Spider in the Corner of the Room (The Project Trilogy) (32 page)

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?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘of course. I am under oath.’

A murmur ripples through the onlookers.

‘Did someone see you during these…visits?’

‘The patients saw me.’

‘Who were elderly and medicated, is this correct?’

‘Yes, naturally. They were dying and in pain.’

‘And did anyone else see you on the ward at this time?’

My heart sinks. ‘No.’

‘What?’ he says. ‘No nurses? No fellow doctors?’

When I look up to speak, my body feels heavy, my mind exhausted. ‘I wear a hooded sweat top when I visit. I go in unnoticed and in the evening there is a skeleton reception staff. I do not wish to draw attention to myself. I do not visit sick patients so others can see me. But there is—’

I stop dead. The phrase hits me like a truck, unlocks a recollection.
I do not visit sick patients so others can see me.
The woman in the hijab—she spoke that phrase to me
once! She worked in…in a medical tent on a refugee camp, tended to patients. Which means I knew her, worked with her. Murdered her under the influence of what? Unlicensed drugs? My mouth drops open, a lone shriek flying from it. I look up. The prosecutor is standing, frowning.

‘Ms Martinez,’ the judge says, ‘are you okay?’

I turn, blink at him, but my mind is melting.

‘Ms Martinez…’

From the corner of my eye, I just about see the jurors fold their arms, heads shaking. I swallow hard, wipe the sweat from my brow and force myself to look to the judge. ‘I am sorry.’

He nods to the prosecutor, tells him to continue.

The prosecutor clears his throat. ‘Dr Martinez, is there CCTV evidence of these visits of yours to the elderly ward?’

‘There…’ I stall, try to focus, but it is hard now. ‘There is a CCTV camera there,’ I say, sitting back upright a little, suddenly wondering if he is part of the Project, too. I shoot a glance around the court. Maybe everyone here is with them, all conspiring against me. The judge. The jury. But what would I do if they were? Murder them, too?

‘And is there a recording of your visits, showing you, at the time of the murder, sitting by the bedsides of these elderly patients?’

All eyes are directed at me. ‘There is no recording, no,’ I say, finally.

The gallery erupts.

‘Order,’ says the judge.

From the back of the room, a door bangs open and a man in a wig and cloak, clutching a file scuttles to the defence bench. The whole courtroom watches. The man slides next
to Harry, whispers in his ear, then exits, his back to me the entire time. The prosecutor dabs his neck, returns his focus to me.

‘Dr Martinez, I put it to you,’ he says, ‘that you were indeed not in the geriatric ward in St James’s Hospital that night, but in fact at the convent on Draycott Road.’

‘I…I was not,’ I say, unsure, but I am not looking at the prosecutor, my stare, instead, is on the small parcel Harry has just been given.

‘And yet you cannot prove it.’ He shakes his head. ‘You cannot prove your alibi, Dr Martinez.’ The prosecutor looks to the judge. ‘No further questions, Your Honour.’

Just as I begin to descend the steps, my head hanging, Harry rises. ‘Your Honour, I have just one or two more questions.’

I halt, grip the rail. What is he doing?

The judge lets out a sigh and eyes Harry. ‘Okay, make it quick, Mr Warren.’

‘Yes, Your Honour. Thank you.’ Harry holds up a CD. ‘The defence would like to submit this CCTV footage as evidence.’

The usher takes the CD and slides it into the PC system to the right of the room.

‘If you could press play, please,’ Harry says. I stay very still, not daring to move, to breath. To my right, a television screen flickers to life with grainy black-and-white footage. The image—I recognise it.

‘What you are seeing here,’ Harry says, ‘is a CD that has been discovered—handed to me today, just now, in fact. It is a CD that contains CCTV footage of the night of the murder of Father O’Donnell.’ He points to the screen. ‘Note
the time: 10.35 p.m. If you watch, you will see shortly coming along the corridor…Yes, there she is.’

I squint at the image. Then I see it: me. My whole body goes rigid, scared to admit what my eyes are telling me.

‘Dr Maria Martinez Villanueva,’ Harry says, ‘this is who you are seeing in this recording in the hospital at the time of the murder of Father Joseph O’Donnell. And if we fastforward it…’ The screen blurs, black lines scratching left and right. ‘Yes, here.’ He points at the screen. ‘The time: 11.55 p.m. This camera was stationed by the main rear exit to the hospital.’

I peer at the monitor. It is me, leaving the hospital. My mind scatters, thoughts blown wide open. It exists! Me, on screen. The evidence was there all along. I can feel myself shaking, tiny tremors. The people in the gallery whisper, everyone moving, looking to one another, to the television screen. I make myself peer at it now, too, my face, my evidence, one question forming in my mind until it is too big to ignore: Why? Why was the CCTV kept from my first trial? And why has it now been returned? I ring my hands together, feeling myself on the verge of breaking away, of finding an open window to flap out of.

‘You are seeing now, ladies and gentlemen,’ Harry says, ‘Dr Maria Martinez, visiting, as she has stated in this court, elderly, dying patients,’ Harry says. ‘Leaving at 11.55 p.m. This is after the time the call was placed by Sister Mary to the emergency services.’

Harry nods to the usher, who presses pause. An image of my face half hidden under the shadow of a navy hooded Universidad de Salamanca top—but still clear, still me—flickers on the screen. I had thought the CCTV did not
exist. It could not be found. No CCTV evidence—the reason I am in prison.

Harry looks to the judge. ‘No more questions, Your Honour.’

The room erupts. I am led back to the dock, but I don’t hear what else is going on, my mind dreamlike almost. How can an alibi appear just like that? Can it be true? But how? Is it the Project? It is all I can think of as, once the noise has died and the perfunctory processes have passed, the counsels begin their closing statements. Their words, as they speak, whip past me like a snow flurry.

Suddenly, a voice snaps, ‘Stand!’ I blink my eyes into focus and see the guard staring at me, her body leaning towards me. I must have lost track of time, because the closing statements are over and the whole courtroom is looking at me.

Slowly, I rise from my seat as ahead the judge bends forward to speak.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the statements from both counsels. The evidence has been presented and the facts are stated. You now have to consider this case based solely on the information presented in this court today. You have an important task ahead of you. This court will now retire and the jury will consider its verdict.’

I
try Balthus’s number once, twice, but nothing. No answer, no voicemail. The air is hot, heavy, sweat dripping down my back, but I hardly notice, so pricked are my ears for any sounds of movement, of running, shouting. Of Kurt.

I examine the area, and, changing direction, ditch down another side street, dark, out of the way. I stop by some bins, steady myself, slowly check around. There is no one here. The whole situation hitting me, I slide against a damp wall and try to defuzz my head, think through my options. I have broken out of the session, which means they’ll be after me, instantly. I wipe my forehead. Kurt, the needle. He wanted to drug me to get me out. To where? To Callidus? And if everything he said was true, if the NSA surveillance has threatened the Project, threatened me, then can I really evade them? Will they always be watching?

I rub my eyes. Callidus, the memory I had in the courtroom of the woman in the hijab. Was she real, the woman? And what of Project Callidus, of their intentions? Are they
inherently good? Do they really want me to help them, as Kurt said, to fight terrorism? For the greater good? But how can murdering people—anyone—be good? How? Even the notion of it seems absurd, crazy: me, covert, an asset, trained without knowing, already having possibly completed code-based operations without realising, killing without knowing I was being drugged.

An unexpected wave of exhaustion washes over me. Leaning back against the wall, I give in a little, just for a moment, and, my eyelids heavy, close. The brickwork is cold against my back and it feels good, a relief almost to be here, outside, hiding, out of the way, out of—

My mobile vibrates. I grunt, eyes flying open as I try to get my bearings. I fumble for my phone, slam it to my ear.

‘Maria?’

I freeze. The voice. I recognise it, tense up, self-defence mode on high alert.

‘Maria, it’s me. I missed your calls. Where are you? Are you okay?’

My body drops at the realisation of who it is, relieved I was wrong. ‘Balthus,’ I say, fast, alert now, ‘the therapist, the one your service sent me to: he’s part of the Project.’

‘What? Jesus.’

I stand, scan the area, aware of everything, every sound, colour, smell, as if all my dials have been turned up to maximum, at breaking point.

‘Maria? Are you still there?’

‘I need you to get here.’ I smear sweat from my face, tell Balthus where I am, words forming in my mouth, my mind automatically giving an almost exact GPS location without me knowing how. A clatter of bin lids echoes from
two streets back. I sling my bag over my shoulder. ‘Hurry.’ I end the call and start to run.

The jury has returned.

As they take their seats, I am led to the dock by the guard. My head, my thoughts are spiralling out of control now, I can feel it. Sister Mary, the sudden CCTV discovery, the blood, the knife, the killing—it all stinks of the Project, and yet, even now, as the ceiling fan spins and the sun bakes the bodies of those returning to the public gallery, I can’t say for certain the Project is involved, the dreaded thought that I have acted alone, that I have killed alone, threatening to slice me in two. Reality sneaks in through the back door of my brain, whispering one word:
Murderer.