A Mind to Kill

Chapter Twenty-three

Sir Ivan Jarvis was incandescent with rage, the fury worsened by it being obvious to everyone in chambers – but to himself most of all – that he had no alternative. He was, nevertheless, still seeking one.

Jeremy Hall had endured the threats and gone through the music-hall accusations quite unworried: he’d already decided there were grounds for appeal upon the judge’s court-recorded animosity. What had happened during the past twelve hours – with only God knowing what was likely to emerge in the coming twenty-four – guaranteed not just the legal overturning of everything if Jarvis didn’t comply but ensured an ignominious end to the old man’s lifelong career. Jarvis knew that, too.

‘I made clear my attitude to tricks, Mr Hall!’

‘And I’ve made clear, my Lord, that these matters only came to my notice at the conclusion of yesterday’s hearing. This application is not based on trickery. It is based upon fact.’ It was hard, in his excitement, not to appear overconfident: not too soon or too quickly to seek some personal satisfaction from how he’d been demeaned in open court.

‘The facts were in a statement, for all to see and challenge!’

‘One was, my Lord,’ corrected Hall, not needing to take the reminder further. Jarvis had prior access to Peter Lloyd’s statement, as well as both prosecution and defence.

‘My Lord,’ intruded Keflin-Brown. ‘My learned friend very properly provided me with every facility and access, after last night’s conclusion. From what has come to light, overnight, I must support his application most strongly in every way.’ There was his practised, mannered paused. ‘In fact, subject to your Lordship’s direction I intend suspending the prosecution until it has been resolved.’

Jarvis’s mouth became an even tighter line. ‘There could be an explanation for one of your disparities, regrettable though such a mistake might be.’

‘But not for the other,’ argued Hall, easily. ‘Since last night I am in a position to prove from the prosecution’s own witnesses, given your permission to recall, as well as from my own, that the second matter is incontrovertibly conclusive.’

‘We heard yesterday from eight witnesses who saw your client murder her husband,’ persisted the judge.

‘We also heard, from those eight witnesses, how she stood hands outstretched against the window after appearing to have carried out that murder. Each account of which further supports my request this morning.’ There had been a chance for him to sleep, after about 3 a.m., but the adrenalin had been Everest high and he hadn’t even bothered to try. Instead, having found the key, he had forced himself yet again through Jennifer Lomax’s entire file, sometimes consciously mouthing the words he read in his determination against missing anything else by being dulled by his familiarity with what he already knew. Now he was absolutely sure there were no more oversights.

To Keflin-Brown the resistant judge said, ‘You have no objection to the introduction of a new defence witness?’

‘None, my Lord,’ said the older barrister, at once.

‘What time is he due to land?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Just after midday,’ responded Hall, prepared for every query. ‘Arrangements have been made to convey him immediately to court.’

‘With hearsay evidence?’ challenged Jarvis, hopefully.

Another door he was going to enjoy slamming in the old bastard’s face. It had been Humphrey Perry’s suggestion to extend the enquiry. Which had produced the most dramatic – as well as perhaps the most inexplicable and frightening – evidence to support his application that morning. It was, Hall knew, what was unsettling everyone, something none of them understood and didn’t want to think about. ‘The court benefits from the time difference between this country and the United States of America: it was only 11 a.m. in Washington DC when your Lordship rose last night. The defence had already engaged an American lawyer, prior to the developments before your Lordship today. He was able to locate the doctor who took the original samples and have him swear an affidavit before an American judge in chambers that his findings were a true and accurate record. I would ask you to accept, my Lord, that it is therefore legally admissable and not hearsay evidence…’ Closing the lid on the box, Hall finished, ‘If that is not your view, then I will make arrangements to fly the doctor here, personally to appear before you.’

Jarvis shook his head, in defeated rejection. He looked intently and individually at the two barristers, then at Perry and Robert Morley behind. ‘Have any of you thought of the implications of this?’ he demanded, voicing the unspoken bewilderment of them all.

Keflin-Brown and Hall exchanged looks, each inviting the other to respond. Taking the responsibility, as the applicant, Hall said, ‘I cannot explain what I believe I can prove.’

‘Your application is granted, in full,’ Jarvis surrendered. There was a pause, ‘I’m minded to add God help us.’

No-one considered the remark an exaggeration or out of place. Perry was actually thinking the same thing himself.

It had been one of the most horrific times of the total horror, not as bad as having her mind taken over, or the murder itself or the lesbian rape but close behind. Jane had erupted against Jeremy Hall’s refusal to explain what was happening, screaming so loudly and so long Jennifer had screamed herself, at the physical pain it caused. Twice, despite Jennifer’s efforts to prevent it, she’d been thrown violently to the ground and had once been unable to stop herself suddenly striking out, catching the barrister a glancing blow on the side of the face. The fury had reached apoplexy at Hall’s reaction to it all. He’d greeted every outrage as if he wanted it to occur – making no effort to avoid the slap – unnecessarily pointing the worst of her behaviour out to the people before whom she was paraded, very often like an exhibit. She recognized some, like the two detectives and the prosecuting barrister and court officials, but not others. They’d ignored her too when Jane had made her demand to know their names and what they were doing, snipping a sample of hair and fingerprinting her and taking yet another blood test. Jane had made her jerk her arm when the needle went in, breaking it off, so she had another sore wound in her arm: it had taken all her own effort as well as Hall physically holding her arm for the sample and the fingerprints to be taken. All that had been done by someone she didn’t know, in her cell, although the prison doctor had attended as a witness. Hall and Perry and some other strangers were there, too, and so much official activity had obviously frightened the matron. Jennifer had used it further to scare the woman after everyone had gone, lying about an authority inquiry. There hadn’t been any cream residue when she’d awoken that morning and Jennifer hadn’t detected anything during the night, which she believed she might have done. Jane had maintained an unrelenting barrage of noise, penetrating even the sedative, so Jennifer had always had a vague awareness of her surroundings. It had been a pill, not an injection – further evidence the matron didn’t intend drugging her beyond any awareness of what was happening to her – and Jane had succeeded in making her vomit the first one up before managing to swallow the second.

The tirade had continued that morning. Jennifer’s hand had been jerked and pulled when she’d tried to make-up and dress her hair, so the effort was very much worse than at the beginning of the previous two days, although better than at their end, after Jane had made her drool. She’d chosen a dress today, dark blue again to minimize the inevitable staining and intended trying hard to remember to have more clothes brought up from Hampshire: both suits were too crumpled and sweat-and-saliva stained for a second wearing. She doubted if cleaning would help.

The threats had approached hysteria, on the way to court. There was: ‘ Find out what’s going on! If you don’t, I’m going to make you do things you can’t even begin to imagine! ’ And then: ‘ Forget the attack on Emily: Gerald even. You’ll go out with the biggest bang ever .’ Followed by: ‘ You find out or by tonight you’re in the funny farm, for life.’ And then that most familiar of all: ‘ Don’t fool yourself, Jennifer. You know you can’t fight me – resist me – sufficiently.’ Before a return to the beginning: ‘I want to know what’s going on! ’

So did Jennifer. Desperately. From the fact that Keflin-Brown and his junior were involved, as well as the stone-faced Bentley and Rodgers and a lot of obvious specialists and experts it had to be important. Vital. Yet she’d been in court all the time, heard everything that was said. And there hadn’t been anything: nothing, that is, that had meant anything to her. So what was it?

‘ Find out: I keep telling you to find out! ’

Jennifer didn’t have to talk. Thinking was enough. Really knocked you off your perch, hasn’t it Jane? Really beating you this time. Said it would happen, didn’t I? Not as clever as you thought you were. Panicking. Don’t know what to do. Now you’re lost, not me. Will lose. How’s that feel? Lost and going to lose a lot more. Finished, Jane. Not just dead once. Dead twice.

‘ Dream on, bitch! Enjoy, as long as you can. Which won’t be long. That dock’s really going to be your bear pit today. You’re going to dance to every tune I want to play and I’m going to play the lot. Should have kissed sticky-fingered matron and your dyke friends goodbye. You won’t be going back to them. Got a special place for you in the looney tune chorus. Here’s a joke, just for you. A celebrity goes into an asylum, part of a compassion therapy experiment, and says to the first man he sees: “Hello. Do you know who I am?” and the man says: “No. But ask matron. She’ll tell you.” ’

Not good enough, Jane. Not even very funny. Panic. Not in control any more. Lost.

‘ We’ll see. ’

We will. Tough shit, Jane. You’re fucked.

There was almost a phosphorous whiteness from the intensity of the window-reflected camera flashes at their arrival. Jennifer descended confidently from the van but the moment she reached the ground all support left her legs. Only the quick reflexes of Ann Wardle kept her from collapsing on to the ground: as it was she went down heavily to her left, where the second wardress failed to catch her, and hit her knee with sickening hardness against a kerb edge. Her tights tore and her knee began to bleed, all strength and sensation gone from the leg. Jennifer was virtually carried into the building, arms around the necks of both wardresses who in turn linked their arms around Jennifer’s back to complete the bridge. The duty doctor was crouched in front of her, cleaning and dressing the darkly bruised cut, when Jeremy Hall entered the cell.

‘ Ask him! Demand to know! ’

Instead Jennifer said: ‘She made me fall. She’s screaming to know what’s happened.’

‘I’m sure she is.’

‘ What! ’

‘She says she’s going to make me do worse things than attack Emily. That I’ll be in a mental hospital by tonight.’ He was somehow different. Not frightened of her – he was one of the few who had never been frightened of her – but somehow holding back. He wasn’t even leaning over the table towards her like he’d usually done, since the trial had begun.

The hesitation was obvious, too, before he said, ‘I want her to do everything possible she can.’

Jennifer looked at the barrister, aghast. ‘What?’

‘The more ridiculous she makes you look – the more outrageous the actions or the words – the better it is for us. Don’t fight against any of it, however bad it is. Do it and say it.’

‘ WHAT? ’

‘She’s screaming! Hurting my head again.’

‘Who or whatever is in your head is my defence witness now,’ insisted Hall. ‘Whatever she does or says is going to prove your total innocence. Do you hear that, Jennifer? I can prove you’re not guilty! Not just that. Prove you’re not mad, either.’

‘ NOoooooooo! ’

The gossip of an impending although unidentified sensation inevitably came from the court officials and the anticipatory electricity was tangible when Jennifer entered the dock. The limp immediately became a cause for speculation, several journalists standing in the absence of the judge to crane over the dock rail in an effort to see the reason. Jennifer was tensed, nervous of an abrupt attack from Jane, but nothing came although she still had the tingling burn of Jane’s presence, more uncomfortable than usual. Her knee throbbed and had swollen tightly against the dressing. She was ready when the judge entered the court, grabbing out for the rail and glad of the wardresses close behind but there was no weakness in her legs. Despite what Hall had said in the cells below it was instinctive for her to grip the underside of the chair. Ann had the first handkerchief ready, in her lap. At Jennifer’s look the wardress shook her head, reassuringly.

Jarvis cleared his throat, staring fixedly at Jennifer for several moments before turning to his right. In his strangely sonorous voice he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, since the adjournment of this trial yesterday, certain matters have most forcibly been brought to my attention…’ He looked briefly down at Jeremy Hall, who was visibly hunched, like a runner eager to get off the blocks.

‘… In the light of what has emerged, overnight, it is necessary, in my view, to allow these matters to be fully and properly examined, in your presence. And for that examination to be conducted at this stage of the trial, instead of waiting for the prosecution to conclude its case and for the defence to present theirs, which would be the normal course of events…’

The judge paused, to clear his throat again, and Jennifer was startled to see Perry turn and smile encouragingly at her. She was too surprised to respond.

‘… To that end,’ resumed Jarvis, ‘certain witnesses who have already given evidence will today be recalled, for their evidence to be explored more fully than it was when they first appeared. I will do my best to ensure that this is done in a comprehensible manner, to prevent this extremely unusual course causing you any confusion…’

Briefly Jarvis’s attention switched to Hall, as if in warning. ‘… If, however, something emerges that any of you do not understand, I require you at once to advise me, through the court officials. At which time it will be clarified. Is that quite clear to all of you…?’

There were uncertain nods throughout the jury. The press beehive hummed.

‘… We will pick up, however, with the witness who was giving evidence at the conclusion of yesterday’s hearing,’ announced Jarvis. ‘Doctor Peter Lloyd…’

The hospital doctor re-entered the box, agreeing with a nod that he understood he was still bound by the oath he’d taken the previous day. Hall was already standing, waiting.

‘Doctor Lloyd,’ said Hall. ‘Your answer to my final question, yesterday, was that during the time she spent under your care a total of five separate blood tests were taken from the accused?’

‘That is correct.’

Taken by you?’

‘Three were.’

‘Did you take the first, upon her admission?’

‘Yes.’

‘That first test, upon her admission, would have been for a particular and specific purpose, would it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Mrs Lomax had quite severe injuries, to her arms and hand. She’d lost blood. It was necessary to give her a transfusion.’

‘Before which you had to establish what?’

‘Her blood group.’

‘Why was it you who took that first sample?’

‘I was the duty emergency doctor that day.’

‘How long did it take pathology to identify Jennifer Lomax’s blood group?’

Lloyd shrugged. ‘Maybe thirty minutes. As I’ve said, it was considered an emergency: there’s a fast-track system. By the time the wounds had been cleaned and Mrs Lomax prepared for surgery, we had the results.’

‘Which were?’

‘That Mrs Lomax’s blood group is B Rhesus Positive.’

‘Which was the blood you transfused?’

Lloyd appeared surprised by the question. ‘Of course.’

‘What effect would there have been upon Mrs Lomax if blood other than B Rhesus Positive had been transfused?’

The doctor appeared even more confused. ‘An extremely severe reaction. Anything else would have been incompatible. She would have gone into shock: could even have died from renal failure.’

‘But Mrs Lomax did not go into shock or suffer any adverse effects from your transfusion?’

Lloyd shook his head, bewildered. ‘No.’

‘During the pathological examination of blood samples subsequently taken from Mrs Lomax, would the group always be identified?’

‘Yes. The check system requires it.’

‘Do the medical records in front of you show the blood group of those four other separate tests?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are they?’

‘The only group they could be, of course, B Rhesus Positive.’

‘Thank you, doctor. I am extremely obliged,’ said Hall, sitting. As he did so he turned invitingly to Keflin-Brown, who shook his head against any re-examination. After the constant groundswell of noise with which Jennifer had been surrounded on the previous two days, the court was now breathlessly silent as everyone tried to understand what was unfolding. The burn of Jane’s presence was definitely hotter and Jennifer felt herself sweating again. She reached out herself for the ever-ready handkerchief, using it to dab her upper lip and forehead. There was an unintended jerk, a twitch of frustration, but Jennifer easily kept her hand steady.

‘I call Professor Hewitt,’ announced Hall. He was enjoying himself, savouring the reversal, refusing to be distracted by the underlying uncertainty. Jarvis was according him every consideration, no longer interrupting. And there had been nothing from Jennifer, in the dock. At the thought he turned to look at her, smiling slightly. This time Jennifer did smile back, although doubtfully.

The Home Office pathologist was a thin, bespectacled man with mousy, receding hair. He entered the witness-box briskly, a busy man irritated at being bothered a second time.

Discerning the man’s mood, Hall said, ‘There is only what you may regard as a small matter upon which I am going to ask you to assist the court, professor, but I must ask you to accept my word it is of vital importance. Gerald Lomax had been the victim of a violent and sustained attack, had he not?’

‘Yes.’

‘During which he had received wounds and injuries described by you during your earlier testimony as massive?’

‘Yes.’

‘As well as examining those massive wounds, about which you’ve already told us, and ascertaining that Gerald Lomax was not suffering any medical condition that might have contributed to his death, did you also take a sample of Gerald Lomax’s blood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have it pathologically analysed.’

‘I did not do it personally. It was forensically analysed by Doctor Billington.’

‘Quite so. He would have advised you of his findings, though, to complete your report?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell the court the grouping?’

Hewitt flicked through the manila folder he had carried into the box. ‘AB Rhesus Positive.’

‘It is a customary forensic practice in such cases of violent attack and death for a pathologist to take samples of detritus that may be found beneath a victim’s fingernails, is it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Help the court by telling us why that is done?’

‘It is invariably instinctive for people to try to fight off their attackers: do something in self-defence. It is very common to find skin or blood particles or hair beneath a victim’s fingernails.’

‘Did you carry out such tests upon Gerald Lomax?’

‘Yes.’

‘And recover the evidence you sought?’

‘Yes. Some skin particles and blood. There was no hair.’

An idea of what more he could do burst upon Jeremy Hall, so startling that for several moments he remained unspeaking, lost even to his surroundings. It would be absolutely conclusive and sensational – far more sensationally conclusive than he was already sure he could prove Jennifer’s innocence – but he needed time and consultation to decide whether to go that far.

He was brought back to the present by a cough from the judge. Jarvis said, ‘Mr Hall?’ There was none of the irritability of before.

‘I beg the court’s pardon, my Lord,’ apologized Hall. ‘What did you do with these samples, professor?’

‘Passed them on for forensic analysis.’

‘Do you know the results of those analyses?’

‘The blood was O Rhesus Negative. I do not know about skin comparison.’

There was a sound in Jennifer’s head, like a sharp intake of breath, at the same time as a stir of growing, although still doubtful, realization from the press. Outwardly – audibly throughout the court – the disturbance was very brief, quickly shrouded in total silence.

‘ Fuck! ’ That was quiet, too. Not even addressed to Jennifer.

‘In your expert opinion, professor, would those samples from beneath the fingernails of Gerald Lomax have come from his attacker, in his desperate attempt to fight that attacker off?’

‘Unquestionably.’

‘I want to challenge you upon that, professor. Unquestionably? Beyond any reasonable doubt, in your mind?’

‘Unquestionably beyond any reasonable doubt.’

Again Keflin-Brown did not re-examine.

Anthony Billington came into the witness-box wearing the same taut, second-skin suit, his freckle-dotted face creased with curiosity at his recall. Because of its importance, Jeremy Hall began by taking the forensic expert through his qualifications and years of experience in his highly technical science.

‘You head the Home Office forensic pathological investigation team?’

‘Yes.’ Billington’s face coloured slightly, at the acknowledgement.

‘I would like to explore more fully than I did earlier upon what you found when you entered Gerald Lomax’s office, on the day of the murder. His body – and Mrs Lomax – were still in situ?’

‘Yes.’

‘You told us you took blood samples?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Both were – in the case of the man had been – bleeding profusely. I took slide provision.’

‘Explain to us what slide provision means.’

‘I quite simply took samples of blood, from both people, later to transfer on to slides, for scientific examination.’

‘Externally, from their weeping wounds. Not by intravenous extraction?’

‘It was not necessary to draw blood off by needle.’

‘Wouldn’t that open the possibility of error? Picking up, for example, blood that might have splashed from another wounded person and not been that of the person to which you later ascribed it?’

‘The circumstances of this case – of my scene-of-crime examination – were extremely unusual. The victim and his attacker were still there. No-one else had been involved. I lifted blood samples not from just one but from several open wounds of both people. By taking more than one sample and from separate sites, I ensured no splash error could contaminate my analysis.’

The silence Hall intruded now was intentional and very mannered: he was, he accepted, performing like Keflin-Brown. When it had stretched almost to break point, Hall echoed, ‘“The circumstances of this case were extremely unusual… no-one else was involved.” Are you sure about that, Doctor?’

‘Of course I’m sure about it!’ said Billington, irritated by the doubt. ‘I was there. Took the samples.’

‘And I am extremely glad that you did,’ placated Hall. ‘How many blood groups did you identify from the scene of the crime?’

‘Two.’

‘What were they?’

‘AB Rhesus Positive and O Rhesus Negative.’

The press gallery was in a tightly controlled frenzy and the burn on Jennifer’s skin was so bad now she had surreptitiously to scratch her arms and her legs. Ann Wardle was at once alert beside her. Jennifer whispered, ‘It’s all right.’

‘Identify each to the persons from whom you obtained those samples, Dr Billington.’

‘Gerald Lomax was AB Rhesus Positive. Mrs Lomax was O Rhesus Negative.’

In his satisfied excitement it was frustrating for Hall to hold back his presentation in the necessary, step-by-step order. ‘You took blood samples other than from the wounds of Gerald and Jennifer Lomax, did you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about from the window, overlooking the trading floor?’

‘Several samples.’

‘There were some fingerprints, in blood, on that window, were there not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you take a sample from those bloodied fingerprints: where the blood might have run down the window.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘But not in any way to affect the definition of the fingerprints.’

‘Of course not!’ said the scientist, affronted.

‘Can you tell the court the group of the blood you took, running down from the fingerprints?’

‘O Rhesus Negative.’

‘You are absolutely sure of that?’

‘There is no possible doubt.’

‘O Rhesus Negative is an unusual blood group, is it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘One you would be unlikely to confuse or make a mistake over?’

‘I do not make mistakes in my analyses.’

Jennifer couldn’t properly recognize the noise in her head. It was a groaned, near wailing sound: despair almost. Jennifer didn’t want to challenge at that moment – was still nervous of challenging – but she thought: Jane has lost. Not me that beat her. Jeremy Hall. But she’s lost. And then she waited for a diatribe but nothing came. There was still a tingle but her skin was much cooler, no longer physically irritating or sensitive to the touch.

‘I’m greatly obliged to you for establishing that in the court. You just didn’t lift blood from the window: you lifted the fingerprints picked out in that blood, didn’t you, doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Whose fingerprints?’

‘Mrs Lomax’s.’

‘What proof did you have that they were Mrs Lomax’s?’

‘They couldn’t have been anyone else’s!’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s where she’d stood, with her hands splayed against the window.’

‘You’d seen her stand like that?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘How do you know that’s how she’d stood?’

Less belligerently, Billington said, ‘I was told, by the police.’

‘By whom, of the police, exactly?’

‘Detective Inspector Rodgers. He was there with Superintendent Bentley when I arrived.’

‘And they pointed out to you Mrs Lomax’s fingerprints on the window?’

‘She was slumped directly beneath them.’

‘That wasn’t my question, Doctor,’ said Hall, letting nothing slip past. ‘Did Superintendent Bentley and Inspector Rodgers identify fingerprints in blood upon the window as those of Mrs Lomax?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did they later provide officially taken fingerprints of Mrs Lomax, for you to make a scientific match?’

Billington hesitated, looking for guidance to Keflin-Brown, who remained unhelpfully with his head sunk against his chest. Finally Billington said, ‘No.’

‘So there was no proper scientific, forensic comparison between the bloodstained fingerprints upon Gerald Lomax’s office window and fingerprints taken from Mrs Jennifer Lomax?’

Billington was no longer deathly pale. His face blazed, in odd contrast to his red hair. He looked hopefully again to the prosecuting barrister, who steadfastly refused to answer the plea. ‘No.’

‘That means, doesn’t it, Doctor, that your evidence of the bloody fingerprints being those of Mrs Lomax has no forensic or scientific basis or value? The police told you whose they were and you accepted it, entirely upon their word!’

Billington didn’t reply.

‘Doctor Billington?’ demanded Jarvis, all his waspishness transferred.

‘Yes, it does,’ finally admitted the forensic scientist.

‘There were two types of blood upon the knife…’ At Hall’s gesture, the usher offered it to the perspiring witness. ‘… What were they?’

‘AB Rhesus Positive and O Rhesus Negative.’

‘And fingerprints?’ persisted Hall, relentlessly.

‘The same as those upon the window.’

‘As the Home Office’s first choice – its leader – in forensic examination, would you consider yourself an expert in fingerprint comparison?’

‘It is not my particular discipline but I am practised in it,’ qualified the scientist.

‘You have a chart of those bloody fingerprints, among the documents in front of you, do you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘I fully accept that these are not what you would consider proper scientific conditions, but would you compare these prints against the chart you claim to be Mrs Lomax’s fingerprints?’ asked Hall, gesturing again to the attentive usher to take the offered sheet to the scientist.

Billington spent several minutes studying the two sheets, side by side, at one stage taking a pocket magnifying glass from his strained suit. At last he looked up and pronounced, ‘They do not match.’

‘You mean they are the fingerprints of two different people?’ persisted Hall.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you need to take them away to a laboratory, for more detailed examination?’

‘I will of course do so if the court orders it. But I do not think it is necessary…’ He waved with his pocket device like a flag of surrender. ‘Even under this magnification the difference is obvious. One set is peaked, the other whorled. And the linear difference between the two is obvious, almost to the naked eye.’

‘You also found – and eliminated – another set of finger-prints in Gerald Lomax’s office: those of the cleaner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you compare what I have just handed you with those prints you lifted?’

It did not take the man as long this time. ‘Again they are quite different.’

‘You found some hair strands in Gerald Lomax’s office, did you not?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Billington, cautiously.

‘Whose were they?’

Billington’s sigh filled the hesitation. ‘I was told they were Mrs Lomax’s. She’s blond. So was the hair.’

‘By whom were you told?’

‘Superintendent Bentley.’

‘Did you make comparison tests, from proven samples of Mrs Lomax’s hair?’ The earlier, half-formed idea was hardening in Hall’s mind. He’d been demeaned, humiliated and shat upon by a pompous legal establishment and he wanted every ounce of revenge – and humbled recognition – that he was owed.

‘None was made available to me.’

‘Answer the question, Doctor Billington.’

‘No, I did not make any comparison.’

‘What about a B Rhesus Positive blood group?’ demanded Hall, abruptly and intentionally going in yet another direction.

‘I don’t understand that question.’

‘Did you, from anywhere in Gerald Lomax’s office, lift blood subsequently identified as B Rhesus Positive?’

‘No.’

‘From the extensive sampling you took, do you believe you would have found B Rhesus Positive if there had been traces in Gerald Lomax’s office?’

‘Yes.’

‘From your forensic examination of Gerald Lomax’s office how many people were in it, at the time of his murder?’

‘Two.’

‘No-one else?’

‘No. It isn’t possible.’

‘Doctor Billington, what explanation can you give the court when I tell you that the fingerprints I have just made available to you are those of Mrs Jennifer Lomax, taken last night in the presence of a number of witnesses, including the police? And that Mrs Lomax’s blood group, again taken last night to confirm five different earlier samplings, is not O Rhesus Negative, but B Rhesus Positive? Or that the hair you early testified before this court to be that of Mrs Lomax is quite different, in colour, from that taken last night and which is, as we talk, being subjected to DNA analytical comparison.’

The scientist shook his head. ‘That isn’t possible.’

‘It’s more than possible, Doctor Billington. They are unarguable facts, witnessed among others last night by my learned friend for the prosecution, Mr Keflin-Brown.’

It was several minutes before Billington was able to reply. Then he said, ‘I can’t explain it… it’s beyond explanation…’ He looked apprehensively across the court at Jennifer. ‘… It’s too frightening to explain…’

Everyone else in the court was looking at Jennifer at that moment. And there was very little noise.

There was a great deal, however, in the cells during the lunchtime adjournment. Twice the force of Jennifer’s convulsions threw not just herself but both wardresses trying to support her off their feet. The harangue in Jennifer’s head was so loud it made her scream with pain. She defecated and urinated at the same time but because her dress was up around her waist in a struggle with the wardresses it wasn’t stained. Jennifer was too distraught – too possessed – to be embarrassed that it happened in front of Hall and Perry or that the corridor outside was crowded with onlookers. Everything Hall tried to say to her was drowned beneath obscene, shouted invective and so he stopped trying.

It ended as abruptly and dramatically as it began, with the arrival of the duty doctor and the Librium she’d refused earlier.

‘ Don’t want that. Not working things out properly.’

‘Please go,’ pleaded Jennifer, to the two lawyers, wrinkling her nose at her own odour. ‘This is disgusting! I’m all right.’

Nervous of the reaction it might cause, Hall nevertheless said, ‘It’s going well. Remember, don’t worry about anything happening in the dock.’

‘Jarvis wouldn’t like that happening in the dock,’ said Perry, as they both left the cell, Hall herding the bystanders away.

Neither man felt like eating. It was automatic to make their way to the canteen but having reached it they turned away, going back into the court corridors. Perry said, ‘You believe it, don’t you? That there’s another person – Jane – in her head?’

‘Don’t you?’ said Hall, avoiding the answer.

Perry ducked a response, too. ‘Have you any idea what this could lead to? I mean there’s only one direction Jarvis can order the jury now. And that’s before he hears from Forest!’ Ross Hamilton Forest II was the Washington lawyer at that moment airborne over the Atlantic.

‘I worked all that out last night and early this morning,’ said Hall. ‘And all right, if you want me to say it, I will. I don’t understand it and I’m not sure I want to and I’m frightened and I’m not sure what favours we’re doing Jennifer Lomax.’

‘I’ve had some messages,’ said Perry, who had come to the cells after Hall and was reluctant to continue their present conversation. ‘Forest’s plane is on time. Geoffrey Johnson’s meeting him personally. They should arrive here by the time the court resumes.’

‘Perfect,’ said Hall.

‘And there was another from Bert Feltham. There’s a conference tonight, with Sir Richard.’

‘About Jennifer Lomax?’ queried Hall. ‘Or about whatever it is that made it so important for this case to be dumped upon me in the first place?’

Humphrey Perry didn’t reply.