ smiled Bentley.

‘I didn’t say you could call me Jennifer.’

She was breaking, Bentley recognized: trying to hide behind pomposity. ‘Hurt like hell, didn’t it, finding out about Gerald and Rebecca?’

‘ Woweeeee!!! ’

Jennifer had assuaged the guilt of her affair with Gerald – and the never-quite-lost feeling after Jane’s death – by knowing, positively, really knowing, not simply convincing herself, that her marriage to Gerald was invulnerable: complete, unendangered, absolutely and totally invulnerable. Which it had been, she determined, fighting back: had to be. It was a trick, a cheap trick to get her to admit something, anything, that wasn’t true. Wouldn’t work. Whatever they wanted – expected – it wouldn’t work. To Hall she said, ‘Why are you allowing this! Stop it!’

‘ I don’t want it to stop. Gerald was screwing your best friend, Jennifer! And you didn’t even know it, any more than I knew he was screwing you. Oh this is wonderful! Perfectly wonderful. ’ The hysterical laughter echoed in Jennifer’s head.

Before Hall could speak, Bentley went on, ‘That’s it, isn’t it, Jennifer? You found out your husband was having an affair with Rebecca Nicholls and worked out a perfect defence for a minimal sentence so that you could kill him in front of her. That’s why you stood at the window, covered in his blood, laughing down at her. You wanted her to see, didn’t you…?’

‘ NO!’ The denial wailed from Jennifer as she snatched her hands up, to cover her ears, to stop hearing the words. The drip rattled against its frame and she felt the needle tear out of her uninjured arm and then the warmth of the blood. ‘Stop it! Go away! You’re lying: all of you lying.’ She slumped back against the pillows, the room misting in front of her, her bruised lips moving but forming no words.

‘This can’t go on!’ protested Lloyd.

‘No,’ said Hall. It can’t. I’ve allowed more than I should have done. It has to stop now.’

Bentley wheeled upon the lawyer, only just stopping himself from telling the man to go to hell. The bitch had got away with it by faking the collapse, like she was trying to get away with murder by faking insanity.

‘ Get up. Say something. ’

Jennifer didn’t hear the words. Lloyd pushed through to Jennifer’s bedside, more fully opening the half-lidded eyes. ‘She’s not properly conscious. And she isn’t faking it…’ He became aware the tape was still operating. ‘I am formally warning you this woman’s health would be seriously endangered by attempting to continue this interview, which she isn’t mentally capable of responding to anyway.’

Rodgers wasn’t quick enough stopping the tape to prevent it registering Bentley’s hand-slap of frustration against the table top.

It didn’t, however, record Jeremy Hall saying to Humphrey Perry, ‘We made a mistake. A very bad mistake.’

It was a room of angry people and a lot of confusion, the ward sister’s office into which Lloyd herded them as nurses came running to his call. He had forbidden the re-entry of any policewomen – insisting they witnessed Jennifer’s recovery through the corridor window – adding to Bentley’s fury.

‘The doctor said it was a genuine collapse,’ said Hall. It had been a bad mistake to allow the interview: getting the doctor’s agreement wasn’t sufficient excuse. He should have insisted upon more time, properly to prepare the woman: protect her. And done that better – protected her better – before the police arrival. Someone with more experience wouldn’t have let any of it happen.

‘Rubbish!’ rejected Bentley. ‘The collapse is a fake, like hearing voices is a fake. I’ve got the motive, like I knew I would. It’s murder, pure and simple and premeditated. I won’t have any prosecution accepting diminished responsibility or an unfit-to-plead attempt.’

‘It’s not up to you what the prosecution will or will not accept,’ reminded Hall, refusing to be bullied. No-one was sitting. Instead they stood either side of the small room, like opposing combatants, which Hall supposed they were. Like David and Goliath. It was hardly a good analogy, he realized: Goliath lost.

The detective’s face tightened at the correction. Formally – but with difficulty – Bentley said, ‘I’m going to conduct this investigation as a culpable homicide, with no extenuating circumstances like mental illness. And that will be how my report is submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service.’

That’s what we’d expect you to do,’ said Humphrey Perry. The solicitor’s irritation was personal. It was virtually inevitable that what had occurred would leak back to Feltham and he’d promised the man he’d keep an eye on Jeremy Hall to make sure something precisely like this didn’t happen. It would be best if he actually told the man himself, to get his side of the story in first.