Part Fifty-Eight
On the Monday lunchtime, Karen decided to drive over to tell George about Sylvia's involvement in Barbara's case. Karen was still incensed by this turn of events, almost unable to believe that the need for vengeance had taken over Sylvia so completely. But then Sylvia's capacity for vindictiveness always had outweighed that of any other prison officer, except perhaps Di Barker. Why was it, Karen thought meditatively to herself as she drove, that some people's innate desire for retribution could lead them to do the most stupid and drastic of things? Just like Sylvia's desire to be part of Barbara's trial and possible return to custody, for example. So, here Karen was, on her way to George's office, with a fairly thick folder on the passenger seat beside her.
George was intrigued. All Karen had said when she'd phoned, was that she had some important news concerning Barbara's case, and that she thought George ought to be made aware of it without delay. George had replied by asking her to come in time for lunch, something she usually didn't bother to eat. She couldn't begin to wonder what it was that Karen had to tell her, which was why George hadn't yet contacted Jo.
When Karen arrived, they both thought that the other looked tired, fraught, and wearing away at the edges. "You look like I feel," Karen said when she entered George's office. "It's nothing that won't pass," George said dismissively. Laying a brief hand on George's shoulder, Karen said, "Any time you want it, I am capable of listening. I can't always guarantee to offer you an intelligent solution, but I can try." "Thank you," George said sincerely, thinking that she was really very lucky where Karen was concerned. She had hurt Karen at the worst possible time, yet here Karen was, still prepared to work with her, and still prepared to be there for her if necessary. "Now then," George said, wanting to get back to the matter in hand. "What's this piece of dynamite you have for me?" "I have been made aware, this morning no less, that Sylvia Hollamby will be standing for the prosecution in Barbara's trial." "Is there a remotely good reason for it?" George asked, as they moved over to the coffee table that George's secretary had laid with lunch. "Barbara was the indirect cause of Sylvia's first ever written warning, and I think she wants a little payback." "You know something, the first time I saw her, on that imposed visit to Larkhall, I could tell that she was a pretty loathsome waste of space." "I couldn't have put that better myself," Karen said with a smile. "So, I've done something for you that should it come out, will get me sacked." "It won't," George promised her. "This," Karen said with a momentous pause. "Is a copy of Sylvia's personnel file, detailing every instance in which her reliability as an officer has been questioned, and believe me, they are many and varied." "You darling," George said, greedily taking the file up from where Karen had laid it on the desk. Alternating between sips of coffee and bites of sandwich, George began flipping through the file's contents.
"Who's Carol Byatt?" George asked, catching sight of Sylvia's first recorded verbal warning. "Before my time," Karen said succinctly. "Ask Helen about that one." Making a note to call Helen later that afternoon, George moved through the file. "Aha," She said, clearly having found something that caught her interest. "Tessa Spall." "That's where I think all of this stems from," Karen replied. "When Tessa and Barbara were transferred to Larkhall at the same time, Sylvia mixed them up, with almost fatal consequences. This was primarily because Barbara was struggling with the officers, because she was claustrophobic, and had been shut up in a prison van for god knows how long." George winced in sympathy for Barbara's plight. "Tessa on the other hand, was quiet, polite, everything you would expect Barbara to be. It was an easy assumption to make, but Sylvia should have checked. Dominic was appalled when he found out that the woman being held under sedation down the block was Barbara, not Tessa as everyone thought. Sylvia's lapse in the usual bureaucracy of admission, led to both myself and then Fenner being held hostage by a very angry woman who had both an axe to grind and a syringe of her own HIV-infected blood. She knew me, because I'd worked at her previous prison, and she was furious with me because I had moved someone out of her reach to ensure her safety. I gave Sylvia a written warning as her immediate superior of Wing Governor, because her failure to actually check that the prisoner was who she said she was, led to a serious lapse in security." "As this is documented evidence as opposed to being mere speculation," George said thoughtfully. "We can almost certainly use it."
Flipping further through the bulky folder, George stopped in astonishment. "You demoted her? What on earth for?" "You might ask Denny about that little fiasco," Karen said with the barest hint of a smile. "She and Shaz Wiley, in one of their more childish moments, duped Sylvia inside their cell, and unceremoniously banged the door on her, with her on the inside, and them on the outside. This was after lock up, you understand, so Sylvia had no choice but to hand over her keys, if she didn't want her fellow officers to know how she'd let her guard down. With the keys in their hands, Shaz and Denny skipped off to the servery, and left Sylvia furiously champing at the bit till they came back and let her out." At this point, George burst into a helpless fit of giggles. "I'm supposed to take an entirely different view," Karen said dryly. "It only came out later because Renee Williams died the next day, which began a full scale murder enquiry. Fenner of all people got the truth out of Sylvia about what happened that night, and thankfully persuaded her to tell me. So, I forced her to hand over her pips, and made her endure the worst humiliation you can ever give anyone like Sylvia, that of being demoted." "But I see that she was reinstated, not long after being demoted," George replied, glancing down at the file. "Simon Stubberfield, one of my previous bosses, did a deal with her. A load of them went on strike after Shell stabbed Fenner and was put back on the wing, and with Sylvia being the union rep, it was her whom Simon had to negotiate with. So, he gave her back her pips, and she called off the strike. Disgustingly neat and tidy when you think about it."
"Is there any other major incident I should know about?" George asked, seeing this as by far the quicker option. "It wasn't a major incident in that no prisoner or officer's life was put at risk, but it is an incident that will no doubt hit home with the jury." "It sounds as though you've learnt something from me after all," George said with a smile. "Racial discrimination and intolerance, reported to me by one of Sylvia's fellow officers, Paula Miles." "Ah, I see," George said succinctly. "And you're absolutely right, anything remotely PC-related is almost better than evidence itself these days, but you didn't hear me say that." "Jinan Hamad wasn't in Larkhall for long, because her case was reassessed. She was another one who went in for rooftop protests. That's becoming something of a habit with G wing's women. Sylvia made several racially motivated comments to her both on admission and whilst she was an inmate on the wing. As you will see, I sent her on a cultural awareness course, though how much good it did is anyone's guess." "Oh, well, it's all good jury fodder," George said matter-of-factly. "They'll love it, or rather they'll love us for raising it, which is after all the point of the exercise. Now, I don't need to declare how I laid my hands on this, because unlike medical records, personnel files aren't classified information, though at times I think they should be, so you've no need to worry. Your job is perfectly safe as long as you don't obtain a conscience between now and the trial." "A conscience where Sylvia's concerned, you must be joking," Karen said bitterly. "She's been a thorn in my side since my very first day at Larkhall. Even then I could see how spiteful she was towards the inmates. So, if Sylvia wants to start a war over the issue of Barbara, then she'll get one right back, just not in the way she might be expecting it."
After putting all the documents back into the file, George laid it on her desk and regarded Karen thoughtfully. "How are you, really?" She asked into the resulting silence. "I'm surviving," Karen said quietly. "And how much are you working?" "Probably too much," Karen admitted freely. "But at the moment, that's something I need to do." "Hence your assistance with Barbara's case." "There's no way Barbara killed Henry," Karen said with feeling. "But I can't be seen to be leaning either way, you know that. As her prison governor, I have to remain entirely impartial, which is precisely why you've received that file off the record. But yes, you're right, it probably is giving me just something else to focus on." "Let me see your arms," George said, her voice both firm and gentle. Opening her mouth to protest, Karen simply decided that it would be quicker just to do as George asked. Unbuttoning both her cuffs, she rolled up her sleeves and bared her forearms for George's inspection. The right was still perfectly smooth, the unmarred skin no longer the twin to that on the left. This arm, though unadorned with any new cuts, was scattered with old, healed scars, the like of which George didn't think she had ever seen. Putting out a finger, she ran it over the longest scar visible, the ridged tissue in stark contrast to the smooth perfection of the other arm. "When did you last cut?" She asked, as Karen refastened her sleeves. "Not since the night Shell appeared in my bedroom. It sounds so ridiculous, but the last thing she ever said to me, was to stop cutting, because I didn't want to end up like her." George recoiled in shock. "But you wouldn't, you couldn't," She protested vehemently. "Not in that way," Karen said with a fond smile. "I won't ever end up behind bars if I can help it. What Shell meant, was that I didn't want to end up like her, doing everything possible to harm myself in an effort to escape from everything going on in my head. Shell used to routinely burn herself with cigarette ends, and I think she wanted to make sure that I didn't get that bad. I'm not sure why I haven't cut since then, but it almost seems disrespectful, if that doesn't make me sound completely barking." "No, it actually makes some kind of sense," George replied thoughtfully. "You've always had some sort of affinity with Shell Dockley. She was never just another inmate to you, no matter how much you don't want to admit it. You had a connection with her as a result of Fenner, because he did precisely the same thing to her as he did to you, though under different circumstances. Another similarity you have shared with her is that of being a mother. Shell Dockley might have been termed psychopathic in her time, but you have more than once asserted to me that she loved her children, just as you did," She added a little more softly. "So, if respecting a dead woman's memory is what's keeping you from cutting yourself, I'm hardly going to criticise you for that." "I can't promise that I won't ever do it again," Karen told her, wanting to get this point absolutely clear. "I know you can't," George replied without argument. "Because I can't promise that I will never again starve myself into dangerous territory. But if this appears to be Dockley's little legacy, so be it."
Later that afternoon, long after Karen had left, George picked up the phone to call Helen. "This is a nice surprise," Helen said when George had been put through to her office. "You've just caught me having a coffee between patients." "Ah, well, this is really business rather than pleasure," George said with a smile. "What can you tell me about Carol Byatt?" There was a long, almost sonorous pause. "Well, there's a name I haven't heard for a while," Helen said meditatively. "What do you want to know about her?" "Why it was that you gave Sylvia Hollamby a verbal warning. There isn't much about it in her personnel file, and as I may be cross-examining her when she appears as a prosecution witness, I would dearly like to get my facts straight." "The vicious, old cow," Helen replied with feeling. "Does Nikki know about this?" "I assume so, as it was Karen who informed me. It all came out this morning, so you'll probably hear all the gory details when Nikki gets home tonight." "And Karen lifted you a copy of Sylvia's personnel file?" Helen asked with a knowing laugh. "That is classified information," George said with a smile in her voice. "Yeah, about as classified as when I lifted a copy of Nikki's file to start illicit work on her appeal," Helen filled in. "I'm glad to see others following in my footsteps. Anyway, you wanted to know about Carol. She was twenty-two, and serving time for assaulting a police officer whilst being arrested for prostitution. She was pregnant, though to give the officers their due, she hadn't informed anyone of this. She might not have known herself. It was very soon after I became Wing Governor, something that hadn't gone down well with either Fenner or Sylvia, because they both highly disapproved of some university graduate who'd been fast tracked through the system. They thought that only prison officers who had worked their way up from the bottom were worth their weight in gold. One night, when Sylvia was doing lock up on the 3s, Carol told her that she wanted to see the doctor. Sylvia told her to wait till the morning, though probably not in so many words, and Carol told Sylvia that she was bleeding. Assuming this was simply a time of the month issue, Sylvia left her to it, even though Carol kept calling out that she needed the doctor. Whether she knew what was really happening to her or not, I don't know. Anyway, when Dominic went to unlock first thing the next morning, he found Carol unconscious, and the cell looking like an abattoir." "Good god," George said in quiet horror. "I went to see Carol in hospital, where she told me what had happened the night before, and when I confronted Sylvia about it, she protested that Carol hadn't told her anything of the sort. I gave her a verbal warning because as a result of her clear negligence in ensuring that the inmate was safe and well, said inmate nearly bled to death in her cell, not something the home office would want to have made public." "That's four times so far when Sylvia Hollamby's reliability has been called into severe question," George thought out loud. "All incidents that the jury will look at most unfavourably. I haven't had chance to go through the rest of the file yet, and when I do, I'm sure I'll find even more. Whatever prompted Brian Cantwell to use her as a witness, I couldn't possibly imagine, but then I don't suppose he knows about any of this. If he did, he wouldn't touch her with a barge pole."