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

by Nikki Owen

  I inch towards the painting and inspect it. At the back of the frame against the wall is a white sheath. I poke it. It is attached to the frame and, when I pierce it, my finger breaks a hole straight through to the wall. I halt, take a breath, hesitating yet, at the same time, knowing I have to do this, knowing I have to uncover all of it.

  I extract my finger and observe the frame. Apart from the broken corner, it appears normal, untouched. My fingers run along the underside of it. Beginning at the top, they work systematically from left to right, feeling for anything unusual. When they arrive at the end, I begin to contemplate if it was hasty of me to rip the painting, when I feel something.

  A long tube. Slowly, my fingers touch the lump, heart slamming. It is eight milimetres in diameter, narrow, definitely there. I draw in a breath; then, gripping it, I tear the tube from the frame.

  I step back and open my hand. There, on my palm, is a glass vial containing something I cannot ever fail to recognise. I blink, shake my head, but when I look again, it is still there.

  Blood.

  Chapter 25

  I grab the wastepaper basket and vomit into it.

  Harry crouches down. ‘Breathe,’ he says. ‘Breathe.’

  But my focus is shot, my whole world crumbling in front of me, an earthquake, a seismic shift. ‘I am the test child,’ I say, lifting my head. ‘I am the fucking test child. Me. All my life. An MI5 test freak.’ A scream rips from my throat and sick drips from my mouth, my nose. Harry hands me a tissue, but I push it back, standing, swaying as I do. ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’

  I grab at my hair, clutch it, scrape my fingers across my scalp over and over. The sheer scope of what we have discovered, of what we have just read is already putrid in my mind, rotting it, filling it with disease, decay. The reason I can decode encrypted patterns, the reason I can ascertain how to hack, read algorithms—it is all to do with the Project. Is all to do with the conditioning they put me through, conditioning I have never even been aware of because they used drugs on me, unlicensed drugs.

  Test child. I repeat the phrase more and more: test child, test child, test child. My body becomes rigid, immovable. The words on the screen swim in front of my eyes, real words, written down, documented evidence of who I am, of what I am. How could I not know? How could I not know?

  ‘Come on, Maria,’ Harry says, ‘let’s get you sat down elsewhere.’

  His hand touches my shoulders and I fly at him. ‘Leave me alone!’ I scream, stumbling, running immediately to the shelves, to the textbooks of words and facts, all jeering me, and I look at them and I think: do they all contain lies, too? Do they? Is everything I have ever believed in, ever held true all just one blanket deception? ‘Who am I?’ I yell at the shelves, deranged, out of control. ‘Who the fuck am I?’

  And then I grab one book then another and another, flinging them to the floor, my eyes blurred, my throat red raw, blood pounding in my neck.

  ‘Maria, stop!’ Balthus shouts, but I ignore him, my body feeling as if it is not here, as if I am an illusion, a hologram, that if an arm was waved through me, static would crackle and I would completely disappear.

  I can hear the two men near me now and, like keys being taken out of the ignition, it stalls me a little, energy seeping out of me, deflated, over.

  ‘Maria, look at me.’ Harry, he is by me now, I can smell him. I try to look at him but my eyes cannot escape the textbooks, the words. The acres upon acres of lies.

  ‘Maria,’ Harry says again and this time, whether it is the scent of cigars from him or the heat of his body, I soften, thinking of my papa, of how he discovered some of this. And then I realise something.

  I look at Harry. ‘Do you think the Project will kill me? Bobbie says they will kill me, that MI5 will kill me.’

  ‘You’ve had a big shock,’ Harry says. ‘Come and sit down.’

  ‘No!’ My eyes fly to his. ‘What about you both?’ I gulp down air as if it’s the last pocket of oxygen left in the world. ‘This Project conditions people with Asperger’s to fight terrorism. Terrorism! Computers, secrets, codes…’ I stop breathing for a second, momentarily paralysed by the fact that Father Reznik—his codes, the problem solving he gave me all through my childhood, right up until university—that was all part of the conditioning. I shriek, slap my hand to my mouth. What if they were not games or tests but actual tasks, operations to help catch people. Kill people? I make myself look at Balthus.

  ‘If…if MI5 can go after me, they can go after you. This Project is secret for a reason. They could even kill Mama and Ramon.’ I shake my head. ‘They mustn’t know that you know. It can only come from me. Because that’s who this is all about: me.’

  ‘But, Maria, why do they want to kill you?’ Balthus says. His question floors me. I look at him now, standing strong and solid in the middle of the office. ‘If it is you who has worked for them,’ he continues, ‘you who’s the prime conditioning subject, why would they want rid of you? Why now? It doesn’t make sense.’

  I stay still, the question blinding me, muffling any response, like a bag over my head. He’s right. It makes no sense. To train me then kill me. What has happened to change it all?

  ‘Come sit over here now,’ Harry says.

  I blink at him, let him guide me to the chairs by the desk, my legs giving up on me, my brain shot, torn, blown to oblivion. Balthus offers me water and I take it, but the glass shakes in my hand. I set it down and look to the window. Dark clouds, a patter of rain.

  ‘Who am I?’ I say, staring blankly at the rain, at the window, the world. I turn back to Harry, a crack cutting through my voice. ‘Who am I?’

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ he says. ‘Come here.’

  And he pulls me into him and, for the first time in so long, I let somebody comfort me.

  ‘That’s my phone.’

  Harry stands and searches for his bleeping cell. He has been sitting with me, his arms around me, and I have let it happen, let another human being comfort me. The last person I allowed to do that was my papa.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Balthus asks as Harry speaks in whispers in the corner.

  But I am unable to describe feelings to him, to anyone. It is hard to believe it is true, what we have discovered. I thought I knew who I was: I was wrong.

  ‘The one thing I don’t understand,’ Balthus says now, ‘is why you?’ He trails away, slowly sitting back. He slides one hand over his mouth, rubs it, places it in a fist on the table. I watch him and I think how one small fact can alter things forever, can merge one face to another—Father Reznik’s and Father O’Donnell’s. Father O’Donnell. I hold my breath as I realise. His name, I have acknowledged the priest’s name for the first time since his death. It dislodges me, this fact, whips the ground from beneath me and I open my mouth with horror. Because I question something now, something I may have, in the very abyss of my mind, feared for so long: did I kill him?

  I dart my eyes to the floor, foot tapping, banging. What if it was me? If I close my eyes, more and more now I find that the faces of the two priests merge together until I don’t know one from the other, the good or the bad. Two sides of the same coin. And I am scared. Because, if this Project could do what they have to me since childhood, if they could condition me to decipher codes and catch cyber terrorists all without me knowing, make me trust people who turned out to be handlers, then what else am I capable of? What else have I done without my knowledge?

  ‘Balthus,’ Harry shouts.

  We look at him. ‘What?’

  Harry rubs his head, his cell by his side. ‘They pushed it through.’

  ‘What? Pushed what through?’

  Harry walks over. ‘The hearing, Maria’s appeal. A date’s been set. Already. That was the List Office. Full court appeal hearing, Royal Courts of Justice.’

  ‘When?’ I ask.

  ‘This week.’

  ‘But…’ I stop, all of it going too fast. So much spinning past me. ‘It’s too quick.’

&
nbsp; Harry nods.

  ‘But why?’ I say, blinking. ‘Why is it so soon?’

  ‘Could it be down to this Project?’ Balthus says. ‘Harry, do you think they could have fast-tracked it?’

  Harry sighs, scratches his cheek. ‘I don’t know. I mean, this is highly unusual, to be so fast, so yes, maybe, yes.’

  ‘But why?’ Balthus says. ‘Why would they get involved in the appeal? Why now?’

  And that is the question that hangs in the air. If the Project are pushing my appeal hearing through, why?

  Because everything happens for a reason. So what is theirs?

  Chapter 26

  The next few days pass in a blur.

  I tell Patricia everything, watch as Michaela Croft is dragged away, kicking, screaming, to solitary, Balthus supervising it all, his dark eyes narrow, his height, torso dominating every space. Dr Andersson has gone—all traces of her erased in one click, like she was never here—but still I spend each night caught in a web of dreams and nightmares, each one worse than before, a rolling screen of Rubik’s cubes, of vestries and faces and knives and endless computer tests. I am convinced now, more than ever, that maybe I was complicit in Father O’Donnell’s death, that maybe I was told to do it, under the influence, perhaps, of some drug or other. When I awake, I tell myself that it is all nonsense, that I can’t have been drugged, but then I remember the conditioning programme, my Asperger’s, the secret, hacked documents, and I cry out as my eyes fly open, sticky with troubled sleep, brain ripped apart, recalling that it has all happened. And, as I try to grapple with it, to shut it down, the quiet whisper that I may be a murderer returns over and over like a shadow in the night.

  I am in the yard watching the dust float through the air, the sun glowing on it, changing the colours from dirt brown to pink, when I get the hearing notification, in the end the whole thing rushed through in just one week. As the guard leads me away, Patricia nods, her eyes downturned, her fingers silently spread in a star shape for me on her leg. My knees want to give way, but I won’t let them, won’t let them beat me this time. Them or anyone else that gets in my way.

  Harry is sitting at the table when I enter the interview room. As the door clicks shut, he strides over, opens his arms and hugs me. I let him. I let myself be enveloped by his warmth, like a blanket around me, comforting, safe. I cannot tell him, but I like him. His tobacco scent, his creased-eye smile. He is strong, a calming presence, one that lets me breathe a little easier, smile a little more. It is good for me.

  We pull away, Harry gesturing to a chair. I sit, smoothing down my trousers, the nerves seeping out, the need for routine and repetition in the face of change overwhelming. Because I am here for one thing. One thing that I can barely think of. One thing that I have wanted to hear so badly, yet now that my palm rests on the handle, now I am at the point of opening the door, I am frightened. Because I do not know what is on the other side. Or who.

  ‘The appeal hearing has finished? They have a verdict?’ I ask finally, forcing myself to speak.

  Harry nods, pulls out a file. He withdraws a paper and slides it over to me. My fingers touch it, skimming the surface. I read.

  ‘Is…is this true?’ I say, not looking up. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. All true.’

  And I nod as there, on the page, I read the word: Retrial.

  ‘You’re to be tried for the offence you were originally convicted of,’ he says.

  ‘The murder.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So fast?’ I can hear the height in my voice, the rise. ‘Harry, it is too soon. Do you think—?’

  ‘That the Project has played a hand in it?’ He sighs. ‘I’m beginning to think it is highly likely. It’s very unusual for proceedings to happen so fast.’

  The Project, the conditioning, their intentions towards me if I get out. The doubt, the hazy uncertainty of my actions pulse in me, like a boil ready to burst. Father O’Donnell was nice to me, and he died. Papa was nice to me, and he died. I glance down at my hands, at my fingers, aware of their weight, aware of what they can do, what they can hold. A person’s neck. A car engine component. A sharp knife.

  ‘I have an expert witness lined up for the DNA evidence now.’

  I shove my hands beneath the table, clear my throat. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. A very experienced pathologist.’

  ‘Do you believe that will work against the prosecution?’

  ‘I do. And the DVD store owner, a witness who placed you at the scene. Do you remember him from the first trial?’

  ‘Yes.’ But I do not, not entirely. I dig my nails into my legs, cross at myself.

  ‘Something’s not quite right about him. I have my team working on him back in chambers. Everyone has a past, everyone has a secret—we just need to find out what his is.’

  Harry pulls out some more papers, and I watch him, his movements, his fingers on the pen. We are here together now, the two of us witnesses to each other’s presence, and then, I realise, that is my biggest problem. ‘What about my alibi?’

  He sets down his legal paper. ‘Tell me again, Maria, what you were doing at the time of the murder.’

  ‘I was at St James’s Hospital.’

  ‘But it was not your shift?’

  ‘No. My shift finished at twenty hundred hours. I was with the patients in the geriatric ward.’

  ‘But there was never any CCTV of that, nothing ever recovered.’

  ‘But there should have been. There were cameras, I know there were.’

  He taps his pen. ‘Okay, tell me again, why were you with the elderly patients?’

  ‘I wanted to learn from them.’ I pause. ‘I used them to learn emotions. I studied their expressions. And they were…nice to me.’

  Harry tilts his head. ‘Oh, Maria.’

  I manage a small smile, the warmth of him reaching me even here, on the opposite side of the table.

  ‘It’s all going to be okay you know,’ Harry says after a moment.

  I look at him. ‘I used to think so, but I do not know any more.’

  We sit in silence, the clock on the wall pulsing out a feeble, intermittent tick, as if at any point soon everything inside it, everything that makes it work, makes it track time, is going to give up and die.

  ‘Time keeps moving,’ I say aloud, my eyes on the clock, vision blurred, out of focus.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Harry says.

  I turn to him. ‘What?’

  ‘The timing of your retrial date,’ he says, pausing, pressing his lips together. ‘It seems the Project may have had an input in that, too.’

  I go very still. ‘When is it?’ When he does not respond immediately, I slam my palm on the table. ‘Harry, when is it?’

  ‘Two weeks’ time,’ he says. ‘Two weeks.’

  I am standing with my back against the wall when Kurt returns. I have made no attempt to hide the torn picture, the cell phone still lying on the floor. It is evidence, clear evidence that something is not right, not normal or solid. I squeeze the vial of blood in my fist.

  Kurt halts when he sees me. ‘What’s going on, Maria?’

  The door is still open. I look at it. Kurt follows my eyeline; he shuts the door. And locks it.

  He begins to walk towards me. For some reason, he seems different. Robotic, almost. I step back.

  ‘I found the vial,’ I say.

  ‘There is no vial,’ he replies, striding to me.

  ‘No! I have it. You can’t mess with me any more!’

  I hold the glass tight, but he is almost standing in front of me now, so I blurt, ‘I know about Callidus, about the conditioning programme.’

  Kurt halts. ‘What?’

  I sway a little, my pulse tearing through me. ‘I know my father found some documents about me, about tests carried out on me in Britain.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘I saw it all,’ I say, feverish, fast, ‘a secret document.’ I tell him all of it, everything we saw in Balthus’s office
. ‘And now you are here, pretending to be my therapist, but you are just one of them! A handler, MI5, part of the Project. Tell me it’s true,’ I spit. ‘Tell me!’

  Kurt tilts his head, delivers me one, languid smile. A shiver runs down my back. ‘Maria, I don’t know what you are talking about, but you are worrying me.’ He glances to the picture frame. ‘Look at what you have done. You are increasingly losing contact with reality. You mentioned Dr Andersson—well, in my professional opinion, her diagnosis of schizophrenia was correct. You are hostile, suspicious. Callidus? It’s just a word.’ He takes one step towards me. ‘You need to stay under my care.’

  ‘People have been tested on,’ I blurt. ‘I have been tested on. I have seen the document. They have been using me to experiment on. Ask Balthus. Ask Harry Warren. They will both verify what I saw—what we saw.’ I feel for the wall behind me.

  A tiny tut. ‘But, Maria, I have already spoken with both Harry and Balthus. They have no idea what you are talking about. In fact, they paint another picture entirely—of a delusional inmate, turning up unannounced at the Governor’s office several times a day; of a woman for whom reality is a distant dream and an unwelcome nightmare…’

  ‘What? No. That didn’t—’

  ‘You pestered the Governor each day with a new, crackpot theory about who was after you, who was protecting you. You even brought your own family into it, claiming they were in danger. Governor Ochoa has told me everything.’

  I shake my head. ‘No. No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But…but we found the web page. My notebook, the codes, the algorithm from Bobbie Reynolds. We saw the eyes-only data. I hacked into it all. Harry and Balthus—they both saw it, too.’

  ‘They were just humouring you, Maria, playing along. Why do you think you needed so many appointments with Dr Andersson? Why do you think she had to take blood samples? You were unstable.’