Spider in the Corner of the Room (The Project Trilogy) (27 page)

Harry is sitting at the table when I enter the interview room. As the door clicks shut, he strides over, opens his arms and hugs me. I let him. I let myself be enveloped by his warmth, like a blanket around me, comforting, safe. I cannot tell him, but I like him. His tobacco scent, his creased-eye smile. He is strong, a calming presence, one that lets me breathe a little easier, smile a little more. It is good for me.

We pull away, Harry gesturing to a chair. I sit, smoothing down my trousers, the nerves seeping out, the need for routine and repetition in the face of change overwhelming. Because I am here for one thing. One thing that I can barely think of. One thing that I have wanted to hear so badly, yet now that my palm rests on the handle, now I am at the point of opening the door, I am frightened. Because I do not know what is on the other side. Or who.

‘The appeal hearing has finished? They have a verdict?’ I ask finally, forcing myself to speak.

Harry nods, pulls out a file. He withdraws a paper and
slides it over to me. My fingers touch it, skimming the surface. I read.

‘Is…is this true?’ I say, not looking up. ‘Is it?’

‘Yes. All true.’

And I nod as there, on the page, I read the word: Retrial.

‘You’re to be tried for the offence you were originally convicted of,’ he says.

‘The murder.’

‘Yes.’

‘So fast?’ I can hear the height in my voice, the rise. ‘Harry, it is too soon. Do you think—?’

‘That the Project has played a hand in it?’ He sighs. ‘I’m beginning to think it is highly likely. It’s very unusual for proceedings to happen so fast.’

The Project, the conditioning, their intentions towards me if I get out. The doubt, the hazy uncertainty of my actions pulse in me, like a boil ready to burst. Father O’Donnell was nice to me, and he died. Papa was nice to me, and he died. I glance down at my hands, at my fingers, aware of their weight, aware of what they can do, what they can hold. A person’s neck. A car engine component. A sharp knife.

‘I have an expert witness lined up for the DNA evidence now.’

I shove my hands beneath the table, clear my throat. ‘You do?’

‘Yes. A very experienced pathologist.’

‘Do you believe that will work against the prosecution?’

‘I do. And the DVD store owner, a witness who placed you at the scene. Do you remember him from the first trial?’

‘Yes.’ But I do not, not entirely. I dig my nails into my legs, cross at myself.

‘Something’s not quite right about him. I have my team working on him back in chambers. Everyone has a past, everyone has a secret—we just need to find out what his is.’

Harry pulls out some more papers, and I watch him, his movements, his fingers on the pen. We are here together now, the two of us witnesses to each other’s presence, and then, I realise, that is my biggest problem. ‘What about my alibi?’

He sets down his legal paper. ‘Tell me again, Maria, what you were doing at the time of the murder.’

‘I was at St James’s Hospital.’

‘But it was not your shift?’

‘No. My shift finished at twenty hundred hours. I was with the patients in the geriatric ward.’

‘But there was never any CCTV of that, nothing ever recovered.’

‘But there should have been. There were cameras, I know there were.’

He taps his pen. ‘Okay, tell me again, why were you with the elderly patients?’

‘I wanted to learn from them.’ I pause. ‘I used them to learn emotions. I studied their expressions. And they were…nice to me.’

Harry tilts his head. ‘Oh, Maria.’

I manage a small smile, the warmth of him reaching me even here, on the opposite side of the table.

‘It’s all going to be okay you know,’ Harry says after a moment.

I look at him. ‘I used to think so, but I do not know any more.’

We sit in silence, the clock on the wall pulsing out a feeble, intermittent tick, as if at any point soon everything inside it, everything that makes it work, makes it track time, is going to give up and die.

‘Time keeps moving,’ I say aloud, my eyes on the clock, vision blurred, out of focus.

‘That reminds me,’ Harry says.

I turn to him. ‘What?’

‘The timing of your retrial date,’ he says, pausing, pressing his lips together. ‘It seems the Project may have had an input in that, too.’

I go very still. ‘When is it?’ When he does not respond immediately, I slam my palm on the table. ‘Harry, when is it?’

‘Two weeks’ time,’ he says. ‘Two weeks.’

I am standing with my back against the wall when Kurt returns. I have made no attempt to hide the torn picture, the cell phone still lying on the floor. It is evidence, clear evidence that something is not right, not normal or solid. I squeeze the vial of blood in my fist.

Kurt halts when he sees me. ‘What’s going on, Maria?’

The door is still open. I look at it. Kurt follows my eyeline; he shuts the door. And locks it.

He begins to walk towards me. For some reason, he seems different. Robotic, almost. I step back.

‘I found the vial,’ I say.

‘There is no vial,’ he replies, striding to me.

‘No! I have it. You can’t mess with me any more!’

I hold the glass tight, but he is almost standing in front of me now, so I blurt, ‘I know about Callidus, about the conditioning programme.’

Kurt halts. ‘What?’

I sway a little, my pulse tearing through me. ‘I know my father found some documents about me, about tests carried out on me in Britain.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘I saw it all,’ I say, feverish, fast, ‘a secret document.’ I tell him all of it, everything we saw in Balthus’s office. ‘And now you are here, pretending to be my therapist, but you are just one of them! A handler, MI5, part of the Project. Tell me it’s true,’ I spit. ‘Tell me!’

Kurt tilts his head, delivers me one, languid smile. A shiver runs down my back. ‘Maria, I don’t know what you are talking about, but you are worrying me.’ He glances to the picture frame. ‘Look at what you have done. You are increasingly losing contact with reality. You mentioned Dr Andersson—well, in my professional opinion, her diagnosis of schizophrenia was correct. You are hostile, suspicious. Callidus? It’s just a word.’ He takes one step towards me. ‘You need to stay under my care.’

‘People have been tested on,’ I blurt. ‘I have been tested on. I have seen the document. They have been using me to experiment on. Ask Balthus. Ask Harry Warren. They will both verify what I saw—what
we
saw.’ I feel for the wall behind me.

A tiny tut. ‘But, Maria, I have already spoken with both Harry and Balthus. They have no idea what you are talking about. In fact, they paint another picture entirely—of a delusional inmate, turning up unannounced at the Governor’s
office several times a day; of a woman for whom reality is a distant dream and an unwelcome nightmare…’

‘What? No. That didn’t—’

‘You pestered the Governor each day with a new, crackpot theory about who was after you, who was protecting you. You even brought your own family into it, claiming they were in danger. Governor Ochoa has told me everything.’

I shake my head. ‘No. No.’

‘Yes.’

‘But…but we found the web page. My notebook, the codes, the algorithm from Bobbie Reynolds. We saw the eyes-only data. I hacked into it all. Harry and Balthus—they both saw it, too.’

‘They were just humouring you, Maria, playing along. Why do you think you needed so many appointments with Dr Andersson? Why do you think she had to take blood samples? You were unstable.’

Blood. The vial in my fist. I hold it out. ‘So, how do you explain this?’

Kurt flashes one short smile. ‘What? An empty glass tube?’

I stare at the vial. There’s nothing in it. ‘No. How can that be?’ I turn it, tip it upside down, but still it is bare. ‘But there was blood in it. I know there was. I saw it.’

‘You saw what you wanted to see, Maria.’

I rub my eyes. What is happening? The vial was full. Thick with red blood.

‘Tell me, have you not been sleeping very well?’

I dart my eyes around the room, frantic like some wild animal caught in a trap. ‘You have drugged me.’

‘No.’ He sighs. ‘You are paranoid. It is very common among schizophrenics.’

‘I am not schizophrenic!’ I touch the wall, move my body a fraction.

‘It’s okay. I can help you.’ A line of sweat trickles down his temple.

‘You do not want to help me.’ I move one step to the right.

‘Yes, I do.’

I take another step.

‘Maria, stop!’

I freeze. My heart bangs against my ribcage, threatens to break free of my chest entirely.

‘This cannot go on,’ Kurt says. He shakes his head. ‘You are clearly unwell, more than I initially thought.’ He looks round him. ‘Where’s my cell?’

And then it comes to me. ‘Daniel!’ I say, fast. Kurt stops. ‘Your real name is Daniel.’

He stands still.

‘There is a message on your phone.’ I point to it. ‘Your girlfriend.’ He glances to where the mobile lies. ‘Dr Carr wants you to cut it—that means he wants you to stop interviewing me, doesn’t it? He said you have enough recording material, that the tests are all confirmed and neutral. The geese, she said, are on your trail now. That you need me out and on your side.’ I pause, chest heaving, air flying in, out. ‘She said, “NSA is blown.” NSA is the National Security Agency in America. What does it mean, “it’s blown”? Why the NSA?’

When he does not speak, I keep going, desperate to break free. ‘It’s time. She said, “It’s time.” So you can stop all
this now and tell me the truth.’ I exhale, long, deep. ‘Tell me the truth.’

I wait, not daring to move. Kurt keeps his eyes on me, inches towards the phone, picks it up. He listens to the message. Done, he slips the phone into his pocket. His eyes stay on me. One second, two. My body presses against the wall, frantic for a way out, an escape.

‘Your brother,’ I say for some reason, out of hopelessness, ‘was he a part of all this?’

A flicker, there, in his eyes, a flicker of the lids. ‘Don’t mention my brother,’ he says, voice deep, scratched.

‘Is that why you are involved? Because he was killed by terrorists on 9/11?’

‘I said, don’t.’

But he is wavering, a wetness to his eyes. I keep going. ‘Is that why you are watching me? Because I am part of this conditioning programme and you think I can stop terrorists like Al Qaeda?’ The glass vial presses against my palm, and it suddenly all connects, all makes sense. ‘You drugged me, didn’t you?’ I nearly laugh at the craziness of it. ‘That’s why I thought there was blood in the vial.’ I shake my head. ‘All this time, you were drugging me.’

‘Versed,’ he says after a moment.

‘What?’

‘Versed. It’s a drug that makes you forget what has happened, any discomfort and…unwelcome effects of certain procedures.’

I look at the vial now, glass glinting in the sunlight. The memory of Black Eyes branding me to see if I could feel it. I touch my stomach where the scar sits. That’s why I can’t remember experiencing the pain. They were drugging me
even when was a child. I look at Kurt now, my body shaking. ‘The…the hospital, the doctor with black eyes—’

‘Dr Carr. That’s who we took you to see.’

His name. Black Eyes has a name. ‘Then it all happened?’ I say, half of me not believing, half knowing it’s true. ‘You took me in a van during therapy?’

‘Yes.’

I slap my hand to my mouth. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. ‘And the Banana Room was…?’

‘An hallucination. Side effect of the drug.’

I shake my head, press into the wall harder, not wanting to hear any of it, eyes darting around the room. And then I see it: the cobweb.

I look back to Kurt. When I speak it is like steel, like the deepest cut. ‘There are no spiders are there? They were all hallucinations, too.’

But Kurt does not reply this time, instead his eyes are on the ceiling now, too. On one thing. One thing that seems as if it is there, real. I can tell he sees it, too.

Because when I look closer now, when I squint my eyes as tight as I can, I see it for what it really is: they were all hallucinations except one spider. One tiny black spider.

‘Dr Carr said to cut it,’ I say, frantic to say anything to keep him distracted from what I can see. ‘You need me on your side, they said. Your girlfriend—she said they have enough recording material and…’ I pause, shoot a fast glance at the spider now. ‘That’s how they knew what I was doing,’ I say, stopping, realising. ‘When I needed to go to Callidus for testing. They—you—were recording me the whole time. I just didn’t know.’

I take one step to the corner. ‘It is a real spider,’ I say
aloud, not caring any more what Kurt does or says. Connections race through my brain. Like a fire sparking, they ignite, flames licking, growing bigger, hotter until my head is filled with a blaze of answers, questions, accusations, every one of them threatening to scorch me, to burn me to a cinder.

‘It’s a real spider,’ I shout. ‘Real!’ I have to get it, prove it. I scan the room. Kurt’s chair.

‘Maria. No! Please, don’t. We need you.’

But I ignore him, and instead, race over and, grabbing Kurt’s seat, drag it to the corner.

‘Maria, stop!’

‘Are you MI5?’ I shout to him. ‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’ He shakes his head. ‘No. I was. Let me explain.’

‘Liar!’ I yell. ‘You fucking liar.’

I position the chair underneath the cobweb and clamber onto it. Raising my arm, I aim to wrench the spider from the web, but I have forgotten that the glass vial is still in my hand. It comes loose and drops to the floor.

I watch it. Kurt watches it.

It smashes into thousands of tiny pieces.

Kurt stares at it then looks straight at me. He holds my gaze for one, two, three seconds.

Then, quick, Kurt scrambles towards me. I move. Fast—I have to. Thrusting my hand as far as possible to the ceiling, I rip the spider from the corner of the room.

I
t is here. The morning of my retrial.

I dry my face with a towel, fold it twice and set it on the rail. I do not look in the mirror, not wanting see my reflection staring back at me, a reflection I do not know any more, the image of a person I cannot trust, cannot be certain of, of what they have done, of who they have hurt. I slide my fingers down the mirror and turn away.