Jennifer shrugged. Silly conversation. Not important. Nothing was important. Couldn’t see Emily’s face on the wall any longer. Glad about that.
‘Would you like us to help you? Get you ready for bed?’ suggested Emma. ‘It’s time you went to bed.’
Another shrug. All right where she was.
‘Here,’ said Emma. ‘Let me help you.’ She held her hands out, for Jennifer to grasp and when she did eased her out of the chair.
Emma was in front of her, Fran behind. Jennifer felt someone’s hands on her breasts but it was very gentle, not unpleasant.
‘Nice. Very nice,’ said Fran.
‘ Say nice. Go on, say it! ’
‘Nice.’
‘Do you like that?’ said Emma, softly.
‘ Yes. Say yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘Time to undress,’ said the woman in front of her. ‘Put your hands on my shoulders, so we can help you.’
Obediently Jennifer felt out, putting her hands where she’d been told. The pony-tailed girl leaned forward, to make it easier, and kissed her very gently, on the cheek at first, then on the lips, parting Jennifer’s lips with her tongue. It was hard, not soft, like a tongue should be soft, pushing and probing. Jennifer pulled back, turning her head. ‘Don’t.’
‘It’s nice,’ said Emma.
‘No,’ said Jennifer. The hands from behind were squeezing her breasts and she shrugged, to loosen the grip. ‘Don’t. Hurts.’
‘Nice if it hurts,’ said Fran, mouth close to Jennifer’s ear.
‘Let’s get these clothes off,’ said Emma. ‘They’re in the way. Don’t you think they’re in the way?’
Jennifer felt the hands on her breasts loosen and lowered her head to see the buttons undone on her jacket. There seemed to be a lot of hands, hands in front and hands from behind, busy fingers, like spiders’ legs. She thought it was funny and sniggered. The jacket came off, then the shirt. She felt the zip go at the back of her skirt and Fran pulled it down from behind, with the waist slip.
‘Step out now. One step forward.’
Jennifer did as she was told, in bra and pants. The blond-haired girl came around from behind, standing with Emma. Both looked at her.
‘Wonderful tits,’ said Emma.
‘Wonderful.’
‘I want the tits.’
‘I’m happy with the cunt.’
‘You’re beautiful, Jennifer. Very beautiful.’
‘ Say you like it. Say it now! I like it.’
‘No.’
‘Yes you are, darling,’ said Emma, not able to understand.
‘ I like it! ’
‘No.’
‘We think so.’
‘ I like it! ’ shouted the voice.
‘I like it.’
Both women smiled, in front of her. ‘We’re all going to like it,’ said Emma. ‘We don’t want that bra on any more, do we?’
Jennifer felt the straps go and looked down as her breasts dropped forward, very slightly. Beyond she saw Fran on her knees and felt her pants ease down over her hips. The girl didn’t stand, but stayed kneeling, hands hard against Jennifer’s buttocks bringing her crotch tight into the face. Jennifer felt something wet, against her clitoris, and wriggled, to try to stop it.
‘Don’t… please…’
‘It’s nice, darling. You know it’s nice.’ Emma’s voice was from behind, both her hands on Jennifer’s breasts, kneading, pricking the nipples between her finger and thumb, hard soft, hard soft.
‘Don’t. You’re hurting.’
‘Lay down,’ urged Emma. ‘It will be better if you lie down. Here we go.’
Unprotesting, consciousness ebbing and flowing, Jennifer let herself be laid on the bed and was glad because she wanted to lie down. She felt her legs eased apart and looked down and saw only the top of a blond head between her legs and felt a lot more wetness, something stiff yet soft licking at her and something stiff inside her, working up and down, and she grew wet. Briefly, momentarily, the wetness stopped from outside although something inside still went up and down and Fran’s head came up, so that Jennifer could see her smiling face and then it was gone again, back between her legs. She couldn’t see the blond head any more because Emma was in the way now, bent over her breasts, gently biting and sucking and biting and sucking. It hurt but not badly and Jennifer didn’t protest or try to close her legs because she was too tired and really couldn’t feel any more. Jane was trying to say something but Jennifer couldn’t properly hear. Maybe it wasn’t words. Maybe it was just laughter.
‘I want her cunt now.’
‘Not yet.’
‘We should have brought the cock.’
‘Next time.’
‘Let me have the cunt now.’
‘She’s tight, on two fingers.’
‘Did she come?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is going to be wonderful, having her like this.’
‘Let me have her cunt now!’
The two women hurriedly swopped. Neither spoke, engrossed in new things, new parts.
At last Fran said, ‘This is fantastic.’
‘Her ass is tight, too,’ said Emma. ‘Hardly get my finger in.’
‘I don’t want to share her, not yet.’
‘We won’t.’ Emma rose, from between Jennifer’s legs. Fran came down to the bottom of the bed and together they stood gazing down at the spread-eagled, unconscious woman.
‘You’ve made her bleed,’ said Fran.
‘Probably her ass. She really was tight.’
‘We’ll bring the cock tomorrow.’
‘That’ll be fun.’
‘I came,’ said Fran.
‘So did I.’
‘But I want to come again. I want you to fuck me.’
‘With the cock.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’d be good. Fun tonight as well as tomorrow.’
As they passed the matron’s office they both chorused ‘Goodnight’ and Matron Harrison said ‘Goodnight’ back. She didn’t have to go to the dispensary again, because she’d got what she wanted the first visit.
She stood for a long time gazing down at Jennifer’s naked, leg-spread body, as the other two women had done. In a baby-soothing voice she said, ‘What did they do to you, you poor little thing. You’ll be all sore in the morning. But don’t cry, little one, nursey will make it better. I’m going to rub it with nice, soft cream. That’ll make it better. Nice and soft, take the pain away. There…’
The voice said, ‘ You don’t know how you’re going to suffer,’ but Jennifer didn’t hear.
Chapter Seventeen
There was no alternative to a mental-illness defence. Jeremy Hall supposed he had known that from the beginning, despite Jennifer’s insistence and the unexpectedly conflicting opinions from a lot of the professional experts – prosecution as well as defence – quite a few of whom still had tests and examinations they wanted to carry out or repeat but all of whose findings so far were going to make that defence a mountainously uphill struggle. He’d let them go through the motions, of course: all part of justice being seen to be done. But that’s all it could be, recognized routines with fancy names like Schneider’s First Rank Symptoms assessment to protect their judgement against contrary challenge and impressively to fill the invoice page when they submitted their exorbitant final bills.
Hall was most surprised of all – disappointed even – by Julian Mason’s adamant refusal, after Jennifer’s agreement, to have their final sessions with her under the influence of pentathol, the truth drug, to testify to a mental imbalance, despite having personally witnessed Jennifer’s attack upon the child. Any small doubts that Hall had harboured – and they’d been very small indeed – had disappeared with that frenzied episode that to remember still made his skin crawl.
But Mason wasn’t alone: just the only psychiatrist who’d had the personal experience. With the exception of Milton Smith, the London-based American psychiatrist who w
as prepared to give evidence of Multiple Personality Disorder, the independent and preliminary agreement of the other three defence psychiatrists was that although Jennifer showed some signs of schizophrenia by hearing a voice and the depressed regression into which she’d sunk after the attack on Emily, mental illness was too arguably uncertain for them to give a positive diagnosis. So arguable, in fact, that each had so far indicated they were coming down on the side of sanity.
Most bewildering of all was their unanimous finding, like that of Mason, that the coherent if sometimes obscene conversational logic of what Jennifer claimed to be Jane speaking – the prime indicator of schizophrenia – proved rather than disproved she wasn’t suffering from the illness. Hall’s problem of mounting any sort of defence acceptable to a court was compounded by each of the three prosecution psychiatrists, although again agreeing some mental disorientation, also being prepared to swear there was insufficient mental disturbance to amount to diminished responsibility. Which wasn’t the end of Hall’s problems. There’d been two separate neurological examinations, during which Jennifer had undergone electroencephalograms, in addition to all the other tests administered by George Fosdyke, including brain and upper body scans. Both had registered absolutely normal, showing no physical cause for Jennifer’s condition.
Hall accepted that what little he had was all he could possibly expect for a very fragile and uncertain mitigation plea, apart from the outstanding psychiatric assessments which he didn’t anticipate would do anything to help him and which shouldn’t take longer than a week to complete.
Perry had made brilliant background preparation. Because of Jennifer’s possession claim – the major thrust of his intended defence – the solicitor had gone beyond obtaining a complete transcript of the Jane Lomax inquest – discovering in doing so that Bentley had done the same in an effort to uncover a missed murder – by having a Washington lawyer provide a full medical and personal history of Gerald and Jane Lomax before their transfer to England. Perry had extended the lawyer’s investigation to include a dossier on Rebecca Nicholls, which they’d had to make available to the prosecution under the rules of disclosure and which Hall was sure would be made into a major part of the case against Jennifer.
It appeared Lomax’s affair with Rebecca had begun at least three years earlier – maybe even before that – and that during their return trips to New York they had occupied Rebecca’s Manhattan apartment virtually as husband and wife. They’d continued to do that, in the London flat, during the nights Lomax spent in London while Jennifer remained in the country with Emily. When he’d given Hall the Rebecca Nicholls’ file Perry had remarked that Lomax seemed quite a bastard and after reading it Hall agreed with the assessment. In view of her mental state he would have liked a lot of it kept from Jennifer but objectively realized it was a forlorn hope, providing as it did the vengeance grounds upon which the prosecution were making their case, which was founded on the incontestably concreted evidence of sixteen people witnessing the killing. And which was going to be supported, because of their doubt about mental illness, by at least half a dozen of the country’s foremost mind doctors. By contrast – but he feared easily overwhelmed by the weight of evidence against her – the biography he had of Jennifer Lomax, nee Stone, was of a Mensa-level woman who professionally had been relentless to succeed, which she had, and whose only known failing was to have embarked upon an affair with a married man whom she’d subsequently married and who, ever since, had lived a faultless, blameless, charity organizing life. He paused at the final thought: charities that couldn’t now fast enough get rid of her, an embarrassing encumbrance.
The final acknowledgement of the obstacles he faced further unsettled Hall, who single-mindedly had set out on a Bar career to become even more respected and famous – but more importantly, richer – than his respected and famous uncle. Which required the same absolutely ruthless objectivity which his uncle possessed and of which irritatingly he knew himself at that precise moment to be a victim. But an absolute ruthlessness which he, personally, hadn’t so far shown: if not his heart he’d most certainly worn his integrity on his sleeve. He’d wanted to do his best for Jennifer Lomax – was still determined to do his best for and by Jennifer Lomax – but he had to accept reality. And the reality was that he was defending a case as hopeless as he’d recognized it to be from the very first sherry-and-bullshit session with Sir Richard and the inhaler-puffing Bert Feltham, partners in cynical ruthlessness. Recognized but refused to recognize, he reminded himself, permitting no personal excuses. He’d been fooling himself: allowing himself to forget and minimize the horrific awfulness of her crime because he’d been too hungrily eager to make a career. Which he would – because he was determined – but not with this case. He’d given it a potential it didn’t have. Had never had.
At once came another scathing personal examination. If he’d known it was an unwinnable case from the beginning – which he had – and known he was an inconsequential cog in some complicated higher chambers machination – which he also had – why did he have this incomplete feeling, this belief he couldn’t shake off that there was something more that he should have done, should have recognized, but hadn’t? Get-to-the-top-whatever ambition? Nothing to do with it. Something quite different, quite inexplicable. There was a gap, an empty place or a missing piece from a jig-saw with no missing pieces, a complete picture that didn’t have to be assembled. He had all the parts: every statement, almost every scientific and forensic result, every reason, every motive, every witness. Himself a witness to the madness even. There couldn’t be a gap, a piece that didn’t fit. Inexperience, Hall decided. Easy to rationalize – to understand – if he stopped looking outside and looked inwardly instead at himself, which he was at last doing. His first murder. Newspaper coverage because Jennifer Lomax was beautiful and her cheating husband was a millionaire. The carnage of the crime. He’d wanted her to be not guilty. So he’d disregarded facts and common sense and more forensic evidence than any other murder case in the English criminal history of homicide about which he’d read about or studied or been officially lectured about.
It had all been absurd fantasy, the half-awake-at-night dream that indefensible though it appeared he was going to produce some incredible, last-minute proof of innocence – virtually impossible and almost certainly inadmissible under the rules of disclosure – and lead the beautiful, blond, smiling Jennifer Lomax to face the cameras and a life of innocent freedom. If he tried hard enough, he could probably have imagined the soaring music – lots of violins – that normally accompanied such soap-box endings.
Despite the self-honesty the overlooked feeling wouldn’t go. It stayed nagging in his mind and he wondered if this was what Jane’s voice in Jennifer’s head was like until he realized what he was wondering – that he was accepting the very presence of a voice in Jennifer’s head – and refused to let the speculation run.
His internal telephone buzzed, to warn him that Humphrey Perry was on his way up from that day’s remand hearing, and Hall pushed the case notes aside.
‘Before we begin,’ Hall said, as the older man entered the room. ‘I want to say that I think the preparation is magnificent. I’m in your debt. Thank you.’
Perry, whose opinion of the barrister had changed during the pre-trial weeks, actually flushed. ‘I wish there was a possibility of it working out differently from how it will.’
‘That’s what I want to discuss,’ said Hall. ‘The way forward.’
‘There was no change,’ reported Perry. ‘She’s still wrapped in apathy.’
‘Abject depression is a schizophrenic symptom.’
‘I’ve read all the expert opinions: I commissioned them,’ reminded Perry.
‘What about outbursts?’
‘Usual abuse, to Mrs Heathcote: asked her how many times a day she masturbated. And references again to Jennifer herself being assaulted in the prison hospital.’
‘What about that, exactly?’ pressed Hall.
‘Did you?’ asked Hall.
Perry nodded. ‘After today’s hearing. She said nothing was happening: that it was Jane, making her say it. And immediately afterwards said it was true but that Jane made her say that, too.’
Hall sighed, shaking his head. ‘Mason says he thinks there’s some abuse…’ Hall rustled his hand through the dossiers in front of him. ‘… Not in his report. He telephoned.’
‘He told me the same,’ said Perry. ‘That’s why I made a point of seeing the governor again today. He assured me she’s in the safest place, in the hospital. And that he’s made the matron personally responsible.’
Hall sighed again. ‘What about the election to go direct to a higher court, bypassing committal?’
Perry smiled, wryly. ‘If I hadn’t applied for it I think Mrs Heathcote would have suggested it herself. She seems to be the only person without the slightest doubt that Jennifer Lomax is stark, raving mad. I’ve sent her a note, thanking her for her forebearance. She’s taken a lot of abuse.’
Hall tapped the files in front of him, reminded. ‘Despite what all the experts say, it’s got to be diminished responsibility?’
‘That’s all it was ever going to be.’
‘And because of what the experts say – or rather won’t say – we’re going to have to introduce the episode with Emily,’ insisted Hall. ‘Bring it out when Lloyd and Annabelle Parkes are on the stand and call the two policewomen. You and Johnson, too.’
Perry shook his head, sadly. ‘What a way to prove she’s mentally unstable.’
‘Can you think of a better way, so that I can avoid doing this?’
‘It wasn’t a criticism,’ said Perry, quickly. ‘It’s the only thing you can do: the best of a bad job.’
‘Did you tell her I’d need two or three sessions, before the trial?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything about a QC?’
Perry shook his head. ‘There hasn’t been, for quite a while now. Like I said, her apathy is pretty complete.’
A Mind to Kill Page 17