Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

Jennifer returned Jeremy Hall’s attention, although not appraisingly but honestly. He was a very broad-shouldered man and she liked the way he looked directly at her, not avoiding her eyes as if he was embarrassed or afraid of her. The blue striped suit was beginning to shine at the elbows and she guessed the shirt was on its second wearing. It looked like a family crest on the signet ring. She really didn’t want to do what she had to: she simply didn’t have a choice. Maintaining the calm – enjoying being able to feel it without the Southern drawl voice echoing in her head – she said, ‘I am not mad but I could easily be made so by the nightmare I’m living in, right now…’ A smile came, briefly. ‘Except that I am not going to let it happen. But for me to survive, in any court, I need the very best criminal lawyer it is possible to get. Which means someone with murder trial experience. Someone, in fact, whose very reputation is going to make a court listen: to believe him because he believes me. I’m not trying to be offensive or doubt you. But I’m fighting, literally, for my sanity and my freedom and now I’m fighting for my child. I can’t concern myself with hurt feelings…’ Jennifer straggled to a stop, not sure how further to explain herself.

‘I can assure you, Mrs Lomax…’ began Perry but Hall broke across the solicitor’s stood-to-attention formality.

‘No, let me. I am not offended by anything you’ve said, today or prior to today. We are still very much in the preliminary stages of your case. We’ve talked about that. Like we’ve talked about my being a junior counsel. Which is the capacity in which I will act, to the best of my ability. No leader – that’s what we call a QC, heading a case – becomes involved now. Don’t be offended for your part, but what we are doing now is the nuts and bolts of a defence preparation. Which is the function of a junior counsel.’ He found it virtually impossible to believe a woman who had just expressed herself so logically and reasonably was the same person who a few hours earlier had been ranting and raving obscenities.

‘So there will be a QC with previous experience of murder trials?’ insisted Jennifer.

Just as pedantically Hall said, ‘There are eight QCs in my chambers. I will ask the most experienced, in murder, to represent you.’

Jennifer did not speak for several moments. ‘Thank you. I trust you.’

For even longer Humphrey Perry remained staring at the barrister before turning to Jennifer. Still stiffly formal he said, ‘So you wish to retain our services?’

‘Yes,’ said Jennifer, although speaking to Hall. Then, briskly, she went on, ‘You will personally go down, for the onsite visit with the authorities?’

‘Yes.’

‘When I am taken from here, to the hospital wing of a prison, will I be allowed to wear my own clothes?’

‘Yes,’ guaranteed Hall.

‘The Hampshire visit will have to be arranged, beforehand. I want Anna belle to sort out some clothes for me. Tell her to use her own judgement. I want suits… nightwear and a dressing gown, obviously. Underwear. And toiletries and make-up.’

‘I’ll see it’s arranged,’ promised the barrister.

There was a silence but it was obvious there was something more Jennifer wanted to say.

‘What?’ prompted Hall.

Turning to the doctor, Jennifer said, ‘When will you give medical permission for me to be transferred to a prison hospital?’

Lloyd hesitated. ‘Two or three days. You’re very much better, medically.’

Jennifer ignored the qualification, although it registered. To Hall she said, ‘I’m not convicted. I can have visitors. I want Emily brought here, to this proper hospital to see me. I don’t want her brought into a prison.’

‘I will try to arrange it,’ promised Hall.

Perry strode intentionally fast to their assessment from the psychiatrist and neurologist, to distance them from the doctor who lingered to speak to a nurse. Perry said, ‘That was totally outrageous! No senior in your chambers will take over this and you know it!’

‘They will, if my uncle decides they should.’

‘And why should he do that?’

‘To keep his part of whatever deal you arranged with Bert Feltham for us to act in the first place. I need your help, Humphrey, not your condescension. And I need you to understand that I’m not stupid.’ Hall stopped at the elevator, turning to face the man. ‘We’ll get on much better if we have that understanding, OK?’

‘It’s an indefensible case,’ protested Perry, unthinkingly.

‘Then whatever you promised Sir Richard must be mega,’ said Hall.

Neither Mason nor Fosdyke was talking when the other three men entered the neurologist’s rooms. Both were lounged with polystyrene cups balanced on their chests, Fosdyke behind his desk tilted far enough back in a much-used round-back chair to gaze up at the ceiling, Mason with his feet propped on some unrecognizable carved protrusion from the front of the equally much-used desk. The surprise didn’t finish with desk and chairs. In total contrast to Fosdyke’s over-starched, pristine appearance it was a cluttered, disorganized room of half-open drawers and sagged cabinets. On top of one paint-chipped cabinet a neglected, unidentifiable plant had withered into the vague shape of a sacrificial cross. The only cleared space on the paper-littered desk was around three photograph frames: close by a tower was slowly rising from previously much-fingered polystyrene cups placed one inside the other.

Fosdyke brought himself up at their arrival, gesturing towards three straight-back chairs obviously newly installed in an uncertain, formal line opposite Mason. Opposing combatants again, thought Hall.

Fosdyke said, ‘Waiting Room issue, I’m afraid…’ He raised his coffee container. ‘Like this: can you believe cleaners and patients steal anything else! God knows what for! But I grind the coffee myself. Colombian…’ There was another gesture, to a table near the window where a full pot stood on its hotplate. ‘… Help yourselves.’

Lloyd continued straight on to the coffee. Perry hesitated, then followed. Hall sat down, looking around the room. Perhaps, he thought, the mess was a camouflage against further larceny. The idle reflection was short lived. A few hundred yards away there was a mentally ill murderer who’d cut another human being – her husband – to pieces and this meeting to help her began with an apology about hospital furniture and coffee cups. Wrong, Hall corrected himself, at once. They were doing a job, all of them performing different expertise from different perspectives. But as proper, dispassionate professionals, not allowing the distraction or influence of personal involvement. My first murder, he reminded himself: their attitude was right, his was wrong.

Still at the machine the solicitor turned and said, ‘You sure?’

‘Black, no sugar,’ accepted Hall. He hoped Perry hadn’t imagined he’d waited to be served. He was sorry taking it within seconds of Perry giving him the container: it was too hot to hold without a handle, and he hurriedly placed it on the floor. The returning Lloyd repositioned his chair more towards the doctors before he sat down. Combatants, Hall thought again.

‘Well?’ invited Perry. ‘What’s the verdict?’

‘Limited, from my side,’ said Mason, lowering his feet to the floor. ‘So let’s start with medically provable findings.’

On cue Fosdyke came further upright, too, assembling a few sheets of paper and some X-ray plates before him. As he did so the psychiatrist said, ‘Remember, as far as I am concerned, this isn’t a verdict. It’s a very preliminary impression.’

Fosdyke coughed. ‘Quite obviously mental problems – insanity even – can be brought on by physical factors or illness. We know now, from symptoms still recorded in the archives, that George III wasn’t mad: he suffered from porphyria, which we’d control by pills today…’ He was playing with his notes but Hall didn’t think the neurologist needed them.