Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘ You want me to show you what I can make her do? ’

Three minutes, estimated Hall, unable to check the timing. And still unable to discover any setbacks above. ‘What would that prove?’

‘ That I still call the shots. Which I do.’

‘I disgraced you in court: disgraced the memory of your father. Exposed you as a murderess and destroyed the Herbetson family name.’ He’d discarded the destroyed jacket but wore the boiler-suit over the rest of his clothes. He was saturated by sweat. It had to be five minutes by now.

‘ Who gives a fuck? ’

‘You should. You fouled your family name. Didn’t prove anyone murdered you. Jennifer’s free. Couldn’t keep a husband when you had one. You failed all the way down the line, didn’t you?’ Jennifer had both arms clutched around her, holding her sides. Mason was intently forward, determined against missing anything of the exchange. The two policemen were pebble-eyed, in astonished bewilderment. It had to have been going on for eight minutes by now.

‘ What the fuck are you saying? ’

‘That I can defeat you, whenever I want. And that you’re too scared to admit it. So you’re going to make a scene when we get outside, like a spoilt child…’ He looked to the policemen, shrugging. ‘Let’s go back. It’s a waste of time…’

He’d been sure of Julian Mason but not of the other two men, so they hadn’t been rehearsed. But the psychiatrist had, although he hadn’t thought this dialogue remotely possible: it was, of them all, the greatest uncertainty.

Mason matched the barrister’s shrug and set off back along the metalled walkway, pausing after a few steps to turn back. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ he asked the uncertain policemen.

‘ Bullshit and bluff. How you going to get her out? ’

‘From the emergency helicopter pad on the roof,’ lied Hall. ‘Whenever we choose, any time later today when it’s light.’

‘ What the fuck’s all this about in the first place then? ’

‘You’ve seen the television pictures of what’s happening outside,’ said Hall, knowing from Lloyd that Jennifer had watched. ‘The police wanted to end the chaos as soon as they could. Now they’re going to have to wait.’ He took Jennifer’s arm and began to follow the psychiatrist. He had lost, he admitted to himself. The fifteen minutes he’d built into the timing had to have expired by now.

‘ What do you think you can do? ’

‘It’s not important now.’

‘ Tell me now! ’ Jennifer jerked her arms up, to cover her ears at the shouted demand, crying out at the pain it caused but still gasping out the reply.

‘Fuck off, Jane. Another failure! How about that?’

‘ Now! ’

Hall continued walking Jennifer back into the hospital, behind Julian Mason. There was the clatter of footsteps on metal, as the policemen followed. He didn’t reply.

‘ I mean let’s go. Now! ’

‘No, you don’t,’ said Hall, not pausing.

Jennifer was brought to a halt, stopping him. ‘ You want a fight? ’

‘You’re not up to it.’

‘ You want a fight? ’ Jennifer whimpered at the pain of trying physically to close her ears off again.

‘Yes. I want to fight.’

‘ Then let’s go, asshole.’

Far above, the assembled waggon train was also ready to go. The final trigger that brought the ‘Jennifer’ howl to a throbbing crescendo was the sight of a blanket-embalmed figure – the nurse whose uniform Jennifer was wearing far below – being stretchered between attentive hospital staff into the ambulance. It only just negotiated the left-hand turn back on to the attention-drawing Westminster Bridge before the police and soldier line burst, under the irresistible pressure of frenetically mind-robbed people. But by then the procession was already halfway over the bridge, quickly turning south west past the Houses of Parliament on to Millbank in an obvious direction: back to Hampshire.

It had already crossed and was out of sight when one of the St Thomas’s overalled policemen cautiously eased through the gully-submerged oil delivery opening and even more cautiously climbed the steps to look around, his hand raised in readiness for the down-wave that would tell his colleague, who had finally established radio contact at ground level, to slam shut the scarcely open door. Already the crowd on the river-bordering Albert Embankment was thinning and they – and those that remained – still all gazed and crushed towards the bridge over which they appeared to expect the autocade to return. Others strained to follow the identifying searchlight beams of the helicopters, pursuing along the other side of the river. There was still a loud ‘Jennifer’ wail. The prepared door slamming gesture turned into an urgent beckoning.

They came out together, Mason and Hall either side of Jennifer, the remaining policeman close behind, all three ignoring her scarf-muffled pleas to slow because she was hurting.

‘The launch is there: we’re all right,’ reported the radio-man, at the top of the stairway but without pausing, anxious now for them to get into the concealing ebb-and-flow of people.

The two hundred metres to Lambeth Pier was a barefoot walk on glowing coals. Only Hall could sensibly remain as close as might be necessary to Jennifer: the others had to become gawking sensation-seekers although within a second’s leap. Mason actually joined in the still-existing excitement, pointing up like others were needlessly doing, tracing the distant progress of the convoy from the helicopters’ search-light fingers. They were constantly jostled because the majority of people were going in the opposite direction, still towards Westminster Bridge, but the apologies, when there were any, were invariably automatic, made without looking. Several times Jennifer groaned from the sudden pain of a collision.

With fifty yards still to go Jennifer said, desperately: ‘She’s taking my legs away: I can’t walk much further.’

‘ Can’t run back and hide now. Too far away.’

So she couldn’t risk a fight, after all!’ said Hall, even more desperately. The bitch! But he should have guessed. ‘ Just testing: flexing muscles.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s better.’

The boarding was another potential and anticipated flash point. The launch that Perry had hired but which was crewed by casually dressed river police had been unobtrusively moored at the bottom of the steps for two hours, in total darkness and apparently battened down. An obvious and official police boat, one of four that throughout the day had kept the river between the hospital and Parliament clear of a would-be armada of water-borne sightseers, burbled about ten yards offshore like a growling guard dog, just holding itself in position against the tide. The look-out policeman reached the chained-off steps first, seeming to loiter and then expansively stretched. At the signal there was shadowed movement from below, the faintest footscrape. At the moment the rest of them drew level, on the embankment, a figure rose from the river steps to release the chain.

‘Careful. The steps are slippery.’

They were in and descending within seconds, Hall groping down backwards to reach up with both hands against Jennifer’s shoulders, Mason trying to balance her from behind. Twice Hall slipped, the second time grating his shin against the edge of the step. The surprised exclamation came when they were half way down, then a shout. They were at the pontoon, Jennifer handed in first and unseen, before people appeared above. At once there was a blinding, obscuring beam from the police launch as it swept in under sudden power. The subterfuge was brilliant, a rehearsed performance they hadn’t been told about. With Jennifer, Hall, Mason and the two escorting policeman huddled unseen in the cabin there was a shouted argument between the uniformed and plain-clothes river police, quickly concluded with an even louder shouted announcement that the boat was under arrest. By the time the civilian boat moved off obediently in the wake of the launch, the Embankment level embarkation stage had cleared of people.