The sarcasm in her voice didn’t go unnoticed. Frankie was down off her bunk like a flash. Standing in front of Susan, her arms folded belligerently across her big chest, she said, ‘Don’t get funny wif me. I look after you’s and you’d better remember it.’
‘I’m just tired,’ Susan said, lying down on her bunk and hoping that by feigning sleep she would be left alone.
‘Move over, I’ll just lay down wif you’s,’ Frankie said, and prodded her. ‘You’re gettin’ real skinny. I like that.’
Susan shuddered inwardly. She knew Frankie was a lesbian, she made no secret of that, but until now all her romantic interests had lain with MacAllister, a prison officer. Other women on the wing had said this was the reason Frankie often got out of working, because left alone in the cell, she and this officer could make love.
That had seemed ridiculous to Susan when she first came to the prison. She had believed prison officers had too much integrity for such things. She certainly couldn’t imagine that MacAllister, a softly spoken Scotswoman with a kindly manner, would have anything to do with anyone as ugly or rough as Frankie.
But Susan knew now that taboos in place on the outside vanished in here. Married women with several children who had been heterosexual all their lives would suddenly embark on an affair, sometimes even refusing to go down for a visit with their husbands. Young girls who when they first got here sobbed their hearts out for their boyfriends were almost immediately lured into relationships with older women. In association time she saw women openly kissing and fondling one another.
The lesbian prison officers were in a way the most despicable, for they had purposely chosen a job where they could dominate other women. Countless times Susan had seen one of them keep a girl behind in the showers, or in a cell, and punishments were meted out if their wishes were not complied with. Susan didn’t think all the prisoners who went that way were real lesbians, she was sure they were only coerced into it because they were hungry for affection. But she wasn’t: that hungry herself, and until now she hadn’t ever been the object of anyone’s desire.
‘Please leave me to have a nap,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m not feeling well.’
‘Don’t come all that Lady of the Manor bit wif me,’ Frankie snarled at her. ‘If I want to touch you up I will.’
Susan closed her eyes dismissively. ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she said sharply. ‘Go and find one of your own kind to touch up.’
The slap across her face took her by surprise, but when her eyes shot open and she saw Frankie grinning maliciously and unzipping her jeans, the rage she’d been struggling to control for weeks, the anger she felt about Beth’s rape, all suddenly erupted and she knew she must fight back.
Without saying a word in warning, she leapt off the bed and caught Frankie by the throat, pushing her back towards the wall by the lavatory. It was the speed of her attack which gave her the advantage, Frankie was several inches taller than her and very much stronger, but she’d been caught unawares.
‘I’m sick of you,’ Susan hissed at her, knowing she had to use brute force to hold the woman. ‘Sick of your endless questions, your filthy language, the stink of your body and your bullying. Now you suggest you have the right to touch me up! You are odious. If we were the only two people left on this bloody planet, I’d top myself rather than be stuck with you.’
She tightened her fingers on Frankie’s throat, using all the strength in her body to push the woman back against the wall and prevent her kicking out at her. ‘I want to kill you,’ she roared at her, banging her head back hard against it. She couldn’t control her rage any longer for in her mind Frankie was just like the men who had raped Beth, and a representation of all the people who had contributed to her present predicament.
As she tightened her fingers around the woman’s throat and saw Frankie’s small dark eyes almost pop out of her head, she felt powerful. Close up she could see blackheads on her face, smell the onions from the shepherd’s pie they’d had for dinner on her breath, and that nauseated her still more. ‘I’ll kill you,’ she said, banging her head back again and again.
She had no idea how many times she banged Frankie’s head against the wall, it felt as if she were just a big doll she wanted to smash. She didn’t hear the door open or the two officers come charging in, she only knew they were there when they grabbed her arms. ‘Let her go, Fellows,’ one shouted. ‘Let her go.’
As Susan was dragged out of the cell to the punishment block, at least she had the satisfaction of seeing Frankie slumped on the floor, unconscious.
Susan didn’t come out of her own shock for some time. She remembered one of the officers admonishing her and saying she was shocked and appalled at her behaviour, then asking what Frankie had done to her. Susan hadn’t bothered to answer, she was pretty certain they knew enough about the woman to guess. All she felt then was relief that she could be alone for at least twenty-four hours without anyone speaking to her.
It didn’t matter to her that the punishment cell was bare of everything but a rubber-covered mattress and a blanket. By closing her eyes she could try to drift away somewhere beautiful.
She tried her old trick of imagining the sea, but that only made her aware of gurgling noises in the water pipes. She tried to turn the clonking sound of one of the prison officers’ heavy shoes out in the corridor into the sound of horses’ hooves on cobbles, but try as she might she couldn’t visualize a sun-filled stable yard with fields beyond.
But then her mind flitted to Luddington, and she pictured herself on her bike, picking up speed as she went down the slight incline from the green opposite the church. Mentally she turned into the path down to the lock behind her old home, bumping over the pot-holes, and suddenly she could see Beth riding beside her, whooping as she splashed through a puddle.
Of all the places she and Beth liked to go in their first couple of summers together, the lock was their particular favourite. All at once she was right there again, it was a warm summer’s day and they were sitting side by side at the lock waiting for a boat to come along.
They loved the sound of the rushing water when the lock gates were opened, seeing the swans and ducks heaving themselves up on to the river banks to take a rest, the sunshine on the water and looking down at themselves reflected in it, distorted images like crazy mirrors at the fun-fair.
If they helped people with the lock gates, sweets or fruit were often thrown up to them. But the real fascination for them was the glimpse into family holidays. Neither of them had ever been away on real holidays with both their parents. Beth would talk of days out in Hastings with her mother or brother and sister; Susan had only ever been to relatives in Bristol. It was a curious concept to them both that some families hired a boat, taking all the children and even the dog, and slept and cooked on it for as long as two weeks.
‘We could do it too, when we’re grown up,’ Beth said once, as she saw two teenage girls in bikinis sunbathing side by side on the bows of a cabin cruiser. ‘We could just keep going and going until the end of the river. Maybe we’d find some wonderful place where we could get jobs in a shop or something, and we’d stay there for ever.’
The noise of wailing from another cell dragged Susan back to reality. She wanted to imagine lying on the deck of one of those boats, the sun burning into her skin, slowly chugging down the river. But someone was pounding on their cell door with their feet or fists. It was only then that she remembered with a jolt what she had done to Frankie.
It seemed incredible to her that she’d lashed out like that, with nothing but her bare hands. She’d never hit anyone in her life before, not even at school. It was amazing to her that she’d managed to inflict pain on Frankie, who was bigger and far stronger than herself.
The thought made her smile. At last she’d stood up for herself. Perhaps the other women would treat her with caution from now on.
The following morning Beth took a cup of coffee into Steven’s office after she’d heard him saying goodb
ye to his client.
‘Refreshments,’ she said, putting the mug down on his cluttered desk. ‘And I just wondered when you are going in to see Susan again.’
‘I had arranged to go in today, but now it’s tomorrow,’ he said, shuffling a pile of papers together and putting them into a folder. He looked up at Beth with a worried expression.
‘Something on your mind?’ she asked, perching on the edge of his desk.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Firstly, the police rang earlier and said they’ve got some new evidence and want to interview her again tomorrow. So I rang the prison to inform them. What do I hear but Susan’s been put on the punishment block.’
‘Really! What on earth for?’ Beth asked. ‘Everything was fine when I saw her yesterday.’
‘She attacked another prisoner.’ Steven pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘A serious attack too, the other woman had to be taken to the hospital.’
Beth was astounded. ‘I can’t believe that. She’s so passive!’
‘Is she? I’m beginning to wonder if we know her at all,’ Steven said, with more than a touch of despair in his voice. ‘Apparently it happened just after you left her. Her cellmate was in there alone, and the fight broke out. Apparently the other woman is a real hard case, so the prison officers were very surprised by it, especially as Susan’s never shown any signs of aggression before. They think that if they hadn’t intervened when they did, she might well have killed the woman.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Beth exclaimed, and slumped down on a seat by Steven’s desk. ‘I hope it wasn’t my visit that wound her up?’
‘I expect it had something to do with it,’ Steven said wearily. ‘What did you talk to her about?’
Beth didn’t want to tell him, she knew he would think it was inappropriate and possibly foolhardy. ‘Nothing much,’ she lied. ‘She was a bit hostile at first about me grassing her up as she called it. I remarked on how much weight she’d lost, and she took the opportunity to snipe at me a bit.’
‘Sounds like she was pretty fired up already then?’ Steven said.
Beth felt awkward then, and she didn’t know what to say.
‘Come on,’ he said impatiently. ‘I need to know. I don’t want her coming out with something tomorrow in front of the police that I know nothing about.’
‘She was goading me about dropping her when I went to university,’ Beth admitted reluctantly. ‘It ended up with me telling her about the rape.’ She blushed furiously. ‘Heaven only knows what made me blurt that out. Don’t say it, Steven!’ she added warningly.
‘Don’t say what?’
‘That I shouldn’t have.’
‘She’s your friend.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not for me to tell you what you can talk to her about. Anyway, what sort of effect did it have on her?’
‘She reverted right back to how she was when we were girls,’ Beth said. ‘It was emotional and very comforting for both of us, I think.’
‘Maybe that was the trigger,’ Steven said thoughtfully.
Beth frowned, she couldn’t see what he meant.
Steven got up from his desk and walked over to the window, then turned and looked back at Beth. He looked very worried, and weary too.
‘Maybe she went back to her cell feeling angry at what had happened to you. So angry that when this other prisoner said something she didn’t like, she lashed out.’
‘It would have made her sad, not angry,’ Beth said. ‘I can’t believe she would lash out at someone else because of it. She’s a peacemaker, not a fighter.’
‘Maybe we’re mistaken about that,’ Steven said glumly. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, and rocked on his heels. ‘She has led us to believe that the only time she’d ever been violent was the day she went into the surgery and shot two people. We swallowed that, hook line and sinker, because of the tragic circumstances, and because of your knowledge of her. That’s also why we can’t believe she had any hand in these other people’s disappearance.’
‘Surely you haven’t changed your mind just because she’s attacked another prisoner?’ Beth snapped at him. ‘We both know what it’s like in there!’
‘Look, the police have got something or they wouldn’t be wanting to talk to her again,’ Steven said heatedly. ‘They’ve been up in Wales and out in Luddington. Now she has shown us she is capable of sudden and irrational violence.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Beth retorted. ‘Even the gentlest, calmest person can lash out with the right provocation. I would imagine being cooped up in a cell with someone who gets on your nerves is enough to blow anyone’s lid off.’
‘I know all that,’ he said, making a despairing gesture with his hands. ‘But there is something about her, Beth, something she’s holding back. I’ve sensed it several times. Liam, Reuben and Zoë. What happened to them, Beth?’
She looked at him in horror. She had come to trust his sound judgement and his keen perception, but she couldn’t bear to hear him doubt Susan. ‘Don’t, Steven,’ she pleaded, putting her hands over her face. ‘I don’t care how many coincidences there are of people disappearing around her, I can’t and won’t believe she had anything to do with it.’
‘She certainly has a way of making you believe in her,’ Steven said wryly. ‘She makes me feel that every time I’m with her. It’s only afterwards I begin to get doubts.’
‘Your job isn’t to look for guilt,’ Beth reminded him sharply. ‘You’re defending her, for goodness’ sake. It’s the police and the prosecution who have to do the ferreting.’
‘Interview with Susan Fellows commenced at 9.15 a.m. at Eastwood Park,’ Roy said into the tape-recorder. ‘Those present are Detective Inspector Longhurst, Sergeant Bloom, and Steven Smythe, solicitor representing Susan Fellows.’
Roy began the interview by asking Susan to think back to August 1986. ‘We know you went to Bristol on the 8th, we have confirmation from your old landlord in Ambra Vale that you looked at his house that day and paid a deposit. Is that correct?’
‘Yes,’ Susan replied.
‘Did you go straight home to Stratford-upon-Avon afterwards?’
‘No, I stayed the night in Bristol in a bed and breakfast,’ she said. ‘I went home the following day.’
‘The 9th?’ he said. ‘Was Liam there when you got home?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He was working away.’
‘By working away you mean he was sleeping at his work?’
‘Yes, well, in his camper van,’ she said.
‘Where was this work?’
‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘He didn’t always say.’
‘So when did you see him again?’
‘I didn’t, he never came back again.’
‘Why do you think this was?’
‘I’ve already told you that, several times. He didn’t want to be tied down.’
‘But you were expecting his child,’ Roy said. ‘I’m sure you must have thought he had to take at least some of the responsibility for that?’
‘That never came into it because I didn’t know I was having a baby until after I’d moved,’ she said, frowning with irritation because she’d told him that before too.
‘So when was the last time you saw Liam?’ Roy asked.
‘The day before I went to Bristol,’ she said.
‘So that would have been the 7th of August?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And he left the village in his camper?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t see him or his camper again?’
‘No,’ she said, and sighed deeply.
‘But you must have seen his camper, it was still parked up in a lane in the village for some weeks after you moved away,’ Roy said, looking at Susan intently.
‘Was it?’ she said, eyes wide with surprise. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I suppose you didn’t know either, that on August 9th, the day you were in Bristol, he was working for a Mr Andrews, less than three miles from Luddington?’
br /> ‘I can’t remember after all this time where he said he was working,’ she said.
‘Then it’s just as well Mr Andrews can,’ Roy said sharply. ‘Apparently Liam completed the job during the afternoon, and left after arranging to return the next morning for his money. He didn’t return. Can you explain that?’
Susan shrugged. ‘Maybe he went on to another job, I don’t know, I was in Bristol.’
‘Not at that time, you arrived home in Luddington by bus, at around one-thirty that same afternoon.’
‘If you say so,’ Susan said, folding her arms and looking up at the ceiling.
‘We have a statement from Mrs Vera Salmon, who lived across the road to you, that you sat next to her on the bus that day. She said you told her about the house you’d just found and seemed very excited about it.’
‘I was,’ Susan agreed. ‘I was really happy.’
‘Of course you were, you believed Liam loved you, and that moving to Bristol was a new start for you both. I expect you hoped he’d drop by or phone you later?’
Susan looked confused then. Well, yes, but he was working away.’
‘No, he wasn’t, Susan,’ Roy said. ‘He was seen by this same neighbour going into your house later that afternoon.’
‘Well, maybe he did,’ she said, colouring up. ‘I can’t be expected to remember what happened on what day, not after all this time.’
‘I don’t believe you can have forgotten anything about that day,’ Roy said sternly. ‘Not the journey back from Bristol full of excitement, talking to Mrs Salmon, or what Liam said to you when he called round. I believe that was the day he told you he had no intention of going to Bristol with you. I believe it ended in a fight in which you killed him.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she retorted, then, jumping from her chair, she implored Steven to help her. ‘Tell him, Mr Smythe! I couldn’t have hurt him, I loved him.’
A little later Susan did admit tearfully that Liam had called round and they had an argument. But she said he had left the house by five-thirty and that was the last time she saw him.