A Mind to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Ready,’ declared one of the diggers, clambering out of the grave. Two other cemetery workers who had been standing apart came forward, hefting the lifting straps. The vicar was bowed-headed again, praying aloud now. The count of ‘one, two, three,’ clashed irreverently. Every camera light came on at the emergence of the coffin as it swung on to the waiting canvas. The police photographer at last had something to do.

  Hall became aware of the sound of one and then another helicopter overhead. The graveside police superintendent immediately glanced up, then began talking urgently and loudly into his radio. Hall over-heard ‘licence revoked’ and ‘bugger off.’ To the waiting forensic teams, he said, ‘Is it going to interfere?’

  ‘Not at the height they are at the moment,’ said Hewitt.

  ‘But it’ll blow everything about if they come much lower,’ added Phylis Shipley.

  The officer went back to his radio, talking and listening. He said, ‘We’ve got their registrations from their flight plans. They’ve been warned.’

  ‘Warn them also that if there’s the slightest interference from their down-draught with what we’re doing here I’ll sue them in a civil court,’ said Hall. ‘And I’ll also ask Mr Justice Jarvis to include them in his precincts ruling, for whoever they represent to be jailed.’

  There were several more minutes of muttered exchanges and then a perceptible lessening in the overhead noise, as the helicopters gained height.

  The distraction of the helicopters momentarily took all their attention from the contents of the grave. There was bewildered astonishment when they looked back. It was Keflin-Brown who spoke, the exclamation without any religious connotation: ‘Jesus Christ!’

  The coffin was pristine. No earth attached to it. The pale oak glistened, as it must have done on the day of the burial. The brass fittings dazzled the reflected light from all around.

  ‘I don’t think Jesus Christ has anything to do with this,’ said Hall.

  The two men who had re-dug the grave had recoiled from its smell, hands at their faces.

  Urgently Keflin-Brown said, ‘It shouldn’t be opened! That’s what we’re supposed to understand. That we shouldn’t open it.’ He stepped back.

  The vicar had launched into a confused, jumbled litany. Hall recognized ‘forgiveness’ and ‘mercy’ and a lot of references to ‘evil.’ The permeating sick, sweet, cloying miasma enveloped everything and everyone, wrapping around them like an embalming shroud, layer after layer, lingering from the open grave but seepingly far more overpoweringly from the still closed coffin. Someone retched and there was the raucous sound of vomiting. Everyone groped handkerchiefs from their pockets: Billington and Carter finally but very hurriedly attached their nose-clips.

  ‘The judge’s order says the coffin has to be opened,’ insisted the superintendent, voice muffled through his handkerchief but making no effort to perform the duty with which he was officially entrusted. Unnecessarily he said, ‘But I don’t think I can do it.’

  ‘We’re certainly not going to,’ said the first grave digger.

  The vicar mumbled on, standing well back.

  ‘Here!’ demanded Hall, reaching out for the screwdriver being offered to the unresponsive police officer.

  There seemed a solid although invisible wall of fetid, putrid stink against him. Having gone forward he was at once forced back, bile stinging his throat. Hall inhaled as deeply as he could, then held his breath to approach again. The wood gleamed at him, the brass glittering. There was almost a physical sensation of something – the smell – being wound around him, again and again and again. It stung his eyes, making him squeeze them almost shut, so it was hard to connect with the real lid screws beneath their artificial, decorative caps. Hall was alone now, isolated and oblivious in his total concentration. Three times, like a boxer pulling back from a punch – actually feeling dizzy, on the very edge of unconsciousness – Hall had momentarily to retreat, to breathe out and inhale less stinking air.

  The bolts unscrewed with the smooth newness of the rest of the container. Just before he was driven back, gasping, for the fourth time, Hall managed to push against the lid, skewing it to provide easy-lifting handholds.

  From beyond the barrier there were camera flash fireworks. And from the helicopters above, startling them all, two separate, piercing spotlights stabbed into the scene.

  ‘I can’t lift the lid by myself,’ croaked Hall.

  No-one around him spoke. No-one moved.

  ‘Help me get the lid off!’

  Still no-one spoke. Or moved.

  ‘You!’ said Hall, demanding finger towards the police superintendent. ‘You have by law to enforce the judge’s order!’

  The policeman didn’t think to hold his breath, as Hall was doing. The retching caught the man’s breath, became a spasm and finally he began to hyperventilate.

  In one, panicked heave, they lifted the lid free. The superintendent staggered back, gasping.

  The overhead fluttering of the helicopters and the rumble beyond the police line totally hid the audible reaction from the graveside group, although a lot of their horrified facial reactions were caught on film. The police photographer was frozen. The noise was a whimpering mix of gasps and groans and even some barely held-back screams, all of incredulous terror. The agonized vicar fell to his knees, hands cupped before his face, and audibly said, ‘Oh dear Lord, protect us from this evil and from mysteries we do not understand,’ and began reciting the Lord’s prayer, head bent, refusing after the first instant to look inside. Unhesitatingly the cemetery workers followed, loudly joining the invocation with their hands clasped before them: two crumpled to kneel to pray. They all averted their eyes from the coffin.

  Once more Hall inhaled as deeply as he could before biting into his handkerchief and pinching his nose beneath it to lean forward better to focus. Perry did the same, but Keflin-Brown still held back, making choking, gagging sounds.

  Hall didn’t have any anticipation. At most he’d expected a properly defined skeleton, all the bones in their normally accepted and physically proper place. None was so in the coffin, apart from the fleshless, grinning skull. Adorning that, appearing freshly combed and dressed and very full, was abundant hair, still visibly blond despite the artificial discolouring caused by so much light.

  Nothing else was intact. Instead, running the entire length of the coffin – still lined in perfectly preserved and plush vivid red velvet – FUCK YOU was spelled out, straight bones like the tibia and fibula and femur and humerus and radius and ulna and larger fingers forming the upright letters, the curved but individually separated ribs fashioned into the Us and the C and the O. There had been sufficient, even, for the rejection to be finished off, as if forming an exclamation mark, with what was clearly a stiffly upright middle finger.

  ‘That’s not…’ began Keflin-Brown, from behind, but Hall impatiently closed him down. ‘For God’s sake stop telling me what is or what is not possible! You’re seeing it with your own eyes!’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘So do we all,’ said Hall. Abruptly he realized that the stink had completely disappeared.

  The meeting was already scheduled but Jeremy Hall had not originally intended it to be anything more than an apology for their psychiatric analyses no longer being necessary, coupled with the assurance of their being paid, in full, despite their not having been called. The seemingly uncontrollable, but now understandable, media hysteria – by the time he returned to the Temple that morning there were four book publishing offers, one from America opening at $1,000,000 – and the unavoidable revelation of the coffin’s contents made him change his mind. They could, after all, work for their fee.

  The Temple Inn yard is a public day-time thoroughfare and although there was a police guard directly outside the Proudfoot chambers there were pockets of loitering media representatives, circling in ambush like medieval skirmishers and Julian Mason, the first psychiatrist to arrive, entered shaking his head in bemusemen
t.

  ‘I didn’t imagine it would be like this, despite what I’ve read and seen on television.’

  ‘No-one did. It is unimaginable.’ Flexing his newly developed muscle Hall had told – not asked – Bert Feltham that he needed the main conference room. Which he’d got, without question. In addition to which Feltham had politely asked – not autocratically decreed – if he could attend. Despite Keflin-Brown’s cemetery opinion of his unstoppable future career – which he had anyway already assessed for himself – Hall realistically acknowledged Feltham’s unique position and influence within chambers and went as far as saying he’d welcome the man’s presence. He was, at Mason’s arrival, already by the window overlooking the Thames in head-together conversation with Humphrey Perry. At that moment Johnson was on the telephone, Hall presumed arranging the collection of Jennifer’s belongings from jail.

  ‘I heard on the radio coming in that there was a sensational discovery at the cemetery, although they didn’t know what it was?’

  ‘Let’s wait for the others,’ suggested Hall.

  The American, Milton Smith, whom Hall had intended calling as an authority on Multiple Personality Disorder, was the next to arrive. Hall was in the process of introducing him to Feltham when Steven Denning and Walter Elliott, his other two psychiatrists, entered together.

  The introductions completed and the already prepared coffee served Hall quickly disposed with the original purpose of the gathering, asking each to submit their bills to Feltham.

  ‘There’s no doubt about the outcome of the trial?’ queried Denning, a heavily tweeded and bearded bear of a man. It had been Denning who’d used the truth drug, scopolamine, during one of his sessions with Jennifer and been totally satisfied with the honesty of her answers.

  ‘Not after this morning,’ said Hall. The four psychiatrists listened without any exaggerated reaction to his account of the exhumation. Neither Feltham nor Johnson, already briefed by Perry, showed any surprise.

  ‘Have you realized yet that you’ve made history?’ demanded Walter Elliott. Like Mason, he was a laid-back exponent. He wore open sandals, jeans and a roll-necked sweater: the sweater had a heavy darn in the left elbow.

  ‘It’s being thrust upon me,’ said Hall, making a general arm movement in the direction of the outside yard. ‘But that’s not what I want to talk about, not directly. After what we found in the grave the DNA comparison is largely academic. I’m going to make history by having an English court of law rule that Jennifer Lomax is physically possessed by a ghost. And that it was the ghost of Jane Lomax that murdered her husband-’

  ‘Jesus!’ intruded Denning.

  ‘Where the hell’s that going to take you?’ demanded Mason.

  Hall shook his head against answer. Instead he went on ‘… That disposes of the charge against Jennifer. She’s not guilty of murder…’ He paused, looking around the assembled group. ‘But she’s still possessed…’

  ‘… By a homicidal maniac, whom she can’t always control,’ completed Elliott.

  ‘So,’ demanded Hall, ‘you’re the experts. How do we get rid of Jane?’

  He asked the question looking at Milton Smith. So did everyone else.

  ‘Woa!’ cautioned Smith, an angularly featured, sparse-bodied man. ‘It’s becoming accepted – legally recognized in some states in America – that a person’s mind can consist of two or more, sometimes many more, separate personalities. And that each personality, each different person if you like, can at any one time control the body it’s in: be the person. There’s medically and clinically recorded and analysed cases. But we’re not talking Multiple Personality here. There’s an alien presence inside Jennifer Lomax. She’s been invaded…’ He returned the attention being concentrated upon him by the other three psychiatrists. ‘OK, you guys. I’ve never heard of anything like it before, encountered anything like it before and quite honestly I wouldn’t know how to begin helping or treating this lady. Any of you got a contribution?’

  One by one the three men shook their heads. Denning said, ‘I asked to speak to Jane.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Hall.

  ‘For what it was worth. It was just foul mouthed.’

  ‘That’s what it is, most of the time,’ said Perry.

  Mason sniggered, despite himself. ‘I talked to her, too. How many people have been told to go fuck themselves by a ghost?’

  No-one laughed. Briefly, into Hall’s mind, came Keflin-Brown’s cut-off-at-the-court-door cynicism earlier that day. He said, ‘How can we – any of you working separately or all together, as a group if necessary – rid Jennifer of her ghost?’

  ‘I don’t even…’ began Elliott, ‘… didn’t, until now,’ he corrected, ‘… believe in ghosts.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us did,’ said Hall. ‘Now we do. So let’s try to answer the question.’

  ‘I’ve already told you I can’t,’ said the American. ‘I don’t know how to. If anyone’s got any idea I’ll go along with it.’

  Again, one after another, the other three psychiatrists said the same.

  ‘You can’t say that,’ protested Hall.

  ‘There’s nothing else for us to say,’ insisted Mason, in return. ‘We’re psychiatrists, not exorcists.’

  ‘We suggested exorcism,’ reminded Perry.

  ‘She refused,’ Hall told the other men. ‘She said she didn’t helieve in God.’

  ‘I said I didn’t believe in ghosts,’ repeated Elliott, ‘I think exorcism’s worth trying, whether she believes or not.’

  ‘Anything’s worth trying, the jam she’s in,’ said Smith. He paused. ‘But I’d like to spend a lot more time with her…’ He looked vaguely embarrassed.

  ‘Like a culture under a microscope,’ accused Hall.

  ‘Think of what she is! We can’t begin to imagine her clinical value, to psychiatry. Psychology. Every science of the brain!’ urged the American.

  ‘I’m not going to think of her as an experiment,’ refused Hall. In sudden realization, he said, ‘But she’s sane, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s what we were all going to tell the court,’ agreed Mason.

  ‘So there couldn’t be a committal order for her own protection?’

  The psychiatrists considered the question. Elliott said, ‘She could admit herself.’

  ‘That’s what she told me Jane was trying to do, get her declared insane and locked up in an asylum,’ remembered Denning.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Mason. ‘So Jane could win after all.’

  Hall felt a frustrating surge of impotence. ‘I just can’t leave her,’ he said, a remark more to himself than to anyone else.

  ‘Your legal responsibility ends with her acquittal,’ said Perry.

  ‘I know what my legal boundaries are,’ said Hall, sharply. ‘But I haven’t practised law long enough yet to lose my moral or humane responsibilities.’

  Perry flushed. ‘Don’t we have to face the fact that there’s nothing we can do to help her?’

  ‘You know where to find me, if you think there’s anything I can do,’ offered Mason. ‘Exorcism’s the only thing I can think of.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Elliott. ‘And I’ll help, if anyone comes up with an idea.’

  ‘I’ll talk to some guys back home: see if they’ve got any thoughts,’ offered Smith. ‘But I’m not holding out any hope.’ There was another pause. ‘If she were to agree to a period under analysis I’d appreciate being involved. You never know. It might produce something…’

  ‘Like a Nobel prize?’ said Hall, bitterly.

  Geoffrey Johnson waited until the psychiatrists had filed out before saying, ‘And there’s another problem…’ He nodded towards the telephone by the window. ‘… I spoke to Annabelle. The foreign press don’t consider themselves bound by any order Jarvis has made. The place is under siege, too. The police are doing what they can but she says Emily’s terrified.’

  ‘We’ll move her,’ decided Hall, at once.

  ‘And get her inv
olved in the sort of car chase we had before?’ challenged Johnson.

  The memory of that morning came to Hall. ‘Helicopter,’ he decided. ‘The grounds are big enough. Tell Annabelle to get everything prepared, so they’re ready to move the moment it lands. The press won’t be able to catch up…’ That morning’s memory remained. ‘… But don’t let it land where you’re going to hide her. They’ll trace her from the flight plan. Have it put down somewhere where you’re waiting. Then you go on by road. But not in that Bentley: it’s too identifiable

  …’

  Johnson blinked at the flurry of instructions. Perry said, ‘Where the hell’s it all going to end?’

  ‘I don’t think it is going to,’ said Hall.

  At the hospital Jane said, ‘ They were terrified when they opened my grave. You know what we’ve done! We’ve made everybody believe in ghosts.’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Jennifer was surprised – annoyed even, as she had been throughout the previous day by his lack of contact – at Jeremy Hall arranging for her to travel to court in a police van and under front and rear police escort. Her uncertainty lasted only until they attempted to leave the hospital. The Embankment outside, in both directions, seethed with people – more public than press – through whom it was practically impossible to move. It took thirty minutes to move as many yards, the outside of the van constantly banged and hit, her name shouted again and again, in an echoing, chanted demand for her to put herself at the narrow window. From which, in fact, she recoiled.

  It was far worse at the approach to the court. The solid block of a baying, gawking mob began to form a quarter of a mile away, jamming every street they tried, and they only reached it, finally, edging along in the middle of a linked-arm guard of walking policemen, with others forming an outer barrier physically forcing a path. Jennifer finally closed her eyes altogether against the camera lights, careless of how she’d look in any picture that might be snatched.