Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘ Watch him drop you right in the shit! ’

Jennifer tightened her slightly relaxed grip but there was no movement.

‘Proceed,’ allowed the judge, reluctantly.

Bentley’s face was blazing and Hall was surprised it had been so easy. He said, ‘Mrs Lomax’s remark about Jane didn’t remain inexplicable to you, did it?’

Expectation surged through the press gallery.

‘No.’

‘Did you not make some comment about it, during the aggressive and unsuccessful interview with Mrs Lomax to which you’ve referred?’

‘I may have done.’

The qualification was a mistake, which the man appeared to realize as soon as he spoke. At once the impatient Jarvis said, ‘Well did you or didn’t you, Superintendent? Yes or no?’

‘I made reference to Mrs Lomax hearing voices in her head.’

‘Be quiet!’ snapped Jarvis, at the noise that rippled through the media.

Jane said, ‘ Jeremy’s on my side, not yours! He’s making it easy for me! I can relax! ’

Once more there was no impulse to move. Remembering, Jennifer looked enquiringly at the handkerchief-holding wardress, touching her mouth. The wardress shook her head.

‘Voices?’ pressed Hall. ‘Or just one voice?’

‘Just one voice.’

‘Mrs Lomax’s defence to this charge is that she is possessed, by the first wife of Gerald Lomax, isn’t it?’

The reaction, which was varied but all noisy, was general throughout the court and the judge’s fury wasn’t specifically directed. It still took several minutes to subside. Eventually Bentley said, ‘That is what I understand it to be.’

Hall felt very much in charge, enjoying himself. ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Superintendent?’

The tight-faced man allowed himself a frigid smile. ‘No.’

‘Or spirit possession?’

‘No.’

‘ He’s opening the door to the asylum for you! ’

‘And you didn’t believe Mrs Lomax’s collapse was real, either?’

‘No.’

‘Despite the fact that a doctor – a doctor who will be called during this trial to testify – categorically assured you that it was, within a very short time of it occurring?’

‘No.’

‘You have medical training then?’

‘No.’

‘So you are prepared to argue a medical, clinical opinion with a qualified doctor?’

‘In my professional opinion, it was a faked collapse,’ persisted Bentley, temper completely lost. ‘I’m certainly prepared to argue about ghosts and people being possessed!’

‘You shall, Superintendent, you shall,’ promised Hall, abruptly sitting.

Malcolm Rodgers, who followed Bentley into the witness-box, loyally supported his chief that the collapse was phoney and even agreed the apparent intention to fire her legal team could have been intended as a diversion, to avoid an interview. Conscious of looking remiss to a jury he intended to show he’d overlooked nothing, Keflin-Brown took the inspector in detail through every minute of every encounter with Jennifer Lomax. Who sat listening to Jane’s mental reminders of how insane it made her sound, although not needing to be told because that was precisely how every accurately recounted word made her appear.

‘Did you properly and completely carry out every part of a murder investigation, with the exception of a satisfactory interview or of obtaining a statement from the accused?’ concluded Keflin-Brown.

‘I did, sir,’ agreed Rodgers.

‘Absolutely?’

‘Absolutely.’

Jeremy Hall had no questions, which Jarvis seized to end the day’s proceedings. As they were tidying their files, the clerk hurried up to Perry with a folded note, from which the solicitor immediately looked up to Hall.

‘Jarvis wants to see us in chambers before we start tomorrow.’

Overhearing, Keflin-Brown said, ‘I’ll still take the lesser plea, if she’ll agree.’

Which Jennifer didn’t, fifteen minutes later, when Hall reached her in the cell. He thought Jennifer looked more than simply drained: she appeared hollowed out, a shell of a person.

‘I wasn’t sure where your cross-examination of Bentley took us,’ she said.

‘ First stop the madhouse.’

Hall wasn’t, either. ‘It dented his credibility.’

‘For which Rodgers more than compensated.’

‘It’s a long list so there’s no guarantee we’ll reach her, but Rebecca Nicholls is listed as a witness tomorrow,’ warned Hall.

‘ This we’ve both got to hear! ’

‘I think the tranquillizers helped today.’

‘I’ll see you have them again tomorrow.’

Jeremy Hall had a good note and an even better verbatim recall and went directly from court to chambers to compare what he considered relevant from the case notes with that day’s evidence. It took him two hours and ended with a feeling of frustration he couldn’t properly identify or even understand. ‘What is it?’ he demanded of himself, aloud and unembarrassed, in the solitude of his cramped back room. ‘What the fuck am I missing?’ Fuck wasn’t a word he normally resorted to but it seemed in very common usage these days.

His room was so remote that it was served by narrow back stairs so there was no collision as they left but he emerged at practically the same time as Sir Richard Proudfoot, Humphrey Perry and Bert Feltham leaving from the main entrance with two men he didn’t know. For several moments they remained looking at each other, startled. Then Proudfoot said, ‘Working late?’

‘Yes,’ said Hall. Then, uncaring, ‘You, too?’

‘Something like that,’ said the chamber head. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

In Jennifer’s one-person prison ward the matron said, ‘There’s the magic to make you sleep, my lovely. Now nursey will just rub you, very gently, so you’ll relax.’

‘Give me the cheque-book,’ said Jennifer.

So today she was going to face two enemies, one she would be able to see as well as listen to, the other only hear. Double torture, double humiliation: closing in, almost overwhelming despair that for the last thirty minutes she’d come near to giving in to. Quite apart – uncaring even – from Jane being aware of every mental reflection, Jennifer found it difficult to hold any thought. Which wasn’t the chlordiazepoxide that Jane had again made her choke to the point of vomiting against taking. That hadn’t had time to take effect. She was still thickheaded, that cotton-wool feeling, from the drug the matron had given her the previous night. Her pubic hair had still been slimed with whatever the woman had used for the game she’d played with her, after making her unconscious with the injection. But there’d been no soreness so Jennifer didn’t think she’d been fingered or abused by anyone other than Beryl Harrison. Still more humiliation.

The warning of Rebecca Nicholls being the first witness to the actual murder had come from Jeremy Hall’s cell visit, after her arrival from prison that morning. The barrister was still flushed from his pre-hearing encounter at which he’d told the judge of Jennifer’s continued refusal to change her plea. Sir Ivan Jarvis’s alternative, to foreshorten what again he’d called a music-hall instead of a trial, had been to cut by half the number of trading-floor witnesses with virtually identical accounts of the killing.

The fast-footed, headline-conscious Simon Keflin-Brown had instantly agreed and nominated Rebecca to be the first, guaranteeing the continuation of coverage that had exceeded either his or John Bentley’s expectations – and hopes – that morning. All the tabloids had led with the previous day’s hearing – Murder by Possession was one slogan, Murder in Mind another – and almost every newspaper carried collected photographs of Jennifer, Jane and Rebecca. Inevitably, the captions had referred to eternal triangles. The motherly wardress (‘It’s Ann: Ann Wardle. I’ve got a son who’s ill like you,’) had shown her the Daily Mirror on their way from the prison. All three photographs had been taken in happier, laughing times: assured, confident women, women upon whom no misfortune could ever fall.