Part Four
Selena ignored the venomous glare from Di Barker as she headed for Denny's and Lauren's cell. She knocked quietly and turned the keys and the huddled form of Lauren could be seen under the blankets. From years of institutional living at Larkhall, Denny was dressed according to the mental clock.
"Your brief's due in early this morning, Lauren. I'll take you down right after breakfast, when you're ready." Lauren turned over in her narrow bunk, already having adjusted from the spacious double bed at what is or was home. "What's the point? I ain't never going to get out of here," Lauren's despondent mumble filtered its way through the blankets.
"You're saying this after two days?" Denny's question was edged with controlled amazement. "You can't give up already, man, even if you feel like shit." Denny had never seen Lauren like this, hair unkempt, no makeup and sunk into a deep depression. This was a million miles from the sophisticated, totally in control woman who had made her feel down at heel, even in her best clothes on her day out. The last day or so had worried her so much after she had heard Lauren talk so positively after Yvonne had bent her ear during what must have been a real mother/daughter argument. Denny had grinned as she could so easily fill in the blanks. To her horror, Lauren's self-confidence had plunged downwards like an express lift. She knew the signs as she'd seen it before in others and herself as well. "Denny's right, Lauren. You have to be positive and make the effort," Selena said in her crisp but kindly voice.
It's all bloody words, Lauren fumed to herself. She was being shown up as being a right wimp and this was not her style. She shot out of bed like a cork out of a bottle and turned her back on everyone as she slung on her smartest clothes, and pulled her hairbrush fiercely through her long tangled hair and, in true female Atkins style, started on her makeup.
"She'll be fine, Miss," Denny muttered out of the corner of her mouth to Selena who nodded in agreement. That only made Lauren more angry as she was being talked about as if she couldn't hear. It would have been futile to point out that had anyone spoken to her, she would have bitten that person's head off. It was the tendency of any prisoner, no matter how old, to revert to adolescence in the first few days of imprisonment.
Selena smiled briefly at Denny, closed the door and walked up the metal stairs to Kris's cell.
Jo presented herself at the first of the series of bolts and bars that needed the presence of help to get her through.
"Oh yes, we're expecting you. You'd better come this way to Miss Betts' office. Governor's orders. She insisted that she see you first though I don't know why," Bodybag greeted her with the minimum of politeness and a suspicious glance in her direction while Jo nodded and her long legged easy stride kept pace just slightly behind the rapid self-important fussy steps of the smaller woman. She deposited Jo at her destination with the barest civilities and shot off down the corridor.
"It's good to see you again, Karen," Jo greeted her with a natural sense of diplomacy as her mind went back to the time when she was here previously and Karen was the helpful wing governor helping to assemble the case against Fenner and on a second occasion when she and George had subjected Karen to the cut and thrust grilling of her as a possible murder suspect outside and inside any court of law. However, thought Jo, time had separated them and had distanced that period of high drama in all their lives last autumn with the day to day bustle in their lives. "Not for a social call regrettably. Still, I know from personal experience that she is in safe hands. I wanted to talk to you first to give you a bit of advice as to how she's likely to be. Is this the first time you've defended a client?" "I've done defence work quite often before, though my normal work is as a prosecuting barrister where my clients are the CPS. I've visited clients in prison on remand before but this feels somehow like a new experience for me." "You need to understand that most prisoners, no matter how old they are, revert to adolescence. You understand what I mean?" Jo raised her fingers to her temple in reaction to a sympathetic headache, remembering days in the summer holidays before her younger son Mark left to go to university to either grow up or sink and counting the days. She remembered his tendency to grunt in an inaudible mumble at her and, when asked politely to talk louder, to turn up the volume control in his voice to the aggressively deafening. There were times when being in court was more relaxing and predictable than being at home.
"What advice would you give, Karen, in talking to Lauren from what you've seen." "From initial reports, Lauren Atkins has alternated between depression and aggression," Karen's measured tones unreeled the report. "It's anyone's guess as to which Lauren Atkins you'll find but my advice is to get her to talk and go easy on her - easier than you did with me at any rate," Karen added at the end with a little nervous laugh.
"I'll try," Jo answered with a little smile. The reference put a strange twist on both their past and present.
"How's George? I did mean to ask earlier," Karen said suddenly, the words bursting out of her without premeditation.
"She's doing fine," Jo answered with a warm smile. "I know as I've got to know her better than I used too."
She found herself escorted by a polite young female prison officer along the maze of corridors past a short middle aged uniformed woman staring in disapproval of the world in general and into one of the visiting rooms for 'brief's as she heard herself described. The room reminded her of her early days in one of the more decrepit out of the way courts in the outbacks and painted in drab institutional colours to match the mood of the place. Nothing but a small battered wooden desk and a couple of hard chairs. She settled her papers out on the limited space and waited for Lauren to appear.
"So, you're the brief who's the miracle worker who can get me off this rap?" Lauren's slouch in her chair and eyes like black orbs pegged her, in Jo's eyes, as the archetypal adolescent. "I'm the brief who made mincemeat of your brother if you remember, but I'm here to help you," Jo's low voice was pitched in very hard tones, which was the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face. It was all too unsettling as only her mother had that rarely used knack of getting through to her when she could be free to speak her mind, not someone else's. Charlie had relied on a mixture of charm and fear of the very tangible aura of that violent side of his personality, which dispensed with words beyond a certain level of frustration.
"Are you sure you're not my mum in disguise?" Lauren asked incredulously, instinctively straightening herself in her chair and leaning forward, her arms folded in front of her. Her attention was instantly sharpened and focussed on what this very strong woman had to say. Her mild exterior was a surface front and, like her mother, she related to what lay behind that person.
"Where do you want me to start?" Lauren offered, half fearfully, half eager for deliverance. She bit the bullet and placed her destiny wholly in the hands of someone else and that came hard to an Atkins.
Jo reached in to her handbag and fished out a packet of cigarettes and Lauren gratefully helped herself and angled her cigarette into the lighter flame offered by Jo who lit up, quietly demonstrating one thing the two women had in common. "How's it been, since you've been here?" came the first approach on a safe and impersonal topic.
"Could be worse. I've got Big sister Denny to look after me and tell me if I'm talking a load of crap. The rest of the girls are great. Karen Betts, I mean Miss Betts, is playing it straight down the line and I can handle Bodybag now that……" "Meaning?" Jo asked softly not deceived by Lauren's nonchalant manner and abrupt stop in dragging up the presence of the absent Fenner.
"Sylvia Hollamby, whose disapproval you're bound to meet. All us girls call her that as she's the resident Nazi. All prisons have one." Jo grinned.
"Having your movements controlled 24 7 takes a lot of getting used to but I know what I miss most though it may sound stupid." "I know enough, Lauren, to understand that sometimes the little things in life matter most." "I miss my dog, Trigger. Sounds soft but it's true." Her faint blush and the way she fidgeted showed her embarrassment at her making such a daft confession, but her slight smile signaled to Jo that she felt all the better for it and Jo's soothing reassuring manner was working. "There's a lot of family background I need to know before I can even begin to understand the case. Perhaps you can help me out with this?" Lauren exhaled cigarette smoke deeply into the air while isolated random memories shuffled themselves as if her mind was dealing them off the top of the pack. In her troubled life, she shrank back in time to when all was small scale, safe and innocent, well, as innocent as growing up an Atkins could ever be.
"I grew up with everything that money could buy, well Ritchie and I. We never took the number seven bus from Stepney Green like mum did when she was little. Mum drove us to school, all dressed up, me with my ribbons in my hair. It was always some flash motor that she changed fairly often as Charlie wanted to show off to the locals how much money we had, 'nothing was too good for my princess' Charlie told me with that proud possessive smile on his face which I thought meant how much he loved me, that I would do anything for him. Ritchie was the same and he was the first born, the man of the family after Charlie, Mum's little angel," at which point Lauren grimaced and stopped.
"He had a way with words which made you want to believe him and he used it on Mum, Ritchie and me all the time." "Used it?" Queried Jo. "You make it sound not quite real." "It felt real when I was growing up." Past blind instincts grappled for control in the tones of semi approval in Lauren's voice before being pushed back. "The Atkins business was a man's world, just like all Charlie's friends. Women were an adornment, something and someone to show off and know their place. You see, there was the other side of Charlie." "If you don't mind me asking, why do you call him Charlie as opposed to Mum for Yvonne?" Jo's curiosity got the better of her.
"Because that's his name," Lauren's tones suddenly hardened and turned abrupt. "What the bleeding hell do you think I'd call him, Daddy?" That was precisely what George's ultra sophisticated, ultra cool outward persona called Joe Channing without a shred of embarrassment, Jo's lightning flash of thought told herself before hastening to pour oil on troubled waters. Jumping into Lauren's memory came the image of her as the Black Angel of Death standing on the front steps of another court as the pizza delivery man whipped out a pistol. The one crack shot splattered Charlie's blood all over his latest piece of skirt and he dropped flat on the ground. Charlie had died months before as her father as he had totally betrayed and stitched up Mum before his sudden physical death.
"You're quite right, it doesn't matter and we're getting off track. I'm sorry." "Mum was always around for me," Lauren thought fondly, a smile softening her steel hard persona. "When I was alone with her, she was a different woman, softer and gentler and was only harder and tougher when Charlie was around. She loved him but she needed him too much. I'll never forget the one time I answered him back. I could see the fear in her eyes, everything went quiet for a second and he started sounding off, just as if everything was normal, like close families are supposed to be. Ritchie never said a thing." "And what happened next?" "I saw the bruises on her arms later and she made some excuse. I knew Mum was covering up as I overheard Charlie shouting at Mum, complaining that she hadn't got enough discipline over us and she was being too soft. He said that she would regret it later on and that his own mother ruled the house with a rod of iron while his father was working hard to get the money to support the family. She had all the time in the world as she was at home all day. That was before she got a job in the betting shop when we got older but Charlie thought of that as pin money compared to the money his businesses was raking in. "Can you explain to me what growing up as an Atkins is about." 'the Atkins values', 'the Atkins values' those words were what were spinning round in her mind but they were the words that caused her to be as she was and talking about it was her lifeline to understanding herself but had brought her to where she was in life.
"If you get hit, you hit back harder," Lauren intoned the litany. "Everything's fair in love and war and you need outside muscle, like the hit man Mum hired because Charlie Williams was moving in on the Atkins's turf. You need guns around you or someone's going to finish you off when you're not looking. The Atkins world is a man's world. There's no place for softness in life, that's for losers." A gentle dismissive smile spread slowly across Lauren's face as she saw the daydream in front of her eyes that was so real, the softness of Roisin's and Cassie's bodies as they gently made love together. She didn't need to be an Atkins when she was in bed with them. Then or when they comforted her after Ritchie's suicide.
"What was it like when you got older?" Jo gently asked.
"Like anyone does when they realise that their cosy little world doesn't fit anymore," Lauren addressed her idealised version of childhood in that hard Atkins voice and stared right through Jo into her past. "Mine was never that cosy. It just meant that I got to see that the car hire company which I thought that Charlie brought in the readies, was a front for a drugs baron. Half the drugs, which went through the East end of London, went through Charlie and that bought the villa in Spain where I went on holidays. It meant that when I discovered men, I never wanted any soft, pathetic, dick brained man to faun over like in the soaps. I only knew hard men like Charlie but I was always harder than them, in bed and out of it. I needed to be tough so that…so that …nothing would hurt me ever again like when I was little." Lauren fumbled for an extra large sized tissue and blew hard into it while corners of it covered her eyes and concealed her tears. A part of Lauren hated herself for feeling that way as Atkins didn't do tears or being scared. Right now, she did both. "And do you still feel that you need to be tough and hard?" Jo gently asked, feeling a mixture of horror and sympathy at what was being unveiled before her eyes.
"Not any more, but the Lauren Atkins that killed Fenner felt differently." "Do you want a break, Lauren?" Jo asked as she offered another cigarette. In truth, she needed a break as much as anyone while all the details of this case were funneling into her mind. This was a case like nothing she had handled before.
Lauren smiled gratefully at this little touch of consideration from the other woman who had that sureness of touch in engaging with her. At the best of times, she knew that she could be prickly and abrasive but the circumstances of that crazy period in her life would be bound to make her feel dangerously aggressive or suicidally guilt ridden or both together. "So, tell me how you felt when you were up in the gallery and I was in court prosecuting Snowball Merriman and your brother." "I wanted that evil tart to be banged up in prison for life for stinging Mum and me out of fifty grand and for what she did to those women who were nearly burnt to death and for Shaz Wiley who was killed. Denny's told me a lot about it since I've been here," Lauren snapped furiously, pleased to feel that her anger could be directed at a target that deserved it.
"Have you resented me for prosecuting Ritchie and getting him sent down?" "Not at all," Lauren blew out the answer with a cloud of cigarette smoke. "You did what you had to do. He had that coming to him for being stupid enough to let Merriman take over what brains he ever had. He let down the Atkins family by robbing us blind, swanning in from Spain, giving Mum all that hearts and flowers stuff when he knew that mum would feel as guilty as hell from the last time she saw him. All this 'my little angel' shit. Besides, to get at her, you had to get at him, also You heard what mum and Karen said in the trial about Ritchie and I know that you remember it right." A flood of memories came into Jo's mind of that trial but the level headed way that Lauren looked her in the eye and talked to her as adult to adult showed her mother's strength and gave her hope that, in this seriously disturbed woman, there was the strength in her for what she had to face. Jo smiled in recognition and it did not need Lauren a great stretch of her imagination to see that her point had got home.
"I have to ask you, Lauren, and please bear with me but can you explain how you felt when Ritchie committed suicide?" That brought Lauren up short. For a second, her anger glared out at Jo in a way that made her feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, stuck in a room where no outside sounds could be heard. Then Lauren was pulled into the centre of a swirl of confused feelings and she could not keep up the tough act any more. She looked down at the table and grabbed at a lock of long black hair that straggled down at the side of her face. There was a palpable feeling of grief fighting with pride in the way that she huddled up into herself that didn't want a comforting hand on her shoulder. She had to be allowed her own time before she could carry on and her half smoked cigarette end smouldered away in the ashtray where it was roughly stubbed out. "I felt that I had let him down. Bastard though he was, he was still my brother. Naturally, being an Atkins, I took it out on the nearest person to hand, Karen, I mean Miss Betts. I acted like a cow that night, and blamed her for being there when Snowball fired her gun and Ritchie got shot and not her. Pathetic isn't it?" Lauren grimaced.
"I remember when my husband died many years ago, and the way I behaved wasn't exactly rational," Jo's soft tones gently comforted as if it were a helping hand stretched out. Impersonal comfort wasn't her thing, perhaps a weakness or a strength. "Was there any special reason why you behaved that way to Karen except for her being there?" She knew this one was coming, Lauren sighed to herself but having come so far she might as well go the whole hog. She was in the hands of this gentle considerate woman who she had seen as a force of nature in a court of law.
"I had found out half way through the trial that my mum and Karen were an item. They made it pretty bloody obvious when we were all in the gallery, holding hands. I was jealous of them and, besides, Atkins women didn't behave that way or so I used to think." Jo was silent as she smoked her cigarette which gave her time to think as she came to grips with the complexities of what she would have to put over in a court of law.
"Let's get to the point," Lauren grabbed a hold on the conversation as Ritchie's last words and testament demanded to be heard.and propelled the conversation onwards. "Ritchie wrote a letter to me which says everything as to why I killed Fenner….." "I haven't got the letter with me, Lauren," Jo mildly interjected.
"……doesn't matter," Cut in Lauren abruptly. "I can remember the letter word for word and this is what he told me.
'Dear Lauren,
You're probably more furious with me than Mum is right now. But you know me, I don't do a hard life. I never have, and now I never will. You probably think all this is my own fault, and yeah, I suppose most of it is. But that's another thing isn't it, us, the Atkins family, we don't do blame. Only, it ain't quite worked out like that. I can't ask Mum for what I need you to do, because she won't do it. She never was a real Atkins, only in name. But you and me, Lauren, we've got Charlie Atkins' blood in us all the way. Lauren, I need you to get rid of Fenner for me. Don't throw this away until you've read what I have to say. You were there through the whole of the trial like Mum was, so you heard that stupid wanker of a barrister we had first, trying to pull Karen Betts' evidence to shreds because of what I think he was told by Fenner. Lauren, Fenner did rape Karen, I know he did. You don't sleep with as many women as I have, without knowing when something just isn't right. Lauren, a bit of me loved her. I know that's not how it was supposed to be, but I did, probably still do. She didn't deserve what I did to her. But I can't put any of that right now. This is why I'm asking you to get Fenner out of the picture for good. I can't put right the things I've done, but if you'll do this one thing for me, I can take away one of the worst things that's ever happened to her. You know that Fenner deserves a dose of the Atkins justice as well as I do. Please do this for me, Lauren, please. Don't tell Mum I've asked you. She's stayed on the straight and narrow since she got out, and we both know she won't be in favour of doing what's right. But you're still my sister, and you weren't Charlie Atkins' protégé for nothing. The best shooter in the East End is my little sister.
I'm proud of you Sis,
Ritchie.'
Lauren stumbled to a halt as Ritchie's final words to her died on the wind and in that moment, she said her last final painful goodbye to Ritchie. She put her hands to her eyes and quietly cried to herself, forgetting Jo's presence, as all the hurt in her was painfully forced out. Her body shook in spasms for all the pain she had ever felt in her life, which she had never let out and had remained trapped within her skin. Jo felt helpless, being an onlooker to Lauren's feelings as if her hands were tied and she was condemned to just being an onlooker. It horrified her to hear the spoken words of how much real love there was between brother and sister however much they had both denied it. Even she could see that the big mouthed man whom she had verbally shredded in that trial had some sense of human decency in his own way. Everything to her mind was making sense in a twisted way and that even to her detached mind, how certain words were written in flames of vengeance and guilt. It was clear how the Atkins family values acted as a powerful undertow like that of a huge rolling Atlantic breaking wave and pulled Lauren into acting as she did. There was only one thing that she needed to know, her relationship with Fenner. "That letter explains a lot to me. The only thing I need to know is why you came to hate Fenner and how you came to kill him. He was asked to give evidence as, believe it or not, that slimy untrustworthy man was pretty central to the case. As for George Channing, she cut him to shreds partly out of sheer pleasure. I have to demonstrate to the court that not only did you act as you did for the last wishes of your brother, but that you had reason to hate Fenner."
"It goes back a long way," Lauren's ice cold voice dripped with a hatred that she was not ashamed of. "I used to visit mum in prison and always, that pig was his usual sneering vicious self. I know from mum that he was responsible for every rotten thing that happened at Larkhall. Everyone hated him, all the women who were watching the trial. I know that he tried to blackmail Karen Betts to cover up for the way he let that tart Merriman string him along by his dick. But….that doesn't explain why I went as far as to kill him," Lauren slowed down and relaxed back in her chair for the first time during the interview.
"I swear to God that after I got that note from Ritchie, I wasn't in my right mind, Jo. Early on in the trial, Mum had told me that she wanted him out of the picture for good, same as Ritchie did and threatened him that if he either laid another finger on Miss Betts, or if he kept his promise to discredit Karen's evidence, she would have him nailed." "Oh?" Jo asked out of interest.
"But I don't want you thinking that mum put me up to that," Lauren hurriedly and almost aggressively explained. "She wanted to go straight after she came out of Larkhall and I mean straight. She would not have heard of anyone doing anything like what I did to Fenner but her words and Ritchie's letter nagged at me till something in me went kind of funny." Lauren shook her head in a dazed fashion as she tried to recall for herself how she had acted and felt in that crazed period of her life before making one final push. "I was in some sort of invisible tunnel that told me how to stalk Fenner for weeks on end, what time he came and went, what pubs he went too, everything about his movements and carried it all round in my head like some detailed blueprint. If people aren't expecting to be followed, they won't be on the lookout. Mum never knew a thing as I was working, I wasn't a child that she had to ask where I was coming and going any more. It was some huge obsession that swallowed up everything in my life. The only break I got from that was seeing Roisin and Cassie and their kids and I could be Auntie Lauren, that other person." And here Lauren smiled in a surprisingly innocent fashion, which transformed her whole personality before resuming her grim self imposed task.
"As luck would have it, I caught him on a Sunday afternoon when he was just going to let himself in to his house when he least expected trouble. After that everything was easy. All you've got to do is to work out your moves in advance and what he might do to break loose. We drove all the way to Epping Forest with me pointing a gun at him, scared shitless. Once I'd got him off the beaten track, I got him to do just what I wanted. He knew better than to argue with an Atkins with a gun pointed at him. He dug his own grave or rather, the grave I'd dug for him and covered up, got him to stand in the grave, shot him and gradually covered him with earth and buried him alive. I felt as high as a kite all this time. Doesn't bear thinking about," Lauren finished in a tone of voice that was as if she were an incredulous spectator to her own crime rather than the flat recital of the events as if a crime reporter might relate.
Jo finished smoking her cigarette. She would have no problem in remembering every word Lauren had said even if it might give her nightmares. She was doing it for Yvonne's sake and she knew now why Yvonne could never tell her what had happened. In a weird way, it seemed possible to Jo that Lauren killed Fenner to regain her mother's attention. Ordinarily, that would seem a crazy, out of the way idea but then again, everything she had seen, heard and read was totally unusual. It was bizarre that just one prison was the source of two such enormously complicated trials. "You've not asked me for any details of what I did to Fenner," Lauren asked, half fearfully and thinking that a brief would probe over every detail of the crime. That was what she had expected and most feared.
"I wanted to find out not what you did but why," Jo gently told her. "That is far more important than anything." "What chance do you think I have? Tell it to me straight," Lauren replied to her huge relief, her appealing eyes stared up at Jo now that she could relinquish the strain of reliving the person that she used to be.
"I can't make any promises but I will promise to do my very best to help you Lauren." "That is good enough for me," smiled Lauren, hugely relieved to have so slight a promise in contrast to so many meaningless extravagant promises she had received and wouldn't be let down.
A silence fell on the room while two mentally exhausted women collected their wits till there was a polite knock on the door. Karen entered the room followed by Selena.
"Have you finished, Jo?" "Just done. You'll hear from me in future and Karen Betts will arrange any further meetings as things crop up." While Selena led Lauren back to her cell to crash out on her bunk as she had mentally purged herself, Karen led Jo back out into the sunshine. She looked at her watch and it was only an hour since she had come to the first of the bolts and bars. It seemed that an eternity had passed since she had last crossed the threshold. Karen seemed at ease with herself but, as she said goodbye, the one thought that was at the top of all that was buzzing round in her mind was that Karen didn't know the half of how Fenner had come to die. Jo prided herself in being able to face any awkward moment but her mind shrank from even contemplating just how Karen would hear all the clinical details in court such as her rapidly growing file held in its depths.
Selena ignored the venomous glare from Di Barker as she headed for Denny's and Lauren's cell. She knocked quietly and turned the keys and the huddled form of Lauren could be seen under the blankets. From years of institutional living at Larkhall, Denny was dressed according to the mental clock.
"Your brief's due in early this morning, Lauren. I'll take you down right after breakfast, when you're ready." Lauren turned over in her narrow bunk, already having adjusted from the spacious double bed at what is or was home. "What's the point? I ain't never going to get out of here," Lauren's despondent mumble filtered its way through the blankets.
"You're saying this after two days?" Denny's question was edged with controlled amazement. "You can't give up already, man, even if you feel like shit." Denny had never seen Lauren like this, hair unkempt, no makeup and sunk into a deep depression. This was a million miles from the sophisticated, totally in control woman who had made her feel down at heel, even in her best clothes on her day out. The last day or so had worried her so much after she had heard Lauren talk so positively after Yvonne had bent her ear during what must have been a real mother/daughter argument. Denny had grinned as she could so easily fill in the blanks. To her horror, Lauren's self-confidence had plunged downwards like an express lift. She knew the signs as she'd seen it before in others and herself as well. "Denny's right, Lauren. You have to be positive and make the effort," Selena said in her crisp but kindly voice.
It's all bloody words, Lauren fumed to herself. She was being shown up as being a right wimp and this was not her style. She shot out of bed like a cork out of a bottle and turned her back on everyone as she slung on her smartest clothes, and pulled her hairbrush fiercely through her long tangled hair and, in true female Atkins style, started on her makeup.
"She'll be fine, Miss," Denny muttered out of the corner of her mouth to Selena who nodded in agreement. That only made Lauren more angry as she was being talked about as if she couldn't hear. It would have been futile to point out that had anyone spoken to her, she would have bitten that person's head off. It was the tendency of any prisoner, no matter how old, to revert to adolescence in the first few days of imprisonment.
Selena smiled briefly at Denny, closed the door and walked up the metal stairs to Kris's cell.
Jo presented herself at the first of the series of bolts and bars that needed the presence of help to get her through.
"Oh yes, we're expecting you. You'd better come this way to Miss Betts' office. Governor's orders. She insisted that she see you first though I don't know why," Bodybag greeted her with the minimum of politeness and a suspicious glance in her direction while Jo nodded and her long legged easy stride kept pace just slightly behind the rapid self-important fussy steps of the smaller woman. She deposited Jo at her destination with the barest civilities and shot off down the corridor.
"It's good to see you again, Karen," Jo greeted her with a natural sense of diplomacy as her mind went back to the time when she was here previously and Karen was the helpful wing governor helping to assemble the case against Fenner and on a second occasion when she and George had subjected Karen to the cut and thrust grilling of her as a possible murder suspect outside and inside any court of law. However, thought Jo, time had separated them and had distanced that period of high drama in all their lives last autumn with the day to day bustle in their lives. "Not for a social call regrettably. Still, I know from personal experience that she is in safe hands. I wanted to talk to you first to give you a bit of advice as to how she's likely to be. Is this the first time you've defended a client?" "I've done defence work quite often before, though my normal work is as a prosecuting barrister where my clients are the CPS. I've visited clients in prison on remand before but this feels somehow like a new experience for me." "You need to understand that most prisoners, no matter how old they are, revert to adolescence. You understand what I mean?" Jo raised her fingers to her temple in reaction to a sympathetic headache, remembering days in the summer holidays before her younger son Mark left to go to university to either grow up or sink and counting the days. She remembered his tendency to grunt in an inaudible mumble at her and, when asked politely to talk louder, to turn up the volume control in his voice to the aggressively deafening. There were times when being in court was more relaxing and predictable than being at home.
"What advice would you give, Karen, in talking to Lauren from what you've seen." "From initial reports, Lauren Atkins has alternated between depression and aggression," Karen's measured tones unreeled the report. "It's anyone's guess as to which Lauren Atkins you'll find but my advice is to get her to talk and go easy on her - easier than you did with me at any rate," Karen added at the end with a little nervous laugh.
"I'll try," Jo answered with a little smile. The reference put a strange twist on both their past and present.
"How's George? I did mean to ask earlier," Karen said suddenly, the words bursting out of her without premeditation.
"She's doing fine," Jo answered with a warm smile. "I know as I've got to know her better than I used too."
She found herself escorted by a polite young female prison officer along the maze of corridors past a short middle aged uniformed woman staring in disapproval of the world in general and into one of the visiting rooms for 'brief's as she heard herself described. The room reminded her of her early days in one of the more decrepit out of the way courts in the outbacks and painted in drab institutional colours to match the mood of the place. Nothing but a small battered wooden desk and a couple of hard chairs. She settled her papers out on the limited space and waited for Lauren to appear.
"So, you're the brief who's the miracle worker who can get me off this rap?" Lauren's slouch in her chair and eyes like black orbs pegged her, in Jo's eyes, as the archetypal adolescent. "I'm the brief who made mincemeat of your brother if you remember, but I'm here to help you," Jo's low voice was pitched in very hard tones, which was the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face. It was all too unsettling as only her mother had that rarely used knack of getting through to her when she could be free to speak her mind, not someone else's. Charlie had relied on a mixture of charm and fear of the very tangible aura of that violent side of his personality, which dispensed with words beyond a certain level of frustration.
"Are you sure you're not my mum in disguise?" Lauren asked incredulously, instinctively straightening herself in her chair and leaning forward, her arms folded in front of her. Her attention was instantly sharpened and focussed on what this very strong woman had to say. Her mild exterior was a surface front and, like her mother, she related to what lay behind that person.
"Where do you want me to start?" Lauren offered, half fearfully, half eager for deliverance. She bit the bullet and placed her destiny wholly in the hands of someone else and that came hard to an Atkins.
Jo reached in to her handbag and fished out a packet of cigarettes and Lauren gratefully helped herself and angled her cigarette into the lighter flame offered by Jo who lit up, quietly demonstrating one thing the two women had in common. "How's it been, since you've been here?" came the first approach on a safe and impersonal topic.
"Could be worse. I've got Big sister Denny to look after me and tell me if I'm talking a load of crap. The rest of the girls are great. Karen Betts, I mean Miss Betts, is playing it straight down the line and I can handle Bodybag now that……" "Meaning?" Jo asked softly not deceived by Lauren's nonchalant manner and abrupt stop in dragging up the presence of the absent Fenner.
"Sylvia Hollamby, whose disapproval you're bound to meet. All us girls call her that as she's the resident Nazi. All prisons have one." Jo grinned.
"Having your movements controlled 24 7 takes a lot of getting used to but I know what I miss most though it may sound stupid." "I know enough, Lauren, to understand that sometimes the little things in life matter most." "I miss my dog, Trigger. Sounds soft but it's true." Her faint blush and the way she fidgeted showed her embarrassment at her making such a daft confession, but her slight smile signaled to Jo that she felt all the better for it and Jo's soothing reassuring manner was working. "There's a lot of family background I need to know before I can even begin to understand the case. Perhaps you can help me out with this?" Lauren exhaled cigarette smoke deeply into the air while isolated random memories shuffled themselves as if her mind was dealing them off the top of the pack. In her troubled life, she shrank back in time to when all was small scale, safe and innocent, well, as innocent as growing up an Atkins could ever be.
"I grew up with everything that money could buy, well Ritchie and I. We never took the number seven bus from Stepney Green like mum did when she was little. Mum drove us to school, all dressed up, me with my ribbons in my hair. It was always some flash motor that she changed fairly often as Charlie wanted to show off to the locals how much money we had, 'nothing was too good for my princess' Charlie told me with that proud possessive smile on his face which I thought meant how much he loved me, that I would do anything for him. Ritchie was the same and he was the first born, the man of the family after Charlie, Mum's little angel," at which point Lauren grimaced and stopped.
"He had a way with words which made you want to believe him and he used it on Mum, Ritchie and me all the time." "Used it?" Queried Jo. "You make it sound not quite real." "It felt real when I was growing up." Past blind instincts grappled for control in the tones of semi approval in Lauren's voice before being pushed back. "The Atkins business was a man's world, just like all Charlie's friends. Women were an adornment, something and someone to show off and know their place. You see, there was the other side of Charlie." "If you don't mind me asking, why do you call him Charlie as opposed to Mum for Yvonne?" Jo's curiosity got the better of her.
"Because that's his name," Lauren's tones suddenly hardened and turned abrupt. "What the bleeding hell do you think I'd call him, Daddy?" That was precisely what George's ultra sophisticated, ultra cool outward persona called Joe Channing without a shred of embarrassment, Jo's lightning flash of thought told herself before hastening to pour oil on troubled waters. Jumping into Lauren's memory came the image of her as the Black Angel of Death standing on the front steps of another court as the pizza delivery man whipped out a pistol. The one crack shot splattered Charlie's blood all over his latest piece of skirt and he dropped flat on the ground. Charlie had died months before as her father as he had totally betrayed and stitched up Mum before his sudden physical death.
"You're quite right, it doesn't matter and we're getting off track. I'm sorry." "Mum was always around for me," Lauren thought fondly, a smile softening her steel hard persona. "When I was alone with her, she was a different woman, softer and gentler and was only harder and tougher when Charlie was around. She loved him but she needed him too much. I'll never forget the one time I answered him back. I could see the fear in her eyes, everything went quiet for a second and he started sounding off, just as if everything was normal, like close families are supposed to be. Ritchie never said a thing." "And what happened next?" "I saw the bruises on her arms later and she made some excuse. I knew Mum was covering up as I overheard Charlie shouting at Mum, complaining that she hadn't got enough discipline over us and she was being too soft. He said that she would regret it later on and that his own mother ruled the house with a rod of iron while his father was working hard to get the money to support the family. She had all the time in the world as she was at home all day. That was before she got a job in the betting shop when we got older but Charlie thought of that as pin money compared to the money his businesses was raking in. "Can you explain to me what growing up as an Atkins is about." 'the Atkins values', 'the Atkins values' those words were what were spinning round in her mind but they were the words that caused her to be as she was and talking about it was her lifeline to understanding herself but had brought her to where she was in life.
"If you get hit, you hit back harder," Lauren intoned the litany. "Everything's fair in love and war and you need outside muscle, like the hit man Mum hired because Charlie Williams was moving in on the Atkins's turf. You need guns around you or someone's going to finish you off when you're not looking. The Atkins world is a man's world. There's no place for softness in life, that's for losers." A gentle dismissive smile spread slowly across Lauren's face as she saw the daydream in front of her eyes that was so real, the softness of Roisin's and Cassie's bodies as they gently made love together. She didn't need to be an Atkins when she was in bed with them. Then or when they comforted her after Ritchie's suicide.
"What was it like when you got older?" Jo gently asked.
"Like anyone does when they realise that their cosy little world doesn't fit anymore," Lauren addressed her idealised version of childhood in that hard Atkins voice and stared right through Jo into her past. "Mine was never that cosy. It just meant that I got to see that the car hire company which I thought that Charlie brought in the readies, was a front for a drugs baron. Half the drugs, which went through the East end of London, went through Charlie and that bought the villa in Spain where I went on holidays. It meant that when I discovered men, I never wanted any soft, pathetic, dick brained man to faun over like in the soaps. I only knew hard men like Charlie but I was always harder than them, in bed and out of it. I needed to be tough so that…so that …nothing would hurt me ever again like when I was little." Lauren fumbled for an extra large sized tissue and blew hard into it while corners of it covered her eyes and concealed her tears. A part of Lauren hated herself for feeling that way as Atkins didn't do tears or being scared. Right now, she did both. "And do you still feel that you need to be tough and hard?" Jo gently asked, feeling a mixture of horror and sympathy at what was being unveiled before her eyes.
"Not any more, but the Lauren Atkins that killed Fenner felt differently." "Do you want a break, Lauren?" Jo asked as she offered another cigarette. In truth, she needed a break as much as anyone while all the details of this case were funneling into her mind. This was a case like nothing she had handled before.
Lauren smiled gratefully at this little touch of consideration from the other woman who had that sureness of touch in engaging with her. At the best of times, she knew that she could be prickly and abrasive but the circumstances of that crazy period in her life would be bound to make her feel dangerously aggressive or suicidally guilt ridden or both together. "So, tell me how you felt when you were up in the gallery and I was in court prosecuting Snowball Merriman and your brother." "I wanted that evil tart to be banged up in prison for life for stinging Mum and me out of fifty grand and for what she did to those women who were nearly burnt to death and for Shaz Wiley who was killed. Denny's told me a lot about it since I've been here," Lauren snapped furiously, pleased to feel that her anger could be directed at a target that deserved it.
"Have you resented me for prosecuting Ritchie and getting him sent down?" "Not at all," Lauren blew out the answer with a cloud of cigarette smoke. "You did what you had to do. He had that coming to him for being stupid enough to let Merriman take over what brains he ever had. He let down the Atkins family by robbing us blind, swanning in from Spain, giving Mum all that hearts and flowers stuff when he knew that mum would feel as guilty as hell from the last time she saw him. All this 'my little angel' shit. Besides, to get at her, you had to get at him, also You heard what mum and Karen said in the trial about Ritchie and I know that you remember it right." A flood of memories came into Jo's mind of that trial but the level headed way that Lauren looked her in the eye and talked to her as adult to adult showed her mother's strength and gave her hope that, in this seriously disturbed woman, there was the strength in her for what she had to face. Jo smiled in recognition and it did not need Lauren a great stretch of her imagination to see that her point had got home.
"I have to ask you, Lauren, and please bear with me but can you explain how you felt when Ritchie committed suicide?" That brought Lauren up short. For a second, her anger glared out at Jo in a way that made her feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, stuck in a room where no outside sounds could be heard. Then Lauren was pulled into the centre of a swirl of confused feelings and she could not keep up the tough act any more. She looked down at the table and grabbed at a lock of long black hair that straggled down at the side of her face. There was a palpable feeling of grief fighting with pride in the way that she huddled up into herself that didn't want a comforting hand on her shoulder. She had to be allowed her own time before she could carry on and her half smoked cigarette end smouldered away in the ashtray where it was roughly stubbed out. "I felt that I had let him down. Bastard though he was, he was still my brother. Naturally, being an Atkins, I took it out on the nearest person to hand, Karen, I mean Miss Betts. I acted like a cow that night, and blamed her for being there when Snowball fired her gun and Ritchie got shot and not her. Pathetic isn't it?" Lauren grimaced.
"I remember when my husband died many years ago, and the way I behaved wasn't exactly rational," Jo's soft tones gently comforted as if it were a helping hand stretched out. Impersonal comfort wasn't her thing, perhaps a weakness or a strength. "Was there any special reason why you behaved that way to Karen except for her being there?" She knew this one was coming, Lauren sighed to herself but having come so far she might as well go the whole hog. She was in the hands of this gentle considerate woman who she had seen as a force of nature in a court of law.
"I had found out half way through the trial that my mum and Karen were an item. They made it pretty bloody obvious when we were all in the gallery, holding hands. I was jealous of them and, besides, Atkins women didn't behave that way or so I used to think." Jo was silent as she smoked her cigarette which gave her time to think as she came to grips with the complexities of what she would have to put over in a court of law.
"Let's get to the point," Lauren grabbed a hold on the conversation as Ritchie's last words and testament demanded to be heard.and propelled the conversation onwards. "Ritchie wrote a letter to me which says everything as to why I killed Fenner….." "I haven't got the letter with me, Lauren," Jo mildly interjected.
"……doesn't matter," Cut in Lauren abruptly. "I can remember the letter word for word and this is what he told me.
'Dear Lauren,
You're probably more furious with me than Mum is right now. But you know me, I don't do a hard life. I never have, and now I never will. You probably think all this is my own fault, and yeah, I suppose most of it is. But that's another thing isn't it, us, the Atkins family, we don't do blame. Only, it ain't quite worked out like that. I can't ask Mum for what I need you to do, because she won't do it. She never was a real Atkins, only in name. But you and me, Lauren, we've got Charlie Atkins' blood in us all the way. Lauren, I need you to get rid of Fenner for me. Don't throw this away until you've read what I have to say. You were there through the whole of the trial like Mum was, so you heard that stupid wanker of a barrister we had first, trying to pull Karen Betts' evidence to shreds because of what I think he was told by Fenner. Lauren, Fenner did rape Karen, I know he did. You don't sleep with as many women as I have, without knowing when something just isn't right. Lauren, a bit of me loved her. I know that's not how it was supposed to be, but I did, probably still do. She didn't deserve what I did to her. But I can't put any of that right now. This is why I'm asking you to get Fenner out of the picture for good. I can't put right the things I've done, but if you'll do this one thing for me, I can take away one of the worst things that's ever happened to her. You know that Fenner deserves a dose of the Atkins justice as well as I do. Please do this for me, Lauren, please. Don't tell Mum I've asked you. She's stayed on the straight and narrow since she got out, and we both know she won't be in favour of doing what's right. But you're still my sister, and you weren't Charlie Atkins' protégé for nothing. The best shooter in the East End is my little sister.
I'm proud of you Sis,
Ritchie.'
Lauren stumbled to a halt as Ritchie's final words to her died on the wind and in that moment, she said her last final painful goodbye to Ritchie. She put her hands to her eyes and quietly cried to herself, forgetting Jo's presence, as all the hurt in her was painfully forced out. Her body shook in spasms for all the pain she had ever felt in her life, which she had never let out and had remained trapped within her skin. Jo felt helpless, being an onlooker to Lauren's feelings as if her hands were tied and she was condemned to just being an onlooker. It horrified her to hear the spoken words of how much real love there was between brother and sister however much they had both denied it. Even she could see that the big mouthed man whom she had verbally shredded in that trial had some sense of human decency in his own way. Everything to her mind was making sense in a twisted way and that even to her detached mind, how certain words were written in flames of vengeance and guilt. It was clear how the Atkins family values acted as a powerful undertow like that of a huge rolling Atlantic breaking wave and pulled Lauren into acting as she did. There was only one thing that she needed to know, her relationship with Fenner. "That letter explains a lot to me. The only thing I need to know is why you came to hate Fenner and how you came to kill him. He was asked to give evidence as, believe it or not, that slimy untrustworthy man was pretty central to the case. As for George Channing, she cut him to shreds partly out of sheer pleasure. I have to demonstrate to the court that not only did you act as you did for the last wishes of your brother, but that you had reason to hate Fenner."
"It goes back a long way," Lauren's ice cold voice dripped with a hatred that she was not ashamed of. "I used to visit mum in prison and always, that pig was his usual sneering vicious self. I know from mum that he was responsible for every rotten thing that happened at Larkhall. Everyone hated him, all the women who were watching the trial. I know that he tried to blackmail Karen Betts to cover up for the way he let that tart Merriman string him along by his dick. But….that doesn't explain why I went as far as to kill him," Lauren slowed down and relaxed back in her chair for the first time during the interview.
"I swear to God that after I got that note from Ritchie, I wasn't in my right mind, Jo. Early on in the trial, Mum had told me that she wanted him out of the picture for good, same as Ritchie did and threatened him that if he either laid another finger on Miss Betts, or if he kept his promise to discredit Karen's evidence, she would have him nailed." "Oh?" Jo asked out of interest.
"But I don't want you thinking that mum put me up to that," Lauren hurriedly and almost aggressively explained. "She wanted to go straight after she came out of Larkhall and I mean straight. She would not have heard of anyone doing anything like what I did to Fenner but her words and Ritchie's letter nagged at me till something in me went kind of funny." Lauren shook her head in a dazed fashion as she tried to recall for herself how she had acted and felt in that crazed period of her life before making one final push. "I was in some sort of invisible tunnel that told me how to stalk Fenner for weeks on end, what time he came and went, what pubs he went too, everything about his movements and carried it all round in my head like some detailed blueprint. If people aren't expecting to be followed, they won't be on the lookout. Mum never knew a thing as I was working, I wasn't a child that she had to ask where I was coming and going any more. It was some huge obsession that swallowed up everything in my life. The only break I got from that was seeing Roisin and Cassie and their kids and I could be Auntie Lauren, that other person." And here Lauren smiled in a surprisingly innocent fashion, which transformed her whole personality before resuming her grim self imposed task.
"As luck would have it, I caught him on a Sunday afternoon when he was just going to let himself in to his house when he least expected trouble. After that everything was easy. All you've got to do is to work out your moves in advance and what he might do to break loose. We drove all the way to Epping Forest with me pointing a gun at him, scared shitless. Once I'd got him off the beaten track, I got him to do just what I wanted. He knew better than to argue with an Atkins with a gun pointed at him. He dug his own grave or rather, the grave I'd dug for him and covered up, got him to stand in the grave, shot him and gradually covered him with earth and buried him alive. I felt as high as a kite all this time. Doesn't bear thinking about," Lauren finished in a tone of voice that was as if she were an incredulous spectator to her own crime rather than the flat recital of the events as if a crime reporter might relate.
Jo finished smoking her cigarette. She would have no problem in remembering every word Lauren had said even if it might give her nightmares. She was doing it for Yvonne's sake and she knew now why Yvonne could never tell her what had happened. In a weird way, it seemed possible to Jo that Lauren killed Fenner to regain her mother's attention. Ordinarily, that would seem a crazy, out of the way idea but then again, everything she had seen, heard and read was totally unusual. It was bizarre that just one prison was the source of two such enormously complicated trials. "You've not asked me for any details of what I did to Fenner," Lauren asked, half fearfully and thinking that a brief would probe over every detail of the crime. That was what she had expected and most feared.
"I wanted to find out not what you did but why," Jo gently told her. "That is far more important than anything." "What chance do you think I have? Tell it to me straight," Lauren replied to her huge relief, her appealing eyes stared up at Jo now that she could relinquish the strain of reliving the person that she used to be.
"I can't make any promises but I will promise to do my very best to help you Lauren." "That is good enough for me," smiled Lauren, hugely relieved to have so slight a promise in contrast to so many meaningless extravagant promises she had received and wouldn't be let down.
A silence fell on the room while two mentally exhausted women collected their wits till there was a polite knock on the door. Karen entered the room followed by Selena.
"Have you finished, Jo?" "Just done. You'll hear from me in future and Karen Betts will arrange any further meetings as things crop up." While Selena led Lauren back to her cell to crash out on her bunk as she had mentally purged herself, Karen led Jo back out into the sunshine. She looked at her watch and it was only an hour since she had come to the first of the bolts and bars. It seemed that an eternity had passed since she had last crossed the threshold. Karen seemed at ease with herself but, as she said goodbye, the one thought that was at the top of all that was buzzing round in her mind was that Karen didn't know the half of how Fenner had come to die. Jo prided herself in being able to face any awkward moment but her mind shrank from even contemplating just how Karen would hear all the clinical details in court such as her rapidly growing file held in its depths.