A Mind to Kill

  ‘What do you want me to do about them, Mr Hall?’

  ‘Mr Hall’ from the in-chamber legend, ‘sir’ from an arrogant police superintendent, recognized Hall. Things had very clearly changed. ‘Ask them to wait, Bert, if you would. Anything that couldn’t be held for a few days?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Hall.’

  ‘I’ll leave it to your judgement…’ He smiled, aware of his own hypocrisy. ‘That’s what everyone else does here, isn’t it?’

  Feltham smile back. ‘Leave it to me, sir.’

  Hall declined all the immediate lunch offers and was glad because he was in his rooms to receive both panicked calls. Superintendent Hopkins he already knew. Peter Lloyd initiated the second approach, verbally to introduce the hospital administrator Hector Beringer.

  Hopkins complained that the crowd around the hospital had become so bad that twice already that day they’d had to close Westminster and Lambeth bridges and seal off the westerly approach to Waterloo station to maintain the barest minimum of a totally interrupted rail service.

  ‘I stopped counting after we’d issued three hundred breach of the peace and obstruction summonses,’ said Hopkins. ‘There’s been assaults upon my officers: people just won’t leave, even after they’re officially charged more than once. And I’ve suspended actual arrests to prevent a riot…’ The man paused, for breath. ‘… There’s actually a group of about forty who say they belong to the Resurrection of Life church, trying to set up a bivouac encampment alongside Lambeth Palace: they’re claiming Jane’s ghost has summoned them. Over a hundred extra officers have had to be seconded in-’

  ‘What’s your point, Superintendent?’ Hall cut in.

  ‘I would have thought that was obvious, sir. It’s becoming difficult for us to cope, even with mounted assistance. We’re on the verge of losing control.’

  ‘Your responsibility is to maintain order,’ reminded Hall.

  ‘I don’t need to be told what my responsibilities are, sir. I’m trying to get some idea how much longer this nonsense is going to continue…’ He paused, imagining the nearest he could come to a threat. ‘And also to find out to whom officially to address a formal notification that I am going to suggest to my Watch Committee that we attempt to recover from Mrs Lomax the money all this is costing.’

  ‘I haven’t an answer to your first question. Address your letter about costs to my instructing solicitor, Humphrey Perry. It will, of course, be strenuously resisted.’

  Hopkins sighed, defeated. ‘Haven’t you any idea when Mrs Lomax might be discharged?’

  At that time Hall had not been contacted by the hospital administrator. ‘Not yet. I might get an indication this afternoon.’

  He got it, in fact, just five minutes later. Hall listened patiently to Hector Beringer’s description of the chaos outside the hospital, guessing he’d rehearsed the protest and needed to vent the obvious anger. ‘It’s become impossible effectively to run the hospital. Emergencies can’t get through: every ambulance is surrounded by mobs who believe she’s inside. One was almost turned over an hour ago.’

  ‘I understood this morning from Doctor Lloyd that she is still seriously unwell.’

  ‘In the opinion of consultants senior to Doctor Lloyd she is not too ill to be moved. I’m responsible for the care of a great many people, not just one. And the health of a lot of them is being endangered. I have to ask you to take Mrs Lomax to a private hospital when you come here this afternoon, which I understand from Doctor Lloyd you intend to do.’

  ‘With a psychiatrist,’ agreed Hall. ‘And when I’m independently satisfied that Mrs Lomax is fit enough to be moved then I will make arrangements. But not before.’

  ‘Mr Hall, I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about this. You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘I don’t want any misunderstanding either, Mr Beringer. And I do have a choice. I have the choice of going before a judge to ask for Mrs Lomax to be placed under a court’s protection against being ejected from your hospital into the sort of uncontrolled mob you’ve just spent fifteen minutes describing to me.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘It would be, if you attempted to do it. I sympathize with the stress you’re under. And what’s happening at your hospital. But threats aren’t the way to resolve it. I’ll expect to see you there this afternoon.’

  It was worse than Hall imagined: worse, even, than the scenes that completely dominated the lunch-time television news bulletins that he watched before he left. He decided to walk, disregarding the entourage of bobbing, questioning and envelope-thrusting media who ignored his demands to be left alone, encountering the build-up as soon as he crossed Blackfriars Bridge to the south side of the river. Stamford Street was lined either side by barriers in an attempt to keep the road open but they’d been pushed forward by the crush of people, reducing the thoroughfare to a single line that was being controlled in a stop-and-go system by police radio cars at either end. It took Hall almost fifteen minutes to find a sergeant and to identify himself, to be escorted along the road on the outside of the barriers. By that time the protesting media pack, forbidden to follow and held behind a police block, had drawn sufficient attention for Hall to be recognized. His name became an immediate, meaningless chant. He ignored the outstretched hands, not knowing what they were reaching for, but was abruptly pulled sideways by someone managing to snag his pocket, which ripped. At once he was overwhelmed by a flurry of hands, grabbing and pulling at him: his tie tightened, garrotting him. It snapped when he desperately yanked it loose and it disappeared into the crowd. One of the two policemen wrenched him free, taking him into the middle of the slow-moving line of traffic, beyond the tendril wave of snatching hands. Twice people – the first a girl, then an immediately encouraged boy inexplicably stripped to the waist – tried to leap the barrier at him. Both were simply knocked roughly back into the crowd by his escorts.

  Alerted by radio, Superintendent Hopkins was waiting for him at Waterloo station. ‘Believe me now?’ the man demanded.

  ‘I didn’t disbelieve you before. I just couldn’t imagine it.’

  ‘They’re bringing soldiers in from Wellington barracks.’

  York Road could not be cleared sufficiently for cars. Policemen were positioned every ten yards desperately trying to keep in place the metal fencing to maintain a passage barely wide enough for Hall and Hopkins to walk between a tight, linked-arm encirclement of more riot-uniformed officers. Despite that protection there were still snatched attempts to touch him. A snowdrift of paper thrust at him to sign built up on the ground when he refused to take it. Two mounted policemen joined the phalanx at the Addington Street junction for what became a final dash into the hospital forecourt. They didn’t stop, running faster without obstruction into the final safety of the hospital reception.

  Hall became aware that he was shaking and wasn’t able to prevent it and realized, surprised, that it was his first experience of real fear. He couldn’t remember how the top pocket had been torn almost out of his jacket, to match the early rip in Stamford Street. Both cuff-links had vanished and his cuffs now hung clear of his sleeves, covering his hands.

  He started back when Lloyd came very close, to examine his face. The doctor said, ‘You’ve got a couple of scratches but they’re only superficial. Here.’

  Hall took the offered antiseptic wipe and after rubbing his face used it to clean what looked like spit off his right sleeve.

  As Lloyd introduced him to the hospital administrator Hall said to both the police controller and Beringer, ‘I don’t need to be told again that it’s unacceptable. Of course it is. Totally…’ He concentrated upon the hospital official. ‘Like it would be to think of discharging Mrs Lomax out into it.’

  ‘I never suggested that and you know it,’ rejected Beringer. ‘I want it solved. Today.’

  ‘Is Mason here?’

  Lloyd nodded. ‘He was lucky. He didn’t get to court to be photographed and recognized. It s
till took him an hour to get through. He’s already with her.’

  ‘How is she?’ Hall asked, as they went to the elevators.

  Lloyd hesitated, looking towards Beringer before saying, ‘I’d like her to be a lot better. The sedation hasn’t totally worn off. But I don’t think it’s physical: thank God she didn’t do any more damage to her ribs when she fell.’

  ‘What’s she said?’

  ‘Virtually nothing other than keep asking for you.’

  Hall frowned. Conscious of the immediate apprehension from Beringer at the question – but not embarrassed at asking it – he said, ‘What about Jane?’

  ‘She’s saying something, over and over again bur Jennifer won’t say what it is.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s what Mason is trying to find out now.’ The doctor paused, when they reached the level of the private ward. ‘I really don’t think she’ll be able to hold on to her sanity much longer. Neither does Mason.’

  ‘But this is a medical, not a psychiatric hospital,’ warned Beringer, from behind.

  Jennifer was lying in bed, the covers drawn up to her chin as if she was trying to hide. She was very pale – there was no make-up and her hair was unkempt – and her eyes, dulled from medication, were black-ringed again. She didn’t smile at Hall’s entry but there was some slight animation in her face. At once she brought a hand from beneath the sheet and held it out to him. He took it, sitting as he did so on the chair Mason pushed towards him. The action was to draw Hall’s attention. The psychiatrist shook his head against having learned anything.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, inadequately.

  ‘You’ve got to do some things. Legal things.’ Her voice was drug slurred but urgent.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Keep Emily safe.’

  ‘What is it, Jennifer? What’s happened?’

  ‘ Tell him! Tell them all! ’

  ‘She’s going to make me kill Emily. That’s what she said in court. What she’s been saying ever since…’

  There was a stir from Lloyd and the administrator. Hall didn’t bother to look, beyond any surprise. How in God’s name was he going to help her? The vague, unformed idea that came was mad but they were in a totally mad, unreal, unknown situation.

  ‘… You’ve got to have her legally taken away from me,’ Jennifer stumbled on, weak-voiced. ‘I can never know where she is. See her again. I know that. Just do it. Don’t tell me about it. Just do it.’

  ‘ Don’t be a spoil-sport! ’

  ‘I’ll do something.’ His hand hurt from the tightness with which she was gripping it, physically needing to hold on to force herself to abandon her baby.

  ‘Not something! Do what I ask you. Get her taken away from me, please. She’ll never be safe, if you don’t…’ She swallowed, heavily, unable to go on for several moments. ‘Then it can be all over.’

  ‘No,’ refused Hall, fearing he understood the final remark. ‘It’s not going to be all over.’

  There were five of them in Beringer’s office but when the proposal to get Jennifer out began to take shape Hall kept a telephone line open to Perry because it was easier for the solicitor to make their part of the arrangements from his end. Hopkins used another extension to co-ordinate the police participation and Mason a third. It took three hours and they spent a further hour objectively criticizing each other’s contribution in the hope of exposing unforeseen flaws.

  ‘You sure about the security?’ Hall asked the psychiatrist.

  ‘That’s what you pay for and how they can afford me as a consultant,’ assured Mason. ‘They’ve treated a cabinet minister and two pop stars in the last six months and not a word leaked out…’ He made a vague gesture through the window overlooking the chaos outside. ‘What you’re seeing there is mass hysteria: strangely, something like a mass religious hysteria. There’s already the cult camped outside Lambeth Palace. It’ll grow far beyond any police or army control unless we get her away. For hundreds of people – hundreds who are going to become thousands – Jennifer Lomax is the equivalent of someone from outer space. Or the second Messiah.’

  ‘I wish we could use a helicopter again,’ Hall said, to Hopkins.

  ‘So do I. But we can’t. The crowd should get smaller, after midnight. And we’ve kept the sightseeing ferries and boats away all day.’

  ‘Let’s hope it stays that way.’

  Only Mason and Lloyd accompanied him when Hall returned to the small ward to explain to Jennifer what was going to happen. She listened blank-eyed, disinterested, shrugging when Lloyd asked her if she physically felt up to it. She said, ‘I suppose so. It hardly matters, does it?’

  Lloyd remained in the ward, insisting upon personally restrapping Jennifer’s ribs and making a final medical examination.

  As Hall and Mason walked back towards the administrator’s office, which was to act as the control room, Hall said, ‘What do you think Jennifer meant by saying it would all be over when I got a protection order for Emily?’

  ‘That she intends killing herself, of course,’ said the psychiatrist, without any hesitation. ‘Are you going to take Emily away, legally?’

  ‘It’s not necessary at the moment. There’s no way Jennifer can get to her.’

  ‘What are you going to do then?’

  ‘Take Jane on,’ said Hall, simply. Insane ideas for insane situations, he thought again.

  Back in Jennifer’s ward Lloyd said, ‘I’ve got something you’re going to want to hear. The blood test is absolutely negative. Not a trace of HIV.’

  ‘I was hoping there would be,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘ It would have imposed a time limit on what I’m going to do but it would have been a wonderful way to see you finally die, wouldn’t it? ’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  It worked.

  When the moment came no-one truly believed that it would, because too many uncertainties were compounded at the outset. Despite the examination and re-examination of what they were going to attempt they hadn’t allowed for equipment failure or interference: the police radio linking Hall’s group to everyone else wouldn’t work from the below-basement boiler room, isolating them completely.

  ‘We can’t go back,’ decided Hall, at once. ‘Everyone else will already be moving. Just keep trying.’

  There were five of them. Hall and Mason, like the two escorting policemen, wore hospital maintenance overalls. As additional disguise the barrister wore a yellow hard-hat. Jennifer wore a nurse’s cloak, over a regulation uniform: the shoes pinched. The headscarf was ready, for when they emerged through the heating service door. Jennifer was shuffling along automatically, engulfed in apathy, moved by Hall and Mason either side.

  ‘Two o’clock was start time,’ agreed Mason. ‘It’s five past.’

  Three floors up, at ground level, it had started although not from the hospital itself. A route for vehicles had been forced through by the army reinforcements, particularly across Westminster Bridge because it was visible from the Albert Embankment. Across it, promptly on time, streamed a cavalcade of motor-cycle outriders, lights on, sirens blaring. The three police vans and two Range Rovers burned their siren-connected lights, too. Police and soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, pushed back against a crowd smaller than during the day but still large enough to block the entrance, reacting to the prearranged signal of an ambulance emerging from the hospital garage to park directly outside the main entrance. Following it from the garage came a squad of soldiers at the double to form another shoulder to shoulder wall between the vehicle and the crowd. ‘Jennifer, Jennifer,’ was an isolated shout at first but at once was taken up to become a repetitive howl. A lot of people tried to kneel in prayer but almost at once started screaming when they were trampled on. Everything was in fact made ghostly white by camera lights. Again, from circling helicopters, lights stabbed down.

  The noise was so loud that it reached them, close to the boiler-room door, although the radio remained dead. Hall gently
touched Jennifer’s arm as if to rouse her, to confront the problem they had recognized but couldn’t anticipate. ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is she there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the sedation?’

  ‘I feel all right. Quite clear. My chest still hurts.’

  The two policemen edged back, despite their personal selection by Hopkins: one was a sergeant, the other an inspector. ‘My best,’ Hopkins had called them.

  ‘Try to give me a warning,’ Hall told her. ‘If it works at all the diversion won’t last long.’

  ‘She’ll do something. She has to.’

  ‘ Hah! ’

  ‘She’s back!’ It had been abrupt, the numbness practically at the same time as the triumphant exclamation.

  ‘Tell me what she says,’ demanded Hall, urgently, trying to maintain a timetable tor which he’d attempted to make allowances for Jane’s inevitable interference, although not able to judge how long they’d need. If Jennifer erupted in attention-attracting convulsions the intention was to retreat, back into the hospital. And everything would have been a waste of time. ‘Every word, as she says it.’

  ‘ Throw you to the wolves! How about that! They’d tear you apart, like a pack: frightened of the unknown.’

  ‘And you’re frightened too, aren’t you?’ demanded Hall, addressing Jane.

  ‘ Cocky little scumbag! You talking to me? ’

  ‘Yes. And you are frightened: not sure of yourself any more. Not sure what you can make Jennifer do.’

  ‘ You want me to show you what I can make her do? ’

  Three minutes, estimated Hall, unable to check the timing. And still unable to discover any setbacks above. ‘What would that prove?’

  ‘ That I still call the shots. Which I do.’

  ‘I disgraced you in court: disgraced the memory of your father. Exposed you as a murderess and destroyed the Herbetson family name.’ He’d discarded the destroyed jacket but wore the boiler-suit over the rest of his clothes. He was saturated by sweat. It had to be five minutes by now.