Spider in the Corner of the Room (The Project Trilogy) (28 page)

Patricia sits on her bed. ‘What time will you be leaving?’

‘Zero eight thirty hours.’

‘And you don’t know if your mam will be there, at the court?’

I shake my head. She is still ill, the cancer spreading its tentacles inside her. I squeeze my hands together.

‘Hey.’ She gestures to the bed. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down?’

I am faced with the reality of life on my own. If I stay in prison, Patricia could be out on parole. If I get out, then
the Project will be waiting for me, as will MI5 and who knows who else.

I sit down. Patricia moves beside me and places her palms on her lap. ‘Have you prepared for the trial?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Is Harry a great lawyer?’

‘Barrister. He is qualified and experienced.’

‘And they are helping you figure out everything that’s going on? All this creepy Project stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then look, this is it now. Today. This is your chance. You have to get out of here. You have to figure out what is going on. They won’t beat you.’ She stops and exhales. ‘You’ll get out. And you’ll win against them all, you’ll see.’

And I try to listen to her, try to tell myself that it will all be okay, but the thought taps me on the shoulder, non-stop like an annoying child. ‘What if I did it?’ I say, my voice a small whisper.

‘What?’

‘I think I killed him. Sometimes…sometimes I see myself there, at the altar. The murder scene. I see it.’ And saying it aloud, hearing my confession out in the open, makes my shoulders soften a little, my headache ease.

‘Doc, you listen to me.’ Her voice is firm, like a quick jab. ‘You are good, you are kind. You are not a murderer, do you hear?’

I nod, but I can’t believe her. I can’t.

‘I know you don’t believe me,’ she says, ‘but this has to end. And it will—it will end well for you. I believe in you, even if you don’t believe in yourself. So, when you go to
court today, and for however long it takes, you tell yourself
enough
, you hear me? Say it.’

‘Why?’

She sighs. ‘Because you have had enough of people thinking you are one sort of person when you aren’t that person at all. You are good. You are not a killer. That’s why you have to say enough to all this.’

She goes suddenly still, swallows and touches her eyes.

I tilt my head. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Hmmm?’ She drops her hand, pops on a smile. ‘No. Everything is grand.’

I glance at the clock: eight-twenty-five.

Patricia stands. ‘They’ll be here in a minute.’

I slip on my jacket, pick up my legal files. My hands don’t shake, but my eyes are blurred, as if my body is protecting me from seeing what’s ahead.

The cell door slides open. ‘Martinez?’ A guard is standing in the doorway. ‘Time to go,’ she says.

Hesitating, I grab Patricia’s hand and shake it.

‘What are you doing?’ she says.

‘Saying goodbye. Like people do, like you taught me.’

She smiles again, releases her hand and holds it up, her fingers star-shaped. I hold mine to hers, tips touching.

‘Martinez,’ the guard snaps, ‘time to go.’

‘Yes.’ I drop my hand, glance for the last time at my cell, at Patricia. Then, a lump forming in my throat, I quickly turn and leave.

I rip the cobweb down, desperate to grab the spider, but Kurt is right behind me. He grips my legs. I can feel the heat of his arms around my thighs.

‘Get—’ I kick out ‘—off me!’

I manage to shove Kurt away, but he clambers back up and clamps on to my right knee.

‘Maria,’ he is saying, yanking at my trouser leg. ‘Don’t!’

But I ignore him. I have to, my brain is screaming at me to run, my heart banging, begging me to protect it. Just as my fingertips grasp the spider, I feel myself falling from the chair. Instinctively, I roll my hand to a fist and hit the floor, landing on my back. The air shoots from my lungs. I try to swing back, but Kurt’s face looms over me.

I move fast, kick his left shin. He cries out, and I roll to the right, scrambling up against the wall, my eyes on the door the entire time.

Kurt turns to me. There is a sharp sting in my palm, but I keep it in a fist, ready to pounce, I realise, just as the Project has trained me.

‘Stop this, now. Please,’ Kurt says.

But I do the opposite and, dragging myself back up, I run to the open window, desperate, frenzied. ‘Help!’ I scream, but the traffic is loud and busy and oblivious. I rattle the bars with my right hand, but they do not move, cemented hard into the brickwork. Kurt is behind me now. He pulls at my shoulders, but I grip the bars, instinctive muscles kicking in, and I think I can hold on when Kurt slices into my arm with the side of his hand. A pain shoots through my elbow, and my fingers let go of the bars.

Kurt seizes me by the shoulders, too quick for me to move in time. He drags me from the window and, flipping me around, pushes me hard into the wall.

He has me pinned by my neck, says nothing at all. Then he begins to squeeze.

I am in a police van. The sun is high in the sky, thirty degrees already. The time is 08.45 hours.

The van jostles along the road, the compressed air stifling. The walls are black and the seats are metal. I stay very still, trying not to think too much or contemplate what’s ahead, because the answer will always be the same: I don’t know if I killed him. The guard sitting opposite me does not speak, instead simply sniffs, blows from an upturned lip onto her cheeks and chews gum.

As we near the court, I hear shouting and am horrified when, through the tiny slit of a window, I see crowds lining the roadside en route to the court building. They are holding up placards daubed with slogans that say ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘innocent’. The van slows down; the placard slogans change. ‘Don’t crucify Maria!’ ‘Tweet #saveMaria!’ I read them all, eyes flying left and right, my pulse accelerating. Who are these people? Why are they here? I feel threatened, a caged animal, in danger, and only breathe a little softer when the shouting subsides. But then other crowds appear, new placards, different ones. ‘God will be thy judge’. ‘Priest killer’. ‘Immigrants out!’ I smooth my trousers over and over, unable to cope with the volume of yelling, so loud in my ears, roaring, muffling my mind. The van jolts, the shouting at its loudest now. It is too much. I rock back and forth a little in an attempt to calm myself; the guard stares at me and chews her gum.

The van comes to a sudden halt and a loud alarm shrills. I slap my palms to my ears.

‘Hands down, Martinez,’ says the guard.

She takes out a pair of handcuffs and slips them over my
wrists, but I don’t like it, the restricted feeling. It frightens me.

Outside, there is a loud creak of heavy iron gates being opened. I swallow. We are driving in.

It is 09.03 hours when I am escorted into the High Court building. The masonry is white and the air is cool, voices echoing, loud, vibrating, but my cuffed hands mean I am unable to block my ears from the noise. As we walk, I see the reception hall is cavernous and wide. Marble stairways curve from the ground floor all the way to the top and, on the ceiling, a fan, two metres in diameter, circulates air through the walkways. More sounds to deal with. Wigged barristers and suited solicitors scurry by, crisscrossing the tiles, heels clicking. Everyone appears to be wheeling suitcases of legal files, dragging them behind like clubbed seals.

I walk with the guard and glance to my left. There are four carved oak doors, all double bolted and taller than two men. Police firearms officers stand by each one. Long, black guns sit diagonally across their bodies.

Once deep inside the bowels of the building, I am placed in a box room and told to sit. The guard unlocks my handcuffs and turns on a radio before she leaves. ‘Some company,’ she says. Classical music immediately drifts in, and for the first time since we arrived here, my shoulders relax.

When Harry finally arrives he is breathless, wigged and sweaty. Greeting me, he dumps his files on the desk and adjusts his wig as it slides forward. He is wearing a barrister’s black robes. I breathe more easily now he is here.

‘How are you?’ he asks.

‘You are sweating a lot.’

‘Sorry?’ He looks down at himself. ‘Oh, yes. Big day.’

He lays out his legal briefs, stands and dabs his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘It would be the hottest day of the year for your trial, wouldn’t it? Did you bring the Spanish sun with you?’

‘No. How could I do that?’

Harry opens his mouth to speak then closes it. He drags out a chair from under the table, flicks his cloak behind him and sits. The classical music still plays on the radio.

‘So,’ he says. ‘We are as ready as we can be. Do you have any questions?’

‘How long will the trial take today?’

‘That depends on how long the prosecution cross-examine for. It could last all day, though naturally there will be a break for lunch.’

‘Do you know who has been selected to be on the jury?’

He nods. ‘I’ve seen the names. There’s a good bunch to select from, it seems. Reasonable mix of people. Jobs. Backgrounds—we should be okay there when the clerk picks them out.’

‘You will call me to the witness stand?’

‘Yes. I think it’s best. Are we still agreed you will do that?’

I pause. If I take the stand, what will I say? If they ask me if I did it, if I killed him, then do I tell them the truth? That I don’t know, that I can’t be sure any more because I have been drugged more times than I know? Because when I think of Father Reznik, I find myself now confusing him with Father O’Donnell and his butchered body? ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I say finally.

‘Okay.’ A smile. ‘I understand.’

The door opens. One of the solicitors. ‘They’re running five minutes late, Harry,’ she says. Harry thanks her. The door closes.

Harry gestures to the radio. ‘I love this piece.’

I breathe in, a deliberate, indulgent inhalation. ‘“The Flower Duet”.’

‘By Léo Delibes from his opera,
Lakmé
.’

Our eyes rest on the radio as the sopranos sing, their voices lapping like waves on a shore. I loosen my shoulders, close my eyes. Violins. Flutes. They dance together across the room, twirling, spinning, entwined.

Harry sighs. ‘I’ve always thought, when I hear this piece of music, that if there were angels, this is what they would sound like. That when I arrived at the gates of heaven, this is what I would hear.’

The voices are in the sky now, high notes gliding through the music. We sit, listen, no words spoken. As the piece comes to a close, the singing hovering in the air like a butterfly, I open my eyes.

Harry smiles at me. We do not speak, simply wait as the singing slowly fades away. I glance to the clock on the wall and my body tenses once more: 09.29 hours. Nearly time.

Harry starts to write some notes. I stare at the radio, try to focus on it to quell my rising nerves. The music has been replaced with a news bulletin, and the announcer is issuing a breaking report about the American National Security Agency—the NSA. There are allegations of espionage and something called Prism. I sit up, pay close attention. The NSA is being accused of illegally accessing personal information via social networking sites and other significant online organisations.

I turn to Harry. ‘Did you hear that?’

He nods. ‘The NSA scandal? It’s all over the papers.’

‘Do you think it has anything to do with the Project?’

But before Harry can reply, the door opens and the solicitor peers round. ‘It’s time.’

My pulse begins to race. I look at Harry. My father’s friend. I have never been so scared in all my life.

‘You can do this,’ Harry says, standing, giving me one of his creased smiles. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out.

‘Mr Warren?’ a guard says from the door.

Harry nods at him, hands me a tissue. ‘For later. Just in case.’

As we walk towards the courtroom, I have to stop, lean against the wall. A memory? A dream? I don’t know, but it is rolling in, fast, slicing into my mind: me, chest heaving, arms, legs smeared in blood, a knife hanging from my fingers, a priest’s collar lying torn on the floor.

‘Maria? Are you all right? Maria?’

I blink, suddenly aware of where I am. I gulp in a breath, cup my hands round my mouth.

‘It’s normal to have a small panic,’ Harry says. ‘That’s it, breathe.’

I do as he says, take air into my lungs. Gradually, the image, the blood in my mind slides away.

‘We have to go,’ Harry says. ‘Okay? It’s starting now. You’ll be fine.’

And I nod to Harry, but, in my head, the flicker of what I just saw slips back again, the reality of it now taking over as I walk to face the court.

I killed him.

K
urt shoves his face in front of mine. ‘I said, stop.’ There is spit on the corner of his mouth, his teeth snarl like a rabid dog.

‘You are hurting me,’ I croak. My eyes dart round, frantic for an escape.

A police siren races by outside. Kurt freezes, glances to the window. The siren fades away.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, and he releases me, and steps back.

I drop to the floor and gasp for air, rub my neck where he held me, lifting my left hand to push myself up, when something pinches it. Slowly, I open my palm. There, on my skin, is a metal spider, and on it, a tiny spec of a camera lens. I try to hide my shock, try to hide the gasp that slips out of my mouth, but when I look up, Kurt is already staring at me.

I look at the spider then at Kurt. ‘Who are you?’

He stares at me and I think he is about to run at me again,
when, instead, he shakes his head, walks over to the table and rests against it. His chest heaves up and down. ‘I’m with the Project,’ he says after a moment. He wipes his forehead. ‘We have been recording everything. With that camera.’

‘Why?’ I shake my head. ‘Why?’ My brain flies. The voicemail message. Dr Carr—Black Eyes. They had enough recording material. And this is how they got the recording. My eyes shoot to the spider, examining every inch. It looks just like a household spider. There are eight legs and, when I turn it over, a tiny battery sits tucked on the underbelly. I pull myself up and stand as straight as I can against the wall, but the room sways, and I feel as if I am in a boat on the sea, the waves choppy, the wind wild, and that with every swell, with every slosh, I am losing my bearings.