A Mind to Kill

Chapter Thirty-four

‘Your father taught you to love God?’

‘ Yes.’

‘And you do love Him, don’t you?’

‘ I did.’

‘And you still do, Jane.’ As always Dawson stood with his hand on Jennifer’s head, his eyes tightly shut, his whole will concentrated upon the woman kneeling before him, a woman who would be for ever damned by another if he failed. Feeling he, too, would be damned if he failed.

He’d not slept at all. He’d spent the whole night prostrate, outstretched before the altar in prayer, pleading for guidance and for a miracle and for Jennifer to be released from a living purgatory.

Two hours before he’d anointed her with oil and marked the cross upon her in holy water and spread the salt and gone through the exorcism ritual until there were no prayers left to be said as part of it.

Jennifer hadn’t slept, either. And not because Jane had filled her mind: she hadn’t needed to. Jennifer knew this was the last chance, the last hope. Now she prayed, too, eyes as fervently shut as the man above her, her desperation even greater, not caring that Jane would know the agony of her fear: that she was giving Jane a target to attack. Despite her daily periods with the priest Jennifer still couldn’t believe, although she wanted to: told herself she had to and mouthed the litany to the priest’s dictation and made her own childlike vow – if You grant me this one thing I will worship, I truly will…

‘ I’m frightened. ’

‘God can help you! Save you!’

‘ No-one can help me.’

‘God can forgive all things: all sin.’ Why were the words so empty, so trite?

‘ He could not forgive me. I’II be for ever in Purgatory… in Hell

… I know the teaching…’

‘You don’t want to cause any more suffering, do you?’

‘ No.’

‘Then you must leave this woman.’

‘ I have sinned too much.’

‘To stay would be the greater sin.’ Not enough. Never enough. There had to be more to say, a way to convince someone who had once believed, as Jane had believed.

‘ I am beyond forgiveness.’

Please, prayed Jennifer. Make her go away. Leave me alone. I’m sorry, so very sorry I can’t believe in You. But please make her leave me alone.

Dawson held back from the forgiveness of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead he said, ‘“Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.”’

‘ Saint Luke wasn’t talking of murder. And I wanted to send Jennifer mad, for taking Gerald… Said I’d kill the child… I can’t be forgiven for that… None of it…’

‘“I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,”’ preached the man, hands shaking with emotion. ‘Repent Jane! Truly repent! You’ll descend into Hell, which you know we all must, but then you’ll rise again, into Heaven. You know that’s true. The way.’

‘I will kill myself, decided Jennifer. No other way. Don’t want to live. Not living. A body for someone else. Destroy the body, destroy the horror.

‘ I have done such terrible things. Now I am so very, very frightened.’

‘Do you love God, Jane?’

‘ I abandoned Him, for evil.’

‘Do you want to love him again?’

‘ Yes.’

‘So you want a way back?’

‘ There can’t be a way back, not for me.’

‘Do you truly repent, Jane?’

There was no immediate reply. Finally, ‘ Yes.’

‘Then trust God. You know you can. You always did in life. How better can you show your true repentance than by freeing Jennifer? To remain is to go on sinning: to continue evil and deserve an eternity in the fires of Hell…’

There was no response. The only sound was their breathing, the priest’s heavy from his effort. ‘Jane?’

‘ She deserved to suffer, for taking Gerald.’

‘Don’t you think she has?’

‘ I’ll only ask for God’s forgiveness: for God’s mercy. Not her.’

‘It’s only God we have to ask.’ He could pray for his own forgiveness for that later.

There was another long silence. Nothing left, thought Jennifer: no way to stop it. Die then. Pills. Pills wouldn’t hurt and she didn’t want to be hurt. Not hurt any more. Just ‘… I repent. Oh dear, merciful Lord, forgive me…’

A fraying thread of excitement held Jennifer and the priest from total collapse. Cox had worriedly taken both their pulses and Dawson’s blood pressure. He still wore his vestments, even his shawl: he sat holding it, running it through his fingers as he talked, which he did haltingly, in short bursts, with not enough breath for what he wanted to say.

‘She’s gone, hasn’t she, Jennifer? Definitely gone?’ He’d asked the same question a lot, since helping her from the chapel, a reassurance they all needed.

Jennifer nodded. At first she’d spoken, agreeing, but now she just moved her head, as if to repeat herself would risk bringing Jane cackling back.

‘It was God,’ insisted Dawson, another repetition. ‘God’s work. God’s mercy.’

‘She disappeared before,’ reminded Hall, cautiously. He wanted it to be true as much as any of them – was as anxious as any of them for it to be true – but couldn’t accept it this soon, this easily.

The priest made an angry gesture of denial,’It’s over now. All over.’

Hall found the possibility of that the most difficult of all to believe. It was too quick, too sudden. But how else could it have been? Exorcise meant to cut out, to remove evil. Which was what the priest was insisting had happened. There was no process, apart from the service. No prolonged treatment and after that a period of recuperation. Or wouldn’t there be? Not the recuperation after an illness, although what Jennifer had suffered was as bad as the worst imaginable illness. An adjustment then. A time – who knew how much time? – to become normal, ordinary. Would it be possible for Jennifer ever again to become normal and ordinary? For the rest of them, perhaps. For Dawson it was a religious miracle that proved the power of God and would sustain him for the rest of his life. For Charles Cox and Julian Mason it was the most incredible clinical experience of their lives: Mason would become world famous from his thesis. And Hall supposed he would in time accommodate the curiosity and notoriety.

But how could life ever again become normal and ordinary for a woman who’d been possessed – physically occupied even – by the spirit of someone else and been used as a vehicle for murder? Perhaps this was where the prolonged treatment began, the counselling and the guidance.

Not over at all, in fact, for Julian Mason and Jennifer. But over for him, if Jane had definitely gone. At once came the objective balance. Over for him even if Jane hadn’t gone. There was nothing more he could do. There were still some things to tidy up, perhaps: two or three weeks’ work, maybe a month. And after that… After that, what?

His difficulty, he at last realized, wasn’t that it was all over. It was at the thought that after that time, after a month at most, he wouldn’t be seeing Jennifer again. Have any reason to see Jennifer again. Too soon to think like that. Despite the conviction of the priest and of Jennifer, none of them yet knew – were convinced, beyond doubt – that Jane had gone. And there was still a lot to do, if she had. He’d let things take their own course, at their own pace. There wasn’t any hurry. He smiled across at Jennifer at the thought and she smiled hesitantly back.

‘It’s so wonderful,’ she said, faint-voiced. ‘I’m so…’ She shook her head, unable to finish, too tired for the words to form.

‘We all want it to have happened,’ warned the psychiatrist, joining Hall’s caution. ‘But we don’t know for sure, not yet.’

‘What do we have to do now?’ frowned Cox.

‘What we’d already decided,’ said Mason. ‘We go on waiting.’