Spider in the Corner of the Room (The Project Trilogy) (22 page)

Careful not to move, I try to see where I am through the window. From what I can determine, we are travelling south. The sky here is lighter and there is less traffic noise, which means we are out of London, but where are we bound?

In desperation, I look at the heart rate monitor, still beeping, blue lights flickering. It tracks my pulse. I lower my chin and look to my chest. There are four electrodes attached to my ribcage. I begin to panic. My heart rate soars.

Is this a memory I have forgotten?

Times passes, and through the window trees fly past, followed by endless grey sky. And then, after what seems like hours later, I begin to see aeroplanes…to hear engines.

The van halts and everything jolts forward. My whole body goes rigid with fear.

‘Hang on.’ A man’s voice. There is a clatter, a crash. ‘I think she’s…Shit. We have to get her on that plane. Now.’

The monitor begins to beep, wild, frantic. I try to claw my way out, try to bash my arms, but I cannot. The monitor beeps faster and faster still.

Someone’s hot breath is on my cheeks. I jerk my eyes to the right and suck in the tape.

A man in a mask is staring at me.

‘She’s awake,’ he says.

Before I can scream, I am injected with a drug. Everything fades to black.

‘I
said what are you doing at my computer, Maria?’

Balthus looms in front of me. I do not move. My eyes dart to Harry. He is not smiling. I swallow, a surge of dread welling up inside me.

Balthus strides to the laptop, pushes me aside, peers at it. ‘Were you using this?’

But I stay mute. What do I tell him? He knew my father but does that mean anything? Does that mean I should trust him?

Harry steps forward. ‘Balthus said he spoke to you, Maria.’

‘What are you doing here?’

Harry walks to a chair. ‘Balthus mentioned that he knew your father—Alarico.’

I let myself give one sharp nod, nothing else. A wind whips at the window from outside. The clock on the wall ticks into the silence.

Harry sighs and sits. ‘We knew we’d have to tell you, one day.’

I freeze. ‘We?’ I clench my fists tight, hard, over and over. The room feels suddenly hot, heavy, despite the window breeze. What is going on?

‘Yes,’ he says, setting down a legal file. ‘That’s why Balthus called me, told me to come over immediately.’

‘What? No. Why would he be calling you? He said there was an emergency.’

‘There was an emergency, yes. You, Maria. You are the emergency.’

‘No.’ I shake my head once, twice, dart my eyes between the two men. ‘“We”. You said,
“we
knew we’d have to tell you”. Who is “we”?’

But they do not answer, each of them glancing from one to the other.

‘Who is “we”?’ I shout.

Harry raises his head. ‘Me and Balthus,’ he says finally. ‘That is the “we”. We were both friends of your father, Maria. Me, Balthus.’ He exhales. ‘Both of us.’

I wake up in a white room. My breathing is frayed, torn at the edges, as it slowly dawns on me that I am no longer in the van. I dare not move, blood crashing through me, knuckles white while my fingernails dig hard into the soft underbelly of my palms. Slowly, I let my eyes scan the area. There is an IV drip in my arm. Straps sit tight around my legs. There is a heart rate monitor to the left, a metal table laid with syringes close by it. And I’m alone, but…I cannot be sure. Panic forces its way in, slamming hard into my thoughts. Where am I? What do they want? Where is Kurt?

I go to move my head when something pulls at it. Hands shaking, I place one palm on my hair. My scalp is covered in electrodes. They are on my forehead, my temples, on the back of my skull. When I tug them, I can feel leads protruding from each electrode. I turn my eyes to the right; there is an electroencephalograph machine by the bed, and I realise in horror that someone is recording my brain activity.

I close my eyes fast, not wanting to look. Instead, I make myself think of the facts, details, anything that will pin a tail on the real picture. Think, Maria, think. How old am I? Start with that. If this is only a memory, not real, then my body will be the teenage me, not the adult me. Peeling open my eyes, I slowly raise my hands, turn them over in the air. They are full size, adult. Trembling, I feel my face. There are no spots and my nose feels larger, my hair is cropped along the edge of my scalp.

Which means only one thing: I am me. Now. Thirty-three years old. The horror of the situation grips me, squeezes me tight, because if I am normal, if I am my usual age, then this is not a memory. This is real.

The panic, again, begins to appear, the primitive urge to flee strong. Why am I here? There is a flicker of movement by the window. I stay still, my breathing loud, like rushing water in my ears. The window is covered by a white blind, but the fabric is thin and there, behind it, I can just make out three shadows, none of which are moving. Does that mean they are watching me? Waiting to do something to me?

A beep bursts from the heart rate monitor and I jump, my eyes landing on the metal table of syringes, and it happens again, but this time fast, like the flip of a switch. No
warning. No rapid breathing. Just a cold sensation, a gentle, familiar slide, like a fish slipping back into a river. My eyes close, lids flutter, and I feel a sudden, sharp pain of a recollection. It hurts so much that I call out for my father. And then I smell it: burning flesh. I panic and look down.

A screech.

My body: it is not mine.

It is now younger, skinnier, my stomach concave, my knees protruding. And I am not on my own. My mother. She is by my side. I blink. How did she get there? She bends over me and rolls up my gown, cooing, exposing me from the chest down, telling me not to worry. I try to cover myself, but my mother slides one palm round my wrist. I scream, but she slips one finger on her mouth and whispers, ‘Ssssh, darling, ssssh.’ I shake my head and then my mother is not there, and instead her image has been replaced by a man with black eyes. Was he there all along and not my mother? The man leans over me now, a red-hot piece of metal in his hands.

‘Can you feel pain?’ he asks, and his accent, it is Scottish.

The heat from the metal is strong and I know what’s going to happen. I writhe, thrash my head side to side, cry out for my mama, my papa.

‘They are not here, I’m afraid,’ Black Eyes says, voice flat, lifeless. ‘Now, tell me if you can feel this.’

He lowers the hot metal and my eyes going wide as he presses it deep into my stomach. I howl.

The acrid stench of burning flesh stings the air.

The room swirls. My heart rate peaks. The image, the memory—it sinks, deep, to the bottom of the ocean. Everything
becomes dark, murky. A splutter of breath and I open my eyes. I gag, immediately try to sit up, my chest heaving, my eyes wild at what I have just seen. But the straps on my legs are too tight and I cannot move, so I dart my eyes downwards and frantically check. My body—it is normal again, full size, adult. Which means that it was a memory, I just had another memory. I gulp in air, as much of it as I can, as my mind drifts to the scar on my stomach, the one I showed Dr Andersson in the prison. He did it, I realise now with clarity. Black Eyes gave me that scar for certain. He is connected to all of this.

Pulling my head up as far as it will go, I study the EEG monitor. The graph paper shows frantic, peaked lines where it must have recorded the brain activity from what can only have been a vivid memory, a flashback. Which means that what I am experiencing now, here, must definitely be real. Slowly, almost too frightened to look, I inch my hand down to my abdomen and pull up my gown. There, beneath my fingers, is the scar. The scar Black Eyes gave me, just as I recalled. A memory, a real memory.

I lift my hand to my head.

And one by one, I rip the electrodes from my skull.

I
stare at Harry. ‘Why did you not tell me you knew my papa? When we first met, why did you not tell me?’

Harry glances to Balthus. ‘Maria, my dear. I couldn’t. I…I am so, so sorry you have found out like this.’

‘Like this?’ I stand, manic. ‘Like this? I found out by chance, but, actually—’ I halt, scratch my head ‘—nothing happens by chance, does it?’ I commence pacing. ‘Numbers—they all have a meaning, a place, and numbers translate into code, and code into data, and data is just another word for information, for facts, for knowledge.’ I stop, chest heaving. ‘And you kept that knowledge from me, Harry.’

I turn, ignoring both men. How can I trust them, trust anyone? They have already lied to me, pretended they were something they are not, just like my university professor, like Father Reznik, like my hospital boss. Like Dr-fucking-Andersson. These are authority figures I assumed were genuine, there to help me. The enormity of it, the delayed shock, slaps me hard and I bend over, wretch, shoulders
heaving, mouth raw. Even my boss at St James’s was not who he pretended to be, and if someone like him can be a liar, someone kind, with a family, with a loving wife, how can we ever really believe anyone is who they say they are?

‘Maria,’ I hear Balthus say. ‘Are you okay?’

I stand and wipe my face as dry as I can, not wanting to feel or appear weak any more, not wanting to seem like a victim. I want to get out, want to win my appeal. I want to survive.

‘Maria,’ Harry says, ‘I know it must seem very unlikely right now, but we are here for you, to help you.’

‘Then why weren’t you here right at the beginning?’ I say, voice firm. ‘When I was arrested? When I was facing my first trial?’

Harry sits forward a little, smiles, one with creases that makes his eyes almost disappear. I feel myself soften a little. ‘I wanted to defend you, Maria,’ he says, ‘but I was working on a high-profile case and—’

‘The chef with the knife?’

‘You know about that?’ Another smile. ‘Well, yes. And I couldn’t get out of the case, and then you acquired a legal team and all I could do was watch them butcher your defence. When you were convicted, Balthus used his wife’s connections, got you transferred to Goldmouth.’

‘The Home Secretary,’ I say, almost to myself.

Harry sits forward. ‘Maria, I wanted to help you. I called Balthus when we heard the news that you were charged. We used his contacts to get you to Goldmouth. You’re Al’s daughter for God’s sake. And he told us what he—’

My eyes dart between them both, heart shoots. ‘Papa
told you? Told you what? What? What do you know? Did he tell you something to do with Scotland?’

They share a glance to each other.

‘Maria,’ Harry says, ‘Alarico didn’t mention anything about Scotland.’

I frown, shake my head. ‘Then what did he tell you?’

Harry exhales. Balthus rubs his head with his hand.

‘He told us that he was concerned for your well-being, Maria,’ Harry says after a moment. He clears his throat. ‘He told us he was concerned for you, how you would cope with day-to-day life as you got older. I suppose he was concerned for your…for your sanity.’

‘Get someone in here. Now!’

I hear the voice but I do not stop, a juggernaut of strength, of survival instinct, railroading through me. I have to escape. I have to. So I keep ripping. I tear the electrodes from my scalp, the slime of the jelly on the pads mixing with my sweat so it trickles down my brow, stinging my eyes, sticking to my lashes, but I do not care.

‘She’s tachycardic,’ someone shouts, but I don’t know who, don’t know from where.

The monitor is beeping; my heart rate is accelerating; still I rip.

Someone is in the room, flat voice, a subtle New York lilt. ‘There’s a change in her blood chemistry,’ they say. ‘We’re getting low potassium levels.’

‘Cause?’ Another voice, different, low, gravel. Scottish.

‘The sodium amytal drug. She must have had too much.’

And then I realise: Kurt. Is it Kurt’s voice? I paw at the IV drip, try to sit up. ‘Kurt!’ I shout.

‘You put it in the coffee as I instructed?’

I thrash. The coffee! He drugged me, in the therapy room. That’s why it tasted odd, why I felt tired sometimes, why events were hazy. And then I think: spiders. Is that why I saw double of them? Because he had drugged me? Is that why I thought I saw cobwebs?

‘We must have put in too much,’ the voice says now. We? Who is ‘we’? His girlfriend? The one with the leather and the studs? I lurch again to break free.

‘Kurt!’ I yell, but still he does not hear me. I thrash around, try to get up, but I am strapped down, secured by the ankles.

A face looms over my head. I gasp. Black Eyes. ‘Hmmm,’ he says, but not to me, to the other person, to Kurt. ‘The drug has certainly helped us tap into her mind, see what she remembers. Thank you for recording it all—I saw it all on the secure site. She located the camera, though. Was only a matter of time. She’s sharp, as we’ve trained her to be.’

The camera! The camera I found in the Banana Room. They were recording me. The people Kurt works for were recording me. ‘Get away from me,’ I scream, like a dog ravaged with rabies, wild, dangerous. ‘Get away!’

Yet, Black Eyes just stands stock-still, peers at me, scanning my body. ‘We’ll need to get her back there, though. Fresh recording, hidden device as before. I need to see a little more of how she is acting under pressure, how she responds when her thoughts are being challenged, compromised. And I need to see a little more of what she is recalling. It is fascinating.’ He lifts my right ear, inspects it. ‘What have the endocrinological investigations shown?’

‘No signs of Cushing’s syndrome or hyperaldosteronism.’

‘Kurt!’ I scream.

Black Eyes drops my ear and presses his palm onto my mouth, silencing me. His skin tastes of metal. I try to scream, but only woollen muffles come out.

‘I instructed you to go easy on the sodium amytal,’ he says to Kurt. ‘Your doses must have been too large. It’s supposed to lower her inhibitions and give her mental clarity to talk, not accelerate her heart rhythm.’

I thrash my head, try to shake him off; he presses down harder on my mouth.

‘Treat her with potassium and magnesium infusions. The dysrhythmia should stop. When you’ve done that and she’s calmed down, give her something to keep her lucid but controlled, then contact me. I have tests to run. MI5 are on to us now, so we need to keep her on our side.’ He looks at me, smiles, then removes his hand and slaps my cheek. ‘You scream like that again and we won’t be so nice next time. Do you understand?’