The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy)

by David B Lyons

  ‘I am not here to—’

  ‘It’s okay, Mr Dupont. You don’t have to answer that. Because I can tell that the prison record of Joy Stapleton is not the only record of her height. When Mrs Stapleton was measured by a Doctor Mishia Rasaad in the Coombe Hospital in May 2004, pregnant with her first son, she was measured at five foot, two and a quarter inches. Not five foot, and one quarter inch. When she was measured for a health check-up, five months after giving birth, she was more specifically measured at five foot, one and one-tenth. Then on arrival in prison she was measured at five foot, two, which as you know was marked in a diary. Quite a discrepancy in all those numbers, Mr Dupont, wouldn’t you agree? What did Mr Bracken call it earlier, measurements of that ilk are like a gulf to you, right?’

  ‘That doesn’t prove the woman in the footage is Mrs Stapleton. None of those measurements you just mentioned are five foot and three quarters of an inch as my software suggests the woman in the CCTV is.’

  ‘No, but what it does suggest, Mr Dupont, is that the measurements you came here to testify against are inaccurate. Wildly inaccurate. Thank you, Your Honour.’

  ‘We thank the witness,’ Delia calls out. Then she stands, leaving Dupont looking perplexed that his testimony ended so abruptly and so inconclusively. ‘Court dismissed,’ Delia follows up with. And as she does, she spins on her heels and dashes down the steps and out the side door as if she’s on a mission. The bright white lights of the modern corridor don’t help to stem her spinning head. So, she pulls at the neck of her robe, whipping it up over her head and scrunching it up into a ball in her hands as she begins to take sharper breaths.

  Then she abruptly halts her power walk, brings the scrunched-up robe to her mouth and vomits into it.

  2,275 days ago…

  ‘This way,’ Joy said to Carol.

  And so Carol followed her. Down the steel steps, across the concrete landing, then into the large space all of the noise seemed to be emanating from.

  ‘Thank you,’ Carol shouted over the chatter.

  ‘Don’t worry about the noise; all that screeching you hear in prison, it’s nothing. Ain’t no cats being strangled or hens a-cackling – that’s genuinely just the noise of three hundred of us women talking over each other. Loud bunch, aren’t we?’

  Carol tried to smile, but it came off more like a grimace.

  ‘I, eh… I thought I could ask you because… well… because you’re a familiar face, I guess.’

  Joy pursed her lips at the new prisoner. She looked just as young and petrified as Joy had been when she’d first arrived in Elm House.

  ‘How long have you been in here now?’ Carol asked, as Joy handed her a tray.

  ‘Just coming up to two years.’

  ‘Two years… jeez, is it that long? Can’t imagine two years in here… let alone two lifetimes… oh, sorry,’ Carol said, holding her hand over her open mouth.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. How long a stretch you got?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘Three months? For what?’

  Carol looked down at the oversized flipflops she was wearing.

  ‘Well… well, it’s a bit embarrassing. I tried to skim from my boss. I was running his accounts. Just took a few quid here and there. I didn’t think he’d notice. If I fancied a new pair of shoes and I knew I couldn’t afford them… I’d just… y’know.’

  ‘Three months for a pair of shoes? Judge musta hated you.’

  ‘Well… it wasn’t just one pair of shoes, if you know what I mean. I didn’t have a clue how much I’d spent… not until the police came to the office one day. Thirty-six grand I’d spent on myself over the course of eighteen months… Almost double me wages.’

  She turned down the corners of her mouth. But Joy was too busy standing on her tip-toes to stare over the kitchen counter to bother listening to Carol’s justifications for her crime.

  ‘So, you normally have a choice of three cereals; today it’s porridge, Rice Krispies or Corn Flakes. They’re not the real deal… cheap knock off versions. But they’re alright with a splash of milk. Oh yeah, and then you can have two slices of toast.’

  ‘Ah… okay… this isn’t so bad, I guess. I think I’ll go for the, eh… Rice Krisp… no, feck it, the Corn Flakes today and I’ll—’ she looked around. But Joy was gone.

  After deciding against cereals, Joy had jumped ahead of the queue and grabbed two slices of buttered toast before heading off to the bench populated by Christy’s Crazies.

  ‘Who that bitch?’ Christy asked her.

  ‘A nobody. Carol something or other… I was thinking of recruiting her over to our side, but she’s only in for three months. Larceny. She’s not worth it to us. She’ll be gone before we know it.’

  They each stared at Carol, all silently taking an in-breath as Nancy Trott sidled up to her, placing a hand to her shoulder.

  ‘See… now she like that kinda gal, does Nancy. Small. Pretty. She love you,’ she said to Joy. ‘You just lucky I got to you first, sista. We hadn’t been in that van together on our first day here, you be gettin’ penetrated by those fat, chubby fingers o’ hers all night long.’

  The gang of Crazies cackled and guffawed at what Christy had just said, even though they well believed her account to be accurate. They weren’t sure which one of Nancy’s Cohorts Nancy was fingering or being fingered by regularly, probably all of them, but they all knew they would rather be a member of the perceived crazy gang than Nancy’s gang – even if it did mean they had to regularly read passages from a bible they knew to be bullshit. It made much more sense to them to pretend to believe in God than be finger raped.

  ‘Okay… okay… let’s settle,’ Christy said, grabbing the two prisoners next to her by the hand. ‘Our Lord Jesus, we thank you for the blessing of these foods you provide for us today and each and every day. May you walk with us and guide us as we continue our journey. We thank you, oh Lord. Amen.’

  Then she let go of their hands as the whole bench muttered an ‘Amen’ in unison, and everybody picked up either a large spoon or a slice of toast and silently got stuck into their breakfasts.

  It was during that rather noisy period, when the screeching first strikes up in earnest as the whole wing is finishing breakfast, that Stella hobbled by their table. She stared at them, as she usually does, menacingly, but she wasn’t intimidating. Not anymore. Though every time Joy laid eyes on her, she could feel the blunt force to the bridge of her nose, even though that attack had, by now, occurred almost two years ago.

  ‘Ye know, I was thinkin’ bout that bitch in ma sleep last night,’ Christy said. ‘I had a vision. She ain’t long for this world. That’s what ma vision told me.’

  And then all of Christy’s Crazies got up from their bench, brought their bowls and plates to the counter and headed back to their cells where they would spend the next hour alone while the prison officers took over the dining room to have breakfast themselves.

  At 9:30 am, the cells reopened, and then it was off to either work, or school, depending on which road you had chosen. Joy was enjoying the Healthy Foods course she was studying by now, even though she had received a poor grade on her most recent assignment. It wasn’t necessarily the course content she was enjoying while she was cooked up in the small education room at the back end of the prison, it was Christy’s company. They were two peas in a pod; rarely separated when the cell doors were open.

  Joy and Christy would talk openly about Joy’s plight; about the fight of an innocent mother spending two life sentences behind bars for the most heinous crime imaginable. The Joy Stapleton is Innocent campaign was going strong; certainly outside the prison. It had snowballed somewhat by social media, though mainstream media rarely covered the cause. They did, when the Joy is Innocent campaign was first founded. But when Joy and Christy started shouting from within the confines of the prison that they had a theory about Joy’s former best friend Lavinia Kirwan being the mystery woman in the unique pink hooded top, the cause too
k a dip in reputation. Lavinia had a solid alibi for the night in question. The woman in the pink hoodie simply couldn’t have been her. That fact didn’t stop Christy and Joy growing their theory, though. And they would often sit on the bed inside one of their cells and cook up more analysis of Lavinia’s possible involvement. But in truth, nobody was listening to them. And especially not Shay. Since his visit five months ago, Joy had heard nothing from her husband. The only update she had been given on his life came via one of the tabloid newspapers, which detailed a story suggesting Shay’s hours at his job had been reduced and that he’d been demoted. The newspaper speculated his health had been an issue in the demotion; that he was suffering from constant waves of depression. She thought about writing to him, reaching out after she’d read that story. But despite sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and a pen, she managed no words.

  2,274 days ago…

  It wasn’t long after the doors had clicked open, as they do first thing every morning, that the first shriek was heard. It was piercing. And Joy knew immediately that something serious had happened. Then Mathilda and Aidan raced up and down the landings of Elm House and began shuffling prisoners back into their cells, while yelling for lockdown.

  ‘What is it, what’s happened?’ Joy asked Aidan as he raced towards her.

  He looked around himself, his face paler than normal.

  ‘We, eh… we just found Stella Cantwell in her cell. She was hanging.’

  Joy held a hand to her mouth, then stepped back into her cell to perch herself on her mattress while Aidan locked the door from the outside.

  It didn’t take long for the doors to click back open, because it wasn’t the prison staff’s first rodeo in terms of cleaning up a suicide mess. Though it was the first time a hanging had happened in Elm House for many a year.

  Aidan was still pale when Joy bumped into him on her way to visit Christy’s cell.

  ‘You okay?’ Joy asked him. But he either didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear her. He just strolled on by as she rattled her knuckles against Christy’s cell door.

  ‘What the fuck?!’ she shouted when she saw Christy’s yellow stained teeth grimacing at her.

  ‘I told you, I told you, Joy. She not long for this world and then within half a day, Our Lord Jesus Christ took her from us.’

  ‘Christy,’ Joy said, her eyes heavy. ‘Did you murder Stella?’

  Christy’s bloodshot eyes almost popped out of her head.

  ‘What you talkin’ bout, girl? I ain’t no killer.’

  ‘But… but…’ Joy held her palms out. She was dumbstruck.

  When all of Christy’s Crazies had gathered around the worn sofa in the games room, they couldn’t hide their awe of their leader.

  ‘I can’t believe God communicates with you directly,’ one of them said. ‘And just so randomly like that. God comes to you in your dreams to tell you Stella is not long for this world and then next night she does it… she kills herself.’

  Joy was the only one who didn’t laud Christy’s gift. It simply couldn’t be that she could tell the future. Not like that. Though Joy didn’t say anything. She needed to pretend she believed in Christy. After all, it was Christy’s gift that had exonerated her in the eyes of most of the prisoners who resided in Elm House. Going against the grain now would only mean she was arguing against her own innocence.

  She did question Christy when they were alone, asking her where she had been the evening previous; though she did it in a very subtle manner. Then she realised, as did the other Crazies who might, like Joy, be sceptical, that Christy couldn’t have had anything to do with Stella’s hanging. She had a solid alibi; was doing a medical in the health room during the time in question and was escorted to and from that medical by Mathilda before she was locked back up in her cell for the night.

  ‘Oh my God,’ one of the Crazies said to Joy, ‘Stella really did kill herself. She killed herself right after Christy had seen it in her vision. This girl is the real deal. The real deal.’

  Joy found herself shaking, even though Stella had handed down the only beating she had ever received her whole life. Her hands were covering her face and slightly quivering when Aidan walked into her cell later that afternoon.

  ‘What a day!’ he said, his face still pale. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Just a bit of shock is all,’ she said before getting to her feet.

  ‘I’m a little bit shocked meself,’ Aidan said. ‘I mean, I didn’t get on with Stella or anything, she just kept herself to herself… but I never thought in a million years she’d go and top herself. She just didn’t seem the kind. She… I dunno… I guess I feel guilty. I should have known she was depressed. She’s on my wing. My landing.’

  Joy inched closer to him and could smell the never-changing scent of Lynx on his neck.

  ‘You don’t need to beat yourself up, Aidan. Don’t be silly. We never see the most obvious things that are right in front of us. Human nature isn’t it?’ Joy said.

  ‘You sure you’re gonna be alright? You seem a little shaken yourself. Can I get you anything? Want me to see if I can get you a warm mug of coffee?’

  Without hesitating, and with her emotions bubbling, Joy inched even closer, then looped both arms around the back of Aidan’s neck before she leaned upwards to press her lips against his.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, baulking backwards and wiping at his mouth. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’

  ❖

  Delia pulls out the long drawer from the bottom of the stack of tall library shelves in her dimly lit office and removes a fresh robe.

  She had ordered Aisling, as she was approaching her office all hot and bothered, to arrange a clean-up of the corridor that leads to the side entrance of the main courtroom.

  ‘There’s something funny along the titles, there,’ she shouted into Aisling’s pokey office. ‘As if somebody got sick or something. See to it that it’s mopped up as soon as possible, won’t you, my dear?’

  She struggles to get her robe over her head, not helped by the fact that her glasses have been combed back into her hair. But when she eventually tugs it down and flattens it at the knees, she takes a seat at her desk. She doesn’t necessarily need to adorn a new robe as court is over for the day, but she intends on working on the trial at her computer and always likes to be dressed for the occasion. Though she knows working on the trial won’t be the first thing she does when she reawakens her computer.

  She hovers her hand over her mouse, then wiggles at it frantically, bringing the screen to life. She doesn’t want to watch it again. But feels she needs to see the whole video through, just in case there is a personal message or instruction at the end of it. All she’d seen of it so far was about six seconds before she’d slapped a hand at her computer monitor. And the video goes on for a full two and a half minutes.

  She lowers the volume on her monitor, then covers a hand over her eyes before tapping at her mouse. A sound of repeated rustling, then a groan, cackles from her speakers.

  Delia slightly widens the gaps between her fingers and turns her eyes inwards so that the image on the screen blurs somewhat and she doesn’t have to take the full impact of it. The rustling continues, as another groan, this one more high-pitched, is followed by an elongated panting. Then the video abruptly stops.

  ‘That’s it?’ she says, wiggling her mouse. She clicks back into the email, and rechecks to confirm that there is no message accompanying it. Just an email address in the sent bar and the video in the attachments.

  She pauses her fingers, plastered thumb and all, over her keyboard, then lets out an audible sigh as she begins to type.

  Who is this? What do you want from me?

  She shakes her head and then pokes one finger at the mouse, sending off her two questions before she has time to stop herself.

  She couldn’t think of how else she could have conceivably replied to that email, even though her next move was constantly floating through her mind in between the silences of Ma
thieu Dupont’s testimony.

  Her stomach has stopped producing bile – her burping and vomiting all done – and her hands aren’t shaking anywhere near as prominently as they were inside the court room. The time she spent in the women’s toilets, splashing her face with water, helped recede her panicking somewhat. But she keeps wringing her sweating hands as she stares at her email list, waiting on a reply to drop into her inbox. But her screen just shines back at her, unblinking.

  ‘Feck it,’ she mutters to herself. Then she clicks her email account off the screen and opens the Word document she had been working from.

  She types ‘Mathieu Dupont’ underneath the minimal amount of notes she has taken so far, then taps her fingernail repeatedly against the mouse in contemplation before typing the word ‘interesting’ next to the name.

  ‘Mathieu Dupont,’ she mutters to herself. She imagines his face, the vertical dimple covered in stubble, the dark eyebrows framing his deep-set eyes. ‘Well… he was definitely manufactured by Bracken, but certainly legitimate nonetheless,’ she says. And then she types the word ‘legitimate’ next to the word ‘interesting.’

  ‘One hundred and fifty… what was it again?’ she says, tip-tapping her fingernails against the mouse before she swiftly swipes at the receiver of her desk phone.

  ‘Aisling,’ she says, ‘can you get me a copy of Mathieu Dupont’s testimony, please? I, eh… didn’t take many notes during the trial today, for some reason, and I need to know the exact height his 3D software measured the figure in the CCTV footage.’

  ‘One hundred and fifty-four point seven, one five centimetres,’ Aisling says without hesitating. ‘I am literally reading through the transcripts myself now. I’ll print you off a copy and bring them into you as soon as I can.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Delia says. Then she places the receiver back down and proceeds to type.

  154.715 cm = five’, ¾”