Part Eighteen
Denny's eyes had blinked open automatically in term for the early morning call. It was a habit of hers from when she was in a foster home and then in a children's home. You didn't know what bastard screw would come through the door when you were half asleep. It all went back to when she was a kid and she really thought that the man coming through the door was just being friendly, like you do when you are a kid. Even now, when everything from her tattoos, the way she dressed and acted was her version of visually displaying herself 'dyke' and 'not to be touched by a man' was her version of self protection. She just didn't take chances, as it wasn't safe to.
Lauren was different because she was as bad as waking up in the morning as her mother had been and the reason was easy to understand. Her hardness threatened any screw who remotely crossed the line with a towering stormcloud of rage in a single look. Besides, she was an Atkins. Stories of her mother's time in Larkhall were embroidered into legend and passed down to new inmates and rumours as to who really killed Charlie still haunted the dark corridors and single cells of the vast honeycomb warren that was Larkhall. Lauren simply had to step into the shoes that were waiting for her. Even today, she was only a shade earlier and Denny finally saw her off with a couple of the screws and life at Larkhall went on much the same, with all the petty day to day routines.
Hours later, she was playing a game of pool to kill time and to keep her thoughts occupied though, in reality, they had walked out of the gates with Lauren. As her ball clipped the other ball she was aiming at, a chorus rose up behind her announcing Lauren's return. The slim black woman dragged herself wearily into the canteen area and stopped, not knowing which way to go.
"Hey, Lauren, how did it go, man?" Lauren's mouth twisted sideways into a grimace and she didn't answer.
"I'll get you some tea," Denny offered graciously as the other woman's body dropped into a chair as if invisible strings holding her up had been suddenly slashed through. She was numb to any emotion and reached for a much overdue cigarette and lit up.
"It's weird sitting in the dock and hearing everyone talking about you. It's as if I was lying out flat on a slab and everyone's was pointing at me and you can't move, you can't speak. The brief who's prosecuting me is a total dickbrain, talking about me as if I'm this psycho bitch that gets a kick out of killing and torturing people. I'm not like that, am I?" Lauren looked pleadingly at Denny.
"You're talking about Shell Dockley, man," Denny's firm voice broke into Lauren's meandering streams of consciousness fuzzy edged voice. "She was an ex who could twist me round her little finger and make me do all the shit evil things for her. I know the difference. You just took out one evil bastard screw and no one's been upset since he's gone, except Bodybag and Di Barker, sad cows. It's just a drag that it's illegal." Denny's simple words of common sense started to blow away Lauren's dark clouds of self-accusation as her eyes focussed on Denny for the first time. Denny knew the signs, they all came back like that from court.
"Just remember, Lauren, I've shared a cell with you all these months and if there was anything bad going down with you, I'd know by now. The worst thing I can say is that you're dead moody first thing in the morning, same as your mum but that ain't no crime." Lauren laughed freely at the utterly absurd bathos in Denny's words. She could be funny without even intending it, and knew much more than she ever thought of life around her. She was much better for her than Ritchie had ever been.
"Jo Mills is doing her best for me, but she only makes me sound as if I'm a right head case instead of a cold evil killer. I know it's for the best, but……" "Do you really want to get banged up here for life as that's what you'll get if your brief doesn't say something smart to get you off the hook?" The expression on Denny's face pleaded with the other woman as much as her words for her to get a grip on herself.
"I know, Denny, but….." "But it doesn't matter shit except for how much she can swing it with the jury. Don't be a twat, just for me. So how well did she do?" "Pretty good so far. She chewed up the other brief and she tied up Dr. Waugh in knots except that….." "What, man." "He ended up sort of agreeing with someone who called Fenner a misogynist bastard. Those were the words…I think." "He's on the other side, ain't he? …… That's weird, man." Denny's face looked blank with incomprehension as what Lauren said didn't click or make any sense. "So what about the judge?" "It seemed different last time. I was in the gallery cheering him on to nail that useless brother of mine and that evil tart Merriman for what they did wrong……" "So what? Did you rob your mum, help smuggle in a ton of explosives and let my bird Shaz get burnt to death? Could you have ever done anything as evil as that? A bastard like Fenner deserved to die. Anyway, that judge is the best, trust me." Denny started dancing about like an excitable little kid. It suddenly dawned on her that if Dr. Waugh had changed sides, it sounded like good news for Lauren.
"How the hell do you know him? Next thing you're going to say is that the Queen makes a nice cup of tea 'cos you've been let out for the day to go to Buckingham Palace." "He came round here one day, didn't I tell you? Miss Betts left me with him to chat to for a bit. I told him about Shaz, even showed him the picture the Costas did of her. He was dead interested and a really nice bloke." Lauren let herself be led off back to her cell and lie down. She needed to crash out on her bunk.
Nikki sat as still as a statue, perched upright as Jewel's opening lazily strummed, slack stringed guitar chords and smouldering keyboards hit that sombre, rock bottom register in her soul. Sometimes she needed to be alone and this was music to be alone with. It was at that point where reflective silence and a shadowed introversion took her to the point where she was oblivious of her surroundings. She didn't get the chance much these days to be this way with the loud raucous music of the club and the snatched time with Helen on opposite shifts. "Barcelona, where the winds all blew And the churches don't have windows but the graveyards do Me and my shadow are wrestling again Look out stranger, there's a dark cloud moving in But if you could hear the voice in my heart it would tell you I'm afraid I am alone." In her mind, she rode the trail with Jewel as that voice arched high up into the summer air in an impossible flight of words. It had hypnotised her from the very first time she heard it. That CD was the first she had bought when she got out of Larkhall and was let loose in HMV with more than her weekly spends in her pocket.
"Won't somebody please hold me, release me Show me the meaning of mercy Let me loose Fly, let me fly, let me fly."
Those words could have been sung to her in the depths of that narrow hard bunk separated from her beloved and craving for that mercy from the world just that once. It wasn't much to ask for. "Let me fly, let me fly I won't be held down, I won't be held back I will lead with my faith." Yes, that was what she had done all her life from when she left home and made her place in a world of her own since the world she was born into had rejected her. Without that faith, she was nothing. When that song came to an end, she clicked the 'replay' button on her remote control for that song to travel through her once again. The music always made her feel good about herself in a strange way. Once is never enough for a song that tells your life.
"Hi Nikki. You've got a lot on your mind when you play that song." That sudden flashing smile of Nikki's that lightened her face and pulled her out of the strange depths of her thoughts back to the here and now. She waved goodbye to that old friend of hers, that special place in her mind, but she knew she would come back there some time in the future. It was a good friend to her and had been with her all her life.
"Kind of. I ran into a guy who brought back memories, as well as some old friends, the old lags from Larkhall." "There is a difference?" "I'm not really sure. It was your ex, Dr. Waugh." Helen was curiously relieved after her quick 'once over' glance at Nikki. Her first words were a hair fine trigger to her question. Nikki's emotions were always written plainly on her face and, instead of a dark scowl, she was softly reflective. It was Helen who reacted fiercely to his name crossing their threshold. "How good did he feel about selling out his professional integrity that he was always talking about?" "Pretty shit," Came Nikki's even reply to Helen's contemptuous accusation. "He wasn't given an easy ride by Jo Mills as you might expect. I got the impression that he genuinely didn't see the weaknesses in his report till he was on the stand. The really weird thing was that he ended up quoting a certain someone who described Fenner as a misogynist bastard. He ended up hanging the bastard out to dry. Pretty strange for a prosecution witness." Helen had the strange sensation of standing in a huge echo gallery with her voice talking back to her. She must have spent years shouting her protests about Fenner to an unhearing world, which sponged it up and reduced her to nothingness. She had fought that battle long and hard, which she had lost and had walked away from. Now her words had been preserved in some time bubble and were framed in Thomas's self-assured educated accent and reverberated round the Old Bailey, on whose dome that ultimate symbol of justice, the balanced scales had tilted her way. It was true that Thomas knew what Fenner was like from what she had told him but after splitting up with him, he was out of her life forever for good or ill.
"He said another thing, Helen. He said about you that there were no hard feelings. What did he mean by that?" Helen took a breath and paused on the brink as, in her mind, she was sitting opposite Thomas in their favourite restaurant, telling herself and him that 'I'm with you now.' Whatever was she doing there while she's got Nikki now.
"I never told you about how Thomas and I split up. Fenner had been blabbing his mouth about the two of us and he confronted me. He didn't beat about the bush………." "Rather like me," Nikki couldn't help adding as clear memories of the man, untroubled by present entanglements, slipped through her mind. "He said that everytime we were getting close, it was as if he was hitting a brick wall……" "That was me." "He said that he had been betrayed before because the woman he was with wasn't honest but I couldn't even be honest with myself…." "That sounds like me talking at my most tactless." "And it was Thomas who, curiously enough, convinced me where my real feelings lay and that was with you, Nikki." After her previous deliberate lightness of tone, Nikki's mouth suddenly opened slightly with shock as the full implications sunk in. Her slim delicate fingers only partly concealed her feelings. So that evil bastard Fenner's parting gift to them had, in his twisted way, helped Helen and her to finally get back together. Only a few seconds, a sense of savage glee came to the rescue that of the evil things that he had done in his life, this rebounded to her advantage and Helen's. She hoped that wherever he was, his spirit could rot in hell and be tortured forever by the thought of their happiness. That light in Helen's large expressive eyes and her neatly cut bobbed hair swung as she turned her head and slipped her arms round Nikki's shoulders and their lips met in a deep kiss.
"Welcome home," She whispered into Nikki's neck, minutes later.
"You and me both, darling."
Denny's eyes had blinked open automatically in term for the early morning call. It was a habit of hers from when she was in a foster home and then in a children's home. You didn't know what bastard screw would come through the door when you were half asleep. It all went back to when she was a kid and she really thought that the man coming through the door was just being friendly, like you do when you are a kid. Even now, when everything from her tattoos, the way she dressed and acted was her version of visually displaying herself 'dyke' and 'not to be touched by a man' was her version of self protection. She just didn't take chances, as it wasn't safe to.
Lauren was different because she was as bad as waking up in the morning as her mother had been and the reason was easy to understand. Her hardness threatened any screw who remotely crossed the line with a towering stormcloud of rage in a single look. Besides, she was an Atkins. Stories of her mother's time in Larkhall were embroidered into legend and passed down to new inmates and rumours as to who really killed Charlie still haunted the dark corridors and single cells of the vast honeycomb warren that was Larkhall. Lauren simply had to step into the shoes that were waiting for her. Even today, she was only a shade earlier and Denny finally saw her off with a couple of the screws and life at Larkhall went on much the same, with all the petty day to day routines.
Hours later, she was playing a game of pool to kill time and to keep her thoughts occupied though, in reality, they had walked out of the gates with Lauren. As her ball clipped the other ball she was aiming at, a chorus rose up behind her announcing Lauren's return. The slim black woman dragged herself wearily into the canteen area and stopped, not knowing which way to go.
"Hey, Lauren, how did it go, man?" Lauren's mouth twisted sideways into a grimace and she didn't answer.
"I'll get you some tea," Denny offered graciously as the other woman's body dropped into a chair as if invisible strings holding her up had been suddenly slashed through. She was numb to any emotion and reached for a much overdue cigarette and lit up.
"It's weird sitting in the dock and hearing everyone talking about you. It's as if I was lying out flat on a slab and everyone's was pointing at me and you can't move, you can't speak. The brief who's prosecuting me is a total dickbrain, talking about me as if I'm this psycho bitch that gets a kick out of killing and torturing people. I'm not like that, am I?" Lauren looked pleadingly at Denny.
"You're talking about Shell Dockley, man," Denny's firm voice broke into Lauren's meandering streams of consciousness fuzzy edged voice. "She was an ex who could twist me round her little finger and make me do all the shit evil things for her. I know the difference. You just took out one evil bastard screw and no one's been upset since he's gone, except Bodybag and Di Barker, sad cows. It's just a drag that it's illegal." Denny's simple words of common sense started to blow away Lauren's dark clouds of self-accusation as her eyes focussed on Denny for the first time. Denny knew the signs, they all came back like that from court.
"Just remember, Lauren, I've shared a cell with you all these months and if there was anything bad going down with you, I'd know by now. The worst thing I can say is that you're dead moody first thing in the morning, same as your mum but that ain't no crime." Lauren laughed freely at the utterly absurd bathos in Denny's words. She could be funny without even intending it, and knew much more than she ever thought of life around her. She was much better for her than Ritchie had ever been.
"Jo Mills is doing her best for me, but she only makes me sound as if I'm a right head case instead of a cold evil killer. I know it's for the best, but……" "Do you really want to get banged up here for life as that's what you'll get if your brief doesn't say something smart to get you off the hook?" The expression on Denny's face pleaded with the other woman as much as her words for her to get a grip on herself.
"I know, Denny, but….." "But it doesn't matter shit except for how much she can swing it with the jury. Don't be a twat, just for me. So how well did she do?" "Pretty good so far. She chewed up the other brief and she tied up Dr. Waugh in knots except that….." "What, man." "He ended up sort of agreeing with someone who called Fenner a misogynist bastard. Those were the words…I think." "He's on the other side, ain't he? …… That's weird, man." Denny's face looked blank with incomprehension as what Lauren said didn't click or make any sense. "So what about the judge?" "It seemed different last time. I was in the gallery cheering him on to nail that useless brother of mine and that evil tart Merriman for what they did wrong……" "So what? Did you rob your mum, help smuggle in a ton of explosives and let my bird Shaz get burnt to death? Could you have ever done anything as evil as that? A bastard like Fenner deserved to die. Anyway, that judge is the best, trust me." Denny started dancing about like an excitable little kid. It suddenly dawned on her that if Dr. Waugh had changed sides, it sounded like good news for Lauren.
"How the hell do you know him? Next thing you're going to say is that the Queen makes a nice cup of tea 'cos you've been let out for the day to go to Buckingham Palace." "He came round here one day, didn't I tell you? Miss Betts left me with him to chat to for a bit. I told him about Shaz, even showed him the picture the Costas did of her. He was dead interested and a really nice bloke." Lauren let herself be led off back to her cell and lie down. She needed to crash out on her bunk.
Nikki sat as still as a statue, perched upright as Jewel's opening lazily strummed, slack stringed guitar chords and smouldering keyboards hit that sombre, rock bottom register in her soul. Sometimes she needed to be alone and this was music to be alone with. It was at that point where reflective silence and a shadowed introversion took her to the point where she was oblivious of her surroundings. She didn't get the chance much these days to be this way with the loud raucous music of the club and the snatched time with Helen on opposite shifts. "Barcelona, where the winds all blew And the churches don't have windows but the graveyards do Me and my shadow are wrestling again Look out stranger, there's a dark cloud moving in But if you could hear the voice in my heart it would tell you I'm afraid I am alone." In her mind, she rode the trail with Jewel as that voice arched high up into the summer air in an impossible flight of words. It had hypnotised her from the very first time she heard it. That CD was the first she had bought when she got out of Larkhall and was let loose in HMV with more than her weekly spends in her pocket.
"Won't somebody please hold me, release me Show me the meaning of mercy Let me loose Fly, let me fly, let me fly."
Those words could have been sung to her in the depths of that narrow hard bunk separated from her beloved and craving for that mercy from the world just that once. It wasn't much to ask for. "Let me fly, let me fly I won't be held down, I won't be held back I will lead with my faith." Yes, that was what she had done all her life from when she left home and made her place in a world of her own since the world she was born into had rejected her. Without that faith, she was nothing. When that song came to an end, she clicked the 'replay' button on her remote control for that song to travel through her once again. The music always made her feel good about herself in a strange way. Once is never enough for a song that tells your life.
"Hi Nikki. You've got a lot on your mind when you play that song." That sudden flashing smile of Nikki's that lightened her face and pulled her out of the strange depths of her thoughts back to the here and now. She waved goodbye to that old friend of hers, that special place in her mind, but she knew she would come back there some time in the future. It was a good friend to her and had been with her all her life.
"Kind of. I ran into a guy who brought back memories, as well as some old friends, the old lags from Larkhall." "There is a difference?" "I'm not really sure. It was your ex, Dr. Waugh." Helen was curiously relieved after her quick 'once over' glance at Nikki. Her first words were a hair fine trigger to her question. Nikki's emotions were always written plainly on her face and, instead of a dark scowl, she was softly reflective. It was Helen who reacted fiercely to his name crossing their threshold. "How good did he feel about selling out his professional integrity that he was always talking about?" "Pretty shit," Came Nikki's even reply to Helen's contemptuous accusation. "He wasn't given an easy ride by Jo Mills as you might expect. I got the impression that he genuinely didn't see the weaknesses in his report till he was on the stand. The really weird thing was that he ended up quoting a certain someone who described Fenner as a misogynist bastard. He ended up hanging the bastard out to dry. Pretty strange for a prosecution witness." Helen had the strange sensation of standing in a huge echo gallery with her voice talking back to her. She must have spent years shouting her protests about Fenner to an unhearing world, which sponged it up and reduced her to nothingness. She had fought that battle long and hard, which she had lost and had walked away from. Now her words had been preserved in some time bubble and were framed in Thomas's self-assured educated accent and reverberated round the Old Bailey, on whose dome that ultimate symbol of justice, the balanced scales had tilted her way. It was true that Thomas knew what Fenner was like from what she had told him but after splitting up with him, he was out of her life forever for good or ill.
"He said another thing, Helen. He said about you that there were no hard feelings. What did he mean by that?" Helen took a breath and paused on the brink as, in her mind, she was sitting opposite Thomas in their favourite restaurant, telling herself and him that 'I'm with you now.' Whatever was she doing there while she's got Nikki now.
"I never told you about how Thomas and I split up. Fenner had been blabbing his mouth about the two of us and he confronted me. He didn't beat about the bush………." "Rather like me," Nikki couldn't help adding as clear memories of the man, untroubled by present entanglements, slipped through her mind. "He said that everytime we were getting close, it was as if he was hitting a brick wall……" "That was me." "He said that he had been betrayed before because the woman he was with wasn't honest but I couldn't even be honest with myself…." "That sounds like me talking at my most tactless." "And it was Thomas who, curiously enough, convinced me where my real feelings lay and that was with you, Nikki." After her previous deliberate lightness of tone, Nikki's mouth suddenly opened slightly with shock as the full implications sunk in. Her slim delicate fingers only partly concealed her feelings. So that evil bastard Fenner's parting gift to them had, in his twisted way, helped Helen and her to finally get back together. Only a few seconds, a sense of savage glee came to the rescue that of the evil things that he had done in his life, this rebounded to her advantage and Helen's. She hoped that wherever he was, his spirit could rot in hell and be tortured forever by the thought of their happiness. That light in Helen's large expressive eyes and her neatly cut bobbed hair swung as she turned her head and slipped her arms round Nikki's shoulders and their lips met in a deep kiss.
"Welcome home," She whispered into Nikki's neck, minutes later.
"You and me both, darling."