Part Twenty One
From the top of the staircase, Crystal stared scornfully down at the tousle haired woman making her uncertain way across the large tiles of the foyer.
"So Miss Barker is still at Larkhall? You want to watch your back, Miss Betts. I know all about her, you is lied to and deceived by that forked tongue of hers." "As a snake in the grass, I always thought she's hardly in the same league as Dockley or Fenner. She's a stupid cow but no more than that. Her version of life at Larkhall has just got to be the best work of fiction I've ever come across." Nikki's disjointed answer failed to sum Di up as much as she wished but it covered up for Karen's silence as she tried to make sense of what Di Barker was playing at. She refused to think too closely of the way she might have appeared to others while she was under Fenner's spell and was not too eager to pass judgement on Di. Surely Crystal was being her usual simplistic self?
"She's not that bad," she answered slowly at last. "Sure, she's as thick as thieves with Sylvia now where at one time she drew the line at Sylvia's wonderfully enlightened 'lock them up, Alcatraz style' approach…………." Helen could now smile as Karen's voice tailed off after making her sarcastic jibe at Sylvia. Time had healed some of the deep wounds of her first year as Wing Governor. "…………but she's kind hearted, deep down, even if her taste in men is very strange." "Only because she's desperate for It," cut in Nikki.
Helen said nothing either as disconnected fragments of that rather harmless looking mixed up PO floated past in her imagination.
"She was your personal officer once, Nikki, as I remember." "Yeah, she was for a bit, but I never had much to do with her. I'd got over my martyr complex by then thanks to Helen…" and here she smiled, still grateful to Helen after all these years…….."and my life was back on track so I really didn't need her. We went our separate ways when Helen started her lifer's group." "When I came back to Larkhall, I found out all about Miss Di Barker. She was all sweetness and honey like the apple Satan offered to Eve," Crystal declaimed. "We'd better find a quiet room to talk and let Crystal tell us what she knows," Came Nikki's practical advice.
"So long as we don't get accidentally locked up in this place," Helen's native caution warned. The disbelieving looks the others exchanged showed them that George didn't hold the monopoly of putting her foot in it.
"Are you seriously meaning to tell me that Di Barker deliberately mixed up the drugs test to split you and Josh up?" Helen's shocked, angry tones could be heard the other side of the door.
"Josh forced that lying woman to tell the truth after she came round to our flat to take him out line dancing. Yeah, some line dancing, the way she was dressed." "There must be some kind of a logical explanation," Helen's wishful thinking played off against Crystal's cynicism.
"Are you saying that as one time Wing Governor of Larkhall or as psychologist? Think about it, Helen. If you had never met Di Barker before and you saw her on the witness stand, just how much would you trust her? 'Fenner and Dockley had a falling out' she said. She said nothing on the stand about him kicking the shit out of Dockley and nothing to you at the time as to why she mixed up the drugs tests." Helen remembered as if it was yesterday, Di's painful confession that looking after her disabled mother kept her up half the night and sensed her loathing of the life she was forced to live. As Acting Governing Governor, she told herself, she had a duty to be whiter than white and not let her natural sympathy show too much in her face and her voice. She had to go by the book and this incident had to go down on her personnel file, as it was only Charlotte Middleton's intervention that brought it to light. Now for the first time, she realised that she deserved to be sacked on the spot for abusing her position of trust for personal gain. That was as bad as Fenner. She ran the tip of her tongue round her lips to moisten them and then nodded her head at the point of decision.
"So she swapped the drugs test results for you and Charlotte Middleton and, just to cover her back, did the same for Shaz Wiley and Buki Lester," Her slow, stretched out syllables thought aloud.
"So when she shagged Mark Waddle in the toilets when Mark was going out with Gina Rossi, that was Di all over. Mark was not one for exactly sticking to the straight and narrow at that time but it was less Mark's doing than I thought," Came Karen's contribution. "It seems as if Di's been operating behind the scenes more than I ever imagined," Came that uniquely expressive Scottish accent. "We need to push on from this as there is an end in sight somewhere. I feel it."
It was half an hour later when Karen led the way to a room where Jo was quietly working. She knew the rambling layout of the Old Bailey far better than the others by now as this was her second major trial she had been involved with and it had become second nature to her over the last few months to come here to see John.
"I'll leave you to it as there isn't anything more I can contribute." Jo gestured to the three women to take a seat and Nikki acted as spokesman as usual.
"We've been putting our heads together and we've found out that there is a lot about Di Barker which it's taken us all to piece together and she is up to her neck in it in trying to paint the best possible picture of Fenner. If she is allowed to get away with it, then Fenner is a plaster saint, Lauren Atkins is some kind of dangerous criminal and she goes down for life." "Go on," Came the prompt answer. Half way through the week, she was tired and she needed all the evening there was to mentally prepare for the next day. The enormous task of taking her major witness through the labyrinthine journey of the life of Lauren Atkins. Instinct told her that time spent with these three women would be time well spent, especially with this concise formulation.
"For a start, what's your impression of Di Barker?" "She told the court less than half of what she knew," Jo said shortly. "And what she did say was a load of……….Anyway, we're here to tell you the other half of what we know," Came Nikki's restrained reply.
"That woman is a liar and deceiver. There is something really weird about her and while I was at Larkhall, she made out that she was my best friend. All the time, she tried to split me up from Josh Mitchell, my partner and father of my children." "That doesn't help me that much, I'm afraid." "Even to the extent of deliberately switching the results of a random drugs test for Crystal and the other three women in her cell?" Jo was brought up short as the banal character from some everyday soap now took on a darker hue of criminality and fraud, thanks to Helen's slow, deliberately chosen words.
"My partner, Josh Mitchell who was a Prison Officer looked up to me and trusted me as a godfearing, clean living Christian woman who believes that drugs are the work of the devil. I tested positive thanks to her and I nearly lost him." "Drugs tests are strictly controlled and supervised," Added Helen. "I would have sworn blind as Karen did to Crystal that the test could not possibly be wrong.
Di Barker broke up another couple at Larkhall, so that she could get off with a prison officer that she fancied. We heard that from Karen." "This still doesn't link her to Fenner though this shows her in a totally new light." "When I had her up in my office about the drugs test, I questioned her as to how she could possibly have made such a mistake. That was what I thought it was at the time. I ought to explain that the tests are on a urine sample which are sent away to be tested in a laboratory. Some of Di's home background started to come out and she explained that she was under pressure and made a slip up. I had no reason to disbelieve her. She used to live at home with her disabled mother. The words she said, and I quote her words as they don't sound very nice are 'All my life is a stinking piss test. I spend half the night running upstairs and downstairs for my mum.' I gave her a written warning, which went on to her file but I felt at the time that she was perfectly genuine. Now I know different." "I went on a hunger strike to prove my innocence and still that woman kept quiet. The other prisoner called Charlotte Middleton who was tested with me. She told the truth out loud and said that she should have tested positive, not negative. She told Di Barker when she was testing us. She even paid for the retest." Jo turned white as a sheet when the impact of that hit home. It hit her hard that she had assumed that prison was one of the lowliest places in society, an underworld where dog ate dog. It now felt purer than the world some of the well-heeled people who she met in her walk of life trod. It made her feel humble and a bit ashamed of the unconscious baggage of ideas she carried around at the back of her mind for all her earnest liberalism. "I bet you would never have thought that a con can have more morality than a screw?" Nikki's slightly hard tone and sharp expression enquired. "Where does that take us now?" Jo asked, gaining trust that the three women would chip away between them and steer the conversation home to its conclusion, wherever it lay.
"It was soon after that incident when Di's mother was taken into care. I know now from Karen that she and Fenner saw her looking pretty shaken up one evening and he drove her home. It was that night that, in her words 'Fenner helped her out to cope with her problems.' The bastard always wants payback. I wouldn't be surprised if there was something that he helped cover up." Helen took up the tale in a style that she was at home with in its structured fashion.
"You admit that this is speculation. I'm playing devil's advocate as if you were in a witness stand as I need something which ties up and can be substantiated." "Well, try this for size, Jo," Nikki concluded. "Helen and I had started our relationship while I was still an inmate and Helen, a prison officer. That was kept secret, as otherwise Helen would have been sacked for it. Both Helen and I hated Fenner's guts from day one. Helen finally got enough on the bastard that would stick. He had been getting a regular cut for running a string of brothels for a prisoner who owned them. Helen finally forced Fenner to hand in his resignation but gave him time to explain all this to Karen first as they were living together at the time. In the meantime, Fenner turned the place upside down and, unfortunately, found evidence of when I broke out of prison and we spent our one night together at Helen's flat. We'd both been foolish to keep souvenirs of that night, my bus ticket together with a previously autographed book as a present from Helen. She kept the nurses coat in her office that I wore that night. Fenner confronted Helen with everything and she resigned on the spot. This was right before my appeal court case which got me my freedom. You may have heard about the case?" Jo Mills was frozen to the spot at the bald recitation of facts. Nikki got it absolutely right even to her hesitant supposition understating how well known the case was. That was a case that she and John often talked about and was a landmark case in their chambers. "So where does Di Barker fit in with this?" "When my cell was turned over, Fenner came clomping in with his big boots and Di Barker was right there with him as if they were joined at the hip. I was outside exchanging insults with him while she rifled through my cell and must have found my things, which he sprung on Helen later as evidence. Right after that, the two of them turned over Babs' cell. She kept a diary of her life at Larkhall and must have thought it was worth a shot to go after that and, sure enough, turned over the chapel and found it there, complete with her account of my breakout. Coincidence? That thing doesn't happen, certainly not in Larkhall. Is that evidence enough for you?" "The bastard knew exactly where the coat was in my office and went straight towards the locker. I thought right away that he must have spotted it earlier but I now bet you a pound to a penny that Di did the dirty work for him in looking round the room earlier on. I don't think that is supposition, is it? Not where payback is concerned." Jo had been gradually breathing in all the time she was listening, and that triumphant 'eureka' feeling lit her up from inside with that immensely satisfying feeling as Nikki and Helen came to the crescendo. The threads of a case which were tantalisingly out of her reach were suddenly drawn together and, together, made an unbreakable net. Right then, she resolved to herself that come what may, Di Barker would be dragged back to the witness box. She shook them all by the hand warmly and a huge smile spread across her face.
When she was finally left on her own and was gathering up her papers, she was sharp and alert and knew she could safely drift off to a dreamless sleep and be fighting fit for the next day when Lauren Atkins came to take the stand.
From the top of the staircase, Crystal stared scornfully down at the tousle haired woman making her uncertain way across the large tiles of the foyer.
"So Miss Barker is still at Larkhall? You want to watch your back, Miss Betts. I know all about her, you is lied to and deceived by that forked tongue of hers." "As a snake in the grass, I always thought she's hardly in the same league as Dockley or Fenner. She's a stupid cow but no more than that. Her version of life at Larkhall has just got to be the best work of fiction I've ever come across." Nikki's disjointed answer failed to sum Di up as much as she wished but it covered up for Karen's silence as she tried to make sense of what Di Barker was playing at. She refused to think too closely of the way she might have appeared to others while she was under Fenner's spell and was not too eager to pass judgement on Di. Surely Crystal was being her usual simplistic self?
"She's not that bad," she answered slowly at last. "Sure, she's as thick as thieves with Sylvia now where at one time she drew the line at Sylvia's wonderfully enlightened 'lock them up, Alcatraz style' approach…………." Helen could now smile as Karen's voice tailed off after making her sarcastic jibe at Sylvia. Time had healed some of the deep wounds of her first year as Wing Governor. "…………but she's kind hearted, deep down, even if her taste in men is very strange." "Only because she's desperate for It," cut in Nikki.
Helen said nothing either as disconnected fragments of that rather harmless looking mixed up PO floated past in her imagination.
"She was your personal officer once, Nikki, as I remember." "Yeah, she was for a bit, but I never had much to do with her. I'd got over my martyr complex by then thanks to Helen…" and here she smiled, still grateful to Helen after all these years…….."and my life was back on track so I really didn't need her. We went our separate ways when Helen started her lifer's group." "When I came back to Larkhall, I found out all about Miss Di Barker. She was all sweetness and honey like the apple Satan offered to Eve," Crystal declaimed. "We'd better find a quiet room to talk and let Crystal tell us what she knows," Came Nikki's practical advice.
"So long as we don't get accidentally locked up in this place," Helen's native caution warned. The disbelieving looks the others exchanged showed them that George didn't hold the monopoly of putting her foot in it.
"Are you seriously meaning to tell me that Di Barker deliberately mixed up the drugs test to split you and Josh up?" Helen's shocked, angry tones could be heard the other side of the door.
"Josh forced that lying woman to tell the truth after she came round to our flat to take him out line dancing. Yeah, some line dancing, the way she was dressed." "There must be some kind of a logical explanation," Helen's wishful thinking played off against Crystal's cynicism.
"Are you saying that as one time Wing Governor of Larkhall or as psychologist? Think about it, Helen. If you had never met Di Barker before and you saw her on the witness stand, just how much would you trust her? 'Fenner and Dockley had a falling out' she said. She said nothing on the stand about him kicking the shit out of Dockley and nothing to you at the time as to why she mixed up the drugs tests." Helen remembered as if it was yesterday, Di's painful confession that looking after her disabled mother kept her up half the night and sensed her loathing of the life she was forced to live. As Acting Governing Governor, she told herself, she had a duty to be whiter than white and not let her natural sympathy show too much in her face and her voice. She had to go by the book and this incident had to go down on her personnel file, as it was only Charlotte Middleton's intervention that brought it to light. Now for the first time, she realised that she deserved to be sacked on the spot for abusing her position of trust for personal gain. That was as bad as Fenner. She ran the tip of her tongue round her lips to moisten them and then nodded her head at the point of decision.
"So she swapped the drugs test results for you and Charlotte Middleton and, just to cover her back, did the same for Shaz Wiley and Buki Lester," Her slow, stretched out syllables thought aloud.
"So when she shagged Mark Waddle in the toilets when Mark was going out with Gina Rossi, that was Di all over. Mark was not one for exactly sticking to the straight and narrow at that time but it was less Mark's doing than I thought," Came Karen's contribution. "It seems as if Di's been operating behind the scenes more than I ever imagined," Came that uniquely expressive Scottish accent. "We need to push on from this as there is an end in sight somewhere. I feel it."
It was half an hour later when Karen led the way to a room where Jo was quietly working. She knew the rambling layout of the Old Bailey far better than the others by now as this was her second major trial she had been involved with and it had become second nature to her over the last few months to come here to see John.
"I'll leave you to it as there isn't anything more I can contribute." Jo gestured to the three women to take a seat and Nikki acted as spokesman as usual.
"We've been putting our heads together and we've found out that there is a lot about Di Barker which it's taken us all to piece together and she is up to her neck in it in trying to paint the best possible picture of Fenner. If she is allowed to get away with it, then Fenner is a plaster saint, Lauren Atkins is some kind of dangerous criminal and she goes down for life." "Go on," Came the prompt answer. Half way through the week, she was tired and she needed all the evening there was to mentally prepare for the next day. The enormous task of taking her major witness through the labyrinthine journey of the life of Lauren Atkins. Instinct told her that time spent with these three women would be time well spent, especially with this concise formulation.
"For a start, what's your impression of Di Barker?" "She told the court less than half of what she knew," Jo said shortly. "And what she did say was a load of……….Anyway, we're here to tell you the other half of what we know," Came Nikki's restrained reply.
"That woman is a liar and deceiver. There is something really weird about her and while I was at Larkhall, she made out that she was my best friend. All the time, she tried to split me up from Josh Mitchell, my partner and father of my children." "That doesn't help me that much, I'm afraid." "Even to the extent of deliberately switching the results of a random drugs test for Crystal and the other three women in her cell?" Jo was brought up short as the banal character from some everyday soap now took on a darker hue of criminality and fraud, thanks to Helen's slow, deliberately chosen words.
"My partner, Josh Mitchell who was a Prison Officer looked up to me and trusted me as a godfearing, clean living Christian woman who believes that drugs are the work of the devil. I tested positive thanks to her and I nearly lost him." "Drugs tests are strictly controlled and supervised," Added Helen. "I would have sworn blind as Karen did to Crystal that the test could not possibly be wrong.
Di Barker broke up another couple at Larkhall, so that she could get off with a prison officer that she fancied. We heard that from Karen." "This still doesn't link her to Fenner though this shows her in a totally new light." "When I had her up in my office about the drugs test, I questioned her as to how she could possibly have made such a mistake. That was what I thought it was at the time. I ought to explain that the tests are on a urine sample which are sent away to be tested in a laboratory. Some of Di's home background started to come out and she explained that she was under pressure and made a slip up. I had no reason to disbelieve her. She used to live at home with her disabled mother. The words she said, and I quote her words as they don't sound very nice are 'All my life is a stinking piss test. I spend half the night running upstairs and downstairs for my mum.' I gave her a written warning, which went on to her file but I felt at the time that she was perfectly genuine. Now I know different." "I went on a hunger strike to prove my innocence and still that woman kept quiet. The other prisoner called Charlotte Middleton who was tested with me. She told the truth out loud and said that she should have tested positive, not negative. She told Di Barker when she was testing us. She even paid for the retest." Jo turned white as a sheet when the impact of that hit home. It hit her hard that she had assumed that prison was one of the lowliest places in society, an underworld where dog ate dog. It now felt purer than the world some of the well-heeled people who she met in her walk of life trod. It made her feel humble and a bit ashamed of the unconscious baggage of ideas she carried around at the back of her mind for all her earnest liberalism. "I bet you would never have thought that a con can have more morality than a screw?" Nikki's slightly hard tone and sharp expression enquired. "Where does that take us now?" Jo asked, gaining trust that the three women would chip away between them and steer the conversation home to its conclusion, wherever it lay.
"It was soon after that incident when Di's mother was taken into care. I know now from Karen that she and Fenner saw her looking pretty shaken up one evening and he drove her home. It was that night that, in her words 'Fenner helped her out to cope with her problems.' The bastard always wants payback. I wouldn't be surprised if there was something that he helped cover up." Helen took up the tale in a style that she was at home with in its structured fashion.
"You admit that this is speculation. I'm playing devil's advocate as if you were in a witness stand as I need something which ties up and can be substantiated." "Well, try this for size, Jo," Nikki concluded. "Helen and I had started our relationship while I was still an inmate and Helen, a prison officer. That was kept secret, as otherwise Helen would have been sacked for it. Both Helen and I hated Fenner's guts from day one. Helen finally got enough on the bastard that would stick. He had been getting a regular cut for running a string of brothels for a prisoner who owned them. Helen finally forced Fenner to hand in his resignation but gave him time to explain all this to Karen first as they were living together at the time. In the meantime, Fenner turned the place upside down and, unfortunately, found evidence of when I broke out of prison and we spent our one night together at Helen's flat. We'd both been foolish to keep souvenirs of that night, my bus ticket together with a previously autographed book as a present from Helen. She kept the nurses coat in her office that I wore that night. Fenner confronted Helen with everything and she resigned on the spot. This was right before my appeal court case which got me my freedom. You may have heard about the case?" Jo Mills was frozen to the spot at the bald recitation of facts. Nikki got it absolutely right even to her hesitant supposition understating how well known the case was. That was a case that she and John often talked about and was a landmark case in their chambers. "So where does Di Barker fit in with this?" "When my cell was turned over, Fenner came clomping in with his big boots and Di Barker was right there with him as if they were joined at the hip. I was outside exchanging insults with him while she rifled through my cell and must have found my things, which he sprung on Helen later as evidence. Right after that, the two of them turned over Babs' cell. She kept a diary of her life at Larkhall and must have thought it was worth a shot to go after that and, sure enough, turned over the chapel and found it there, complete with her account of my breakout. Coincidence? That thing doesn't happen, certainly not in Larkhall. Is that evidence enough for you?" "The bastard knew exactly where the coat was in my office and went straight towards the locker. I thought right away that he must have spotted it earlier but I now bet you a pound to a penny that Di did the dirty work for him in looking round the room earlier on. I don't think that is supposition, is it? Not where payback is concerned." Jo had been gradually breathing in all the time she was listening, and that triumphant 'eureka' feeling lit her up from inside with that immensely satisfying feeling as Nikki and Helen came to the crescendo. The threads of a case which were tantalisingly out of her reach were suddenly drawn together and, together, made an unbreakable net. Right then, she resolved to herself that come what may, Di Barker would be dragged back to the witness box. She shook them all by the hand warmly and a huge smile spread across her face.
When she was finally left on her own and was gathering up her papers, she was sharp and alert and knew she could safely drift off to a dreamless sleep and be fighting fit for the next day when Lauren Atkins came to take the stand.