Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

Hall paused, curious at the strange hollowness in his stomach.

‘Who collected it?’

‘I didn’t need the photograph of Jennifer. It was Elizabeth McIntyre. And I’ve got a photostat of her signature, from the ledger. She’s…’

‘… I know who she is,’ said Hall, as impatient as the other man. ‘She was one of the ones never called.’

‘You’re assuming it’s the basis for Jane’s accusation.’

‘You’ve read everything I have. Did you find another?’

‘No.’

Hall accepted Perry’s insistence it was impossible for them properly to discuss the latest responses from Washington DC from Ross Hamilton Forest II without having a transcript in front of him. He had the solicitor fax it personally to the clinic to prevent its location becoming known throughout the solicitor’s office. That morning’s media coverage maintained the hysteria – and the pursuit – at fever pitch: he’d succeeded in causing some confusion by the different stories he’d given but the consensus was that the death of Jane Lomax was being reopened as a murder inquiry, although the police and the coroner denied it. Pathologist Michael Bailey had been traced, as well as Inspector Hughes and PC Elroyd. Everyone was photographed and extensively quoted. Hall felt sorry for the avalanche that would have engulfed Elspeth Simpson. Fred Knowland appeared on all five breakfast television channels.

Forest’s report from America ran to twenty-five A4 pages, including two signed affidavits, and took the barrister two hours to digest as fully as he wanted.

When they spoke again Perry, who had monitored the media as closely as Hall, said, ‘We probably could get an investigation reopened on the strength of what we’ve found out. I’d take a bet on a posthumous murder verdict.’

‘That’s not what we’re trying to prove,’ reminded Hall.

‘What do you want me to say if there’s an official approach from Hampshire?’

‘Let’s hear what it is, first. We wouldn’t be legally bound to hand our evidence over but I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. Jennifer wouldn’t be involved any more.’

‘They might try to involve her. Don’t forget the motive of an affair.’

‘Let’s wait for an approach.’

‘You think you’re ready?’

‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’

‘You thought what life’s going to be like when it’s all over?’

‘No,’ admitted Hall, honestly. ‘Sometimes I can’t imagine that it ever will be.’ Or, he mentally added in a thought that surprised him, that he particularly wanted it to be. He was certainly anxious to get rid of Jane, but not Jennifer.

Dr Cox confirmed the priest’s insistence that Jennifer was too exhausted by being Jane’s conduit to face what amounted to a quasi-trial and Mason deferred to their opinion and also abandoned any analysis that day. They used Hall’s room to talk through what he intended and Cox said he’d wait until tomorrow before deciding whether Jennifer would even then be able to stand the strain.

‘It’s an attempt to persuade Jane to go, after all,’ the doctor reminded, unnecessarily. ‘The most important thing in her life. She’ll be wound up tighter than a spring.’

‘I couldn’t be more encouraged by how she’s responding,’ enthused Dawson. ‘I know I can exorcize Jane, if this doesn’t work.’

‘It’s not important which of us does it, as long as it’s done,’ said Hall.

‘Jane prayed with me,’ said the priest. ‘And there’s no obscenity, not any more.’

‘I wonder if it’ll be any different when she’s talking to me?’ said Hall.

‘Gerald Lomax was quite a bastard, wasn’t he?’ said Cox.

Mason sniggered, cynically. ‘I think he had more of a Multiple Personality Disorder than some people suspected Jennifer of suffering.’

That evening they walked together in the grounds, the first time Jennifer had ventured outside the clinic: her first unguarded outing, in fact, since the murder. It was her suggestion, seized by the psychiatrist, whom she pointedly told she didn’t want to come with her. Just Hall: just the two of them. Jennifer held his right hand tightly in her left and reached across herself to clutch at his arm with the other, so that he was always close, their bodies touching. There was still a faint shimmer from the heat of the day encouraging insect clouds: encouraging, too, other patients out into the grounds. Hall started out carefully to avoid getting recognizably close to anyone before realizing Jennifer was being just as cautious, always keeping anyone else at a distance. He noticed, too, that in whichever direction they went she always kept the buildings in sight, needing their reassuring nearness.

‘Jane isn’t here.’

‘No reason to think about her then: nor talk about her.’ It had been a prompt from Julian Mason, before they’d set out. There had been others. He felt her shrug, beside him.

‘Do you know what this is?’

‘What?’

‘Being normal. Ordinary.’ It was blissful, almost as if she was floating. She tried to hold the sensation, her own special drug blocking out the reality of the unreal.

He squeezed the hand holding his arm against his body, rehearsing what he was going to say, not wanting to break her mood with the wrong word. ‘It’s a good feeling. I’d forgotten it.’

She squeezed back. ‘Were you angry at me?’

‘When?’

‘At the beginning, when I said I didn’t want you: that I wanted a

‘No. That was professional: your choice.’

‘Can you always be impartial, like that?’

‘It’s an essential of the job.’

‘Are you impartial now?’ She looked intently sideways at him.

He wasn’t sure how to answer: wasn’t sure what she even meant by the question. ‘I’m not going to abandon you: leave you by yourself.’

She looked away and walked without speaking for several moments. ‘Thank you, for what you did then. At the trial I mean. I haven’t thanked you before, have I?’

‘You haven’t seen my fee yet,’ he said, trying for lightness.

‘Did you always believe me?’

Truth or lie? Truth, Mason had dictated: no other way, blunt truth in fact. ‘Of course not, not at first. It was too absurd.’

‘What did you think was going to happen?’

Keep to the truth. ‘That the judge would stop the trial. Order the jury to return a verdict on mental incapacity.’

‘Which would have achieved what you wanted all along?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sneaky bastard!’

She actually laughed, the first time he’d ever seen her do that – the first time since they’d met that she’d ever had the slightest cause, he supposed – and Hall came close to faltering. ‘I thought it was the best outcome. The only outcome.’ And still might be, he thought, worriedly.

‘The television is saying that you’re famous now. In demand.’ She veered off the path, on to the grass, to avoid a rapidly approaching track-suited jogger.

‘We’ll see.’ Bert Feltham hadn’t been happy at his continuing to delay a response to the offered briefs: the total, as of the previous evening, stood at twelve.

They walked unspeaking again, in the general direction of a display of oaks, bowed and gnarled by age.

‘They were there hundreds of years before we were born and they’ll be there after we die,’ she said.

The remark unsettled him. He said, ‘But in between we have a life,’ and at once regretted the remark.

‘Do we?’ She turned away from the tree-line, towards the clinic. To have gone around the coppice the other way would have taken the refuge out of sight. ‘Do you know what I thought, on the day it happened? Before it happened: before Jane? I remember thinking that I was the happiest, luckiest, most contented woman in the world…’ She snorted an empty laugh. ‘… Can you believe that?’