A Mind to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  Hall grinned back at her, very much liking a Jennifer Lomax he hadn’t known before.

  Johnson pushed doggedly on. ‘The legal fees have not yet been put against any account. They will be more than covered from the sale of the London apartment: there was no outstanding mortgage and the sale price was?650,000. There is a Swiss deposit account, in yen, amounting to?400,000. I transferred?75,000 from deposit to current here, so all the other bills have been settled, as of today. That still leaves you with?20,000 in your joint current account, with ?50,000 on deposit. Your personal account, which I have not touched, is in credit for?30,000. There are share portfolios which, on yesterday’s stock market quotations, amount to?1,500,000. And there are company and private insurance policies totalling?3,000,000: I have applied both to the private companies and to Enco-Corps for the discharge of those policies in your favour. Your late husband’s will still has to be admitted to probate but there is a?500,000 trust fund in Emily’s name, with yourself and myself as trustees. It becomes operable when Emily reaches the age of eighteen…’ He straggled to a halt. ‘Those are the main items which I want immediately to bring to your attention…’

  ‘At least I’m financially secure,’ agreed Jennifer.

  Hall wondered if anyone else noticed the suggestion of uncertainty in Jennifer’s voice at the remark and wished he hadn’t. Johnson had covered everything they had discussed by telephone under general headings, although the solicitor had not itemised the financial outlay until that day. Hall said, ‘I don’t think it’s anything that needs an instant decision but there are a lot of offers outstanding that legally we should put to you.’

  ‘Offers?’ frowned Jennifer.

  ‘For books, original screenplays, magazine and newspaper serialization,’ listed Perry. ‘We’ve had twenty: the highest, from an American publisher, is for $8,000,000.’

  ‘We’ve had five in chambers, in the last two days that I haven’t yet passed on,’ said Feltham. ‘And I’ve heard two British publishers are bringing out “books of the trial”.’

  Jennifer laughed, nervously. ‘What do they want?’

  He should have given her better warning, decided Hall. ‘What it was like, for you,’ he said, lamely.

  ‘It was horrific for me.’

  ‘Which is what people want to know about,’ suggested Perry.

  ‘That’s… that’s ghoulish… voyeurism…’ She stopped, blinking rapidly. ‘It’s what Jane said she’d do. That she’d make me into a freak…’

  Damn! damn! damn! thought Hall. ‘It’s nothing we need to talk further about, not now. Like I said, just something we had to tell you about, as your legal agents…’

  ‘… I don’t know… I don’t think…’ said Jennifer, haltingly. Her attitude in the beginning, something close to ebullience, was slipping away. That’s all people wanted to do, look at her and laugh at her, like people used to go on family outings to laugh at the unfortunates in Victorian mental asylums.

  ‘We’ll leave it,’ determined Hall, positively. It had been his mistake and he was angry at himself. He wanted to finish it all quickly now, to try to recover. He looked briskly around the room. ‘There’s nothing else is there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson, back among his papers and missing the look that Hall gave him. ‘The bank, quite rightly, have raised a query about your personal account, Mrs Lomax…’ He smiled up, having found what he wanted. Attached to the letter were a number of cheques. ‘These, in all, total?1,000. All, from the dates, while you were in prison. Obviously you had difficulty in writing, because of your injuries, but four are quite obviously forgeries: the bank have refused to pay out on them. Who’s Beryl Harrison?’

  No! No! No! ‘I don’t want it taken any further!’

  ‘It’s a police…’ began Johnson but Jennifer talked over him. ‘Only if I choose to make a complaint. Which I don’t. I don’t want any more discussion about it. It’s ended.’ Had to get away: get away and hide.

  The men in the room sat regarding her in varying degrees of surprise at an attitude that had run the gamut from recovered confidence through brief uncertainty to seemingly forceful, angry authority.

  Jennifer shuffled through the papers, finding the legal invoices. She extended her hand towards Johnson and said peremptorily: ‘Give me a pen, please. Let me sign a cheque for this. Everything will be paid up to date then, right?’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Johnson, chastened but not knowing why.

  Jennifer quickly scrawled her signature, beginning to stand as she finished. ‘Thank you all for coming. And for everything each and every one of you have done for me. I greatly and very sincerely appreciate it. Now you must excuse me. I have another appointment…’ Quickly, while she could still hang on.

  None of them were fully to their feet before she swept out of the room.

  ‘What the hell…!’ exclaimed Perry.

  ‘We tried to cover too much,’ said Hall. He knew Jennifer did have an appointment, another instruction session with Dawson, but that it wasn’t for another two hours.

  ‘But we achieved a lot, very satisfactorily,’ said Feltham, picking up and looking at the cheque that Jennifer had signed in full settlement of the legal fees to date. He went directly to the barrister. ‘I charged you at?1,000 an hour, Mr Hall. With refreshers, of course. That’s what I’m quoting from now on, with no assurance that we’ll accept the brief…’ He smiled sideways, at Perry. ‘You might keep that in mind, Humphrey.’ He came back to Hall. ‘As of today you’re officially finished here, sir. Although of course I don’t know what your personal plans are. But I thought I might as well bring some work down, for you to consider. A hospital negligence on behalf of a child damaged by oxygen deprivation: insurance company need their wrists slapped. Heroin possession by the youngest son of an earl: says it was planted on him because his elder brother’s a registered addict. Dodgy, but I think it could be true: there’ve been two police complaint investigations in the division in the past three years, for stitching people up. And a grievous bodily harm. Black kid says he was defending himself against a racist gang: four against one and he gets charged!’

  Back to normality, thought Hall. ‘I hope to be in the office in a few days. I’ll look at them before then. Let you know.’

  ‘It’ll be good to see you there, sir.’

  ‘What’s it like? The siege, I mean.’

  ‘Still pretty bad,’ said Feltham. ‘And I suppose it’ll get worse when the word gets around that you’re back. Surprised you got away so easily when you went to Hampshire.’

  ‘So was I,’ admitted Hall.

  ‘I didn’t need the reminder frown not to mention Emily,’ complained Johnson.

  ‘Where is she?’

  Johnson shrugged. ‘They’ve gone to Disney, in Paris. And she’s wetting the bed all the time now. Annabelle is genuinely worried.’

  ‘Have you told Annabelle what’s happened here?’

  ‘She said she’s glad it’s all over. She thinks it would be best for Emily if they went back to Hampshire, after France. That living under a security screen would be better for the child than wandering about from theme park to theme park.’

  ‘Any more talk of her quitting?’

  ‘At least that’s stopped,’ said Johnson. ‘But solicitors for the Metropolitan police have offered a compromise over their policing claim for the hospital. They’re suggesting an independent assessment, by a fee draughtsman.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ rejected Hall. ‘That’s presupposing an acceptance of responsibility on our part. Which there isn’t. Draughtsmen don’t come into it: someone’s playing with legal words they don’t understand. Tell them we don’t consider there’s anything to negotiate.’

  ‘It’s going to seem strange, getting back to other work,’ mused Perry. ‘I’m sure you can hardly wait.’

  ‘It’s certainly going to feel different,’ conceded Hall.

  ‘It might have been a lot at one session,’ conceded Julian Mason. ‘It’s not a setback.�
��

  ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ challenged Hall, curiously.

  ‘Maybe I’m not.’

  ‘So you know what it’s about?’

  ‘I think I probably do.’

  ‘And I can probably guess.’

  ‘Jennifer said it was closed, didn’t she?’

  ‘Something like that. Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘Of course not. And you should know better even to think I would.’

  ‘I’m concerned for her, that’s all: want to guard against a repeat of what happened today.’

  ‘You can do that by forgetting about it.’

  ‘She was upset by the idea of a book, too.’

  ‘I can understand that as an initial reaction. But I think it could be thought about more fully.’

  ‘It would make her into the freak Jane threatened. What she’s terrified of.’

  ‘Come on!’ said the psychiatrist, brutally. ‘She’s always going to be that. It’s something she’s going to have to learn to live with and don’t ask me how, because I haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘Have you told her that yet?’

  ‘She doesn’t have to be told. But she won’t admit it. That’s why it might help to write about it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘If she committed herself to one publisher or one outlet, whatever, the others might eventually go away. But more important than anything, the very act of writing about it would be a catharsis.’

  ‘Actually benefit her, you mean?’

  ‘Probably more than I’m going to be able to.’

  ‘Should I talk to her about it?’

  ‘It’s all part of encouraging her back into the real world, isn’t it? The real world she hasn’t been in for a long time.’ The psychiatrist looked very directly at the other man. ‘But Jennifer is always going to be a freak.’

  ‘I ran away.’ She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. She didn’t want to tell him the reason: risk everything.

  ‘Your choice,’ said Hall.

  She wished he hadn’t sounded so disinterested. ‘You sound like Julian. Have you discussed it with him?’

  Always honesty, he remembered. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me why, obviously. Just that it was a matter for you.’ It was their evening walk, to the outer perimeter now although she was still careful to avoid close contact with anyone else. Hall didn’t think Jennifer being there was a secret any more, obviously not among the staff, and was glad that Julian Mason’s assurance about money buying silence had proved true. The danger, then, had always been other patients.

  ‘I don’t want to tell you.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  ‘I still shouldn’t have run. I panicked.’ She felt so safe on these walks: enjoyed the warmth of his hand, feeling his closeness.

  ‘It was your first time in a group like that.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened once.’ She hoped she wasn’t sounding self-pitying.

  ‘You’ve got to learn again.’

  They walked on in silence. Jennifer said, ‘Could you help me learn?’

  ‘I’m not sure that would be helping you.’ The silence lasted longer. This time he broke it. ‘Would a book be such a bad idea?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how to begin,’ she protested.

  ‘You don’t have to study or pass exams to do it, do you? There’d be editors, people like that, to shape it for you. You’d probably get a lot of guidance before you even got started.’

  ‘It would be like letting people stare at me.’

  He searched for the right reply. ‘Or stop them doing it.’

  ‘I know that’s going to be a problem,’ she admitted.

  You don’t, thought Hall: you haven’t any conception. ‘I think you should think about it quite seriously.’

  ‘I hardly need the money.’

  ‘I’m not thinking about the money. It would get the whole thing out of your memory.’

  ‘I don’t imagine anything could ever do that,’ Jennifer said, soberly.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about forgetting. I was talking about adjusting.’

  ‘That’s something else I know I’ve got to learn: how to adjust.’

  It was time he himself adjusted, Hall decided. Past time. So he had to stop putting it off.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  His going burst her bubble. No-one knew, of course. Not even Julian Mason, with whom she had always been totally open and honest. She supposed being one hundred per cent better which was what Mason and Cox, with Dawson smiling beside them, had just declared her to be – meant she could successfully lie now without anyone guessing. Like Dawson hadn’t guessed about her conversion. That wasn’t so much an outright lie, any more than her not telling the psychiatrist the aching loss – the feeling that something had literally burst – she felt at Jeremy leaving. It was more retaining some privacy, which everyone did. In fact she was probably more honest than most people. Always had been. She did believe in something because when everything else had failed she’d been set free by a miracle, with a priest’s hand on her head. So there had to be some higher authority, some Supreme Being. And if Dawson represented it, then it was to his God she had to be eternally grateful. So she would be. It was the most sincere promise she’d ever made and she’d keep it. She’d probably need to.

  There was a huge difference between talking to Dawson and Julian Mason but talking was the operative word. Jeremy’s departure had signalled the beginning of the end. Now Mason and Cox had told her there was nothing more they could do, so their contact was virtually over as well. So she needed the church as much – maybe even more – than people who insisted they didn’t have the doubts. Which wasn’t badly dishonest, either. More a compromise, which again everybody did about a lot of things, religion most of all. The important thing was keeping her promise.

  She wished it was as easy to rationalize her feelings towards Jeremy Hall. Julian had done his best to prepare her – not about Jeremy alone but about all of them, himself and Dawson and Dr Cox – and she’d recognized at once that her dependence upon them had to be broken. But it wasn’t the same with Jeremy. It wasn’t dependence. What then? It couldn’t be love. That was ludicrous. Their close-together walks had been kindness, nothing more, just his helping her get better. And she didn’t think love – any sort of relationship – had a place in her life any more. She was still unsure what did, apart from Emily. And that remained the biggest, still-avoided uncertainty of all.

  She wasn’t sure, either, whether his daily telephone calls weren’t adding to whatever it was that was troubling her. They weren’t specifically to her, she reminded herself. He always spoke to the two doctors, sometimes even the priest, and there was always a practical reason for their conversations. She’d needed to confirm she still wanted Geoffrey Johnson to retain her power of attorney, for instance. And it had seemed important for him to tell her the Metropolitan authority had dropped their claim for the cost of policing St Thomas’s Hospital and to remind her she still hadn’t made a decision about the media and publishing offers.

  Did her uncertainty – the pricked-bubble feeling – really have so much to do with Jeremy Hall? Or was she transferring on to him – lying to herself – the true reason for it? Wasn’t it, quite simply, the terror of going back into the outside world: of being alone, with no-one to rely on? None of them – Mason or Cox or Dawson – would have made the decision if they hadn’t been totally convinced, individually and collectively, that she was ready for it. It was Jennifer herself who wasn’t convinced. So she had to convince herself about her readiness, as she had to convince herself about a God.

  There was no cause to be ashamed – embarrassed – by how she felt: nor try unnecessarily – unfairly – to involve Jeremy. It wasn’t even the unknown terror of what awaited her. Jennifer was terrified about only one person she was going to meet. And from whom, because of what Mason had just told her, she no long
er had to be parted.

  Jennifer jumped at the telephone, momentarily hesitating before picking it up.

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Julian,’ announced Hall. ‘Excited?’

  ‘Frightened.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if you weren’t.’

  ‘I can leave whenever I want.’ Stop avoiding it! she told herself.

  ‘I know.’ There was a long pause. ‘Jennifer?’

  ‘I can go back with Emily. Be her mother again.’ The words sounded odd: artificial.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Hampshire. She arrived back last week, from Paris.’

  ‘Is it safe for her to be there?’

  ‘We’re employing a lot more security people. Annabelle thinks it’s best.’

  ‘Does she know I’m better?’

  ‘I’ve only just heard myself.’

  ‘It’s going to take me a day or two to get ready.’

  ‘Is it?’ Hall asked, pointedly.

  ‘Emily will have to get used to the idea, as well as me. Just a day or two.’

  ‘I’ll probably need that, to set things up.’

  Jennifer felt a jump of excitement, through the apprehension. ‘You’re going to fix things for me?’

  ‘Would you like me to?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ she said, hurriedly.

  ‘And come with you?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like that very much.’

  ‘Welcome back!’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, doubtfully.

  Jeremy Hall had discerned her mood and understood it, with more practical cause to be apprehensive than Jennifer could yet imagine. The circus had begun again the very moment he’d arrived back at his neglected, mailbox-overflowing apartment. A media ambush still awaited him and he literally ran the envelope gauntlet. There were more letters inside. There were also two from his bank, which coincidentally he opened in the right order. In the first the manager assured him he had no cause whatsoever to worry at being overdrawn because the man fully understood the preoccupying circumstances and cordially invited him to lunch. The second thanked him for the cash infusion so substantial that the lunch would be a good opportunity to discuss investments. The tape on his answering machine was exhausted with messages, some from people he hadn’t heard of since university, others from girls claiming to have met him at functions and parties he couldn’t remembering attending. There were three calls from Patricia Boxall.