Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘I want her cunt now.’

‘Not yet.’

‘We should have brought the cock.’

‘Next time.’

‘Let me have the cunt now.’

‘She’s tight, on two fingers.’

‘Did she come?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is going to be wonderful, having her like this.’

‘Let me have her cunt now!’

The two women hurriedly swopped. Neither spoke, engrossed in new things, new parts.

At last Fran said, ‘This is fantastic.’

‘Her ass is tight, too,’ said Emma. ‘Hardly get my finger in.’

‘I don’t want to share her, not yet.’

‘We won’t.’ Emma rose, from between Jennifer’s legs. Fran came down to the bottom of the bed and together they stood gazing down at the spread-eagled, unconscious woman.

‘You’ve made her bleed,’ said Fran.

‘Probably her ass. She really was tight.’

‘We’ll bring the cock tomorrow.’

‘That’ll be fun.’

‘I came,’ said Fran.

‘So did I.’

‘But I want to come again. I want you to fuck me.’

‘With the cock.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’d be good. Fun tonight as well as tomorrow.’

As they passed the matron’s office they both chorused ‘Goodnight’ and Matron Harrison said ‘Goodnight’ back. She didn’t have to go to the dispensary again, because she’d got what she wanted the first visit.

She stood for a long time gazing down at Jennifer’s naked, leg-spread body, as the other two women had done. In a baby-soothing voice she said, ‘What did they do to you, you poor little thing. You’ll be all sore in the morning. But don’t cry, little one, nursey will make it better. I’m going to rub it with nice, soft cream. That’ll make it better. Nice and soft, take the pain away. There…’

The voice said, ‘ You don’t know how you’re going to suffer,’ but Jennifer didn’t hear.

There was no alternative to a mental-illness defence. Jeremy Hall supposed he had known that from the beginning, despite Jennifer’s insistence and the unexpectedly conflicting opinions from a lot of the professional experts – prosecution as well as defence – quite a few of whom still had tests and examinations they wanted to carry out or repeat but all of whose findings so far were going to make that defence a mountainously uphill struggle. He’d let them go through the motions, of course: all part of justice being seen to be done. But that’s all it could be, recognized routines with fancy names like Schneider’s First Rank Symptoms assessment to protect their judgement against contrary challenge and impressively to fill the invoice page when they submitted their exorbitant final bills.

Hall was most surprised of all – disappointed even – by Julian Mason’s adamant refusal, after Jennifer’s agreement, to have their final sessions with her under the influence of pentathol, the truth drug, to testify to a mental imbalance, despite having personally witnessed Jennifer’s attack upon the child. Any small doubts that Hall had harboured – and they’d been very small indeed – had disappeared with that frenzied episode that to remember still made his skin crawl.

But Mason wasn’t alone: just the only psychiatrist who’d had the personal experience. With the exception of Milton Smith, the London-based American psychiatrist who was prepared to give evidence of Multiple Personality Disorder, the independent and preliminary agreement of the other three defence psychiatrists was that although Jennifer showed some signs of schizophrenia by hearing a voice and the depressed regression into which she’d sunk after the attack on Emily, mental illness was too arguably uncertain for them to give a positive diagnosis. So arguable, in fact, that each had so far indicated they were coming down on the side of sanity.

Most bewildering of all was their unanimous finding, like that of Mason, that the coherent if sometimes obscene conversational logic of what Jennifer claimed to be Jane speaking – the prime indicator of schizophrenia – proved rather than disproved she wasn’t suffering from the illness. Hall’s problem of mounting any sort of defence acceptable to a court was compounded by each of the three prosecution psychiatrists, although again agreeing some mental disorientation, also being prepared to swear there was insufficient mental disturbance to amount to diminished responsibility. Which wasn’t the end of Hall’s problems. There’d been two separate neurological examinations, during which Jennifer had undergone electroencephalograms, in addition to all the other tests administered by George Fosdyke, including brain and upper body scans. Both had registered absolutely normal, showing no physical cause for Jennifer’s condition.

Hall accepted that what little he had was all he could possibly expect for a very fragile and uncertain mitigation plea, apart from the outstanding psychiatric assessments which he didn’t anticipate would do anything to help him and which shouldn’t take longer than a week to complete.

Perry had made brilliant background preparation. Because of Jennifer’s possession claim – the major thrust of his intended defence – the solicitor had gone beyond obtaining a complete transcript of the Jane Lomax inquest – discovering in doing so that Bentley had done the same in an effort to uncover a missed murder – by having a Washington lawyer provide a full medical and personal history of Gerald and Jane Lomax before their transfer to England. Perry had extended the lawyer’s investigation to include a dossier on Rebecca Nicholls, which they’d had to make available to the prosecution under the rules of disclosure and which Hall was sure would be made into a major part of the case against Jennifer.

It appeared Lomax’s affair with Rebecca had begun at least three years earlier – maybe even before that – and that during their return trips to New York they had occupied Rebecca’s Manhattan apartment virtually as husband and wife. They’d continued to do that, in the London flat, during the nights Lomax spent in London while Jennifer remained in the country with Emily. When he’d given Hall the Rebecca Nicholls’ file Perry had remarked that Lomax seemed quite a bastard and after reading it Hall agreed with the assessment. In view of her mental state he would have liked a lot of it kept from Jennifer but objectively realized it was a forlorn hope, providing as it did the vengeance grounds upon which the prosecution were making their case, which was founded on the incontestably concreted evidence of sixteen people witnessing the killing. And which was going to be supported, because of their doubt about mental illness, by at least half a dozen of the country’s foremost mind doctors. By contrast – but he feared easily overwhelmed by the weight of evidence against her – the biography he had of Jennifer Lomax, nee Stone, was of a Mensa-level woman who professionally had been relentless to succeed, which she had, and whose only known failing was to have embarked upon an affair with a married man whom she’d subsequently married and who, ever since, had lived a faultless, blameless, charity organizing life. He paused at the final thought: charities that couldn’t now fast enough get rid of her, an embarrassing encumbrance.

The final acknowledgement of the obstacles he faced further unsettled Hall, who single-mindedly had set out on a Bar career to become even more respected and famous – but more importantly, richer – than his respected and famous uncle. Which required the same absolutely ruthless objectivity which his uncle possessed and of which irritatingly he knew himself at that precise moment to be a victim. But an absolute ruthlessness which he, personally, hadn’t so far shown: if not his heart he’d most certainly worn his integrity on his sleeve. He’d wanted to do his best for Jennifer Lomax – was still determined to do his best for and by Jennifer Lomax – but he had to accept reality. And the reality was that he was defending a case as hopeless as he’d recognized it to be from the very first sherry-and-bullshit session with Sir Richard and the inhaler-puffing Bert Feltham, partners in cynical ruthlessness. Recognized but refused to recognize, he reminded himself, permitting no personal excuses. He’d been fooling himself: allowing himself to forget and minimize the horrific awfulness of her crime because he’d been too hungrily eager to make a career. Which he would – because he was determined – but not with this case. He’d given it a potential it didn’t have. Had never had.