It worked.
When the moment came no-one truly believed that it would, because too many uncertainties were compounded at the outset. Despite the examination and re-examination of what they were going to attempt they hadn’t allowed for equipment failure or interference: the police radio linking Hall’s group to everyone else wouldn’t work from the below-basement boiler room, isolating them completely.
‘We can’t go back,’ decided Hall, at once. ‘Everyone else will already be moving. Just keep trying.’
There were five of them. Hall and Mason, like the two escorting policemen, wore hospital maintenance overalls. As additional disguise the barrister wore a yellow hard-hat. Jennifer wore a nurse’s cloak, over a regulation uniform: the shoes pinched. The headscarf was ready, for when they emerged through the heating service door. Jennifer was shuffling along automatically, engulfed in apathy, moved by Hall and Mason either side.
‘Two o’clock was start time,’ agreed Mason. ‘It’s five past.’
Three floors up, at ground level, it had started although not from the hospital itself. A route for vehicles had been forced through by the army reinforcements, particularly across Westminster Bridge because it was visible from the Albert Embankment. Across it, promptly on time, streamed a cavalcade of motor-cycle outriders, lights on, sirens blaring. The three police vans and two Range Rovers burned their siren-connected lights, too. Police and soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, pushed back against a crowd smaller than during the day but still large enough to block the entrance, reacting to the prearranged signal of an ambulance emerging from the hospital garage to park directly outside the main entrance. Following it from the garage came a squad of soldiers at the double to form another shoulder to shoulder wall between the vehicle and the crowd. ‘Jennifer, Jennifer,’ was an isolated shout at first but at once was taken up to become a repetitive howl. A lot of people tried to kneel in prayer but almost at once started screaming when they were trampled on. Everything was in fact made ghostly white by camera lights. Again, from circling helicopters, lights stabbed down.
The noise was so loud that it reached them, close to the boiler-room door, although the radio remained dead. Hall gently touched Jennifer’s arm as if to rouse her, to confront the problem they had recognized but couldn’t anticipate. ‘What’s she saying?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Is she there?’
‘No.’
‘What about the sedation?’
‘I feel all right. Quite clear. My chest still hurts.’
The two policemen edged back, despite their personal selection by Hopkins: one was a sergeant, the other an inspector. ‘My best,’ Hopkins had called them.
‘Try to give me a warning,’ Hall told her. ‘If it works at all the diversion won’t last long.’
‘She’ll do something. She has to.’
‘ Hah! ’
‘She’s back!’ It had been abrupt, the numbness practically at the same time as the triumphant exclamation.
‘Tell me what she says,’ demanded Hall, urgently, trying to maintain a timetable tor which he’d attempted to make allowances for Jane’s inevitable interference, although not able to judge how long they’d need. If Jennifer erupted in attention-attracting convulsions the intention was to retreat, back into the hospital. And everything would have been a waste of time. ‘Every word, as she says it.’
‘ Throw you to the wolves! How about that! They’d tear you apart, like a pack: frightened of the unknown.’
‘And you’re frightened too, aren’t you?’ demanded Hall, addressing Jane.
‘ Cocky little scumbag! You talking to me? ’
‘Yes. And you are frightened: not sure of yourself any more. Not sure what you can make Jennifer do.’
‘ You want me to show you what I can make her do? ’
Three minutes, estimated Hall, unable to check the timing. And still unable to discover any setbacks above. ‘What would that prove?’
‘ That I still call the shots. Which I do.’
‘I disgraced you in court: disgraced the memory of your father. Exposed you as a murderess and destroyed the Herbetson family name.’ He’d discarded the destroyed jacket but wore the boiler-suit over the rest of his clothes. He was saturated by sweat. It had to be five minutes by now.
‘ Who gives a fuck? ’
‘You should. You fouled your family name. Didn’t prove anyone murdered you. Jennifer’s free. Couldn’t keep a husband when you had one. You failed all the way down the line, didn’t you?’ Jennifer had both arms clutched around her, holding her sides. Mason was intently forward, determined against missing anything of the exchange. The two policemen were pebble-eyed, in astonished bewilderment. It had to have been going on for eight minutes by now.
‘ What the fuck are you saying? ’
‘That I can defeat you, whenever I want. And that you’re too scared to admit it. So you’re going to make a scene when we get outside, like a spoilt child…’ He looked to the policemen, shrugging. ‘Let’s go back. It’s a waste of time…’
He’d been sure of Julian Mason but not of the other two men, so they hadn’t been rehearsed. But the psychiatrist had, although he hadn’t thought this dialogue remotely possible: it was, of them all, the greatest uncertainty.
Mason matched the barrister’s shrug and set off back along the metalled walkway, pausing after a few steps to turn back. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ he asked the uncertain policemen.
‘ Bullshit and bluff. How you going to get her out? ’
‘From the emergency helicopter pad on the roof,’ lied Hall. ‘Whenever we choose, any time later today when it’s light.’
‘ What the fuck’s all this about in the first place then? ’
‘You’ve seen the television pictures of what’s happening outside,’ said Hall, knowing from Lloyd that Jennifer had watched. ‘The police wanted to end the chaos as soon as they could. Now they’re going to have to wait.’ He took Jennifer’s arm and began to follow the psychiatrist. He had lost, he admitted to himself. The fifteen minutes he’d built into the timing had to have expired by now.
‘ What do you think you can do? ’
‘It’s not important now.’
‘ Tell me now! ’ Jennifer jerked her arms up, to cover her ears at the shouted demand, crying out at the pain it caused but still gasping out the reply.
‘Fuck off, Jane. Another failure! How about that?’
‘ Now! ’
Hall continued walking Jennifer back into the hospital, behind Julian Mason. There was the clatter of footsteps on metal, as the policemen followed. He didn’t reply.
‘ I mean let’s go. Now! ’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Hall, not pausing.
Jennifer was brought to a halt, stopping him. ‘ You want a fight? ’
‘You’re not up to it.’
‘ You want a fight? ’ Jennifer whimpered at the pain of trying physically to close her ears off again.
‘Yes. I want to fight.’
‘ Then let’s go, asshole.’
Far above, the assembled waggon train was also ready to go. The final trigger that brought the ‘Jennifer’ howl to a throbbing crescendo was the sight of a blanket-embalmed figure – the nurse whose uniform Jennifer was wearing far below – being stretchered between attentive hospital staff into the ambulance. It only just negotiated the left-hand turn back on to the attention-drawing Westminster Bridge before the police and soldier line burst, under the irresistible pressure of frenetically mind-robbed people. But by then the procession was already halfway over the bridge, quickly turning south west past the Houses of Parliament on to Millbank in an obvious direction: back to Hampshire.
It had already crossed and was out of sight when one of the St Thomas’s overalled policemen cautiously eased through the gully-submerged oil delivery opening and even more cautiously climbed the steps to look around, his hand raised in readiness for the down-wave that would tell his colleague, who had finally established radio contact at ground level, to slam shut the scarcely open door. Already the crowd on the river-bordering Albert Embankment was thinning and they – and those that remained – still all gazed and crushed towards the bridge over which they appeared to expect the autocade to return. Others strained to follow the identifying searchlight beams of the helicopters, pursuing along the other side of the river. There was still a loud ‘Jennifer’ wail. The prepared door slamming gesture turned into an urgent beckoning.
They came out together, Mason and Hall either side of Jennifer, the remaining policeman close behind, all three ignoring her scarf-muffled pleas to slow because she was hurting.
‘The launch is there: we’re all right,’ reported the radio-man, at the top of the stairway but without pausing, anxious now for them to get into the concealing ebb-and-flow of people.
The two hundred metres to Lambeth Pier was a barefoot walk on glowing coals. Only Hall could sensibly remain as close as might be necessary to Jennifer: the others had to become gawking sensation-seekers although within a second’s leap. Mason actually joined in the still-existing excitement, pointing up like others were needlessly doing, tracing the distant progress of the convoy from the helicopters’ search-light fingers. They were constantly jostled because the majority of people were going in the opposite direction, still towards Westminster Bridge, but the apologies, when there were any, were invariably automatic, made without looking. Several times Jennifer groaned from the sudden pain of a collision.
With fifty yards still to go Jennifer said, desperately: ‘She’s taking my legs away: I can’t walk much further.’
‘ Can’t run back and hide now. Too far away.’
So she couldn’t risk a fight, after all!’ said Hall, even more desperately. The bitch! But he should have guessed. ‘ Just testing: flexing muscles.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s better.’
The boarding was another potential and anticipated flash point. The launch that Perry had hired but which was crewed by casually dressed river police had been unobtrusively moored at the bottom of the steps for two hours, in total darkness and apparently battened down. An obvious and official police boat, one of four that throughout the day had kept the river between the hospital and Parliament clear of a would-be armada of water-borne sightseers, burbled about ten yards offshore like a growling guard dog, just holding itself in position against the tide. The look-out policeman reached the chained-off steps first, seeming to loiter and then expansively stretched. At the signal there was shadowed movement from below, the faintest footscrape. At the moment the rest of them drew level, on the embankment, a figure rose from the river steps to release the chain.
‘Careful. The steps are slippery.’
They were in and descending within seconds, Hall groping down backwards to reach up with both hands against Jennifer’s shoulders, Mason trying to balance her from behind. Twice Hall slipped, the second time grating his shin against the edge of the step. The surprised exclamation came when they were half way down, then a shout. They were at the pontoon, Jennifer handed in first and unseen, before people appeared above. At once there was a blinding, obscuring beam from the police launch as it swept in under sudden power. The subterfuge was brilliant, a rehearsed performance they hadn’t been told about. With Jennifer, Hall, Mason and the two escorting policeman huddled unseen in the cabin there was a shouted argument between the uniformed and plain-clothes river police, quickly concluded with an even louder shouted announcement that the boat was under arrest. By the time the civilian boat moved off obediently in the wake of the launch, the Embankment level embarkation stage had cleared of people.
Jennifer had burrowed into Hall’s shoulder, shivering. Quietly she said, ‘Hold me. Please hold me.’
As he did so Jane echoed, in a small-child voice: ‘ Hold me. Please hold me ’
Humphrey Perry was waiting at the designated berth at Richmond, which Hall had chosen because he rowed from there, although not from that specific boat club. They finally parted from their police escorts with whispered, hurried thanks, anxious to get on the road before their arrival was seen: already the sky was lightening. Coffee had been waiting, once they had got underway, and just before they arrived Jennifer had managed without any choking, rejecting difficulty the painkilling pills Lloyd had provided. Within minutes of the car beginning to move she was lolled against Hall’s shoulder, occasionally moving, fitfully, but most of the time snoring. Mason made an exaggerated, lifted-eyebrow expression but didn’t speak. Hall answered the look but didn’t say anything either.
It was completely light by the time they reached the private psychiatric clinic at Hertfordshire, although the only people, apart from the nightstaff, were the medical doctor and two nurses whom Mason alerted from the car phone just before they arrived.
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? ’