Nikki Owen - Spider in the Corner of the Room

‘Yes.’ He coughs. ‘I used to take drugs. But not any more. Not now.’

I watch as Harry consults a file. This cross-examination is crucial. I wipe my palms on my trousers, once, twice, three times, but I feel odd, light-headed. I glance round: the court is deadly silent.

‘Tell me, Mr Granger,’ Harry says, ‘is it correct that you regularly use cocaine?’

‘Um, I did use cocaine, but only once or twice.’

Chatter instantly erupts from the gallery. The judge bangs the bench. ‘Order.’ The room falls quiet. My head sways a little, my vision enclosed, as if I am in a tunnel.

Harry holds up a photograph. ‘Can you take a look at this, please?’ The usher takes the picture and hands it to the witness. ‘This is a photograph,’ Harry continues, ‘of you receiving drugs from a dealer, specifically cocaine. Mr Granger, is this you?’

He nods.

‘Can you speak for the court, Mr Granger?’

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘I would like this photograph to be submitted to the court as evidence,’ Harry says.

The usher takes the photograph. Harry’s team must have located it somehow. This is good news, but I cannot focus on it. There is a blackness seeping around my eyes. I touch my head. I feel hot, clammy.

‘Mr Granger,’ Harry is now saying, ‘how often do you take cocaine?’

He sniffs. ‘I told you, I don’t take it any more.’

‘So, on the day in question, the day you say you saw the defendant leave via the gates of the convent, had you taken cocaine?’

He glances to his counsel. ‘No.’

I push aside the tunnel vision, my eyes flying from the DVD store owner to Harry. What? He can’t say no. This man has to tell the truth, he has to! And, even though I tell myself to calm down, to stay still, anger erupts fast, like a gun being fired.

‘Liar!’ I shout, standing.

‘Order!’ shouts the judge.

The guard pushes me to my seat, tells me to shut up.

Harry swivels round, looks to me, a smile with creases by his eyes. My body immediately softens. The guard orders me to sit, but, as I do, the blackness returns and the room feels as if it is distant from me, faraway.

‘Mr Granger,’ Harry now says, turning from me, ‘I’d like you to reconsider your answer and remind you that you are a drug user, and that-’

‘Objection!’ the prosecutor says. ‘Badgering the witness. Mr Granger has already answered the question.’

The judge narrows his eyes. ‘Sustained. Mr Warren, move on.’

Harry nods to the judge. ‘No further questions,’ he says, and, moving to stare at the prosecutor, returns to his seat.

In the witness box, the store owner descends the steps and exits the room, but I hardly notice, because my eyes are shrouded now, the blackness enveloping me. I begin to see something. A memory? I try to run from it but it comes, rolling in closer and closer like an avalanche. It hits and I gasp. An image smacks hard into me. I see myself head to toe in khaki and black. The air is cold but a promise of heat is there, like daybreak in an equator country. There is a woman in a hijab. She is running, her black cloak flapping behind her as she flees. But it is no use. I catch up with her, knocking her to the ground, flipping her round until I get her head between my knees, ripping off her veil. Her eyes are wet, but I ignore them. I have a mission to complete, a task and I will do it. I have been trained for this. I reach for her neck, enclose my hands around her windpipe and I squeeze. In the end it is easy. She goes limp and I fall back, check her pulse. Nothing. She is dead. For the greater good, she is dead.

I bolt forward, my eyes flying wide open. I gulp in large breaths. What did I just see? What? I look up to see everyone staring at me. Harry mouths, Are you okay? and I nod, but I am unsure. Because what I just saw felt so real, felt so familiar, it was as if it happened. My hands were around the woman’s windpipe. Windpipe.

I inch my fingers to my neck, almost too scared to admit the truth. Because what I just saw has to have been a memory. A memory of an operation I had been sent to complete.

I sprint down the corridor. There are no guards, no police. I do not know where I am or even where I am going, but I know I have to get out of here. Away from Kurt. Away from the service, the Project, the conditioning, the drugs, the tests-everything. So far away that I can finally think clearly, hide.

There are doors on either side of me, bars on windows, but when I shake the handles, every one of them is locked. I race to an exit ahead. It is a fire door. I stop, ribcage heaving. I peer through the glass window and evaluate the area. There are stairs to the left, one large window at the back, and on the wall is a map of the building.

I dart my eyes to the corridor-no sign yet of Kurt. I turn to the fire door, and, pushing it hard, slam it open, my body spilling into the stairwell. Catching my breath, I close the fire door as quietly as possible, and, turning, look straight to the map. I scan it and find the exit location. I am about to shoot down the stairs when there is the distant slam of a door.

I wait. Listen.

Footsteps. A voice on the phone. Kurt is running towards me.

The woman in the hijab floods my thoughts, confusion wrapping its tentacles around my head. Is it true? Is the memory real? For what greater good would I kill someone with my bare hands? The reality is almost too overwhelming, too crushing for my mind, my body.

I fall into reciting numbers to try to calm my growing fear, whispering them under my breath over and over to myself. So when the nun walks into the witness box, her Catholic robes floating behind her, I freeze. Only when the nun sits do I allow myself to breathe again, telling myself that she is not the same person. She is not wearing a hijab. She is not dead.

‘Thank you for being here today, Sister Mary,’ Harry says.

She smiles, her rotund body shrouded in a cloth of grey, her tubby fingers entwined around her rosary. Seeing her in the flesh dredges up something else inside me, but I don’t know what. Fear? Calm? There is a fine line between the two.

Harry consults a file and looks up. ‘I wonder, Sister, if you could explain to me what happened that night-sixth of November-when you found the victim.’

‘His name was Father O’Donnell,’ Sister Mary says. Her voice is plump, sugary, like a boiled sweet. I glance to the jury; they are all smiling.

‘Thank you,’ Harry says. ‘Can you talk me through the moment you found Father O’Donnell?’

She sighs. ‘It was terrible. He was lying there, strapped up. And the blood…‘ She kisses her crucifix. ‘The blood was on his chest. Bright red like poppies in a field.’

‘And what did you do when you found Father O’Donnell?’

‘Well, I called an ambulance, of course.’

‘How?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The ambulance, Sister-how did you come to call the ambulance?’

‘I returned to the convent,’ she says, after a small hesitation. ‘There is a telephone in the main hallway. That is the one I used.’

I stop, shake my mind away from the image of the hijab and the windpipe, and try to focus. There was no telephone in the hallway, not that I recall. Why would she say this?

‘And did you alert anyone to Father O’Donnell’s…situation?’

The Sister raises her eyebrows. ‘Well, of course I did. Goodness, I shouted as loud as I could. Awful, it was. So awful.’ She shakes her head. The only sound in the courtroom is the whirr of the ceiling fan.

‘Forgive me, Sister Mary,’ Harry says, ‘but I am a little confused and need your help.’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Yes.’ He coughs. ‘You say you went to the telephone in the hallway upon discovering Father O’Donnell’s body.’