Nikki Owen - Spider in the Corner of the Room

Because everything happens for a reason. So what is theirs?

The next few days pass in a blur.

I tell Patricia everything, watch as Michaela Croft is dragged away, kicking, screaming, to solitary, Balthus supervising it all, his dark eyes narrow, his height, torso dominating every space. Dr Andersson has gone-all traces of her erased in one click, like she was never here-but still I spend each night caught in a web of dreams and nightmares, each one worse than before, a rolling screen of Rubik’s cubes, of vestries and faces and knives and endless computer tests. I am convinced now, more than ever, that maybe I was complicit in Father O’Donnell’s death, that maybe I was told to do it, under the influence, perhaps, of some drug or other. When I awake, I tell myself that it is all nonsense, that I can’t have been drugged, but then I remember the conditioning programme, my Asperger’s, the secret, hacked documents, and I cry out as my eyes fly open, sticky with troubled sleep, brain ripped apart, recalling that it has all happened. And, as I try to grapple with it, to shut it down, the quiet whisper that I may be a murderer returns over and over like a shadow in the night.

I am in the yard watching the dust float through the air, the sun glowing on it, changing the colours from dirt brown to pink, when I get the hearing notification, in the end the whole thing rushed through in just one week. As the guard leads me away, Patricia nods, her eyes downturned, her fingers silently spread in a star shape for me on her leg. My knees want to give way, but I won’t let them, won’t let them beat me this time. Them or anyone else that gets in my way.

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.’