Chapter 1
She could hear a low dull bleeping sound every few seconds, but it sounded like it was coming from a long way away….
She could feel a dull ache pressing down upon her stomach but she couldn’t place why….
She could feel a soft squeezing of her hand followed by a gentle circular motion being rubbed upon her wrist but she didn’t know who was there….
She felt so tired and drained and she couldn’t quite muster up the strength to squeeze her eyes open so instead she gave in to the overwhelming and inevitable darkness that engulfed her thoughts almost instantly.
Vera Bennett paced her office floor behind the security of her rectangular desk. Derek Channing and Will Jackson sat opposite her, Will began to think that if she continued pacing she would rub a hole in the floor that would swallow her completely. At that moment in time, Vera wished a hole would swallow her so that she could escape the nightmare of these last few days.
“So you think it’s okay to allow a category A prisoner out of the prison, to carry out an act of revenge?” Derek Channing enquired. “Is there something wrote down in the prison governors handbook that gives reference to this ever seeming like a normal or a good idea? Bea Smith had just found out that Ferguson had killed her girlfriend! Along with numerous other acts against her. What did you think was going to happen? A nice chat where she told her how unhappy she was with her? For fucks sake Vera, I’m struggling to understand the reasoning here.”
Vera felt her cheeks turn a crimson red and she stopped pacing, staring instead at the desk in front of her. “When you put it like that it sounds worse than it is. It wasn’t about revenge… At least I didn’t think it was. I didn’t know Smith was armed and I didn’t know she was going out there for that reason. I wanted to set Ferguson up, catch her out, make her pay for her crimes, we all did. I wasn’t thinking straight. When Smith suggested she confront her and tape her admitting to all she’d done, I couldn’t think of another way out. If Smith had stuck to the plan it would have been fine, I had Mr Jackson watching it on CCTV, we were ready to get out there and step in and arrest Ferguson and get Smith back inside….”
“So ready,” Channing interrupts “that Ferguson managed to stab Smith 13 times before you got to her, fucking born ready by the sounds of it.” Channing shakes his head and turns his attention to Will Jackson. “What are your thoughts on this? Why didn’t you try to stop it?”
Will looks up from his hands which he has been staring at for the past few minutes, his attention wandering from the conversation to that afternoon just 6 days ago. His hands then which were a vivid shade of red, blood in every pore, blood that made a river and seemed to never end. Blood from Bea. Red. Her name, her hair, the blood. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Although he was a screw, he considered Bea a friend, as much as a screw and a prisoner could be anyway, they had been through a lot in the few short years that she had been in the prison. She hadn’t had an easy time of things but she was a fighter, and she was loyal. She’d bailed him out on a number of occasions and he didn’t forget things like that. Watching the CCTV had him biting on the edge of his fingernails, he wasn’t happy with the plan, but he didn’t have a choice. Vera was governor and she had the final say. So the least he could do was watch the screen and be ready to step in when needed. He saw the first stab to the stomach and he jumped back, shocked at the ferocity of it, the intensity, the madness. He’d shouted out to Vera who was stood just behind him,
“Get a fucking ambulance, get a fucking ambulance now…” and he’d turned on his heel sprinting out of the CCTV room and along the corridor. He could hear the pounding of his heart in his own ears, the squeak of his leather shoes on the linoleum floor beneath him as he forced each leg forward at an unnaturally fast rate. The corridor which had once seemed so ordinary, had suddenly become endless and the door to outside which lay at the end of it seemed to be so far out of reach he wanted to scream.
The harsh brightness of outside as he burst through the door was like a slap to the face, “Bea,” he had shouted running towards the figure in Teal lying in a ball on the floor. The monster that was the freak stood over her, blood dripping from the screwdriver clenched in her fist. “Bea… Drop the knife,” he looked briefly at Ferguson, “drop the fucking knife,” he was on his knees, his hands clawing at Bea, trying to find where she was bleeding from, trying to find the place to press to stem the flow of blood, it was too much though, there was too much, it was everywhere. He gave up trying to be specific and just placed his hands across her stomach, more for human contact with her than to stop the bleeding, he knew at that point he had no chance of that. Bea groaned quietly at the sudden pressure on her stomach, she glanced at him and their eyes met, “We need help here,” he shouted out, his eyes never leaving hers, “Oh Bea, fuck!” This couldn’t be the way she dies, not at the hands of the freak, not like some dog, left to die in there own shit out in the street. She deserved better than this.