Nikki Owen - Spider in the Corner of the Room

Resting a hand on the bench, Harry utters the phrase that means we are losing the battle: ‘No further questions, Your Honour.’

Kurt’s footsteps echo along the corridor.

Moving fast, I rip the map from the wall and run down two levels of stairs. I stop and listen. More footsteps. I glance around, heart pounding; there is a door to my left. I check the map. There is a fire escape at the back of the building that can be accessed through the exit. Darting to the left, I shove my shoulder into the door, but it does not move. I try again. This time, I shove harder; it pops straight open on to the fire escape.

I am hit by the sound of traffic, buses, people, music. The sounds. The air. It is not prison. Not a therapist’s room. I inhale a large gulp of it, close the door, turn and, without waiting, lower myself to the fire steps, not stopping until my feet touch the tarmac.

I drop to the pavement and look up.

Kurt is staring at me from two floors above. His hair sticks up, blood stains his face and his left eye is half shut. He looks as if he has just climbed out of a grave.

My pulse screams through my veins. We hold each other’s gaze for a few seconds; then, securing my bag, I spin round and start to run, hard, fast, the sound of my feet pounding the pavement echoing behind me.

I scan the area as I sprint, head for a building on the opposite side of the road. There is a warren of side streets and, selecting the nearest one, I fly through them until I reach a corner and stop. I gasp for breath and listen. No footsteps. No one following. Spitting to the road, I fish out my phone.

And I call Balthus.

‘Your Honour,’ says Harry. ‘The defence calls Dr Maria Martinez Villanueva.’

I do not move. The court has descended to a low murmur, the air thick. I feel stuck to my seat, paralysed by doubt. Events, so far, have not gone in my favour. Sister Mary, the DVD store owner’s evidence, Mama believing I am schizophrenic. But while they all implicate me, all tell the world I am guilty, crazed, there is so much more: there is me. I am the issue now, because I do not trust myself any more, do not trust my memories to be real or fake. So what do I say if I go on that stand? What message do I give? That I believe in myself, in my innocence? Or that deep down, deep, deep down, I fear I may be a killer.

Slowly, I stand, my eyes on Harry. The gallery above creaks as people crane for a view. Harry is smiling his creased smile. I force myself to keep my gaze on his face, on his soft features. He believes in me. Patricia believes in me. Papa believed in me.

I walk across the courtroom, feet quiet, just a low shuffle from the soles of my loafers brushing the floor. I can feel everyone’s eyes on me, hear the flap of their makeshift fans as the sun blazes in. I pass Harry and swallow hard, fighting the urge to run to him, to yell that I don’t want to do this, that I cannot trust what I will do or say any more.

The heat saturates the court and sweat springs up on the back of my neck. I reach the witness box, ascend the steps and look down. A Bible. I almost fall when I see it. A priest, a nun and now a Bible: my holy trinity.

‘Repeat after me,’ the usher says. ‘I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

She finishes and looks to me. Everything is quiet. Everything is still.

I grip the edge of the oak panel, the only solid thing, right now, I can hold on to. ‘I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ I repeat, yet even when I say it, when I hear my voice echo the phrase around the court, I do not believe it. I don’t know if I can trust, any more, what the word ‘truth’ really means.

As the usher takes her seat, Harry walks over to the witness box and smiles at me. My shoulders soften a little. ‘Dr Martinez,’ he says now, ‘how well did you know the victim, Father O’Donnell?’

I swallow and lean into the microphone. ‘He was a priest at the convent.’ There is a deafening ring. I recoil, slap my hands to my ears. The usher runs over, pulls the microphone back. My eyes dart round the court. People are frowning, craning their heads to see. The vibration of the ring fades and I slowly drop my hands.

When the rustle of whispers settles, Harry clears his throat. ‘Why did you work at the convent?’

I inhale, try to claw back some composure. ‘I did not work at the convent. I volunteered.’

‘And what did you volunteer to do at the convent?’

‘I fixed things for them. I repaired broken sheds and windows and other similar items.’

Harry nods. ‘That is very noble of you, Doctor. You donated your shoes-Crocs-to the convent, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Father O’Donnell took them?’

I flinch at his name. ‘Yes.’

‘And they contained dried blood from you, from a burst blister, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your work as a doctor-can you tell me about that?’

‘I am a Consultant Plastic Surgeon. I work mainly with burn victims and childhood facial disfigurements.’ At the mention of the hospital, the thought walks into my head: my manager was working for the Project.

‘If we could go to the night of the murder,’ Harry says now. ‘Between nine p.m. and midnight on the sixth of November, where were you?’

‘I was at St James’s Hospital sitting with elderly patients.’

He smiles. ‘And why were you there, with these patients? You have Asperger’s, yes?’

‘Objection! Irrelevance.’

The judge considers the prosecutor. ‘Overruled.’

Harry nods and repeats the question.

I pause, not knowing he would ask me this. It is not normally a question I falter with too much, but now, with the memory of the woman in the hijab fresh, raw, how do I know what I do is simply down to my Asperger’s? How do I know it is not a result of the conditioning?

‘I was sitting with the patients,’ I say, quietly, after a moment. ‘I have…Asperger’s. It is a condition on the autistic spectrum. I have difficulty expressing emotions. I found that sitting with the elderly patients helped me with empathy. They were kind. Most of them were dying.’

‘These patients saw you?’

‘When they were awake, yes.’

‘So you were nowhere near the convent on the night in question.’

I hesitate. A flicker of doubt. There is no CCTV to prove where I was. Could I have been at the convent and not recalled it? Did Sister Mary have something to do with it?

‘Dr Martinez,’ the judge says, ‘answer the question.’

I look from him to Harry and exhale. ‘No,’ I say finally. ‘I was not at the convent.’

I glance to the jury; they are not smiling.

‘Thank you,’ Harry says. ‘No further questions.’

The prosecutor stands and my shoulders become tense again. Coughs echo around the courtroom, hands in the gallery fan faces in the heat.

‘Dr Martinez,’ the prosecutor says, the skin under his jaw swinging slightly, his spindly arms arranged across his chest, ‘let us go to the night of the murder. You were working a shift that day, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘What hours?’

‘I began at eight hundred hours and finished at twenty hundred hours.’

‘A twelve-hour shift. That is a long time; is that usual?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Twelve hours is normal.’

He pauses. ‘So, you work twelve-hour shifts and still manage to find time to volunteer at a convent, is that right?’

I hesitate. Where is he going with this? ‘Yes.’

‘And so the night of the murder, you went from your shift, straight to the convent.’

‘No.’

There is a rustle of voices in the courtroom.

The prosecutor scowls. ‘No? You see, Ms Martinez, here is the problem: you say you did not go to the convent, yet there is a witness that places you there at the time of the crime. And yet, you insist you were at St James’s Hospital with elderly patients. I’m sorry,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You expect us to believe this?’