A Mind to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘ Great tits. Gerald always was a tit man, wasn’t he? That and cunt-sucking. You think he did that with her? Sure he did. She probably gave him head, too. Nose to tail, like a couple of vacuum cleaners.’

  Jennifer held herself in her rigid pose, gripping the seat edge, legs entwined. The press concentration was entirely upon Rebecca, the same artists as the previous day sketching rapidly.

  Keflin-Brown was on his feet, the consummate ringmaster about to present his best act. The barrister took Rebecca smoothly through her Euro-Corps career, demanding suddenly: ‘And now you’re acknowledged its leading trader?’

  The question seemed to surprise everyone as much as Rebecca. She said, ‘I’ve achieved the highest commission over three successive years, yes.’

  ‘As Mrs Lomax did, before her marriage?’

  ‘I fail to see the relevance of that question,’ protested Hall, quickly standing.

  ‘A question of resentment, jealousy, at being replaced in every way?’ suggested the older barrister.

  ‘I see no problem with it…’ began the judge and then ‘Oh, Mr Hall, really!’

  Ann thrust a handkerchief into Jennifer’s hand. As she mopped her face she saw Rebecca look at her, lip curled in disgust. Now her make-up would be smeared, Jennifer thought.

  ‘ Like a clown’s,’ agreed Jane.

  Jennifer felt her body being thrown to the left and tensed as hard as she could against it. Abruptly the sensation reversed and she went violently to the right, propelled by her own strength. Ann grabbed her. When Jennifer righted herself Rebecca was faintly smirking.

  ‘So you replaced Mrs Lomax in more ways than one?’ scored Keflin-Brown.

  ‘I became the top trader,’ said Rebecca, stiffly.

  ‘ On top of the boss.’

  ‘You were, in fact, working on the trading floor on the day of Gerald Lomax’s death?’

  ‘Yes.’ Some of the confidence went out of the woman.

  ‘Describe it to us,’ demanded Keflin-Brown.

  ‘It was two-forty. We’re very conscious of precise time: that’s how trades are recorded. There are clocks on the wall, directly beneath Gerry’s office, showing the time variations in every major financial centre of the World…’ began Rebecca, her presentation perfect.

  ‘ I bet she’s rehearsed, in front of a mirror. Look at her, performing for the newspapers! ’

  It was exactly what the woman was doing, Jennifer saw. Rebecca was turned slightly away from the judge, more interested in addressing the scribbling gallery.

  ‘… I wasn’t aware of Mrs Lomax coming out of the elevator on the mezzanine floor above, but I was conscious of other traders looking up so I did and I saw her…’

  ‘… Through the all-glass design of the office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were able to see everything, in perfect and clear detail?’

  ‘Yes. As she walked, Mrs Lomax was tapping her fingers against the corridor wall. That’s what attracted the people who saw her first.’

  ‘Which hand was she tapping with?’

  ‘Her right. It had to be, because of the approach from the elevator.’

  ‘Where was her left?’

  ‘It appeared to be inside a large shoulder bag.’

  ‘Did she look down at you?’

  ‘Not then. She was staring straight ahead.’

  ‘ My little robot.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I saw her walk into Gerald’s office. He got up, to meet her…’ Rebecca stopped, putting her hand to her face, shoulders heaving. There were no tears.

  ‘ Worth a fucking Oscar.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ enquired the barrister.

  Rebecca nodded, without replying. After several moments she went on, quiet-voiced, ‘It was awful. Terrible. She suddenly had a knife in her hand-’

  This knife?’ interrupted Keflin-Brown, gesturing the court usher, who rose and offered the plastic-enveloped exhibit to the woman. There was still blood on the blade.

  Rebecca physically recoiled. ‘That looks like it.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I didn’t see where it came from. It was just there, in her hand

  …’ Rebecca’s lip quivered. ‘She began slashing and cutting him with it. Stabbing. Wouldn’t stop…’ She broke off again, both hands up against her mouth, the left hand on the outside with the ring visible. ‘… She just wouldn’t stop! He tried to fight her but she’d stabbed him a lot. There was…’ Another gulped break. ‘… blood everywhere. Spurting. Hitting the window…’

  ‘ Say wonderful! ’ shouted Jane.

  Jennifer was totally engrossed in the horror, hand-hold even relaxed. ‘Wonderf…’ came out before she could prevent it, sufficient for everyone to decipher the bitten off word.

  Perry swivelled, making waving-down gestures.

  Jarvis said, ‘Mr Hall! One more outburst and I will send your client down into the cells! And that’s my last warning.’

  ‘ Ah. Don’t want that. You’ve got to stay up here, where everyone can see you. Santa’s little helper’s just saved you, Jennifer. What about that? ’

  Perry was at the dock rail. ‘I know it’s difficult but please try to control yourself.’ The stage whisper easily reached the tightly packed journalists.

  Jennifer nodded. ‘She doesn’t want me out of court.’

  ‘The accused said something, Mr Hall?’ demanded Jarvis.

  Perry bustled back, cupping his hand to Jeremy Hall’s ear. The young barrister turned back to the judge and said, ‘My client promises not to interrupt again, my Lord.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a choice,’ said the small man, nodding to Keflin-Brown.

  ‘Go on, if you can,’ urged the barrister.

  ‘… It was terrible. Obscene. Just stabbing and blood. Blood everywhere. Then Gerald stopped fighting. Stopped moving…’

  ‘What was the next thing to happen?’

  ‘She came and stood at the window, laughing. Just stared down at us and laughed and laughed…’

  ‘ Christ, I enjoyed that. Looking down at the stupid fuckers.’

  ‘How, exactly, did she stand, Ms Nicholls?’

  ‘With her hands outstretched, against the window. Supporting herself… People began running then. Roger… Roger Jones, the floor manager, began going upstairs. Someone had already rung the police.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Stayed where I was.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t think there was anything I could do. Others were following Roger.’

  ‘Was that the only reason you didn’t go upstairs, Ms Nicholls?’

  ‘I was frightened.’

  ‘I’m sure everyone was frightened. Was there any particular reason for your being more frightened than anyone else?’

  ‘ Doesn’t your heart go out to her! ’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Rebecca, hushed-voiced again.

  ‘ Last time I saw a performance like this it really did win an Oscar. ’

  ‘You were Gerald Lomax’s lover, weren’t you?’ said Keflin-Brown, the tone almost as if he were confronting a hostile witness.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Four years.’

  ‘Not four and a half years?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘How long had you been aware that Mrs Lomax had learned of your relationship with her husband?’

  ‘Objection, my Lord!’ protested Hall. ‘This court has had no evidence of Mrs Lomax knowing of an affair between her husband and Ms Nicholls.’

  ‘Let’s get things in their proper sequence, shall we, Mr Keflin-Brown?’ sighed Jarvis.

  ‘I beg the court’s indulgence,’ said the barrister. ‘A regrettable oversight. Allow me to rephrase the question.’

  ‘ Too late for it not to have been heard and taken on board by every member of the jury.’

  ‘Did you have any reason to believe Mrs Lomax knew of your affair with her husband?’
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br />   ‘Not positively.’

  ‘Not positively?’ echoed the lawyer. ‘What then? How then?’

  ‘We’d talked about it, Gerald and I.’

  ‘Talked about what?’

  ‘His telling her he wanted a divorce.’

  No! thought Jennifer, anguished. Please no. Wasn’t true. Couldn’t be true. He wouldn’t have abandoned her. Abandoned Emily. Already decided that. Decided it was impossible. Just sex. Nothing else. Sex.

  ‘ Just like it was with me: going to dump you just like the two of you dumped me. What a shit! Think you’d have lived, Jennifer? Just think: I could have saved your life by killing him. He had to die though. Everything’s working out exactly as I planned.’

  In the well of the court Hall was studying Rebecca Nicholls’ sworn statement to Superintendent Bentley.

  ‘Did he?’ asked Keflin-Brown.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re wearing a very beautiful ring. Diamonds, are they not, around a central stone?’

  Jennifer closed her eyes, trying to shut out the sight of Rebecca and the ring and the court: shut out everything to curl up into the smallest ball that no-one could see and die. Why fight any more? No point. Give up. Plead however Jeremy Hall wanted her to plead and be sent somewhere as a sex toy, to be played with. Emily, she remembered. Had to survive – to fight – so there was someone to look after Emily. Jennifer waited for the taunt but Jane put no thoughts in her head.

  ‘ You’re doing fine, torturing yourself. ’

  ‘Who bought that ring for you, Ms Nicholls?’

  ‘Gerry.’

  ‘Does it have a particular significance?’

  ‘He bought it for me when we talked of getting married.’

  ‘An engagement ring, in fact?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you think, when you saw what Jennifer Lomax did to her husband that dreadful day in the office of Euro-Corps?’

  ‘That he had told her.’

  ‘And were you too frightened to go up to where your lover – your future husband – lay dying because you were afraid she’d try to kill you, too?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rebecca looked away from the press gallery, to stare directly and accusingly at Jennifer.

  ‘There is a child, a daughter, from Mr Lomax’s marriage to the accused, isn’t there?’

  ‘Emily,’ confirmed the woman.

  A fury, a hatred, boiled up within Jennifer. She began physically to shake, without encouragement from Jane.

  ‘ That’s how I felt, Jennifer. Worse than you, even. That’s why I killed Gerald and why I’m doing what I am to you. Balancing the score. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Only fair, after what you did .’

  ‘Steady,’ hissed Ann, close beside her. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘You are, in fact, Emily’s godmother, are you not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A child you love, like your own.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jennifer’s shaking worsened and she felt Ann’s hand on her arm, restraining her.

  ‘Was there any discussion between you and Mr Lomax about Emily?’

  ‘He said whatever happened he couldn’t give her up: that Emily was his life. And that he’d make Jennifer agree to his having Emily with us.’

  Jennifer felt an emptiness, a void. He couldn’t have been this cruel. He would have had to hate her to be this cruel: to have used her, like the matron and Emma and Fran and Harriet used her.

  ‘ That’s it, Jennifer: that’s what it was, all the time. Still think you’re the luckiest woman in the world?’

  ‘What was Mr Lomax’s intention, as far as you were aware?’

  Rebecca remained staring straight at the dock, the look of contempt on her face again. ‘As far as I was aware Gerald intended divorcing Jennifer and getting custody of Emily. And then we would marry.’

  ‘ Left with nothing! Tossed out, with the garbage. ’

  ‘And for the three of you to become a family?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rebecca’s voice was soft again, trembling with the uncertainty of a happiness she’d now never achieve.

  ‘Gerald would have told Mrs Lomax what he intended with the child, as well as wanting a divorce, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Objection!’ protested Hall. ‘There is no way the witness can speculate about a conversation, if any, between Mr and Mrs Lomax.’

  ‘Mr Keflin-Brown,’ rebuked the judge, mildly.

  ‘I beg the court’s indulgence and of course withdraw the question

  …’ apologized the older barrister.

  ‘ Too late. Motive all sorted and made perfectly clear. You’re for the drop, Jennifer. Would have been if they still hanged murderers.’

  ‘… and I have no further questions,’ the man concluded, surrendering Rebecca Nicholls to cross-examination like a well-chewed bone upon which there was no meat left.

  ‘You haven’t the slightest idea – any way of knowing – if Gerald Lomax confessed his adultery to his wife, have you?’ attacked Jeremy Hall, at once.

  ‘We’d talked about his doing so.’

  ‘But you don’t know that he had done it?’

  ‘No.’

  Hall lifted Rebecca’s statement from the mound of papers in front of him, hefting it as if testing its weight to attract the jury’s interest. ‘What you’ve told the court today is at considerable variance with what you told Superintendent Bentley, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘I had just seen the man I loved slaughtered, in front of my eyes! Seen his blood burst everywhere!’

  ‘No, you hadn’t! Your full statement was made to Superintendent Bentley several days after that.’

  ‘I still don’t remember.’

  There was a tug at Jennifer’s elbow, with the hand offering the handkerchief. Hurriedly she dried herself. Jane said, ‘ I’m not going to have you taken out of court but everyone’s still got to think you’re a drooling idiot.’

  ‘Then let me help you, Ms Nicholls,’ offered Hall, beckoning the usher. ‘I’ve marked a section, at the top of the third page: the page of a statement you’ve signed and agreed as an accurate account of your conversation with Superintendent Bentley. Doesn’t that marked section say, and I quote, “But Jennifer never knew”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s very different from what you’re asking the jury to believe today, isn’t it, Ms Nicholls?’

  ‘I was still in shock. I’ve had time to think about it, since.’

  ‘I quote again, from a paragraph marked just a little lower from that to which I’ve referred. Doesn’t that say “She didn’t kill Gerry because of me”?’

  ‘Yes. But I told the police he’d promised me he would get a divorce.’

  ‘But didn’t you also say, in the third marked passage, that Gerald Lomax had not told his wife of your affair. Or asked for a divorce. And didn’t you go on to say – and again, my Lord, I quote – “He said he’d tell me before he did. But he didn’t say anything. So he didn’t”?’

  ‘I may have done.’

  ‘Ms Nicholls, it’s in a statement you signed as an accurate account of your conversation with the superintendent.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I was still shocked!’

  ‘You’d been with Gerald Lomax the night before he was killed, hadn’t you? Like you were every night when he remained in London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In his flat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you make love?’

  ‘Mr Hall!’ interrupted the judge, while Keflin-Brown was still only halfway to his feet. ‘Is there a point to this line of questioning?’

  ‘An extremely important one,’ insisted Hall. He had no intention of considering it after the inevitable result of the trial, because it would not be in Jennifer Lomax’s interest, but he was convinced that by now the transcript would already show sufficient unfair bias for an appeal to be lodged.

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nbsp; ‘Be very careful, Mr Hall. I shall be paying particular attention,’ said Jarvis.

  ‘You slept with Gerald Lomax the night before he died?’ resumed Hall.

  ‘Yes.’ Rebecca was tiny-voiced again.

  ‘You had no secrets from each other, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And he’d promised to tell you, before he asked Jennifer for a divorce?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he did want to marry you?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘To clear the way for you and he to marry, a divorce would have been the most important thing in Gerald Lomax’s life at that moment, wouldn’t it! He’d promised to tell you. You had no secrets from each other. Yet the night before he was murdered – by a woman it is being suggested was driven to kill by insane jealousy – in the intimate surroundings of the bedroom, he said nothing to you whatsoever about having confessed his adultery to his wife?’

  ‘No.’ There was very little defiance any more and practically no voice.

  ‘So he hadn’t told Jennifer Lomax what would have caused her to commit this terrible crime, had he? This whole-’

  ‘My Lord,’ broke in Keflin-Brown. ‘How can this witness testify to what might or might not have taken place when she was not in Hampshire the previous weekend?’

  ‘That was an inept question, Mr Hall,’ criticized the judge.

  ‘Questioning an inference that the jury have been asked to draw from uncorroborated testimony in Ms Nicholls’ evidence-in-chief,’ fought back Hall, refusing to be bullied. ‘But let me try to find my answer from a different direction. To your knowledge, had Gerald Lomax ever deceived you?’

  ‘ Wonder who else he was screwing. There would have had to be someone, wouldn’t there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘ Doesn’t know him like we do, does she?’

  ‘Held anything back from you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Broken a promise to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He had promised to alert you, in advance, of his confessing everything to Mrs Lomax and demanding the divorce that would give him custody of Emily?’