A Mind to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  Perry gazed across the car at the other man, acknowledging the ploy with an admiring nod but not immediately starting the engine. ‘Jarvis doesn’t want court time wasted on a full trial.’

  ‘Bugger what Jarvis wants!’ said Hall. ‘Show me a different way to achieve what has to be achieved, in the best interest of Jennifer Lomax, and I’ll take it!’

  ‘I wish I could,’ said Perry, solemnly.

  ‘So do I,’ said Hall.

  ‘Jarvis will feel-’

  ‘I don’t need to be told what Jarvis will feel,’ stopped Hall. ‘I know.’

  The ponderous silence stretched interminably, Sir Ivan Jarvis staring fixedly at Hall, and even Simon Keflin-Brown, who normally would have found the temptation irresistible, didn’t attempt any courtroom idiosyncracies. There were no coughs, no foot scuffing.

  At last Jarvis said, ‘Could it be that I failed to make myself clear?’

  ‘You made yourself abundantly clear, my Lord,’ said Hall. He’d wanted to cough but hadn’t and the assurance croaked out.

  ‘Then perhaps you haven’t made yourself clear to your client?’

  ‘I have, my Lord.’

  ‘During how many conferences, since our last meeting?’

  ‘Three, my Lord.’

  ‘Logged meetings?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘I am displeased, Mr Hall.’

  ‘I have explained, in the clearest possible detail, the courses open to my client. She repeats her instruction that she pleads not guilty to the major charge, that of murder.’

  To the prosecuting barrister the judge said, ‘You have been apprised of this?’

  ‘I have, my Lord: I’m obliged to my learned friend.’

  Turning to his clerk Jarvis said, ‘What’s the calendar allowance?’

  ‘Two weeks, my Lord,’ said the man, as usual not needing to consult the diary.

  Coming back to Hall, the man said, ‘You will remember what I said about tricks, won’t you?’

  ‘I will, my Lord.’

  ‘If you don’t, I shall be very quick to remind you.’

  In the corridor outside Keflin-Brown said, ‘I don’t envy you one moment of it. I’ll do what I can to help. My case is proven before it starts, after all.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You did make three prison visits, didn’t you?’ pressed the older barrister.

  ‘Yes.’ Jennifer had remained as brightly alert as before and boasted about resisting the voice, which she appeared to be doing: certainly there hadn’t been any unintelligible interruptions or swearing. She’d actually become angry when he’d pressed her to reconsider the plea, dismissing it and instead handing him a long list of clothes and accessories she wanted brought up from Hampshire for her court appearances.

  ‘Good,’ said Keflin-Brown. ‘You know the old bugger will check, don’t you? That’s why he asked if they were logged.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘There’s nothing ever funny about Sir Ivan Jarvis. Which you’re going to find out.’

  He’d spent the two previous weekends engrossed in the case notes and been unsure if he could spare the time to come out on the river this Saturday. In the end he decided he needed the relaxation in anticipation of what the next fortnight might bring. But he was stiff, not concentrating sufficiently: at the beginning he frequently mis-oared and dug too deep to feather until he consciously forced himself to dismiss the case from his mind, to get the slide moving easily and build up the rhythm. Hall got it, finally, feeling the cramped tension ease from his back and shoulders, building up until the narrow boat was smoothly cleaving the water: as he thrust beneath Richmond Bridge a group of Japanese tourists leaned over the parapet to photograph him and Hall wondered how many times in the next two weeks his photograph was going to be taken. For what, he reflected, could be the obituary of a failed legal career.

  It was inevitable that Jennifer would commit some outrage from the dock and just as inevitable that because of it Jarvis would intervene with instructions to the jury about diminished responsibility. And most inevitable of all that the old man would consider it the sort of trick against which he’d specifically warned, forcing as it would the court to make the decision Jennifer Lomax had failed to be persuaded to make for herself. Trick or not – and Hall didn’t totally agree that it was – it would serve Jennifer Lomax’s best interests. Which was his primary concern, as her counsel.

  Jeremy Hall wished he could resolve the doubt in his mind that he was still in some way failing her. He abruptly decided to cut the row short and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening going yet again over notes and statements he’d already read so many times he knew them verbatim. His rowing concentration gone again, he missed his stroke altogether with his left blade, veering the boat abruptly sideways, and a group of people watching from Mortlake bridge laughed at him.

  ***

  He finished reading everything and considered calling Patricia, who hadn’t telephoned him since the can’t-make-it message on the answering machine. Hall supposed he’d have to become accustomed to being laughed at in the coming weeks.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jennifer had a soaring, uplifting feeling of release being taken from prison, which she acknowledged at once was precisely what it was and what it should be: since the day of Gerald’s death she had been imprisoned, first in the cell-like hospital room and then in an actual cell, although part of the prison hospital.

  The escape wasn’t total, however. There was, in fact, something new, a torture that hadn’t been inflicted before. Jennifer hadn’t been conscious of the voice when she’d emerged from her drugged sleep that morning, as she usually was, but when she became fully awake her body tingled with the numbness of Jane’s presence. But there wasn’t a taunting voice. Instead, at Jennifer’s moment of awareness, there was a cough, the subdued sound of a watcher in the shadows. Which, she accepted, was the perfect description, except that this watcher wasn’t in the shadows, waiting to pounce, but in her mind. But still waiting, she didn’t know for what. Or when. Jennifer positively let the thought linger, challenging Jane to read it and react – to let Jane know she wasn’t surprised or caught out by the change of torment – but still the voice didn’t come. There were, though, the occasional coughs of a patient stalker.

  Which Jennifer ignored, practically succeeding in submerging the occasional interruption beneath the growing euphoria at getting beyond four narrow, enclosing walls. For which she made meticulous preparation. A?100 cheque kept the insistent matron (‘nursey will wash you: just lay back,’) on the other side of the locked bathroom door and provided the dryer to get her hair in perfect shape. Because the mirrors were larger she made up in the bathroom, too. She did so discreetly, the lightest blusher, the minimum of mascara, a pale lipline, determined to look her absolute best. And most of all, for every minute of every day that the trial might take, to appear in control.

  She decided she’d made a good clothes selection during that last plea-persuasion meeting with Jeremy Hall. For the opening day of the trial she chose the severe, although loosely tailored blue Dior suit and a plainly cut voile shirt to create the appearance she’d favoured when she’d worked at Enco-Corps, subtly feminine but more obviously no-nonsense businesslike. It was also, she remembered, how she’d usually dressed for the committee meetings of the charities and fund-raising groups that had so very quickly found her name an encumbrance. Jennifer returned to the larger bathroom mirror to survey the complete effect, glad the long sleeves completely hid the worst of the scars. She’d included gloves in her clothes request and considered wearing them, to cover the damage to her hands, but decided against it until she’d assessed the court.

  Beryl Harrison was waiting directly outside the bathroom when Jennifer emerged. She said, ‘You look lovely. Beautiful.’ The reaching out was not really to feel the material but for some brief, physical contact. As Jennifer followed the escort along the corridors, towards the exit, she pass
ed Emma and Fran, together as always. Emma told her to hurry back and Fran said, ‘I like that outfit. That would look good on me. I’ll have to try it on.’

  Jennifer strained to see something, anything, of the streets along which the prison van moved but the windows were small and heavily tinted and hardly anything registered. One of the escorting wardresses, a motherly woman, said, ‘Here it is then. Your big day.’

  Jennifer smiled but said nothing. There was a cough in her head, a more positive throat-clearing than any before. Jennifer stiffened but nothing came.

  The same wardress said, ‘We’re almost there. I’d sit back, if I were you.’

  Jennifer did, although not knowing why. The van began to slow and then abruptly there was an eruption of blinding light through three of the windows.

  ‘Cameramen,’ explained the wardress. ‘They shoot blind through the windows. It hardly ever works. Don’t know why they do it. They won’t have got you.’

  After the virtual isolation of the past weeks, Jennifer found the sudden bustle and activity strangely disorientating. The yard beyond the shielding-off, high-gated entrance was jammed with police cars and vans and men and woman in police and prison officer uniform. The escorting wardresses formed up either side and walked her into the building. Almost directly inside was a reception office, where her arrival was officially listed in a ledger and a clerk signed a receipt which Jennifer realized was for her, as if she was a product or a package. Still unspeaking they led her on, nodding and occasionally greeting other officers and prison staff as they passed.

  The cell at which they stopped was half-tiled. In its centre there was a scarred table with a tin ashtray in its middle. There was a chair either side and two more against the wall, below the barred window. There was no bed or obvious toilet, but there was a pervading smell of urine. The wardress who had remained silent until now said, ‘Do you want to pee or anything? Once you’re in court you’ll be stuck, not able to go.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s your last chance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If her brief hurries, we’ll be able to get a cup of tea before we have to go up,’ said the talkative wardress to the other. And then smiled as Jeremy Hall appeared at the door.

  Hall was smiling, too. Humphrey Perry was directly behind. He was blank-faced.

  ‘The suit’s just right. Perfect.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘OK.’ The excitement of no longer being incarcerated was ebbing away, back in yet another cell.

  ‘Not frightened?’ asked Hall.

  Jennifer didn’t answer at once. ‘I’ve never been in a court before but no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘There’s quite a lot of ritual. Tradition. Don’t pay any attention to it. But you must leave everything to me. Not try to address the court yourself.’

  ‘I’ll do my best not to let anything happen. She’s doing something different. I know she’s with me but she’s not talking. Trying to upset me now by saying nothing. Just lurking.’

  Perry, who’d brought up one of the spare chairs to sit beside the other lawyer, shifted but didn’t speak. His chair grated, jarringly.

  ‘How do you know she’s with you?’ asked Hall.

  ‘I won’t tell you, remember? She’ll know if I tell you. Maybe do something to stop me knowing.’ She wondered if that would get any reaction but there was no sound in her head.

  Perry sighed.

  Hall said, ‘I forgot. If you want to say anything to me you can do it through Mr Perry. Write a note or ask him to come up to the dock. That’s acceptable. For several days it’ll just be the prosecution evidence.’ And a lot more he didn’t want to contemplate, he thought, fearfully.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘We’ve done well with jury selection.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Ensured, as best we can, what might be the most favourable jury.’

  Jennifer’s frown deepened. ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘I challenged the men to the allowable limit and got them replaced by women.’ He regretted now making the comment at all: the composition wouldn’t have meant anything to her if he hadn’t mentioned it.

  ‘More sympathetic to me about Rebecca, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not part of my defence.’

  ‘It’s the key to the prosecution, which I’ve got to do everything to confront.’

  ‘Which I expect you to do very well.’

  Hall half shrugged, looking around the bare room. ‘You can have food brought in during the trial, if you’d like. I don’t think what they provide here is much good.’

  ‘I’m not very interested in eating. Maybe I’ll think about it tomorrow. But thank you for the thought.’ It seemed a long time since anyone had treated her with any kindness or personal consideration. She realized how much she’d missed it. Suddenly she demanded, ‘Are you frightened?’

  ‘No,’ blinked Hall, startled. He was glad she hadn’t asked if he was apprehensive, which he didn’t consider the same thing, the most minimal element of fear and therefore hardly qualifying. And if she had he would have lied to retain her confidence. But he was apprehensive. Not of any one single danger but generally concerned, mostly about the unknown. Whatever happened it was going to be a parody of a proper trial until Jarvis intervened to stop it and Hall accepted he personally would be the object of every sort of criticism and outrage. And not only – just most immediately and directly – from Jarvis but at every other legal level. Realistically Jarvis’s influence disappeared with the old man’s retirement and Hall expected to retain his place in the Proudfoot chambers even after Sir Richard’s elevation because he was the man’s nephew. But it would be a long time, if ever, before a brief was offered to him by name. And even longer before Bert Feltham accepted one for him, named or not.

  ‘I’m glad you’re not frightened,’ said Jennifer. ‘And I appreciate what you’ve done for me.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything for you yet,’ Hall reminded.

  ‘What you’re going to do for me,’ Jennifer corrected.

  ‘I have to go and robe,’ said Hall, standing. ‘Do you want to make yourself comfortable before the court?’

  ‘No,’ refused Jennifer again. ‘And I want to apologize, for going on about a QC. I trust you.’

  As they climbed the stairs to reach the robing room Perry said, ‘Yet another amazing transformation. The voice has mysteriously gone away and you’re the barrister she wants after all.’

  ‘She’ll change her mind soon enough when she sees how I’m going to let the trial go.’

  ‘What mind?’ dismissed the solicitor, allowing the contemptuous cynicism.

  Hall shrugged but didn’t bother with a reply. He was taking the only defence course open to him with Jennifer Lomax but he couldn’t lose the feeling that he was in some way failing her.

  Preoccupied as she was by space – or lack of it – Jennifer was surprised by the comparative smallness of the court. Her expected imagery came from films and television, invariably American, in which legal surroundings barely achieved their supposed officialdom from just the raised dais for the judge and the pen for the jury, but otherwise looked like church halls.

  Where she was going to be tried didn’t look anything like a church hall and scarcely appeared half the size of one. Jeremy Hall’s word – tradition – came immediately into her still clear mind as Jennifer entered the dock and gazed around her, registering everything. The brass-railed dock that was to be her place for the duration of the trial dominated the floor of the court, only slightly lower in its elevated height to the carved, wood-canopied and Royal emblem-surmounted bench from which the judge would preside, from the huge and momentarily unoccupied red leather, button-backed throne.

  In the well of the court, seemingly far below her, were the bewigged and raven-robed barristers – Jeremy Hall’s wig was far whiter, his ro
be far newer than any around him – with their instructing junior counsel and solicitors in battle-ready formation behind: surrounded by so many artificial headpieces, Humphrey Perry’s domed bald head stood out like a pebble in a stream. Facing them but directly below the judge’s position was the robed and wigged court clerk with other officials and to their left a bespectacled, grey-haired woman at a stenograph.

  The press gallery was behind her and already full, a flurry and buzz of attention erupting the moment Jennifer’s head appeared above the rail. A girl in a jean suit and a bearded man at the very edge of the gallery immediately began sketching in large pads, heads jerking up and down like mechanical dolls as they tried to capture her likeness. The jury box was on the opposite side of the court to the press, tiered up on two levels. Remembering the downstairs cell conversation, she counted ten women and two men. They all concentrated upon her entry but with less noise than the press opposite. The public gallery was behind and above, far too high for her to see how many people were in it. From the noise she guessed it to be crowded. The seat towards which her two escorts gestured her was centred in the dock to micrometer exactness and appeared heavily padded until she sat down. The leather didn’t give, remaining rock hard and Jennifer accepted it was going to be an uncomfortable experience physically as well as in a lot of other respects.

  Down in his pit far below Hall turned unexpectedly, catching her eye. He smiled and nodded to her. She was unsure whether to respond but in the end nodded back, although she didn’t smile. With the barrister facing in his direction, Perry leaned forward for a huddled conversation. Hall’s smile died, his face at once serious. There were more jerky nods of agreement before he turned back to the still empty bench.

  There was a cough inside Jennifer’s head.

  ‘The court will rise,’ demanded the court clerk, loudly.

  It did, in straggled unison. Jennifer had been ready, aware of the clerk preparing to make the announcement, but the unintended movement surged through her as she rose. It would have brought her forward in a jump that might have spread-eagled her over the bar of the dock if she hadn’t been ready for that, too. As it was she staggered forward and clutched out for the rail, needing to cling to it in the effort to suppress the uncoordinated vibrations that racked through her body, violent enough to have thrown her off her feet if she hadn’t been holding on. She felt the wardresses at either arm, holding her, and saw the entering judge stop and stare red-faced towards her. His attention directed that of the lawyers, most of whom turned. The jury and media were already gazing at her in astonishment, several of the journalists scribbling hurriedly.