There was a wheelchair for the half-asleep Jennifer but the efficient smoothness of her immediately being swept into her private suite was broken by her abruptly twisting, seeking Hall who for once had retreated into the background.
The imploring hand came out again. ‘You’re not leaving me?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t want you to.’
‘I told you I’m not.’
‘ I’m not leaving you, either.’
There was still too much adrenalin for either of them even to consider sleep. Hall sat through the formal admission procedures, which Mason completed with the resident doctor, Charles Cox. He was a pipe-smoking, slow-talking man who showed neither surprise nor awe at Jennifer’s presence.
‘What about you three?’ he asked, in a strangely high-pitched voice.
‘I’d like my usual room,’ accepted Mason, at once.
‘I haven’t thought about it,’ admitted Hall.
‘From what I’ve seen on television you’re going to need somewhere to hide, too.’
‘I suppose I am,’ accepted Hall. ‘Thanks.’
‘You looked bloody scared among all those people yesterday.’
‘I was.’ He hadn’t been aware of any television cameras.
‘I won’t be staying,’ refused Perry, hurriedly.
‘No,’ agreed Hall, just as quickly. ‘I’m going to want you back in London.’
‘Am I still professionally engaged?’ demanded the solicitor.
‘Yes,’ sighed Hall.
‘Upon whose instructions?’
‘Mine. Which will be confirmed by Mrs Lomax tomorrow. Or rather later today, when she wakes up.’
‘What is there legally left to do?’
‘At the moment I’m not sure. But it could be a lot.’
After Perry left with the doctor, Mason said, ‘You really think you can drive Jane out? Make her leave Jennifer?’
Hall felt a flicker of embarrassment. ‘We’re not talking reality here. So it’s as sensible in a nonsensical situation as anything else.’
‘I still think you should try exorcism. There’s a chapel here. A priest.’
‘I’m willing to try anything.’
‘What about me?’
‘I don’t understand?’
‘Am I being professionally retained again?’
‘You told me there was nothing you could do, psychiatrically.’
‘That was to get rid of Jane. Jennifer’s now in a depressed suicidal state. That is treatable. And should be treated, shouldn’t it?’
‘Of course. But can it be, despite Jane?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted the psychiatrist. ‘We’ve obviously got to try.’
Then I’d like you to be the one to do it. To organize the exorcism, as well.’
‘ Attempted exorcism,’ warned the psychiatrist. He didn’t immediately continue, although it was obvious he wanted to. Finally he said, outright, ‘I’d like her permission and authorization to do a Paper.’
Another vulture, picking at the carcase, thought Hall. Except that Jennifer wasn’t a carcase – yet – and it was unfair to criticize Mason as a vulture. What was he going to do when it came around to considering all the media and book offers? Not a question needing an immediate answer. There were a lot of others to be settled first. He said, ‘I’ll talk to her about it. We both can, in fact.’
‘I can give you one early diagnosis.’
‘What?’
‘One of the commonest treatment methods for mental illness is for a psychiatrist to gain the utter reliance of his patient.’
‘So?’
‘It’s going to be hard for me to do that with Jennifer. She’s already transferred her total dependence on to you.’
In her adjoining room, through the drug haze and exhaustion and despair, Jennifer was distantly aware of Jane singing, to her own tune and adjusted words, ‘Three Little Piggies Went to Market’.
‘ One little piggy went to the slaughter.
Another little piggy makes two.
A third little piggy is waiting by the door
Who can we find to make four? ’
Chapter Twenty-nine
They did finally sleep but only for two or three hours and then fitfully. Hall was glad Jennifer was still asleep. Henot House, he discovered, was not specifically a psychiatric hospital – although it had a dedicated and fully staffed wing – but a drug and alcohol dependency clinic for the ultra rich and very famous, set in wooded grounds at least three times as big as those in which the Hampshire mansion was set, these complete with an eighteen hole golf course. He took particular note of the helicopter pad.
Within the building there was a shopping mall. He charged a designer track suit, trousers and shirt, underwear and shaving gear to an account he already found opened for him, although against his suite number, not his name. He checked at once with Charles Cox, reassured it was all part of the?500-a-day system and that Jennifer’s identity was similarly protected.
While he waited for Humphrey Perry to get into his office, Hall watched breakfast television. It was almost totally occupied, as it had been for the past five days, by Jennifer. Hector Beringer repeated in a live interview, with Superintendent Hopkins in insistent support beside him, that Jennifer was no longer at the hospital. Every channel had its own reporter who’d taken part in the previous night’s chase talking over the helicopter film of the decoy ambulance driving as far as Basingsroke before returning, without stopping, for the nurse dressed in Jennifer’s clothes very publicly to get out and actually pose for photographs at the hospital entrance. There was ground footage of her doing that and a lot of that morning’s film of a disbelieving crowd build-up which already looked as large as it had been the previous day. Soldiers were still there. Every station featured their resident psychiatrists, two of whom thought Jennifer could be freed of Jane’s possession by treatment they offered to provide against three who insisted Jennifer would be possessed for life. The latter view appeared to be the opinion of newspaper contributing psychiatrists, whose views were also discussed in detail. One tabloid held up to the camera had the headline Twinned for Life to a Murderer. There was a lot of psychiatric references to religious hysteria that had attracted the crowds and footage of the cult squatters by Lambeth Palace. There was on every channel discussion about the book and media offers as if they were being seriously considered by Jennifer and her legal advisors. On a commercial station, the last to which Hall turned, a pop group performed a Country and Western style Ode to Jennifer with a prediction from a disc jockey that it would be in the charts by the end of the week. The repeated chorus was that Jennifer was doomed for life.
Despite having had little sleep himself, Humphrey Perry was in his office promptly at nine, waiting for Hall’s call. It took the solicitor fifteen minutes to take down Hall’s instructions, which included having collected from Geoffrey Johnson and delivered the clothes and belongings he’d collected from the prison. When Hall told the solicitor what he wanted from both the defence and prosecution sections of the murder file, Perry said, That absolutely-’
‘Don’t even bother to say it!’ stopped Hall.
‘We actually know Bentley, a trained murder squad detective, looked into it,’ still protested the man.
‘The same detective who didn’t properly carry out the investigation at the scene of the crime,’ rejected Hall. ‘It was all too obvious. They laid back.’
‘Leave it to the priests and the psychiatrists.’
‘Just have what I want sent down. But not by courier: someone you can trust from your office who won’t be recognized and followed.’
Mason and the clinic doctor were in deep conversation when Hall emerged for the second time.
‘I’ve managed a preliminary medical examination,’ said the squeaky-voiced doctor. ‘I don’t like all the medication she’s been having. What St Thomas’s administered was fine but God knows what was pumped into her in prison. I’m going to put her on detox, to clean her out.’
Hall flinched at the brutality of the doctor’s expression. In daylight Cox was an unusual looking man: Hall guessed the hooded eyes were normal but weren’t helped by the man waiting up for their arrival. ‘You consider she’s medically unwell?’