Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘That’s not really the point,’ argued Perry.

‘So I’d go through the motions of praying and whatever else is involved to score points with a judge!’

‘Scoring points with a judge is what trials are all about,’ said Hall, matching the older man’s cynicism.

‘If I don’t believe it wouldn’t work, would it? So Jane would still be there and I’d have achieved nothing.’

‘You wouldn’t know that until you’d tried,’ said Perry.

Jennifer shook her head. ‘I’m satisfied with none of the psychiatrists being prepared to say I’m mad.’

‘She must be mad!’ erupted Humphrey Perry, when they reached the courtyard outside the main prison gates. ‘Only someone completely mad would have failed to see the only way out, with a plea to a lesser charge!’

‘I know,’ said the younger man, resigned.

‘We had a chance to get out. Why didn’t you take it?’

‘I want to help her.’

‘How the hell can you do that? She won’t let herself be helped in the only way available.’

‘I’ll enter the plea she wants, go through whatever pantomime the voice in her head causes and let Jarvis instruct the jury to return a verdict of the lesser charge made obvious from her behaviour in court. That way she’ll get the care she so obviously needs.’

Perry gazed across the car at the other man, acknowledging the ploy with an admiring nod but not immediately starting the engine. ‘Jarvis doesn’t want court time wasted on a full trial.’

‘Bugger what Jarvis wants!’ said Hall. ‘Show me a different way to achieve what has to be achieved, in the best interest of Jennifer Lomax, and I’ll take it!’

‘I wish I could,’ said Perry, solemnly.

‘So do I,’ said Hall.

‘Jarvis will feel-’

‘I don’t need to be told what Jarvis will feel,’ stopped Hall. ‘I know.’

The ponderous silence stretched interminably, Sir Ivan Jarvis staring fixedly at Hall, and even Simon Keflin-Brown, who normally would have found the temptation irresistible, didn’t attempt any courtroom idiosyncracies. There were no coughs, no foot scuffing.

At last Jarvis said, ‘Could it be that I failed to make myself clear?’

‘You made yourself abundantly clear, my Lord,’ said Hall. He’d wanted to cough but hadn’t and the assurance croaked out.

‘Then perhaps you haven’t made yourself clear to your client?’

‘I have, my Lord.’

‘During how many conferences, since our last meeting?’

‘Three, my Lord.’

‘Logged meetings?’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘I am displeased, Mr Hall.’

‘I have explained, in the clearest possible detail, the courses open to my client. She repeats her instruction that she pleads not guilty to the major charge, that of murder.’

To the prosecuting barrister the judge said, ‘You have been apprised of this?’

‘I have, my Lord: I’m obliged to my learned friend.’

Turning to his clerk Jarvis said, ‘What’s the calendar allowance?’

‘Two weeks, my Lord,’ said the man, as usual not needing to consult the diary.

Coming back to Hall, the man said, ‘You will remember what I said about tricks, won’t you?’

‘I will, my Lord.’

‘If you don’t, I shall be very quick to remind you.’

In the corridor outside Keflin-Brown said, ‘I don’t envy you one moment of it. I’ll do what I can to help. My case is proven before it starts, after all.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You did make three prison visits, didn’t you?’ pressed the older barrister.

‘Yes.’ Jennifer had remained as brightly alert as before and boasted about resisting the voice, which she appeared to be doing: certainly there hadn’t been any unintelligible interruptions or swearing. She’d actually become angry when he’d pressed her to reconsider the plea, dismissing it and instead handing him a long list of clothes and accessories she wanted brought up from Hampshire for her court appearances.

‘Good,’ said Keflin-Brown. ‘You know the old bugger will check, don’t you? That’s why he asked if they were logged.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘There’s nothing ever funny about Sir Ivan Jarvis. Which you’re going to find out.’

He’d spent the two previous weekends engrossed in the case notes and been unsure if he could spare the time to come out on the river this Saturday. In the end he decided he needed the relaxation in anticipation of what the next fortnight might bring. But he was stiff, not concentrating sufficiently: at the beginning he frequently mis-oared and dug too deep to feather until he consciously forced himself to dismiss the case from his mind, to get the slide moving easily and build up the rhythm. Hall got it, finally, feeling the cramped tension ease from his back and shoulders, building up until the narrow boat was smoothly cleaving the water: as he thrust beneath Richmond Bridge a group of Japanese tourists leaned over the parapet to photograph him and Hall wondered how many times in the next two weeks his photograph was going to be taken. For what, he reflected, could be the obituary of a failed legal career.

It was inevitable that Jennifer would commit some outrage from the dock and just as inevitable that because of it Jarvis would intervene with instructions to the jury about diminished responsibility. And most inevitable of all that the old man would consider it the sort of trick against which he’d specifically warned, forcing as it would the court to make the decision Jennifer Lomax had failed to be persuaded to make for herself. Trick or not – and Hall didn’t totally agree that it was – it would serve Jennifer Lomax’s best interests. Which was his primary concern, as her counsel.

Jeremy Hall wished he could resolve the doubt in his mind that he was still in some way failing her. He abruptly decided to cut the row short and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening going yet again over notes and statements he’d already read so many times he knew them verbatim. His rowing concentration gone again, he missed his stroke altogether with his left blade, veering the boat abruptly sideways, and a group of people watching from Mortlake bridge laughed at him.

He finished reading everything and considered calling Patricia, who hadn’t telephoned him since the can’t-make-it message on the answering machine. Hall supposed he’d have to become accustomed to being laughed at in the coming weeks.

Jennifer had a soaring, uplifting feeling of release being taken from prison, which she acknowledged at once was precisely what it was and what it should be: since the day of Gerald’s death she had been imprisoned, first in the cell-like hospital room and then in an actual cell, although part of the prison hospital.

The escape wasn’t total, however. There was, in fact, something new, a torture that hadn’t been inflicted before. Jennifer hadn’t been conscious of the voice when she’d emerged from her drugged sleep that morning, as she usually was, but when she became fully awake her body tingled with the numbness of Jane’s presence. But there wasn’t a taunting voice. Instead, at Jennifer’s moment of awareness, there was a cough, the subdued sound of a watcher in the shadows. Which, she accepted, was the perfect description, except that this watcher wasn’t in the shadows, waiting to pounce, but in her mind. But still waiting, she didn’t know for what. Or when. Jennifer positively let the thought linger, challenging Jane to read it and react – to let Jane know she wasn’t surprised or caught out by the change of torment – but still the voice didn’t come. There were, though, the occasional coughs of a patient stalker.

Which Jennifer ignored, practically succeeding in submerging the occasional interruption beneath the growing euphoria at getting beyond four narrow, enclosing walls. For which she made meticulous preparation. A?100 cheque kept the insistent matron (‘nursey will wash you: just lay back,’) on the other side of the locked bathroom door and provided the dryer to get her hair in perfect shape. Because the mirrors were larger she made up in the bathroom, too. She did so discreetly, the lightest blusher, the minimum of mascara, a pale lipline, determined to look her absolute best. And most of all, for every minute of every day that the trial might take, to appear in control.