Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘Right,’ agreed Johnson, chastened but not knowing why.

Jennifer quickly scrawled her signature, beginning to stand as she finished. ‘Thank you all for coming. And for everything each and every one of you have done for me. I greatly and very sincerely appreciate it. Now you must excuse me. I have another appointment…’ Quickly, while she could still hang on.

None of them were fully to their feet before she swept out of the room.

‘What the hell…!’ exclaimed Perry.

‘We tried to cover too much,’ said Hall. He knew Jennifer did have an appointment, another instruction session with Dawson, but that it wasn’t for another two hours.

‘But we achieved a lot, very satisfactorily,’ said Feltham, picking up and looking at the cheque that Jennifer had signed in full settlement of the legal fees to date. He went directly to the barrister. ‘I charged you at?1,000 an hour, Mr Hall. With refreshers, of course. That’s what I’m quoting from now on, with no assurance that we’ll accept the brief…’ He smiled sideways, at Perry. ‘You might keep that in mind, Humphrey.’ He came back to Hall. ‘As of today you’re officially finished here, sir. Although of course I don’t know what your personal plans are. But I thought I might as well bring some work down, for you to consider. A hospital negligence on behalf of a child damaged by oxygen deprivation: insurance company need their wrists slapped. Heroin possession by the youngest son of an earl: says it was planted on him because his elder brother’s a registered addict. Dodgy, but I think it could be true: there’ve been two police complaint investigations in the division in the past three years, for stitching people up. And a grievous bodily harm. Black kid says he was defending himself against a racist gang: four against one and he gets charged!’

Back to normality, thought Hall. ‘I hope to be in the office in a few days. I’ll look at them before then. Let you know.’

‘It’ll be good to see you there, sir.’

‘What’s it like? The siege, I mean.’

‘Still pretty bad,’ said Feltham. ‘And I suppose it’ll get worse when the word gets around that you’re back. Surprised you got away so easily when you went to Hampshire.’

‘So was I,’ admitted Hall.

‘I didn’t need the reminder frown not to mention Emily,’ complained Johnson.

‘Where is she?’

Johnson shrugged. ‘They’ve gone to Disney, in Paris. And she’s wetting the bed all the time now. Annabelle is genuinely worried.’

‘Have you told Annabelle what’s happened here?’

‘She said she’s glad it’s all over. She thinks it would be best for Emily if they went back to Hampshire, after France. That living under a security screen would be better for the child than wandering about from theme park to theme park.’

‘Any more talk of her quitting?’

‘At least that’s stopped,’ said Johnson. ‘But solicitors for the Metropolitan police have offered a compromise over their policing claim for the hospital. They’re suggesting an independent assessment, by a fee draughtsman.’

‘Rubbish!’ rejected Hall. ‘That’s presupposing an acceptance of responsibility on our part. Which there isn’t. Draughtsmen don’t come into it: someone’s playing with legal words they don’t understand. Tell them we don’t consider there’s anything to negotiate.’

‘It’s going to seem strange, getting back to other work,’ mused Perry. ‘I’m sure you can hardly wait.’

‘It’s certainly going to feel different,’ conceded Hall.

‘It might have been a lot at one session,’ conceded Julian Mason. ‘It’s not a setback.’

‘You don’t seem surprised,’ challenged Hall, curiously.

‘Maybe I’m not.’

‘So you know what it’s about?’

‘I think I probably do.’

‘And I can probably guess.’

‘Jennifer said it was closed, didn’t she?’

‘Something like that. Are you going to tell me?’

‘Of course not. And you should know better even to think I would.’

‘I’m concerned for her, that’s all: want to guard against a repeat of what happened today.’

‘You can do that by forgetting about it.’

‘She was upset by the idea of a book, too.’

‘I can understand that as an initial reaction. But I think it could be thought about more fully.’

‘It would make her into the freak Jane threatened. What she’s terrified of.’

‘Come on!’ said the psychiatrist, brutally. ‘She’s always going to be that. It’s something she’s going to have to learn to live with and don’t ask me how, because I haven’t got a clue.’

‘Have you told her that yet?’

‘She doesn’t have to be told. But she won’t admit it. That’s why it might help to write about it.’

‘How?’

‘If she committed herself to one publisher or one outlet, whatever, the others might eventually go away. But more important than anything, the very act of writing about it would be a catharsis.’

‘Actually benefit her, you mean?’

‘Probably more than I’m going to be able to.’

‘Should I talk to her about it?’

‘It’s all part of encouraging her back into the real world, isn’t it? The real world she hasn’t been in for a long time.’ The psychiatrist looked very directly at the other man. ‘But Jennifer is always going to be a freak.’

‘I ran away.’ She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. She didn’t want to tell him the reason: risk everything.

‘Your choice,’ said Hall.

She wished he hadn’t sounded so disinterested. ‘You sound like Julian. Have you discussed it with him?’

Always honesty, he remembered. ‘Yes.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t tell me why, obviously. Just that it was a matter for you.’ It was their evening walk, to the outer perimeter now although she was still careful to avoid close contact with anyone else. Hall didn’t think Jennifer being there was a secret any more, obviously not among the staff, and was glad that Julian Mason’s assurance about money buying silence had proved true. The danger, then, had always been other patients.

‘I don’t want to tell you.’

‘Then don’t.’

‘I still shouldn’t have run. I panicked.’ She felt so safe on these walks: enjoyed the warmth of his hand, feeling his closeness.

‘It was your first time in a group like that.’

‘It wouldn’t have happened once.’ She hoped she wasn’t sounding self-pitying.

‘You’ve got to learn again.’

They walked on in silence. Jennifer said, ‘Could you help me learn?’

‘I’m not sure that would be helping you.’ The silence lasted longer. This time he broke it. ‘Would a book be such a bad idea?’

‘I wouldn’t know how to begin,’ she protested.

‘You don’t have to study or pass exams to do it, do you? There’d be editors, people like that, to shape it for you. You’d probably get a lot of guidance before you even got started.’

‘It would be like letting people stare at me.’

He searched for the right reply. ‘Or stop them doing it.’

‘I know that’s going to be a problem,’ she admitted.

You don’t, thought Hall: you haven’t any conception. ‘I think you should think about it quite seriously.’

‘I hardly need the money.’

‘I’m not thinking about the money. It would get the whole thing out of your memory.’

‘I don’t imagine anything could ever do that,’ Jennifer said, soberly.

‘I wasn’t talking about forgetting. I was talking about adjusting.’

‘That’s something else I know I’ve got to learn: how to adjust.’

It was time he himself adjusted, Hall decided. Past time. So he had to stop putting it off.