‘ Go on! I didn’t expect it to be as good as this.’
‘You’re right to be scared, Jennifer. I’m on to you. Know what your plan was,’ smiled Bentley.
‘I didn’t say you could call me Jennifer.’
She was breaking, Bentley recognized: trying to hide behind pomposity. ‘Hurt like hell, didn’t it, finding out about Gerald and Rebecca?’
‘ Woweeeee!!! ’
Jennifer had assuaged the guilt of her affair with Gerald – and the never-quite-lost feeling after Jane’s death – by knowing, positively, really knowing, not simply convincing herself, that her marriage to Gerald was invulnerable: complete, unendangered, absolutely and totally invulnerable. Which it had been, she determined, fighting back: had to be. It was a trick, a cheap trick to get her to admit something, anything, that wasn’t true. Wouldn’t work. Whatever they wanted – expected – it wouldn’t work. To Hall she said, ‘Why are you allowing this! Stop it!’
‘ I don’t want it to stop. Gerald was screwing your best friend, Jennifer! And you didn’t even know it, any more than I knew he was screwing you. Oh this is wonderful! Perfectly wonderful. ’ The hysterical laughter echoed in Jennifer’s head.
Before Hall could speak, Bentley went on, ‘That’s it, isn’t it, Jennifer? You found out your husband was having an affair with Rebecca Nicholls and worked out a perfect defence for a minimal sentence so that you could kill him in front of her. That’s why you stood at the window, covered in his blood, laughing down at her. You wanted her to see, didn’t you…?’
‘ NO!’ The denial wailed from Jennifer as she snatched her hands up, to cover her ears, to stop hearing the words. The drip rattled against its frame and she felt the needle tear out of her uninjured arm and then the warmth of the blood. ‘Stop it! Go away! You’re lying: all of you lying.’ She slumped back against the pillows, the room misting in front of her, her bruised lips moving but forming no words.
‘This can’t go on!’ protested Lloyd.
‘No,’ said Hall. It can’t. I’ve allowed more than I should have done. It has to stop now.’
Bentley wheeled upon the lawyer, only just stopping himself from telling the man to go to hell. The bitch had got away with it by faking the collapse, like she was trying to get away with murder by faking insanity.
‘ Get up. Say something. ’
Jennifer didn’t hear the words. Lloyd pushed through to Jennifer’s bedside, more fully opening the half-lidded eyes. ‘She’s not properly conscious. And she isn’t faking it…’ He became aware the tape was still operating. ‘I am formally warning you this woman’s health would be seriously endangered by attempting to continue this interview, which she isn’t mentally capable of responding to anyway.’
Rodgers wasn’t quick enough stopping the tape to prevent it registering Bentley’s hand-slap of frustration against the table top.
It didn’t, however, record Jeremy Hall saying to Humphrey Perry, ‘We made a mistake. A very bad mistake.’
Chapter Nine
It was a room of angry people and a lot of confusion, the ward sister’s office into which Lloyd herded them as nurses came running to his call. He had forbidden the re-entry of any policewomen – insisting they witnessed Jennifer’s recovery through the corridor window – adding to Bentley’s fury.
‘The doctor said it was a genuine collapse,’ said Hall. It had been a bad mistake to allow the interview: getting the doctor’s agreement wasn’t sufficient excuse. He should have insisted upon more time, properly to prepare the woman: protect her. And done that better – protected her better – before the police arrival. Someone with more experience wouldn’t have let any of it happen.
‘Rubbish!’ rejected Bentley. ‘The collapse is a fake, like hearing voices is a fake. I’ve got the motive, like I knew I would. It’s murder, pure and simple and premeditated. I won’t have any prosecution accepting diminished responsibility or an unfit-to-plead attempt.’
‘It’s not up to you what the prosecution will or will not accept,’ reminded Hall, refusing to be bullied. No-one was sitting. Instead they stood either side of the small room, like opposing combatants, which Hall supposed they were. Like David and Goliath. It was hardly a good analogy, he realized: Goliath lost.
The detective’s face tightened at the correction. Formally – but with difficulty – Bentley said, ‘I’m going to conduct this investigation as a culpable homicide, with no extenuating circumstances like mental illness. And that will be how my report is submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service.’
That’s what we’d expect you to do,’ said Humphrey Perry. The solicitor’s irritation was personal. It was virtually inevitable that what had occurred would leak back to Feltham and he’d promised the man he’d keep an eye on Jeremy Hall to make sure something precisely like this didn’t happen. It would be best if he actually told the man himself, to get his side of the story in first.
‘There’ll be no further interviews with my client,’ announced Hall.
‘ Is she your client?’ demanded Bentley, belligerently. ‘Sounded to me as if you were going to be fired.’
‘Until I am, properly, I represent Mrs Lomax,’ insisted Hall. ‘And while I do I won’t allow a repetition of what took place in there.’
Cocky young bastard out to make a name for himself, judged Bentley. He was going to have his work cut out doing it with this case and Bentley decided he’d be buggered if he’d do anything to help. ‘You actually believe all her nonsense?’
‘From the beginning Mrs Lomax appeared genuinely unwell to me.’
‘You heard the voice?’ mocked Rodgers, who’d worked with Bentley long enough to gauge his superior’s mood and knew that at that moment Bentley was as furious as hell.
‘I got sufficient indication of a mentally distressed woman.’
‘Which you’ll get a lot of tame psychiatrists to swear to, in court.’
‘It’s Mrs Lomax’s own wish to be psychiatrically examined,’ said Hall.
‘And we’ll match you, trick-cyclist for trick-cyclist, to say that she’s sane,’ insisted Bentley.
Hall allowed himself to become angry at his own mistakes but had a barrister’s control against letting it happen professionally at the attitudes of others. Bentley was the sort of overconfident person easy to handle in court, someone quickly coaxed into ill-considered response. ‘Perhaps it won’t be necessary. I thought you knew Mrs Lomax wants to be diagnosed sane.’
‘That’s the cleverest bloody part of what she’s doing, isn’t it?’ said Rodgers. ‘Playing mad but saying she doesn’t want to be.’
Hall decided to experiment, to see how easy it would be to manipulate Bentley. ‘I’ve told you I won’t allow the interview to continue. There’s no real point in your staying here any longer, is there?’
Who the fuck did this cocky little bugger just out of school think he was talking to? Red faced, Bentley said, ‘I’ll decide when and how to leave enquiries.’
‘Of course,’ said Hall, mildly. ‘I was just trying to save you wasting time.’
‘I’ll make up my own mind when I’m doing that, too.’ Bentley caught the smirk on Perry’s face and realized, too late, what was going on. They’d see who had the last laugh, he promised himself, vindictively. The bloody woman thought she was making a fool out of him and these two smarmy sods thought they were making a fool out of him – actually laughing! – but before it was all over they’d learn who the real fools were.
‘We’ll set up the examinations as soon as we get the go-ahead from the doctor,’ Hall said to Perry. ‘You have names?’
‘Several,’ assured the solicitor, aware of the renewed irritation from the two detectives at apparently being ignored. It might have been unintentional but if it wasn’t Jeremy Hall appeared to have mastered a useful courtroom technique.
‘We’ll use several,’ decided the younger man. ‘And I want each totally independent, not one responding to the opinion of another…’ Appearing to remember Bentley, Hall said, ‘How soon will you submit to the Crown Prosecution?’