Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘Neither had I, not until now. Everything’s happened very quickly.’

There was another wan smile. ‘You did what I asked you. Proved me not guilty. Thank you.’ She reached out her hand, towards him.

Hall hesitated, then took it.

‘ Where’s the fucking violins and pink doves? ’

‘I was testing you,’ confessed Jennifer.

‘Testing me?’

‘To see if you’d take my hand. To see if you were frightened of me. She says you are.’

Hall retained her hand. ‘Then she’s wrong about that, too, isn’t she?’ It wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t scared. He was… He didn’t know what he was but it wasn’t fear. Disbelief, perhaps? No, it couldn’t be that. He’d already decided he did believe. It was, he supposed, how someone would feel confronting a creature from outer space, although the analogy offended him, because Jennifer Lomax wasn’t an alien creature. Despite what she’d gone through – was still going through – she was a very beautiful and physically attractive woman. He released her hand. Not that he felt any physical attraction. To have allowed that would have been unprofessional: he had to behave like a doctor in that respect.

‘ I’m not wrong! He’s scared. Everyone’s going to be scared. You’re going to be a pariah for the rest of your life. We’ll get you a drum. That’s what it means, you know. A drummer because that’s what Hindu pariahs do, beat a drum as a warning for people to get out of the way when they’re coming.’

‘I’ve got to think of Emily, haven’t I?’

‘You haven’t ever stopped.’

‘I mean about getting back with her. Properly.’

‘I’ve told you, Annabelle says she’s virtually forgotten what happened here.’

‘She’ll remember, when I go home.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I’m frightened that’s how it will be.’

‘You’ll have to take it a step at a time,’ said Hall, hating the cliche.

‘How long, before it’s all finished with the court?’

‘Depends how long the DNA takes. Just days.’

‘It’s been a lifetime.’

‘ And it’s only just beginning! ’

‘Now it’s over.’

‘I won’t have to go back to prison to get my things?’

Hall shook his head again. ‘I’ll have them collected and taken back to Hampshire. Or to the flat here, if you’d prefer.’

Now Jennifer shook her head, but much more positively. That’s where he went with Rebecca. In our bed. My bed. I don’t want to go there again. Not ever. I’ll sell it. In fact…’ She paused. ‘I’ll certainly be here all day tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ask Geoffrey Johnson to come. He can make arrangements to put it on the market immediately.’

‘I’ll fix it,’ undertook the barrister. It all sounded very normal, so very ordinary. Would it ever be possible for Jennifer Lomax to know normality – to be normal – again.

Jennifer looked abruptly to the bedside cabinet and what was on top of it. ‘And I can use the telephone, whenever I like, can’t I?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Hall, guessing the point of the question.

‘So I could telephone Emily?’

‘If you want to.’

‘I want to,’I said Jennifer, hesitantly. There was a pause. Then she said, ‘But I don’t know what to say to her.’ There was a further silence before she added, ‘And there’s something else…’

Hall waited for Jennifer to finish but she didn’t.

Jeremy Hall wasn’t conscious of being followed from the hospital until he parked along the Embankment and was immediately surrounded by people who leapt from three separate cars which screeched to a haphazard halt behind him. There were seven reporters, three women among them. They all began talking and shouting at once, drowning each other out, and for several moments Hall was totally bewildered.

‘Who are you? What…?’

The names of the newspapers were the first thing that positively registered. He didn’t bother to match the identification with the representatives.

‘Is she all right?’

‘What’s she say?’

‘What’s Jane telling her?’

‘Can Jane make her do whatever she wants?’

‘She’s a Frankenstein, isn’t she?’

‘Will she always have to be locked up, as a danger?’

Hall used his bulk to shoulder his way through, shaking his head but saying nothing. Envelopes were thrust at him and instinctively he took them.

‘That’s not final.’

‘We’ll negotiate.’

‘Call us first, before anyone else.’

‘We’ll be sympathetic, put Jennifer’s side of the story.’

The cordon was much bigger around his chambers. When the crowd saw him approaching there was the blinding whiteness of cameras and television lights and Hall actually stumbled into people he could not see. It was impossible to distinguish anything from the shouted, screaming questions. More envelopes were thrust towards him, which he let fall to the ground. It wasn’t until after he bulldozed his way through and was admitted through the briefly unbolted door by the uniformed porter that Hall realized he was still clutching those that had first been forced upon him.

Everyone was already assembled in Proudfoot’s room. The QC and Bert Feltham were in shirt-sleeves: Mickey Mouse figures were propelled up and down Feltham’s braces by the heaviness of his breathing. Humphrey Perry looked mournful.

Proudfoot said, ‘What the hell have we opened up here?’

‘Pandora’s Box?’ suggested Hall. After the previous night entirely without sleep he was suddenly extremely tired.

‘I’ve never known anything like it. It’s incredible. We’ve called the police, to clear them,’ said Proudfoot.

Choosing partly to misunderstand, Hall said, ‘There’s never been anything like this. That’s why they’re here. It’s as bad at the hospital. I was followed back.’ He looked uncertainly at the envelopes in his hand and thrust them towards Perry.

‘It’ll be more offers,’ predicted the solicitor, holding up a sheaf of already opened letters. ‘ The Sunday Times heads the list at the moment. Quarter of a million. They all say they’re prepared to negotiate. And that they’ll be sympathetic, whatever that means.’

Proudfoot indicated the open cocktail cabinet and said to the younger barrister, ‘Help yourself.’

Hall wasn’t a drinker but he poured whisky, deciding that night he not only needed but deserved it. He wondered if there would be any congratulations for representing a client as he had. He said, ‘I hadn’t thought this far ahead. Anticipated the reaction.’

‘I don’t want it to continue,’ declared Proudfoot, accusingly. ‘I’m wondering what the Bar Council attitude will be.’

‘Disappointment among its members that they’re not involved,’ guessed Hall, cynically. ‘And I don’t see how I could have avoided it.’

‘Applying for exhumation was unnecessary,’ insisted Proudfoot.

‘If the DNA is the same as that at the scene, Jennifer Lomax will be officially and fully declared not guilty instead of the trial closing because the evidence is unsafe.’

‘Which means Gerald Lomax was murdered by a ghost,’ said Proudfoot, contemptuously.

‘Yes,’ said Hall, with flat simplicity. ‘The court has already accepted evidence that proves that.’

A heavy silence encompassed the room. It was broken by the wheezing Bert Feltham. ‘I’ve gone through the transcript of today’s evidence. That’s exactly what it proves.’

‘Precisely a Pandora’s Box,’ said Perry, distantly.

Hall helped himself to more whisky, uninvited. ‘We can only go on a day at a time,’ he said, remembering it was the cliche he’d used at the hospital because he couldn’t think of anything.