Part Eighty Eight
Karen was applying the final touches of her makeup and was looking intently into her bedroom mirror. She looked back at her reflected image which was confident enough to face the unknown. She saw it suddenly turn confidently to the absent Meg Richard standing next to her and making that fatal prediction.
"I can see Shell going exactly the same way as Tessa Spall did……"
Those words hung in the air of her very stylish bedroom as she answered herself.
"But it shouldn't have happened. Last time I saw Shell, she had just had her baby and she had the one thing in her life that she would ever love and would keep her stable. In her way, she loved her two daughters who she let go for adoption by Social Services rather than grow up to be abused in the same way that she had been. She was more settled than before she escaped. "
She brushed her long thick fair hair hard in anger as she recalled seeing Fenner climb up the metal flights of staircases and enter the abandoned cell, possessions scattered and caught sight of Fenner's back.
"I'm, er, collecting Dockley's stuff. She's shipping out," Fenner said with that very rare and highly suspicious hesitation in his voice.
"Where to?" she had asked in total shock, trying to take in what on earth had happened since Shell Dockley had so proudly given birth to her son. That feeling was so strong that it was all over G wing in such a short time.
"It's an emergency admission. To a secure psychiatric hospital.Excuse me," And he brushed past her while she remained open mouthed with shock.
She had never accepted for one moment the concocted story from that shifty pair of liars, Colin Hedges and Fenner that Shell had been caught at the point of holding a pillow over the baby's head. However Grayling chose to believe them. One look at his face told her that it was very expedient for Shell to be off his hands so that it would be someone else's problem and his reputation would be secure. She had had to resign herself, in the end, to being unable to get past the barrier placed in her path by Grayling even though her suspicions niggled away at the back of her mind. That is, till the chance unfolding of her own court case steered this matter into Karen's hands..
Very well, she would sidestep Grayling and the Court Order placed in her hands by John Deed would be her ace in the pack that she would play to help settle two injustices in one fell swoop.
She looked at the close typed blue document with grim satisfaction, typed out in the formal legal language of its kind and the scrolled heading which was duly dated and signed in John Deed's bold decisive script. This conveyed power over any official of her grade that she may have to argue with. She slipped it into a large brown envelope and into the separate front compartment of her briefcase. This was her ace in her pack if a straight professional approach received the brush off which she suspected that it would.
She clattered down the flight of steps to her car in her underground car park and the automatic barriers clanked their way open to let her steer her car to the open road. At Larkhall, her absence was unnoticed as her diary contained the brief note that she was "working from home on accounts." The entry was very nearly true as it was Fenner's account that she was working on to settle for good and her definition of home was rather elastic. She knew only too well that Fenner would be delighted to temporarily lord it over the wing with Karen elsewhere and phoning up Karen was not in his scheme of things.
She was happy as she always was with that feeling of freedom away from her usual routine of driving to Larkhall every day. Sometimes she felt as if the car drove her to work as she slid into automatic pilot and she woke up to see the familiar grey walls and the wooden gates inviting her in. This time she was out on the open road with her foot pressed down on the accelerator and her car cutting a direct route on a fairly quiet motorway and turning off along the narrow country lane to the Psychiatric Hospital at Ashmore. Her car twisted and turned its way until she saw the entry to her right and the ultra modern red brick pile ahead.
Immediately, her mind which had idled its way with the steady rhythm of her car came very much to the present.She was resolved to be at her most persuasive first and only to brandish her court order if it was absolutely necessary. There was something about carrying a court order signed by a High Court judge that almost made her feel nervous. She felt as if she were carrying a high velocity gun in her briefcase with the power to blow away the most dangerous criminal and the sheer power of that weapon scared her as to what it was capable of. This really wasn't the Karen Betts of old who relied on her power of the spoken word and at most, sheer force of personality to get what she wanted. However the other side of her was grateful for so mighty an equaliser as she was heading blind into an unknown organisation. She suspected that her past life as a nurse would be of limited value as times had changed since she worked in a hospital and you didn't have to work with bolts and bars.
"You've come to visit Shell Dockley, have you? We don't get many visitors here, not from your place." The receptionist eyed her suspiciously, focussing on her Wing Governor's badge and her credentials to prove exactly who she was. "You'd better stay in the waiting room. This is a secure hospital, after all."
Every organisation has the dragon receptionist to keep off unwelcome intruders, the doctor's surgery, Sylvia at Larkhall, the hospital out patient's clinic, you name it, every place has got one. She smiled pleasantly, putting herself in the mind of the receptionist as was her habit as someone who had knowledge as to how organisations work. While she waited, she helped herself to a tattered copy of 'Woman's Own' which was preferable to 'Reader's Digest', the other old favourite of waiting rooms as she whiled away the time.
"Miss Betts, can you come this way. The Chief Executive wants to see you in person about your visit."
Karen strolled casually alongside the woman in her officious uniform. The familiar long antiseptic bare white corridors and the tiled floor felt familiar under her feet. Soon they came to a door with stout plate glass mesh windows. The nurse spoke into a wall intercom to identify herself and presently, the door swung gently open released electronically on a catch by the prison officer in the security booth behind the break proof glass screen. His colleague came to escort her along the next corridor and then turn sharp right. Karen found the prison officer aloof and giving off none of the easy chattiness that she was used to. The whole place was very modern but cold and controlled by invisible locks on doors and not the slam shut loud clunk from the bolt and crash of metal against the wood frames of Larkhall. This was an alien landscape which made even the crumbling ruin of Larkhall friendly because of it's antiquity.
The sharp edged rectangular door was opened and Karen took in the state of the art office furniture and power dressing woman behind the desk which made both her office and herself feel down at heel in comparison. She crushed that instinct to feel inferior reminding herself that she had come up from the ranks to her present position of authority as she introduced herself in pleasant tones and explained her purpose.
"By what authority do you consider you have a right to interview one of our patients, Miss Betts?" came the supercilious tones, hardly even looking at her. "We have strict rules here."
"I quite understand, but Shell Dockley was once an inmate in the wing of the prison of which I am Wing Governor. A delicate matter has come up of which she is able to give first hand evidence."
"Shouldn't you have given me prior notice of such a visit? My time is precious in the running of a psychiatric prison which I can ill afford in dealing with uninvited guests?"
Jesus Christ, this woman is on a real power trip, Karen thought. If she had my job where anything and everything comes up at short notice, she wouldn't last the week. Never mind, keep smiling at the cow.
"This has come up at short notice as I, too, have a prison wing to run. As someone on the same level of authority and similar responsibilities as myself, I hoped you would understand." Karen smiled broadly, totally ignoring the way this woman looked down her nose at her.
"Well, you thought wrong, Miss Betts.I shall immediately send for a prison officer so that you can be escorted off the premises forthwith," And she reached over for the phone.
"Not so fast," Karen replied with a decided edge in her voice so that she was no longer the well mannered supplicant. "I had hoped for this to be agreed the easy way but you leave me no alternative," And Karen reached forward into her briefcase for the envelope. "I had said that this is a delicate matter. I am not obliged to explain to a perfect stranger the purpose of this visit but I hold here a Court Order signed by a High Court judge empowering me to see Shell Dockley whether you like it or not. You have no choice in the matter."
For the first time, the woman saw Karen Betts who was subtly changed. There was a steely tone in her voice which she had not come across before. As someone whose fussy bullying had held sway in such a closed in institution, she did not know how to deal with someone who unmasked a greater power than her own. Her job was to ensure everything appeared to run well and that the glossy yearly prospectus suitably blinded with science her remote seniors in Whitehall. The power of the law was some alien force with the ability to drag into the dock any luckless individual who broke the eleventh commandment "Thou shalt not be found out." The spectre of the Public Enquiry that the judiciary would ruthlessly probe her empire was the one distant nightmare which she resolved she would never have to face. This woman sprang out of nowhere armed with this document with the very legal power that could frighten her.
"Of course, we seem to have got off to a misunderstanding….." she stammered.
Haven't we just, Karen contemptuously thought.
"……I shall make the necessary arrangements for you to see the person concerned…."
One inmate is just like another to her, Karen's thought chorussed.
"…..Do you want me to sent in an orderly with a cup of tea later?"
"Thank you. I would appreciate that," smiled Karen even though her facial muscles were starting to ache.
As the Chief Executive made the necessary arrangements over the phone, it crossed her mind to double check with the governor of Larkhall Prison about this dangerous woman. To do that she wanted her out of the way as soon as possible.
"Miss Taylor," she said to the young nurse, spotting her namebadge just in time. "will you escort Miss Betts here to see Shell Dockley."
The nurse opened her mouth in puzzlement at this most unexpected order but thought better of it than to question it. That was the way the hospital was run.
Karen smiled nicely one last time and followed the very young, very serious woman along the corridor. Jesus, was I that young once, as she looked at the universal nurses uniform that she had once worn.
Presently, they arrived at the wing that Shell Dockley was on and once again passed through the invisible barriers. One or two of the patients came into view, looking much like any other patient or inmate of her past and present except for the way they avoided her eye. There was something removed about them. The whole look of the place was more like a typical hospital if it weren't for the ubiquitous sealed up doors. The nurse opened one of them and a familiar face came into full view.
"Miss Betts!" exclaimed Shell. "I can't believe it's you after all this time. Thought you'd given up on me, miss," She finished on a more subdued reproachful note.
Karen took in Shell's appearance with one glance. She was wearing a grey track suit, much like the one she had worn at Larkhall in her more subdued moments. There was no hint of jewellery or heavy makeup and her long wavy blond hair was less brassy than it was. So far, so good. It was the secondary impression that unsettled her. In the past, she felt that there was a scheming intelligence at work however much a tentative trust had built up between the two of them. She had cried on her shoulder when her feelings
normally dammed up by the wall of hard exterior, broke through. She had told her how guilty she felt that she had exposed her children to the dangers of the same sexual abuse from her mother that she had suffered from because she had dared not face it. Looking at her now, there was something not quite right about her. Her blue eyes, sometimes limpid pseudo sincere, sometimes burning with hatred were vacant. You could always tell by the eyes, Karen's nursing instinct and her self education in psychology told her.
"It's good to see you, Shell." Karen's warm voice expressed the very real feelings. The barrier erected by her stabbing of Fenner had crumbled away without her noticing it allowing her to revert to the way she was. But could Shell do the same? Did she need to do so?
"You mean it, miss? You're not just saying it to make me feel better?" Shell asked guilelessly. Once she had said that to Helen who cynically dismissed it as the typical deceitful Shell ploy. This time, she meant it.
"I mean every word that I say. I should have come to visit you before and helped you out long before now." Karen's regretful tones were infused with startling candour. "But there's another reason why I've come to see you. I want you to help me. That is if you are willing to."
Shell sat there dumbstruck, temporarily lost for words which, again was not like the old Shell whose verbal fluency never let her down nor her judgement as to how much truth she would mix in with clever lies.
"You mean it, miss? How do you want me to help?"
Karen reached inside her handbag for a packet of cigarettes, flipped open the packet and handed one to Shell and, while they both lit up, she gathered her thoughts.
"You remember Jim Fenner, do you Shell?" she asked, to gauge just how much recall she had of the past. Beneath the fogged up exterior, a vague flash of anger registered and the corners of her mouth were dragged down.
"Yeah, I remember him all right. He was the bastard who landed me in here and what took my baby off me.He's the one that you were shagging, weren't you. You needn't have wasted your time. No one really knows what Fenner's like except me."
It was that anger, even if it was filtered through the mental fog of all the tranquillisers that she had been prescribed, that brought up the remnants of the old Shell personality but even the bitterness was overlain by a feeling of impotence. It was ironical to consider all the drugs that Shell had taken or dealt while she was at Larkhall but these were drugs designed to keep her in a state of foggy acquiescence.
"There's something I have to tell you, Shell," Karen urged her desperately, having taken the plunge in telling her everything . "Months ago, Fenner raped me. I have come to see you to ask you, to beg you to tell me what you know of Fenner so that I can settle with him for all of us."
"You beat Fenner?" Shell's face was twisted with scorn. "You ought to have let me finish him off when I had the chance. Remember the night when I stabbed him with a broken bottle."
"Shell, you know that I cannot officially condone what you did that night. There has to be another way, the legal way. You know more about him than I do. That is why I am asking you for help."
Suddenly, Shell's combative desire to fight evaporated. Might as well let Miss Betts do it her way. She was too tired to fight for very long. Ashmore had made her that way.
"All right, Miss Betts. You ask the questions and I'll tell you the truth. I might as well," she laughed cynically. "I'm locked up here and I'll never get out. and don't you make any big promises about getting me out."
"Can you tell me what happened between you, Rachel Hicks and Fenner.It's all right," as Shell shrank back with fear. "Denny Blood has told me a lot of what went on already and you won't come to any harm if you tell me your version."
"There's not much to tell that you don't know already," Shell said sulkily. "Fenner got greedy and started screwing that Hicks cow soon after Stewart came to Larkhall as wing governor. He made all sorts of promises to me that he'd get her transferred out……."
"Wait a moment, Shell. How did you find out about Rachel Hicks?" interrupted Karen.
"Wade told me," Shell said shortly to Karen's incredulity, knowing the hostile relationship between the two women. "I was winding her up about her love life and she let that one slip out. Anyway, I beat Hicks up one day when I went into her cell and she had her lipstick on, ready for a 'hot date' so she ended up in the hospital wing. In the end I blackmailed her by threatening that something bad would happen to her daughter if she didn't do as I wanted, like get her mother to smuggle drugs in. In the end, she topped herself. Simple as that, miss."
Something of the old psychotic Shell came back into life, the sheer inappropriate flatness of emotional response to horrifying events that would have made anyone else sound and feel guilty and embarrassed by what they had done. It was as if the deeds didn't belong to her.
"How much did Fenner know of all this."
"The bastard knew everything." Shell's bitter laugh punctuated the remark. "Don't you know him better than that? He was there just after I done Hicks over. After she killed herself, he came into my cell and told me to keep quiet about everything and it would all blow over."
Karen's face tightened as, at last, she was gaining a real backstage view of the man as she had never seen before, the man whom she had lived with and had even accepted his proposal in marriage.
"I lived with him for a while," Karen confessed with real embarrassment. "He even proposed marriage to me once. That was before I started finding out about him."
"You poor cow," Shell looked at her with scorn.
"Didn't you get conned by him the same way that I did?" Karen interposed. "I wonder if you had ever told what you knew about Fenner, he would have been sacked."
"He was too useful to me," Shell shook her head at the thought which challenged her belief in her own street smartness, one quality which she had believed in. "I got sex off Fenner. He covered up for all the bad things I ever did.That's the way he's ever worked at Larkhall"
"So tell me about the time he beat you up," Karen's composed voice concealed the feeling of shock and horror which put his relationship with Maxi Purvis into sharp focus.
"Which time?" Shell challenged to Karen's horror. "You mean the time he rammed my face into the cell wall or the second time he kicked and punched me and you came into my cell just after he run off."
"Start with the first time," Karen asked softly."
"I can't remember why he done that," and a vagueness of expression crept back across Shell's face to Karen's concern. This is not like the Shell I once knew.
"Anyway I started sending letters to his wife telling her the poor cow what he was doing with me, making it look as if someone else was writing them."
"Who did he think was writing them?" Karen asked.
"Nikki Wade of course," Shell said with a self satisfied smile.
Typical Fenner, Karen thought with contempt. He lets his unreasoning hatred take him over, first for Nikki when Shell was to blame and next for Yvonne when Snowball was feeding him a load of crap. She was watching these events unfold as if they took place before her eyes up on a TV screen, including herself as she then was when she first came totally fresh to Larkhall, so sure of herself, so confident and yet knowing nothing.
"Anyway, Fenner catches on to me and finds the mobile phone what I was phoning his wife on and…..you know the rest, miss. You and Stewart saw what he done to me."
"So why did you retract your statement later on?" Karen asked softly.
"I convinced meself that I loved him," Shell admitted with embarrassment. So did I, Karen thought with real sympathy. "I found a note in my cell from his wife telling me that I had broken up their relationship and I was the one that Fenner really loved. So I made up some sort of a story and Fenner came back. Stupid, wasn't I," Shell finished, and looked appealingly at Karen not to laugh at her.
"I nearly got married to Fenner. How could I laugh at you? So who wrote the note?"
"Fenner got the letter off me and told me that he'd told his wife what to write. It was all a con, miss. And I believed it. And that's the time I started going kind of funny, prancing around, dressed up like Britney Spears in that therapy class."
Karen shuddered as the morning's memory leapt back to her of her talking to Meg Richards and the horrifying vision of Shell standing at the top of the staircase on the 3s with a make belief noose held round her neck and screaming. "Come on Mr Fenner. Why don't you string me up like Rachel Hicks. It's what you want, innit?" In a twisted kind of way, it all made sense. It made far more sense than Fenner's protestations to her that what he did to her 'was never rape.' She got to her feet and had a short walk round the cell and asked herself just who was mad, Shell or Fenner?
"You all right, miss?" Shell asked with genuine concern for her. Normally it was the other way round.
"Thank you, Shell. I'm all right. Really." Karen smiled with real affection for this strange, difficult and sometime dangerous woman. They had one strong unbreakable bond in common which had been their undoing, Fenner.
"I hope you don't mind telling me what you know about your escape from Larkhall."
"Fenner fixed it," Shell said promptly. "I had been winding him up after the stabbing and he wanted me out of Larkhall. You must know what he was like then. He suggested it, he got a spare key cut for the back door to the chapel and for the van so I could escape. He left me money and told me where to find the keys. It was his idea that I make up that diary so Stewart would get the blame………"
'I can't help feeling that I'm being set up…..'echoed Helen's voice in Karen's mind to the memory of her scorn and derision at Helen's paranoia. Helen was on the right track about that one as well and she was wrong yet again. And who was standing next to them while the two of them argued, knowing everything and saying nothing?
"………it was dead easy. Everything would've went right if only that dozy driver hadn't got in the way and the van broke down after I bumped his car…"
Just then, there was a knock on the cell door. Karen shushed at Shell to keep quiet as if they were locked up together in the cell and the prison warder was coming to spy on them. However, it was the orderly with the tea trolley. Karen got up and fetched two mugs of tea off the trolley and offered one to Shell. She smiled freely and openly as this was the first time in her life that a screw had fetched her a drink in her life, the same screw who was the one person who treated her with genuine kindness.
"I'll tell you, miss, about the night that I stabbed him if you want," Shell offered, eager to please the one woman from a better time in her past than she was enjoying now. Somehow, she felt nostalgic about her days at Larkhall where she sensed that she was more free, less doped up than she was now. At least the drugs she took then were her own choice.
"I wasn't going to ask you, Shell but tell me what happened."
"I was serving drinks with Atkins and the Julies at Bodybag's party, remember. We slipped an 'E' into Bodybag's drink and were laughing at her as she was doing the hokey cokey," Shell explained, her voice and manner becoming sharper and clearer as the memories came flooding back and grinning at the memory. Karen's answering thought was that that's another one I didn't know about.
"Everything changed when Atkins told me that you were shagging Fenner. I could tell by the way that you two were next to each other," Shell went on, glaring into the mid distance, away from Karen. "Right near the end, I got one of the empties, took it into a quiet room and smashed the bottle. It was as easy as anything in the dark when Fenner escorted us back to our cells. Fenner came sneaking round later on and it was obvious what he was after. 'You're a whore, Dockley,' he told me once and he liked whores and that's a fact, that's what he wanted what he couldn't get off his wife."
Karen felt sick at this point. She dared not tell Shell that she was distinctly hostile to Fenner that night and was giving him the brush off. How could she tell Shell that that night, she had got it all wrong. This was not the Jim Fenner that she had known when she lived with him but this was Fenner, the man who had raped her, who did not know the meaning of the words that she had said that night, over and over, that she didn't want it. Why should he know any different from the women who had never said no to him in the past, the women whom he had had power over, especially when he had got his boundaries confused? If she had married Fenner, he would have cheated on her the same way he had done with Marilyn.
"He thought I was going down on him when I rammed the broken bottle into him for everything he had done bad to me in the past. I wanted to see him die slowly and to beg for mercy and to confess in writing what he had done. I would have done it if it weren't for you and Stewart poking your noses in. You shouldn't have done that, miss. He didn't deserve to live and you know it."
Karen was silent. Everything Shell had said convicted herself of deeds that were not only illegal but bad. Yet she understood why she had acted, better than she had known before.
"One last thing I was going to ask you, Shell, is how on earth did you end up here?" Karen asked gently. She jumped to the conclusion, clear as day, that Fenner had gone to Shell once he realised that he wasn't getting any sex off her. This was the one vital fact not in Helen's report into the stabbing that immediately made sense of everything.
Shell dissolved into floods of tears on Karen's shoulder. All the talk of all her misfortunes brought everything back to her and she felt all the pain despite all the drugs. She stayed there while Karen shush shushed into her ear and patted her shoulder. This was the sort of mothering Shell ought to have had years ago. She blew her nose loudly into a tissue and resolved to tell the last bad thing that had happened to her since she'd started taking the pills that numbed her and stopped her feeling anything at all. At least that worked for all normal patients.
"Fenner fixed it like he fixes everything. Soon as I came back to Larkhall, I was doing hand jobs for the screws and he was getting a rake off. I was saving up for my little boy, Ronan……or whatever they've called him now. One of the worst was Colin Hedges." Shell scowled as she fell silent. "I was in my cell tucking little Ronan in when he came round, unzipping his flies. I screamed at him not to do that in front of a little boy but he wouldn't listen……" and the last three words whirled their way out of Karen's past which she had said that to the sympathetic policewoman, the night she had taken the fateful decision to go round to Fenner's B and B.
"……the baby was screaming while Hedges was trying to drag me off my baby, as if he needed protection from me. Next thing I know is that Fenner comes through the door and fixes up these lies about me harming my baby and I get dragged away to this place. I know that I have done bad things in my time but I would never have harmed my baby. You must believe me."
Karen was speechless as the horror and enormity of what had happened to her at Fenner's hands was taking its time to sink in. What made it worse was that for so much of the story, Karen was either totally unaware or at best suspicious.
"Of course I believe you but you should never have put your trust in Fenner but come to either me or Helen Stewart."
"Neither should you, miss," Shell said simply.
What could she say to that as both women fell silent, both mulling over all the bad memories of the past.
"I left a big wad of notes in my cell that I had saved up for my baby. Do you know what happened to it?"
The flash of anger on Karen's face as she realised now what Fenner was up to in Shell's cell said everything.
"He took it all, didn't he." Shell said while Karen nodded, her anger now swelling in her that, yet again, Fenner had been up to no good under her very nose.
"How much cash did he walk away with?" Asked Karen, an idea forming in her head.
"About two hundred quid. The bastard. I could have got Ronan some decent clothes with that money." Then, after a short silence, "You're really going to do something about Fenner?" Shell asked, the question half rhetorical, wanting to be convinced.
"I know just how dangerous Fenner is, and I'm going after him for what he's done to me, to you and to others. I'll promise you this one."
"You have got to get me out of this place, miss. I shouldn't be here……and I'm sorry for some of the things I done," Shell's voice and eyes pleaded with Karen.
What could she say? Strangely enough, she believed Shell's remorse as Helen might have done if she had seen her at this moment. It was not her practice to promise something she couldn't deliver and, without the Court order, she would not have got this far. She was sure of nothing else than that she was going to have her hands full in bringing Fenner down.
"If I ever can, I will, Shell. But it won't be easy."
"So there's hope, yeah?" Shell asked.
"That's the best I can do, Shell," Karen replied, feeling inadequate that she could not move mountains.
The smile that Shell gave her just before she turned her back somehow upset her that she would be out while Shell was stuck there for the foreseeable future. There were no promises of happy endings, not in shell's case where her whole life was anything but.
At least she had made her peace with the past in the same way that she had done with Helen and, who knows, but the ghosts might be laid to rest.
Karen was applying the final touches of her makeup and was looking intently into her bedroom mirror. She looked back at her reflected image which was confident enough to face the unknown. She saw it suddenly turn confidently to the absent Meg Richard standing next to her and making that fatal prediction.
"I can see Shell going exactly the same way as Tessa Spall did……"
Those words hung in the air of her very stylish bedroom as she answered herself.
"But it shouldn't have happened. Last time I saw Shell, she had just had her baby and she had the one thing in her life that she would ever love and would keep her stable. In her way, she loved her two daughters who she let go for adoption by Social Services rather than grow up to be abused in the same way that she had been. She was more settled than before she escaped. "
She brushed her long thick fair hair hard in anger as she recalled seeing Fenner climb up the metal flights of staircases and enter the abandoned cell, possessions scattered and caught sight of Fenner's back.
"I'm, er, collecting Dockley's stuff. She's shipping out," Fenner said with that very rare and highly suspicious hesitation in his voice.
"Where to?" she had asked in total shock, trying to take in what on earth had happened since Shell Dockley had so proudly given birth to her son. That feeling was so strong that it was all over G wing in such a short time.
"It's an emergency admission. To a secure psychiatric hospital.Excuse me," And he brushed past her while she remained open mouthed with shock.
She had never accepted for one moment the concocted story from that shifty pair of liars, Colin Hedges and Fenner that Shell had been caught at the point of holding a pillow over the baby's head. However Grayling chose to believe them. One look at his face told her that it was very expedient for Shell to be off his hands so that it would be someone else's problem and his reputation would be secure. She had had to resign herself, in the end, to being unable to get past the barrier placed in her path by Grayling even though her suspicions niggled away at the back of her mind. That is, till the chance unfolding of her own court case steered this matter into Karen's hands..
Very well, she would sidestep Grayling and the Court Order placed in her hands by John Deed would be her ace in the pack that she would play to help settle two injustices in one fell swoop.
She looked at the close typed blue document with grim satisfaction, typed out in the formal legal language of its kind and the scrolled heading which was duly dated and signed in John Deed's bold decisive script. This conveyed power over any official of her grade that she may have to argue with. She slipped it into a large brown envelope and into the separate front compartment of her briefcase. This was her ace in her pack if a straight professional approach received the brush off which she suspected that it would.
She clattered down the flight of steps to her car in her underground car park and the automatic barriers clanked their way open to let her steer her car to the open road. At Larkhall, her absence was unnoticed as her diary contained the brief note that she was "working from home on accounts." The entry was very nearly true as it was Fenner's account that she was working on to settle for good and her definition of home was rather elastic. She knew only too well that Fenner would be delighted to temporarily lord it over the wing with Karen elsewhere and phoning up Karen was not in his scheme of things.
She was happy as she always was with that feeling of freedom away from her usual routine of driving to Larkhall every day. Sometimes she felt as if the car drove her to work as she slid into automatic pilot and she woke up to see the familiar grey walls and the wooden gates inviting her in. This time she was out on the open road with her foot pressed down on the accelerator and her car cutting a direct route on a fairly quiet motorway and turning off along the narrow country lane to the Psychiatric Hospital at Ashmore. Her car twisted and turned its way until she saw the entry to her right and the ultra modern red brick pile ahead.
Immediately, her mind which had idled its way with the steady rhythm of her car came very much to the present.She was resolved to be at her most persuasive first and only to brandish her court order if it was absolutely necessary. There was something about carrying a court order signed by a High Court judge that almost made her feel nervous. She felt as if she were carrying a high velocity gun in her briefcase with the power to blow away the most dangerous criminal and the sheer power of that weapon scared her as to what it was capable of. This really wasn't the Karen Betts of old who relied on her power of the spoken word and at most, sheer force of personality to get what she wanted. However the other side of her was grateful for so mighty an equaliser as she was heading blind into an unknown organisation. She suspected that her past life as a nurse would be of limited value as times had changed since she worked in a hospital and you didn't have to work with bolts and bars.
"You've come to visit Shell Dockley, have you? We don't get many visitors here, not from your place." The receptionist eyed her suspiciously, focussing on her Wing Governor's badge and her credentials to prove exactly who she was. "You'd better stay in the waiting room. This is a secure hospital, after all."
Every organisation has the dragon receptionist to keep off unwelcome intruders, the doctor's surgery, Sylvia at Larkhall, the hospital out patient's clinic, you name it, every place has got one. She smiled pleasantly, putting herself in the mind of the receptionist as was her habit as someone who had knowledge as to how organisations work. While she waited, she helped herself to a tattered copy of 'Woman's Own' which was preferable to 'Reader's Digest', the other old favourite of waiting rooms as she whiled away the time.
"Miss Betts, can you come this way. The Chief Executive wants to see you in person about your visit."
Karen strolled casually alongside the woman in her officious uniform. The familiar long antiseptic bare white corridors and the tiled floor felt familiar under her feet. Soon they came to a door with stout plate glass mesh windows. The nurse spoke into a wall intercom to identify herself and presently, the door swung gently open released electronically on a catch by the prison officer in the security booth behind the break proof glass screen. His colleague came to escort her along the next corridor and then turn sharp right. Karen found the prison officer aloof and giving off none of the easy chattiness that she was used to. The whole place was very modern but cold and controlled by invisible locks on doors and not the slam shut loud clunk from the bolt and crash of metal against the wood frames of Larkhall. This was an alien landscape which made even the crumbling ruin of Larkhall friendly because of it's antiquity.
The sharp edged rectangular door was opened and Karen took in the state of the art office furniture and power dressing woman behind the desk which made both her office and herself feel down at heel in comparison. She crushed that instinct to feel inferior reminding herself that she had come up from the ranks to her present position of authority as she introduced herself in pleasant tones and explained her purpose.
"By what authority do you consider you have a right to interview one of our patients, Miss Betts?" came the supercilious tones, hardly even looking at her. "We have strict rules here."
"I quite understand, but Shell Dockley was once an inmate in the wing of the prison of which I am Wing Governor. A delicate matter has come up of which she is able to give first hand evidence."
"Shouldn't you have given me prior notice of such a visit? My time is precious in the running of a psychiatric prison which I can ill afford in dealing with uninvited guests?"
Jesus Christ, this woman is on a real power trip, Karen thought. If she had my job where anything and everything comes up at short notice, she wouldn't last the week. Never mind, keep smiling at the cow.
"This has come up at short notice as I, too, have a prison wing to run. As someone on the same level of authority and similar responsibilities as myself, I hoped you would understand." Karen smiled broadly, totally ignoring the way this woman looked down her nose at her.
"Well, you thought wrong, Miss Betts.I shall immediately send for a prison officer so that you can be escorted off the premises forthwith," And she reached over for the phone.
"Not so fast," Karen replied with a decided edge in her voice so that she was no longer the well mannered supplicant. "I had hoped for this to be agreed the easy way but you leave me no alternative," And Karen reached forward into her briefcase for the envelope. "I had said that this is a delicate matter. I am not obliged to explain to a perfect stranger the purpose of this visit but I hold here a Court Order signed by a High Court judge empowering me to see Shell Dockley whether you like it or not. You have no choice in the matter."
For the first time, the woman saw Karen Betts who was subtly changed. There was a steely tone in her voice which she had not come across before. As someone whose fussy bullying had held sway in such a closed in institution, she did not know how to deal with someone who unmasked a greater power than her own. Her job was to ensure everything appeared to run well and that the glossy yearly prospectus suitably blinded with science her remote seniors in Whitehall. The power of the law was some alien force with the ability to drag into the dock any luckless individual who broke the eleventh commandment "Thou shalt not be found out." The spectre of the Public Enquiry that the judiciary would ruthlessly probe her empire was the one distant nightmare which she resolved she would never have to face. This woman sprang out of nowhere armed with this document with the very legal power that could frighten her.
"Of course, we seem to have got off to a misunderstanding….." she stammered.
Haven't we just, Karen contemptuously thought.
"……I shall make the necessary arrangements for you to see the person concerned…."
One inmate is just like another to her, Karen's thought chorussed.
"…..Do you want me to sent in an orderly with a cup of tea later?"
"Thank you. I would appreciate that," smiled Karen even though her facial muscles were starting to ache.
As the Chief Executive made the necessary arrangements over the phone, it crossed her mind to double check with the governor of Larkhall Prison about this dangerous woman. To do that she wanted her out of the way as soon as possible.
"Miss Taylor," she said to the young nurse, spotting her namebadge just in time. "will you escort Miss Betts here to see Shell Dockley."
The nurse opened her mouth in puzzlement at this most unexpected order but thought better of it than to question it. That was the way the hospital was run.
Karen smiled nicely one last time and followed the very young, very serious woman along the corridor. Jesus, was I that young once, as she looked at the universal nurses uniform that she had once worn.
Presently, they arrived at the wing that Shell Dockley was on and once again passed through the invisible barriers. One or two of the patients came into view, looking much like any other patient or inmate of her past and present except for the way they avoided her eye. There was something removed about them. The whole look of the place was more like a typical hospital if it weren't for the ubiquitous sealed up doors. The nurse opened one of them and a familiar face came into full view.
"Miss Betts!" exclaimed Shell. "I can't believe it's you after all this time. Thought you'd given up on me, miss," She finished on a more subdued reproachful note.
Karen took in Shell's appearance with one glance. She was wearing a grey track suit, much like the one she had worn at Larkhall in her more subdued moments. There was no hint of jewellery or heavy makeup and her long wavy blond hair was less brassy than it was. So far, so good. It was the secondary impression that unsettled her. In the past, she felt that there was a scheming intelligence at work however much a tentative trust had built up between the two of them. She had cried on her shoulder when her feelings
normally dammed up by the wall of hard exterior, broke through. She had told her how guilty she felt that she had exposed her children to the dangers of the same sexual abuse from her mother that she had suffered from because she had dared not face it. Looking at her now, there was something not quite right about her. Her blue eyes, sometimes limpid pseudo sincere, sometimes burning with hatred were vacant. You could always tell by the eyes, Karen's nursing instinct and her self education in psychology told her.
"It's good to see you, Shell." Karen's warm voice expressed the very real feelings. The barrier erected by her stabbing of Fenner had crumbled away without her noticing it allowing her to revert to the way she was. But could Shell do the same? Did she need to do so?
"You mean it, miss? You're not just saying it to make me feel better?" Shell asked guilelessly. Once she had said that to Helen who cynically dismissed it as the typical deceitful Shell ploy. This time, she meant it.
"I mean every word that I say. I should have come to visit you before and helped you out long before now." Karen's regretful tones were infused with startling candour. "But there's another reason why I've come to see you. I want you to help me. That is if you are willing to."
Shell sat there dumbstruck, temporarily lost for words which, again was not like the old Shell whose verbal fluency never let her down nor her judgement as to how much truth she would mix in with clever lies.
"You mean it, miss? How do you want me to help?"
Karen reached inside her handbag for a packet of cigarettes, flipped open the packet and handed one to Shell and, while they both lit up, she gathered her thoughts.
"You remember Jim Fenner, do you Shell?" she asked, to gauge just how much recall she had of the past. Beneath the fogged up exterior, a vague flash of anger registered and the corners of her mouth were dragged down.
"Yeah, I remember him all right. He was the bastard who landed me in here and what took my baby off me.He's the one that you were shagging, weren't you. You needn't have wasted your time. No one really knows what Fenner's like except me."
It was that anger, even if it was filtered through the mental fog of all the tranquillisers that she had been prescribed, that brought up the remnants of the old Shell personality but even the bitterness was overlain by a feeling of impotence. It was ironical to consider all the drugs that Shell had taken or dealt while she was at Larkhall but these were drugs designed to keep her in a state of foggy acquiescence.
"There's something I have to tell you, Shell," Karen urged her desperately, having taken the plunge in telling her everything . "Months ago, Fenner raped me. I have come to see you to ask you, to beg you to tell me what you know of Fenner so that I can settle with him for all of us."
"You beat Fenner?" Shell's face was twisted with scorn. "You ought to have let me finish him off when I had the chance. Remember the night when I stabbed him with a broken bottle."
"Shell, you know that I cannot officially condone what you did that night. There has to be another way, the legal way. You know more about him than I do. That is why I am asking you for help."
Suddenly, Shell's combative desire to fight evaporated. Might as well let Miss Betts do it her way. She was too tired to fight for very long. Ashmore had made her that way.
"All right, Miss Betts. You ask the questions and I'll tell you the truth. I might as well," she laughed cynically. "I'm locked up here and I'll never get out. and don't you make any big promises about getting me out."
"Can you tell me what happened between you, Rachel Hicks and Fenner.It's all right," as Shell shrank back with fear. "Denny Blood has told me a lot of what went on already and you won't come to any harm if you tell me your version."
"There's not much to tell that you don't know already," Shell said sulkily. "Fenner got greedy and started screwing that Hicks cow soon after Stewart came to Larkhall as wing governor. He made all sorts of promises to me that he'd get her transferred out……."
"Wait a moment, Shell. How did you find out about Rachel Hicks?" interrupted Karen.
"Wade told me," Shell said shortly to Karen's incredulity, knowing the hostile relationship between the two women. "I was winding her up about her love life and she let that one slip out. Anyway, I beat Hicks up one day when I went into her cell and she had her lipstick on, ready for a 'hot date' so she ended up in the hospital wing. In the end I blackmailed her by threatening that something bad would happen to her daughter if she didn't do as I wanted, like get her mother to smuggle drugs in. In the end, she topped herself. Simple as that, miss."
Something of the old psychotic Shell came back into life, the sheer inappropriate flatness of emotional response to horrifying events that would have made anyone else sound and feel guilty and embarrassed by what they had done. It was as if the deeds didn't belong to her.
"How much did Fenner know of all this."
"The bastard knew everything." Shell's bitter laugh punctuated the remark. "Don't you know him better than that? He was there just after I done Hicks over. After she killed herself, he came into my cell and told me to keep quiet about everything and it would all blow over."
Karen's face tightened as, at last, she was gaining a real backstage view of the man as she had never seen before, the man whom she had lived with and had even accepted his proposal in marriage.
"I lived with him for a while," Karen confessed with real embarrassment. "He even proposed marriage to me once. That was before I started finding out about him."
"You poor cow," Shell looked at her with scorn.
"Didn't you get conned by him the same way that I did?" Karen interposed. "I wonder if you had ever told what you knew about Fenner, he would have been sacked."
"He was too useful to me," Shell shook her head at the thought which challenged her belief in her own street smartness, one quality which she had believed in. "I got sex off Fenner. He covered up for all the bad things I ever did.That's the way he's ever worked at Larkhall"
"So tell me about the time he beat you up," Karen's composed voice concealed the feeling of shock and horror which put his relationship with Maxi Purvis into sharp focus.
"Which time?" Shell challenged to Karen's horror. "You mean the time he rammed my face into the cell wall or the second time he kicked and punched me and you came into my cell just after he run off."
"Start with the first time," Karen asked softly."
"I can't remember why he done that," and a vagueness of expression crept back across Shell's face to Karen's concern. This is not like the Shell I once knew.
"Anyway I started sending letters to his wife telling her the poor cow what he was doing with me, making it look as if someone else was writing them."
"Who did he think was writing them?" Karen asked.
"Nikki Wade of course," Shell said with a self satisfied smile.
Typical Fenner, Karen thought with contempt. He lets his unreasoning hatred take him over, first for Nikki when Shell was to blame and next for Yvonne when Snowball was feeding him a load of crap. She was watching these events unfold as if they took place before her eyes up on a TV screen, including herself as she then was when she first came totally fresh to Larkhall, so sure of herself, so confident and yet knowing nothing.
"Anyway, Fenner catches on to me and finds the mobile phone what I was phoning his wife on and…..you know the rest, miss. You and Stewart saw what he done to me."
"So why did you retract your statement later on?" Karen asked softly.
"I convinced meself that I loved him," Shell admitted with embarrassment. So did I, Karen thought with real sympathy. "I found a note in my cell from his wife telling me that I had broken up their relationship and I was the one that Fenner really loved. So I made up some sort of a story and Fenner came back. Stupid, wasn't I," Shell finished, and looked appealingly at Karen not to laugh at her.
"I nearly got married to Fenner. How could I laugh at you? So who wrote the note?"
"Fenner got the letter off me and told me that he'd told his wife what to write. It was all a con, miss. And I believed it. And that's the time I started going kind of funny, prancing around, dressed up like Britney Spears in that therapy class."
Karen shuddered as the morning's memory leapt back to her of her talking to Meg Richards and the horrifying vision of Shell standing at the top of the staircase on the 3s with a make belief noose held round her neck and screaming. "Come on Mr Fenner. Why don't you string me up like Rachel Hicks. It's what you want, innit?" In a twisted kind of way, it all made sense. It made far more sense than Fenner's protestations to her that what he did to her 'was never rape.' She got to her feet and had a short walk round the cell and asked herself just who was mad, Shell or Fenner?
"You all right, miss?" Shell asked with genuine concern for her. Normally it was the other way round.
"Thank you, Shell. I'm all right. Really." Karen smiled with real affection for this strange, difficult and sometime dangerous woman. They had one strong unbreakable bond in common which had been their undoing, Fenner.
"I hope you don't mind telling me what you know about your escape from Larkhall."
"Fenner fixed it," Shell said promptly. "I had been winding him up after the stabbing and he wanted me out of Larkhall. You must know what he was like then. He suggested it, he got a spare key cut for the back door to the chapel and for the van so I could escape. He left me money and told me where to find the keys. It was his idea that I make up that diary so Stewart would get the blame………"
'I can't help feeling that I'm being set up…..'echoed Helen's voice in Karen's mind to the memory of her scorn and derision at Helen's paranoia. Helen was on the right track about that one as well and she was wrong yet again. And who was standing next to them while the two of them argued, knowing everything and saying nothing?
"………it was dead easy. Everything would've went right if only that dozy driver hadn't got in the way and the van broke down after I bumped his car…"
Just then, there was a knock on the cell door. Karen shushed at Shell to keep quiet as if they were locked up together in the cell and the prison warder was coming to spy on them. However, it was the orderly with the tea trolley. Karen got up and fetched two mugs of tea off the trolley and offered one to Shell. She smiled freely and openly as this was the first time in her life that a screw had fetched her a drink in her life, the same screw who was the one person who treated her with genuine kindness.
"I'll tell you, miss, about the night that I stabbed him if you want," Shell offered, eager to please the one woman from a better time in her past than she was enjoying now. Somehow, she felt nostalgic about her days at Larkhall where she sensed that she was more free, less doped up than she was now. At least the drugs she took then were her own choice.
"I wasn't going to ask you, Shell but tell me what happened."
"I was serving drinks with Atkins and the Julies at Bodybag's party, remember. We slipped an 'E' into Bodybag's drink and were laughing at her as she was doing the hokey cokey," Shell explained, her voice and manner becoming sharper and clearer as the memories came flooding back and grinning at the memory. Karen's answering thought was that that's another one I didn't know about.
"Everything changed when Atkins told me that you were shagging Fenner. I could tell by the way that you two were next to each other," Shell went on, glaring into the mid distance, away from Karen. "Right near the end, I got one of the empties, took it into a quiet room and smashed the bottle. It was as easy as anything in the dark when Fenner escorted us back to our cells. Fenner came sneaking round later on and it was obvious what he was after. 'You're a whore, Dockley,' he told me once and he liked whores and that's a fact, that's what he wanted what he couldn't get off his wife."
Karen felt sick at this point. She dared not tell Shell that she was distinctly hostile to Fenner that night and was giving him the brush off. How could she tell Shell that that night, she had got it all wrong. This was not the Jim Fenner that she had known when she lived with him but this was Fenner, the man who had raped her, who did not know the meaning of the words that she had said that night, over and over, that she didn't want it. Why should he know any different from the women who had never said no to him in the past, the women whom he had had power over, especially when he had got his boundaries confused? If she had married Fenner, he would have cheated on her the same way he had done with Marilyn.
"He thought I was going down on him when I rammed the broken bottle into him for everything he had done bad to me in the past. I wanted to see him die slowly and to beg for mercy and to confess in writing what he had done. I would have done it if it weren't for you and Stewart poking your noses in. You shouldn't have done that, miss. He didn't deserve to live and you know it."
Karen was silent. Everything Shell had said convicted herself of deeds that were not only illegal but bad. Yet she understood why she had acted, better than she had known before.
"One last thing I was going to ask you, Shell, is how on earth did you end up here?" Karen asked gently. She jumped to the conclusion, clear as day, that Fenner had gone to Shell once he realised that he wasn't getting any sex off her. This was the one vital fact not in Helen's report into the stabbing that immediately made sense of everything.
Shell dissolved into floods of tears on Karen's shoulder. All the talk of all her misfortunes brought everything back to her and she felt all the pain despite all the drugs. She stayed there while Karen shush shushed into her ear and patted her shoulder. This was the sort of mothering Shell ought to have had years ago. She blew her nose loudly into a tissue and resolved to tell the last bad thing that had happened to her since she'd started taking the pills that numbed her and stopped her feeling anything at all. At least that worked for all normal patients.
"Fenner fixed it like he fixes everything. Soon as I came back to Larkhall, I was doing hand jobs for the screws and he was getting a rake off. I was saving up for my little boy, Ronan……or whatever they've called him now. One of the worst was Colin Hedges." Shell scowled as she fell silent. "I was in my cell tucking little Ronan in when he came round, unzipping his flies. I screamed at him not to do that in front of a little boy but he wouldn't listen……" and the last three words whirled their way out of Karen's past which she had said that to the sympathetic policewoman, the night she had taken the fateful decision to go round to Fenner's B and B.
"……the baby was screaming while Hedges was trying to drag me off my baby, as if he needed protection from me. Next thing I know is that Fenner comes through the door and fixes up these lies about me harming my baby and I get dragged away to this place. I know that I have done bad things in my time but I would never have harmed my baby. You must believe me."
Karen was speechless as the horror and enormity of what had happened to her at Fenner's hands was taking its time to sink in. What made it worse was that for so much of the story, Karen was either totally unaware or at best suspicious.
"Of course I believe you but you should never have put your trust in Fenner but come to either me or Helen Stewart."
"Neither should you, miss," Shell said simply.
What could she say to that as both women fell silent, both mulling over all the bad memories of the past.
"I left a big wad of notes in my cell that I had saved up for my baby. Do you know what happened to it?"
The flash of anger on Karen's face as she realised now what Fenner was up to in Shell's cell said everything.
"He took it all, didn't he." Shell said while Karen nodded, her anger now swelling in her that, yet again, Fenner had been up to no good under her very nose.
"How much cash did he walk away with?" Asked Karen, an idea forming in her head.
"About two hundred quid. The bastard. I could have got Ronan some decent clothes with that money." Then, after a short silence, "You're really going to do something about Fenner?" Shell asked, the question half rhetorical, wanting to be convinced.
"I know just how dangerous Fenner is, and I'm going after him for what he's done to me, to you and to others. I'll promise you this one."
"You have got to get me out of this place, miss. I shouldn't be here……and I'm sorry for some of the things I done," Shell's voice and eyes pleaded with Karen.
What could she say? Strangely enough, she believed Shell's remorse as Helen might have done if she had seen her at this moment. It was not her practice to promise something she couldn't deliver and, without the Court order, she would not have got this far. She was sure of nothing else than that she was going to have her hands full in bringing Fenner down.
"If I ever can, I will, Shell. But it won't be easy."
"So there's hope, yeah?" Shell asked.
"That's the best I can do, Shell," Karen replied, feeling inadequate that she could not move mountains.
The smile that Shell gave her just before she turned her back somehow upset her that she would be out while Shell was stuck there for the foreseeable future. There were no promises of happy endings, not in shell's case where her whole life was anything but.
At least she had made her peace with the past in the same way that she had done with Helen and, who knows, but the ghosts might be laid to rest.