A Mind to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘There is nothing more I can do,’ admitted the barrister.

  ‘Which only leaves me,’ accepted the priest. ‘Dear God, please help me: please help us both.’

  Chapter Thirty-four

  ‘Your father taught you to love God?’

  ‘ Yes.’

  ‘And you do love Him, don’t you?’

  ‘ I did.’

  ‘And you still do, Jane.’ As always Dawson stood with his hand on Jennifer’s head, his eyes tightly shut, his whole will concentrated upon the woman kneeling before him, a woman who would be for ever damned by another if he failed. Feeling he, too, would be damned if he failed.

  He’d not slept at all. He’d spent the whole night prostrate, outstretched before the altar in prayer, pleading for guidance and for a miracle and for Jennifer to be released from a living purgatory.

  Two hours before he’d anointed her with oil and marked the cross upon her in holy water and spread the salt and gone through the exorcism ritual until there were no prayers left to be said as part of it.

  Jennifer hadn’t slept, either. And not because Jane had filled her mind: she hadn’t needed to. Jennifer knew this was the last chance, the last hope. Now she prayed, too, eyes as fervently shut as the man above her, her desperation even greater, not caring that Jane would know the agony of her fear: that she was giving Jane a target to attack. Despite her daily periods with the priest Jennifer still couldn’t believe, although she wanted to: told herself she had to and mouthed the litany to the priest’s dictation and made her own childlike vow – if You grant me this one thing I will worship, I truly will…

  ‘ I’m frightened. ’

  ‘God can help you! Save you!’

  ‘ No-one can help me.’

  ‘God can forgive all things: all sin.’ Why were the words so empty, so trite?

  ‘ He could not forgive me. I’II be for ever in Purgatory… in Hell

  … I know the teaching…’

  ‘You don’t want to cause any more suffering, do you?’

  ‘ No.’

  ‘Then you must leave this woman.’

  ‘ I have sinned too much.’

  ‘To stay would be the greater sin.’ Not enough. Never enough. There had to be more to say, a way to convince someone who had once believed, as Jane had believed.

  ‘ I am beyond forgiveness.’

  Please, prayed Jennifer. Make her go away. Leave me alone. I’m sorry, so very sorry I can’t believe in You. But please make her leave me alone.

  Dawson held back from the forgiveness of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead he said, ‘“Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.”’

  ‘ Saint Luke wasn’t talking of murder. And I wanted to send Jennifer mad, for taking Gerald… Said I’d kill the child… I can’t be forgiven for that… None of it…’

  ‘“I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,”’ preached the man, hands shaking with emotion. ‘Repent Jane! Truly repent! You’ll descend into Hell, which you know we all must, but then you’ll rise again, into Heaven. You know that’s true. The way.’

  ‘I will kill myself, decided Jennifer. No other way. Don’t want to live. Not living. A body for someone else. Destroy the body, destroy the horror.

  ‘ I have done such terrible things. Now I am so very, very frightened.’

  ‘Do you love God, Jane?’

  ‘ I abandoned Him, for evil.’

  ‘Do you want to love him again?’

  ‘ Yes.’

  ‘So you want a way back?’

  ‘ There can’t be a way back, not for me.’

  ‘Do you truly repent, Jane?’

  There was no immediate reply. Finally, ‘ Yes.’

  ‘Then trust God. You know you can. You always did in life. How better can you show your true repentance than by freeing Jennifer? To remain is to go on sinning: to continue evil and deserve an eternity in the fires of Hell…’

  There was no response. The only sound was their breathing, the priest’s heavy from his effort. ‘Jane?’

  ‘ She deserved to suffer, for taking Gerald.’

  ‘Don’t you think she has?’

  ‘ I’ll only ask for God’s forgiveness: for God’s mercy. Not her.’

  ‘It’s only God we have to ask.’ He could pray for his own forgiveness for that later.

  There was another long silence. Nothing left, thought Jennifer: no way to stop it. Die then. Pills. Pills wouldn’t hurt and she didn’t want to be hurt. Not hurt any more. Just ‘… I repent. Oh dear, merciful Lord, forgive me…’

  A fraying thread of excitement held Jennifer and the priest from total collapse. Cox had worriedly taken both their pulses and Dawson’s blood pressure. He still wore his vestments, even his shawl: he sat holding it, running it through his fingers as he talked, which he did haltingly, in short bursts, with not enough breath for what he wanted to say.

  ‘She’s gone, hasn’t she, Jennifer? Definitely gone?’ He’d asked the same question a lot, since helping her from the chapel, a reassurance they all needed.

  Jennifer nodded. At first she’d spoken, agreeing, but now she just moved her head, as if to repeat herself would risk bringing Jane cackling back.

  ‘It was God,’ insisted Dawson, another repetition. ‘God’s work. God’s mercy.’

  ‘She disappeared before,’ reminded Hall, cautiously. He wanted it to be true as much as any of them – was as anxious as any of them for it to be true – but couldn’t accept it this soon, this easily.

  The priest made an angry gesture of denial,’It’s over now. All over.’

  Hall found the possibility of that the most difficult of all to believe. It was too quick, too sudden. But how else could it have been? Exorcise meant to cut out, to remove evil. Which was what the priest was insisting had happened. There was no process, apart from the service. No prolonged treatment and after that a period of recuperation. Or wouldn’t there be? Not the recuperation after an illness, although what Jennifer had suffered was as bad as the worst imaginable illness. An adjustment then. A time – who knew how much time? – to become normal, ordinary. Would it be possible for Jennifer ever again to become normal and ordinary? For the rest of them, perhaps. For Dawson it was a religious miracle that proved the power of God and would sustain him for the rest of his life. For Charles Cox and Julian Mason it was the most incredible clinical experience of their lives: Mason would become world famous from his thesis. And Hall supposed he would in time accommodate the curiosity and notoriety.

  But how could life ever again become normal and ordinary for a woman who’d been possessed – physically occupied even – by the spirit of someone else and been used as a vehicle for murder? Perhaps this was where the prolonged treatment began, the counselling and the guidance.

  Not over at all, in fact, for Julian Mason and Jennifer. But over for him, if Jane had definitely gone. At once came the objective balance. Over for him even if Jane hadn’t gone. There was nothing more he could do. There were still some things to tidy up, perhaps: two or three weeks’ work, maybe a month. And after that… After that, what?

  His difficulty, he at last realized, wasn’t that it was all over. It was at the thought that after that time, after a month at most, he wouldn’t be seeing Jennifer again. Have any reason to see Jennifer again. Too soon to think like that. Despite the conviction of the priest and of Jennifer, none of them yet knew – were convinced, beyond doubt – that Jane had gone. And there was still a lot to do, if she had. He’d let things take their own course, at their own pace. There wasn’t any hurry. He smiled across at Jennifer at the thought and she smiled hesitantly back.

  ‘It’s so wonderful,’ she said, faint-voiced. ‘I’m so…’ She shook her head, unable to finish, too tired for the words to form.

  ‘We all want it to have happened,’ warned the psychiatrist, joining Hall’s caution. ‘But we don’t know for sure, not yet.’

  ‘What do we have to do now?’ frowned Cox.

>   ‘What we’d already decided,’ said Mason. ‘We go on waiting.’

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Which they did. Nervously. With Jennifer in those early days the most nervous of all, the convinced priest the least. Jennifer very much needed his conviction to sustain her own hope, after the immediate elation of the exorcism. But as those days passed it became easier for her, the confidence growing imperceptible layer by imperceptible layer.

  She kept her vow and maintained her religious instruction under Dawson, eager to pray – although unsure to whom – for the freedom to be permanent. She continued her treatment under Julian Mason, too, surer that she’d come through the horrific mental ordeal with her sanity intact but realistically accepting she needed that agreed and confirmed by a trained psychiatrist – a mind doctor – just as much as she needed to be guaranteed physically to have recovered by Charles Cox. Least perceptible of all was the gradual preparation each provided, unconsciously at first and each in their own specialized way, to equip Jennifer for her return to the closest she’d ever come to life among ordinary people who would never consider her anything but abnormal, apparently free of Jane or not.

  Mason identified Jennifer’s unprompted acceptance that she needed him as one of the most important indicators of her mental health. ‘She has come through it,’ he told Jeremy Hall. ‘She could still be damaged, wrecked even, if Jane comes back: that’s the key, which it’s always been. But basically she’s as solid as a rock. What we’re seeing – what I’m seeing – is the determination always to win, to be the best, that we’d heard about but never properly been able to see, until now.’

  ‘Isn’t that a pretty quick prognosis?’ queried Hall.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ demanded the psychiatrist. ‘I’ve been with her, night and day, for weeks, remember! She’s been my only patient. And she never had a mental problem: she had Jane, inside her head, trying to give her one. And it didn’t work.’

  ‘What about thinking of killing herself?’

  ‘Thinking of doing it is very different from actually doing it. Wouldn’t you have considered suicide, if you’d been the victim?’

  Wanting to make his practical contribution to Jennifer’s rehabilitation – secretly disconcerted that he wasn’t doing as much as the other three men – Hall said, ‘There’s been quite a few things left in limbo. Is it too soon to involve her in making decisions?’

  ‘It can’t be soon enough. One thing that’s got to be restored is her total confidence, the arrogance if you like, that she had before. People become confident making decisions for themselves.’

  ‘It’s about confidence that I’m concerned. I need to go back to London: get a lot of things on course. We talked about it last night, out walking. She asked me not to go. Got upset at the thought.’

  Mason nodded, ‘That dependency is something we’ve got to deal with.’

  ‘So do I just go?’ It was a clinical question, his only concern to do nothing to cause Jennifer any setback. He still couldn’t imagine everything coming to an end: that there was a finite point and that it was fast approaching.

  ‘No,’ decided Mason. ‘She’s making giant strides but at her speed, not ours. She’s still in a cocoon here. She’s got to be eased off her dependency upon you and me and upon Mr Dawson. Not have anything snatched away.’

  ‘What needs to be settled is still largely about her. How about bringing people here? Involving her that way?’

  ‘Good,’ nodded Mason. ‘A very good idea.’

  Jennifer thought it was, too. Guided by the psychiatrist Hall gave her two days’ warning and hopefully briefed everyone else just as thoroughly against anything she wasn’t prepared for. Bert Feltham was to be the only stranger and Jennifer said she was quite happy with his inclusion, too.

  ‘My first single-minded contact with someone from the outside world!’ she said. Mason was as pleased with the joke against herself, as he was with everything else Jennifer was doing and saying. But not as pleased as Jennifer. She felt alive, vibrant, a sensation she could scarcely remember. It was going to be all right. Everything. All right best of all – most of all – with her and Emily. Jennifer abruptly stopped the reflection, refusing it.

  The chamber’s chief clerk, unaccustomably subdued in dark grey, arrived with Humphrey Perry. Well briefed – perhaps too well briefed was Hall’s initial thought – by the solicitor, Feltham tried overly hard to behave as if there had been nothing whatsoever unusual about Jennifer. But couldn’t quite carry it off at the moment of introduction, offering and then withdrawing his hand.

  Jennifer laughed openly at the man and said, ‘I don’t bite any more: and I no longer have an alter ego that does it, either.’

  Geoffrey Johnson got to the clinic fifteen minutes later, burdened by briefcases and files. Inevitably the plump family lawyer was smoking one of his carved-bowled pipes. He paused by the Bentley to knock out the dottle before coming into the clinic.

  Although she had already agreed Hall again queried Feltham’s presence at the meeting and again Jennifer insisted she had no objection.

  ‘Let’s get as much done as soon as we can. There must be a lot to catch up with: things to do,’ said Jennifer, eagerly. Back in control of herself, she thought: in control, in charge, of everything concerning her. Jennifer Lomax was Jennifer Lomax again. What she wanted – what she decided – these men would do. Follow her instructions and her wishes. From today she’d go forward. Pick up the pieces: rebuild a life. Shouldn’t be frightened to be by herself, Julian Mason had told her at their last session, the previous day. More than strong enough to cope. And she was: she was sure she was. Jane had gone. Wasn’t coming back. Ever. That’s what Dawson said. The man she had to believe because he’d driven Jane away. And God: God too. It was still easier to believe the priest. So there was a lot to do. There was the rest of her life – her life and Emily’s life – to work out. Make safe and secure and never endanger again. She hadn’t talked about Emily to Peter yet. Hadn’t talked to anyone, not even Dawson. Or Jeremy. Had to, soon. The big decision. The biggest. Talk about it and then plan the reunion. Not reunion: pompous word. Mother’s didn’t have reunions with baby daughters. The meeting then. Plan the meeting. But not yet, not today. Formalities was how Jeremy had described the purpose of this gathering: settling the formalities. She looked expectantly at the barrister, who took the cue.

  Hall said, ‘A lot of today is going to be taken up with money. This isn’t the way this is normally done – certainly not between barrister and client – so it’s going to be an exception to the rule…’ Encouraged by Jennifer’s self-mockery he said, ‘… But then everything has been an exception to every rule.’ He looked to the family solicitor. ‘… Which sets the stage for you, Geoffrey…?’

  Johnson cleared his throat, a smoker’s cough, as he unloaded his briefcases. Hall was glad he’d had a larger conference table moved into his suite.

  Johnson said to Jennifer, ‘With your power of attorney I’ve had to expend rather a lot of money. I’m anxious you should see the accounting and approve it…’ He smiled, briefly. ‘It’s not an essential decision today, providing you’re satisfied with my discharge of my duties, but you also might like to decide whether you wish me to continue with power of attorney, now that you’re…’ The man stumbled to a halt.

  ‘… Now that Jane’s gone?’ finished Jennifer, helpfully.

  ‘I’m very glad you’re better,’ said Johnson, still awkwardly.

  ‘You and me both, Geoffrey. You and me both,’ said Jennifer, with bright glibness. She was actually enjoying herself, amused at the apprehension everyone apart from Jeremy was finding it so difficult to hide. She was seized by the urge suddenly to say, ‘Boo!’ to see what they’d do.

  The solicitor burrowed protectively into his bank of paper, isolating separate sheets like a bombardier laying out his ammunition. The financial outlay had necessarily been extremely high, Johnson warned, firing his first salvo. The Regent’s Park a
partment had sold within days of being put on the market for its full asking price – instead of stating the price, the man slid the first of his prepared papers across to Jennifer – but completion had only just been concluded. Until five days earlier the estate had been responsible, as it was for the Hampshire mansion, the running of which cost considerably more. Another account sheet followed the first across the table towards Jennifer. Against that maintainence had also been put the cost of removing Emily and Annabelle by helicopter and their accommodation since. Here Johnson hesitated, looking to Hall who shook his head, unsure if Jennifer saw the gesture: she’d been gazing down at the figures. Also included were the costs of the private security firm now necessary to protect the Hampshire house and all the costs being incurred at the clinic: more invoices slid across the table.

  ‘And then there are very considerable legal expenses,’ said Johnson. ‘And why Mr Feltham is here. Those expenses have, officially, to be submitted to my firm, of which Mr Perry is a partner and which, in turn, represents Mr Hall. I can’t obviously approve payment from your estate to a firm of which I am also a partner: it constitutes a conflict of interest. It is necessary for you, personally, to authorize that.’

  As if rehearsed, Feltham pushed the account sideways to Johnson, who passed it, unread, directly to Jennifer. She sniggered and said, ‘Surely it’s not too heavy to pick up.’ She lifted it, looking at the amount. ‘… But then again!’

  Hall was embarrassed and thought the other three men were as well.

  ‘Seems to me like everything adds up to around?1,200,000?’ said Jennifer, furthering all their discomfort and knowing it. ‘You guys do even better than I as a trader and I thought I was good…’

  ‘There is no difficulty,’ said Johnson, hurriedly. ‘You are extremely well provided for…’

  ‘Geoffrey, you’re tying yourself in knots trying to be discrete!’ interrupted Jennifer. ‘Why don’t we talk figures: make it easier for you? I don’t give a shit…’ She looked quickly at Hall. ‘That was me swearing, not Jane!’