A Mind to Kill

Chapter Twenty

Jennifer had a soaring, uplifting feeling of release being taken from prison, which she acknowledged at once was precisely what it was and what it should be: since the day of Gerald’s death she had been imprisoned, first in the cell-like hospital room and then in an actual cell, although part of the prison hospital.

The escape wasn’t total, however. There was, in fact, something new, a torture that hadn’t been inflicted before. Jennifer hadn’t been conscious of the voice when she’d emerged from her drugged sleep that morning, as she usually was, but when she became fully awake her body tingled with the numbness of Jane’s presence. But there wasn’t a taunting voice. Instead, at Jennifer’s moment of awareness, there was a cough, the subdued sound of a watcher in the shadows. Which, she accepted, was the perfect description, except that this watcher wasn’t in the shadows, waiting to pounce, but in her mind. But still waiting, she didn’t know for what. Or when. Jennifer positively let the thought linger, challenging Jane to read it and react – to let Jane know she wasn’t surprised or caught out by the change of torment – but still the voice didn’t come. There were, though, the occasional coughs of a patient stalker.

Which Jennifer ignored, practically succeeding in submerging the occasional interruption beneath the growing euphoria at getting beyond four narrow, enclosing walls. For which she made meticulous preparation. A?100 cheque kept the insistent matron (‘nursey will wash you: just lay back,’) on the other side of the locked bathroom door and provided the dryer to get her hair in perfect shape. Because the mirrors were larger she made up in the bathroom, too. She did so discreetly, the lightest blusher, the minimum of mascara, a pale lipline, determined to look her absolute best. And most of all, for every minute of every day that the trial might take, to appear in control.

She decided she’d made a good clothes selection during that last plea-persuasion meeting with Jeremy Hall. For the opening day of the trial she chose the severe, although loosely tailored blue Dior suit and a plainly cut voile shirt to create the appearance she’d favoured when she’d worked at Enco-Corps, subtly feminine but more obviously no-nonsense businesslike. It was also, she remembered, how she’d usually dressed for the committee meetings of the charities and fund-raising groups that had so very quickly found her name an encumbrance. Jennifer returned to the larger bathroom mirror to survey the complete effect, glad the long sleeves completely hid the worst of the scars. She’d included gloves in her clothes request and considered wearing them, to cover the damage to her hands, but decided against it until she’d assessed the court.

Beryl Harrison was waiting directly outside the bathroom when Jennifer emerged. She said, ‘You look lovely. Beautiful.’ The reaching out was not really to feel the material but for some brief, physical contact. As Jennifer followed the escort along the corridors, towards the exit, she passed Emma and Fran, together as always. Emma told her to hurry back and Fran said, ‘I like that outfit. That would look good on me. I’ll have to try it on.’

Jennifer strained to see something, anything, of the streets along which the prison van moved but the windows were small and heavily tinted and hardly anything registered. One of the escorting wardresses, a motherly woman, said, ‘Here it is then. Your big day.’

Jennifer smiled but said nothing. There was a cough in her head, a more positive throat-clearing than any before. Jennifer stiffened but nothing came.

The same wardress said, ‘We’re almost there. I’d sit back, if I were you.’

Jennifer did, although not knowing why. The van began to slow and then abruptly there was an eruption of blinding light through three of the windows.

‘Cameramen,’ explained the wardress. ‘They shoot blind through the windows. It hardly ever works. Don’t know why they do it. They won’t have got you.’

After the virtual isolation of the past weeks, Jennifer found the sudden bustle and activity strangely disorientating. The yard beyond the shielding-off, high-gated entrance was jammed with police cars and vans and men and woman in police and prison officer uniform. The escorting wardresses formed up either side and walked her into the building. Almost directly inside was a reception office, where her arrival was officially listed in a ledger and a clerk signed a receipt which Jennifer realized was for her, as if she was a product or a package. Still unspeaking they led her on, nodding and occasionally greeting other officers and prison staff as they passed.

The cell at which they stopped was half-tiled. In its centre there was a scarred table with a tin ashtray in its middle. There was a chair either side and two more against the wall, below the barred window. There was no bed or obvious toilet, but there was a pervading smell of urine. The wardress who had remained silent until now said, ‘Do you want to pee or anything? Once you’re in court you’ll be stuck, not able to go.’

‘I don’t think so. Thank you.’

‘It’s your last chance.’

‘No.’

‘If her brief hurries, we’ll be able to get a cup of tea before we have to go up,’ said the talkative wardress to the other. And then smiled as Jeremy Hall appeared at the door.

Hall was smiling, too. Humphrey Perry was directly behind. He was blank-faced.

‘The suit’s just right. Perfect.’

‘Good.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘OK.’ The excitement of no longer being incarcerated was ebbing away, back in yet another cell.

‘Not frightened?’ asked Hall.

Jennifer didn’t answer at once. ‘I’ve never been in a court before but no, I don’t think so.’

‘There’s quite a lot of ritual. Tradition. Don’t pay any attention to it. But you must leave everything to me. Not try to address the court yourself.’

‘I’ll do my best not to let anything happen. She’s doing something different. I know she’s with me but she’s not talking. Trying to upset me now by saying nothing. Just lurking.’

Perry, who’d brought up one of the spare chairs to sit beside the other lawyer, shifted but didn’t speak. His chair grated, jarringly.

‘How do you know she’s with you?’ asked Hall.

‘I won’t tell you, remember? She’ll know if I tell you. Maybe do something to stop me knowing.’ She wondered if that would get any reaction but there was no sound in her head.

Perry sighed.

Hall said, ‘I forgot. If you want to say anything to me you can do it through Mr Perry. Write a note or ask him to come up to the dock. That’s acceptable. For several days it’ll just be the prosecution evidence.’ And a lot more he didn’t want to contemplate, he thought, fearfully.

‘All right.’

‘We’ve done well with jury selection.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Ensured, as best we can, what might be the most favourable jury.’

Jennifer’s frown deepened. ‘I don’t understand?’

‘I challenged the men to the allowable limit and got them replaced by women.’ He regretted now making the comment at all: the composition wouldn’t have meant anything to her if he hadn’t mentioned it.

‘More sympathetic to me about Rebecca, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s not part of my defence.’

‘It’s the key to the prosecution, which I’ve got to do everything to confront.’

‘Which I expect you to do very well.’

Hall half shrugged, looking around the bare room. ‘You can have food brought in during the trial, if you’d like. I don’t think what they provide here is much good.’

‘I’m not very interested in eating. Maybe I’ll think about it tomorrow. But thank you for the thought.’ It seemed a long time since anyone had treated her with any kindness or personal consideration. She realized how much she’d missed it. Suddenly she demanded, ‘Are you frightened?’

‘No,’ blinked Hall, startled. He was glad she hadn’t asked if he was apprehensive, which he didn’t consider the same thing, the most minimal element of fear and therefore hardly qualifying. And if she had he would have lied to retain her confidence. But he was apprehensive. Not of any one single danger but generally concerned, mostly about the unknown. Whatever happened it was going to be a parody of a proper trial until Jarvis intervened to stop it and Hall accepted he personally would be the object of every sort of criticism and outrage. And not only – just most immediately and directly – from Jarvis but at every other legal level. Realistically Jarvis’s influence disappeared with the old man’s retirement and Hall expected to retain his place in the Proudfoot chambers even after Sir Richard’s elevation because he was the man’s nephew. But it would be a long time, if ever, before a brief was offered to him by name. And even longer before Bert Feltham accepted one for him, named or not.

‘I’m glad you’re not frightened,’ said Jennifer. ‘And I appreciate what you’ve done for me.’

‘I haven’t done anything for you yet,’ Hall reminded.

‘What you’re going to do for me,’ Jennifer corrected.

‘I have to go and robe,’ said Hall, standing. ‘Do you want to make yourself comfortable before the court?’

‘No,’ refused Jennifer again. ‘And I want to apologize, for going on about a QC. I trust you.’

As they climbed the stairs to reach the robing room Perry said, ‘Yet another amazing transformation. The voice has mysteriously gone away and you’re the barrister she wants after all.’

‘She’ll change her mind soon enough when she sees how I’m going to let the trial go.’

‘What mind?’ dismissed the solicitor, allowing the contemptuous cynicism.

Hall shrugged but didn’t bother with a reply. He was taking the only defence course open to him with Jennifer Lomax but he couldn’t lose the feeling that he was in some way failing her.

Preoccupied as she was by space – or lack of it – Jennifer was surprised by the comparative smallness of the court. Her expected imagery came from films and television, invariably American, in which legal surroundings barely achieved their supposed officialdom from just the raised dais for the judge and the pen for the jury, but otherwise looked like church halls.

Where she was going to be tried didn’t look anything like a church hall and scarcely appeared half the size of one. Jeremy Hall’s word – tradition – came immediately into her still clear mind as Jennifer entered the dock and gazed around her, registering everything. The brass-railed dock that was to be her place for the duration of the trial dominated the floor of the court, only slightly lower in its elevated height to the carved, wood-canopied and Royal emblem-surmounted bench from which the judge would preside, from the huge and momentarily unoccupied red leather, button-backed throne.

In the well of the court, seemingly far below her, were the bewigged and raven-robed barristers – Jeremy Hall’s wig was far whiter, his robe far newer than any around him – with their instructing junior counsel and solicitors in battle-ready formation behind: surrounded by so many artificial headpieces, Humphrey Perry’s domed bald head stood out like a pebble in a stream. Facing them but directly below the judge’s position was the robed and wigged court clerk with other officials and to their left a bespectacled, grey-haired woman at a stenograph.

The press gallery was behind her and already full, a flurry and buzz of attention erupting the moment Jennifer’s head appeared above the rail. A girl in a jean suit and a bearded man at the very edge of the gallery immediately began sketching in large pads, heads jerking up and down like mechanical dolls as they tried to capture her likeness. The jury box was on the opposite side of the court to the press, tiered up on two levels. Remembering the downstairs cell conversation, she counted ten women and two men. They all concentrated upon her entry but with less noise than the press opposite. The public gallery was behind and above, far too high for her to see how many people were in it. From the noise she guessed it to be crowded. The seat towards which her two escorts gestured her was centred in the dock to micrometer exactness and appeared heavily padded until she sat down. The leather didn’t give, remaining rock hard and Jennifer accepted it was going to be an uncomfortable experience physically as well as in a lot of other respects.

Down in his pit far below Hall turned unexpectedly, catching her eye. He smiled and nodded to her. She was unsure whether to respond but in the end nodded back, although she didn’t smile. With the barrister facing in his direction, Perry leaned forward for a huddled conversation. Hall’s smile died, his face at once serious. There were more jerky nods of agreement before he turned back to the still empty bench.

There was a cough inside Jennifer’s head.

‘The court will rise,’ demanded the court clerk, loudly.

It did, in straggled unison. Jennifer had been ready, aware of the clerk preparing to make the announcement, but the unintended movement surged through her as she rose. It would have brought her forward in a jump that might have spread-eagled her over the bar of the dock if she hadn’t been ready for that, too. As it was she staggered forward and clutched out for the rail, needing to cling to it in the effort to suppress the uncoordinated vibrations that racked through her body, violent enough to have thrown her off her feet if she hadn’t been holding on. She felt the wardresses at either arm, holding her, and saw the entering judge stop and stare red-faced towards her. His attention directed that of the lawyers, most of whom turned. The jury and media were already gazing at her in astonishment, several of the journalists scribbling hurriedly.

‘Mr Hall!’ demanded Jarvis, still standing. ‘Is your client unwell?’

Beside her the chatty wardress from the prison van whispered, ‘Come on love, don’t bugger about. It won’t help.’

Perry was already scurrying around to the edge of the dock, just able to get his chin over the edge. Having done so there was nothing for him to say. Lamely he said to the escorts, ‘Is she going to be all right?’

The two women had prised Jennifer’s hands free themselves to support her, still shaking, back to her chair. Having got her there they remained holding her up because Jarvis was still standing.

‘It’s all right,’ hissed Jennifer, as the sensation subsided. ‘Sorry.’

At a nod from the returning Perry, Hall said, ‘I crave the court’s indulgence, my Lord. A momentary incapacitation.’

‘Which I hope does not recur,’ said Jarvis, finally sitting.

As Jennifer was lowered on to the rock-hard seat the laughing started in her head, hysterical, and Jane said, ‘ How’s that for openers! And they ain’t seen nuthin yet! ’

‘Beat you. Stopped it happening,’ mumbled Jennifer, softly, her head lowered to conceal the lip movement as she’d tried to conceal it in hospital from the guarding policewomen. She ached, painfully, from the effort of holding herself against the unintended movement.

‘ Not enough. Everyone saw. Are still looking. ’

A lot still were, from the jury and the media, although the lawyers had turned to look in Jarvis’s direction. Small though the court appeared to Jennifer, the judge was still dwarfed by his surroundings.

‘The prisoner will stand,’ declared the clerk and Jennifer was unable to prevent herself wincing.

Getting unsteadily to her feet again, Jennifer muttered, ‘Help me,’ to the wardresses, who closed in tightly. It was fortunate they did and that Jennifer additionally snatched out for the rail again. All feeling vanished instantly from her left leg. She swayed into the escort on that side, who grabbed her arm, taking her weight. It hurt where she’d been cut. As the clerk read out the formal murder charge, Jennifer felt the support disappearing from her other leg and knew the two women could not hold her entire weight. Suddenly the feeling came back. Then seeped away again. Then returned, causing Jennifer to bob up and down, despite the effort of the other two women to keep her stable. Through misted eyes Jennifer saw Hall on his feet, only vaguely aware of his returning a plea of not guilty on her behalf. The women virtually carried her back to the chair again. As they sat her down, one said, ‘You sure you don’t need a doctor?’

As quickly as it had gone, all the feeling – although still with the numbness of Jane’s presence – rushed back and the voice said, ‘ Don’t want any doctors, taking you back to hospital and spoiling things! Maybe I’ll take a little rest. But then again, maybe I won’t. ’

‘I’m all right,’ Jennifer said, to the enquiring woman. She felt physically drained, the ache in her arms and legs and body worse than after the first attack. Now the tension had gone her legs were shaking, although sufficiently below the wall of the dock for it not to be visible to anyone except the women now seated beside and slightly behind her.

As the older barrister rose ponderously to his feet and like the actor he was paused to get the attention of his audience, Jennifer forced herself to concentrate, knowing that her future, her everything, depended upon every word and every nuance that was going to be uttered or conveyed in the coming days.

There was a lot of what Jennifer supposed Hall had meant by ritual, the judge always addressed as my Lord and Keflin-Brown describing Hall as his learned friend and phrases like ‘may it please the court’ used as verbal commas and parentheses before Keflin-Brown turned to face the jury to outline the case he assured them he would prove beyond any reasonable doubt.

‘Indeed,’ he intoned, ‘I will submit to you there have been few murders in the last hundred years – even longer – when the preponderance of guilt can be more strongly proved.’

‘ You listening? ’

Jennifer jumped, startled, angry at herself for allowing one concentration to become greater than the other.

‘ Yes, you did relax, didn’t you? Got to stay on your toes, Jennifer. I’m going to destroy you: everything about you. The game is for you to try to stop me. Shall we do that? Winner takes all, you or me. Fight to the death.’

Jennifer stiffened against any response. And succeeded.

‘… You may feel, after having heard certain evidence that will be produced before you, that there is a clinical explanation for this horrendous crime,’ Keflin-Brown was saying. ‘Upon that, upon the law, you must at all times be guided by my Lord. But from the outset, you must know the prosecution’s case. It is that Jennifer Lomax, before you in the dock…’ The man performed his first obvious trick, turning to extend an unwavering, accusing finger in Jennifer’s direction. ‘… is a calculating, premeditating murderess who killed her husband most horribly having discovered that he was having an affair with another woman, a woman, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, whom Jennifer Lomax once regarded as a friend… just as she believed her marriage and future with Gerald Lomax was untouchably secure…’

‘ Don’t worry, Jennifer. No-one will think you’re that. A month from now we’ll have you safely tucked up with all the Jesus Christs and Franklin D. Roosevelts and Napoleons and Catherine the Greats, just one big happy, crazy party.’

Jennifer sat upright, arms straight by her side, anchoring herself by gripping the underside of the uncomfortable chair, thinking again how much the prosecutor was making her sound like the sign-here package that had been delivered that morning. Me! she thought, agonized. It’s me! Me sitting here, holding on here: a person, a body. Jennifer Lomax. Me. Flesh and blood. A person with feelings. Not ‘her’. Or ‘the accused’. Or ‘this woman’. Or ‘a calculating, abandoned wife who decided upon the ultimate punishment for a deceiving husband’. Not true: hadn’t known.

‘ Tell them it’s not fucking true, you lying bastard! ’

‘Not fucking true, you lying bastard!’ Jennifer was on her feet before she could stop herself, the unpreventable shout reverberating around the court to the discernible echo of sharply indrawn breath. She said, ‘No… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…’ but her control was gone and the voice said, ‘ Don’t let the short-assed judge stop you: tell him to stay under his fucking mushroom where the pixies belong,’ and as Jarvis opened his mouth to speak Jennifer stopped him by saying, ‘Stay under your fucking…’ before she managed to halt. Silence embalmed the courtroom, every eye upon her. Hall was swivelled, horrified. Perry was coming half bent, crablike, towards her. The interrupted Keflin-Brown struck a pose, head to one side, bewilderment sculpted into his face.

‘Sit down!’ said the solicitor, in a stage whisper heard by everyone.

But Jennifer didn’t sit down, despite the wardresses plucking at her arms. At the dock rail she said, imploringly, ‘I’m sorry! It wasn’t me! It’s never me! It’s Jane.’

‘Shut up and sit down!’ said Perry, still loud.

‘Mr Hall!’ demanded the judge.

‘I beg the court’s indulgence, my Lord. A problem from which my client is suffering which I intend bringing to your Lordship’s notice, during the course of this trial-’

‘A problem this court does not wish to suffer,’ cut off the tiny, irascible man. ‘Do I need to remind you about turning this court into a music-hall?’

‘No, my Lord.’

‘Do you wish an adjournment, to advise your client how properly to behave in my court?’

‘I do not think that will be necessary, my Lord.’

‘Don’t have me make it necessary, Mr Hall.’ Jarvis raised his head, looking directly at Jennifer. ‘Do what your legal advisors tell you, Mrs Lomax. Sit down. And do not interrupt the proceedings of this court again.’

As Jennifer once more was put back into her seat Jane said, ‘ The dwarf doesn’t like you. No-one likes you. Not even Gerald liked you. All alone. Poor little Jennifer No-Friends.’

‘May I proceed, my Lord?’ unnecessarily asked Keflin-Brown.

‘I wish you would,’ said Jarvis, grimly.

Keflin-Brown’s opening had been broken at his background sketch, back to which he returned with a professional’s skill. Jennifer Stone had been born to privilege and known no other life, the barrister resumed. She was the only daughter of an army Brigadier whose outstanding service as military attache first in Washington and then in Moscow, at the very height of the Cold War, had culminated with his appointment as deputy chief of the Britain’s Defence Staff and for a time permanent NATO representative.

‘The accused travelled and lived in high places. She knew no other life. Such echelons were her life.’

Nothing in that life had been difficult for her, nothing barred to her. She was a natural linguist, fluent in German and French. The Oxford double degree in economics and mathematics had been gained with an appropriate Double First.

‘Before you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, sits a woman upon whom life has always smiled, the sun always shone…’

‘… And a murderess. Tell them you’re a murderess! ’

Jennifer was clutching the underside of the chair and tensed as the words and the desire again to leap up surged through her. She kept her head tight against her chest and wrapped her feet around the chair legs, the effort shuddering through her. There was a stir from the press gallery and the jury looked. Hall jerked around, face creased. Keflin-Brown remained looking steadfastly at the jury, his only concession a hesitation measured with stop-watch accuracy.

‘… Truly a beneficiary of the Gods,’ the man picked up on the absolute edge of hyperbole. The transition from a brilliant academic student to an even more brilliant financial career was as flawlessly smooth as everything else that Jennifer Stone had ever undertaken in that flawless life.

‘She became, ladies and gentlemen, a commodity trader, a vocation so far removed from the sort of mundane lives that you and I enjoy as to be difficult for us to comprehend. In previous centuries such people would have become swash-bucklers, pirates even. Today they are the sort of entrepreneurs who daily pledge millions, hundreds of millions, upon their ability to forecast and predict the value of commodities – metals, oil, grain, meat, money even, in fact every essential of life – in a month, three months, a year. It is a piratical existence, a hard, unrelenting, dog-eat-dog, give no quarter occupation. Those who follow it are hard, unrelenting, unforgiving people which as the facts of this case unfold you might well bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen of the jury…’

It was overly theatrical and flamboyant but at the same time true, thought Jennifer. That’s exactly how she so nostalgically remembered Enco-Corps: price-assess before anyone else, better than anyone else, buy or sell before and better than anyone else, forgive and forget no-one else, no mercy, no excuses, no escapes, ready to kill to stop being killed…’

‘ Kill to stop being killed.’

Jennifer’s mouth was open, the words formed. ‘Kill’ emerged although indistinctly and she managed to smother the rest in a choking cough. There was a what-did-she-say coming together of heads among the assembled journalists and another nervous, backwards glance from Jeremy Hall. Perry half rose, then lowered himself again. The judge remained poised longer, waiting.

It was another opportunity for Keflin-Brown to demonstrate his finely balanced timing. Jennifer Stone was such a person, the barrister picked up once more. In her first year at Enco-Corps she’d topped the in-house chart of successful trades, earned bigger profit-related commission than any other dealer and maintained that supremacy every year until she left.

‘That departure was to marry Gerald Lomax, a millionaire vice President of Euro-Corps’ American parent company and its head, here in Europe,’ continued the prosecutor. ‘It was a marriage that took place just six months after the death of Lomax’s first wife, from what an inquest jury concluded to be an inadvertent overdose of insulin upon which, as a severe diabetic, she was dependent…’

Jennifer saw Jeremy Hall’s sharp, sideways glance at the other barrister at the innuendo of the phrasing seconds before the voice burst through her head in a screaming, echoing tirade. ‘ Murdered. Killed me. The bastards killed me.’ And then, over and over, the same roaring chant, ‘ Murder, murder, murder, murder.’

But Jennifer was prepared, more so than ever before, alerted by the first reference to Jane. She clung desperately to the chair edge, her body rigid, pulling the control into herself and with her chin tight against her chest hopefully to prevent anyone seeing the bizarre, eyes-shut, face-squeezed contortion against the engulfing noise.

‘… As the facts of this case are outlined to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, one of the conclusions you may reach is that Gerald Lomax was a promiscuous womanizer,’ Keflin-Brown was saying. ‘While his first wife was still alive, Lomax was engaged in an extramarital affair with Jennifer Stone, his brilliant, top-achieving trader…’

No! thought Jennifer, outraged. They were the facts but they weren’t the facts at all. It hadn’t been like that, as it was being made to sound, as if she and Gerald had been rutting animals. It wasn’t sex: it was love. It was…

‘ Yes! ’ contradicted Jane. ‘ Exactly what you were, rutting, grunting animals. Pigs on heat. Fuck, fuck, honk honk. ’

‘No!’ protested Jennifer, forgetting where she was. She came up with a start. Hall remained looking forward but was hunched, almost as if he was trying to shield himself from her. Perry glared around and Keflin-Brown worsened the moment by halting in mid-sentence, turning his head from the jury to look enquiringly at her.

‘Mr Hall!’ said the judge, exasperated. ‘I really will not allow this to continue, as you well know.’

‘My Lord,’ said Hall, rising. ‘I apologize once more to the court for the behaviour of my client, which is in no way disrespectful-’

‘But which is precisely how this court is minded to regard it,’ stopped Jarvis, impatiently. ‘I would remind you there are ways open to me to restrict such behaviour.’

‘I am so reminded, my Lord, and I am obliged,’ said Hall, meekly.

‘… As I was saying,’ restarted Keflin-Brown. ‘Before their marriage, before the death of the first Mrs Lomax, Jennifer Stone and Gerald Lomax were lovers. After their marriage, the new Mrs Lomax gave up what had been a glittering career and chose to spend a considerable part of her time in the couple’s country estate, in Hampshire. For part of every week, however, Gerald Lomax chose to remain and live in London, which was, after all, his place of work…’ The slight, throat-clearing cough and the sip of water was as timed as everything else. ‘… At that place of work, the place where this terrible crime was committed and witnessed by no fewer than sixteen people, from all of whom you will hear, was employed another female trader, a fellow American named Rebecca Nicholls. You will hear, ladies and gentlemen, that for some years, maybe simultaneously with the affair he was conducting with the accused, Gerald Lomax was also engaged in a relationship with Miss Nicholls. Indeed, in New York which they had frequent occasion to visit and where Miss Nicholls retained an apartment, the couple lived virtually as husband and wife…’

‘ Doesn’t that make pretty listening! That’s your bastard of a husband he’s talking about, Jennifer. This is Gerald who used to come across with all that shit about love and happiness and how much he adored you and would do anything for you. And Rebecca, your best friend. Listen up now. I don’t want you to miss a single word.’

Keflin-Brown had turned, to look at Jennifer and by so doing brought most of the jury around with him. He said, ‘After the hideous stabbing about which you will hear, Mrs Lomax did not make what amounted to a full statement to the police: did not explain herself. But it is the Crown’s case that Mrs Lomax discovered the affair in which her husband was engaged with Miss Nicholls. That she decided to wreak the most terrible revenge imaginable upon the man, for his deceit and that in full and sound mind she set out just two months ago, entered her husband’s office and in full view of the entire staff, stabbed, cut and slashed Gerald Lomax so savagely and so severely that he died on the spot… and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I intend to prove to your satisfaction.’

‘ And I shall make you insane. That’s what I’ll do, in the end, of course. Really destroy that mega-mind of yours. But slowly, so very slowly: I’ve got for ever, after all. So I want you to know how it’s happening, when it’s happening, every moment that it’s happening: chip, chip, there it goes, every little chip of the way. And that’s how I’ll leave you in the end, Jennifer: a piss-soaked, mind-emptied imbecile, dribbling down her front without knowing it…’

Jennifer was aware of Perry at the dock edge. ‘For God’s sake wipe your face! Spit is running all over you!’

‘… Just like that.’