Subject 375

She narrows her eyes at me. I go still again. ‘What is it with you, hey? Why do you always sound like a fucking robot? You don’t say much. And then when you do…’ She throws up a hand. ‘You just sit there, still as a bloody wall.’ She stands. Her face is suddenly flushed, contorted, and she stalks towards me, rolls her thick, tattooed shoulders. ‘Who are you, hey?’

I cannot help it. The words tumble out. ‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. Have you already forgotten?’ I try to smile, maybe that will help. It doesn’t.

Her eyes go wide like two marbles in her head, two perfect storms.

I try something else. ‘You asked me my name. I wondered if perhaps you had temporary memory loss. Prison could do that.’ I try a laugh, that’s what people sometimes do. A bit of teeth.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

I scan my brain. Is she cross? So, I drop the laugh, recall what a concerned face may look like and attempt to replicate that. ‘Women in prison are five times more likely to have mental health issues compared to the general population. In the UK.’

‘What the—’ She wipes spit from her mouth. ‘Are you saying I’m mental?’

‘No, I—’

‘You what? You fucking what?’

She leans forward, then suddenly—before I can move, think, assess—she knocks me to the floor. My notebook flies from my pants and slides out of reach. Panic. Fear. A rocket of blood pressure. My hands reach for the notepad, but Michaela jumps on me with her whole torso. Foul body odour. Clammy skin. Suffocating me. She pins me down, flies fists into my face, raining them down on me like giant hailstones. I try to move my head, tossing it from side to side, try to lift my left arm, legs, feet, hands, but she has me locked, chained by her limbs. Desperate, I feel for my notebook and, to my fleeting relief, manage to grab it as another fist hurtles towards me, but this time, somehow, I roll to the side, knee her hard in the groin. She screams. I scramble, clawing my way across the floor, but then she seizes me again, flings me to the wall like her battered prey. The notebook spins away and out of sight.

Michaela stops, her shoulders heaving, chest lurching. Thinking she will hit me again, I crouch, gulp in air. Blood trickles down my forehead.

‘You should watch your mouth,’ she says, her breathing hard, heavy.

My ribs throb. I wince. Two, maybe three, are broken.

‘You gone fucking mute? Say something.’

Boots. The sound of guards’ boots on the walkway.

Michaela looks to the door then takes one step forward. Then another.

I raise my hands over my head, fingers trembling.

‘You need to stay where you are, Martinez,’ Michaela says, her voice barely audible. But even in my frightened state, even though I fear she will kill me, I hear it, there, something different about her voice. Her accent. It is Scottish; no longer East London. Scottish.

‘You have to stay in here,’ she says. ‘Stay in Goldmouth. It is vital, understand? We know who you are. You need to stay put. Or Callidus will come knocking. Forget Father Reznik, you hear? Forget he was ever there. You shouldn’t have come looking in the first place. Either of you.’

I spit out some blood. ‘What is Callidus?’ I say through ragged breaths.

She bends down so her face is almost touching mine. ‘Callidus is something that doesn’t exist.’

‘How do you know about Father Reznik?’ But she does not reply. ‘How?’ I yell. ‘What do you mean, “either of us”?’

Inhaling, Michaela steps back and raises her fists. ‘Fucking cunt!’ she yells with one eye on the door. I go rigid. Her accent. The tone of how she now speaks…Her London voice is back. Raw terror explodes inside me, ripping into me, tearing me to pieces. This woman knows we were looking for him, me and the priest. She knows. Yet how? Who is she? I need help. Now, I need…

But Michaela lets out a wild scream, one ear-piercing howl. And before I can respond, before an unfamiliar instinct to launch myself at her can kick in, she punches me clean in the head.

Then: nothing.

‘And did you believe her, this Michaela?’ Kurt says.

Two hours have gone. Lost. How did that happen? I look from the clock to Kurt and realise that I haven’t answered him yet. ‘Yes, I believed her. Why would I not?’

Kurt crosses his legs. ‘You said Michaela mentioned something called Callidus, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I assume you know what it means?’

I scarcely move. My fingers begin to tap furiously on my knee, the phrase, who is he, whipping round my head like a tornado, a lethal storm. Can he be aware of what it really is? What it really stands for? ‘What do you know?’ I finally say, and I am surprised at the venom in my voice, the clench of my jaw.

His eyes are narrowed, pen pointed. ‘Maria, I purely refer to the word, “callidus”. That is all. I simply want to hear if you know its definition.’

I let my shoulders drop. What am I thinking? He only wants a definition. A definition. Do I want him to believe me unhinged? Crazy? Because if I continue to overanalyse every single word he utters, continue to try to decipher every utterance, every social nuance, that’s what could happen. Insanity. I tilt my head, endeavour to adopt a normal smile. ‘Callidus is a Latin word. It means clever, dextrous, skilful, cunning.’

He lowers his pen. ‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?’

I rub my forehead, compose myself. I need to remain calm, somehow, stay steady, but it is relentless, all the talk and the words and the endless possibilities of meanings. I breathe in hard then pause. The air. Is it…is it paint? I sniff again to clarify, but I am certain. There is a smell of fresh paint in the room. It is strong and I don’t like it, the fumes contaminating my nostrils, my brain, overriding them with new senses to process. I glance to the ceiling. The cobwebs dangle in the breeze, yet they seem strangely rigid, plastic almost.

Kurt coughs and I look over. He is staring at me now, chin lowered so his eyebrows appear thick, straight yet strangely transparent, liquefied.

‘Maria, do you trust in your recollection of events—of what was said during the incident with Michaela Croft in the cell?’

I hesitate. ‘Yes. I…Of course.’

‘And what about her mentioning Father Reznik?’

He clicks his pen, waits. I am struck by silence. If I tell him what I have discovered, what then? A diagnosis, an incorrect one? Again? Maybe I should tell him portions of what happened, maybe he can advise me. I rub my head one more time then drop my hand. ‘Michaela was not who she said she was.’

‘How do you know that?’

I clasp my hands together, squeeze the fingers. I can do this. ‘This is all private in here, no? Doctor-patient confidentiality applies?’

He nods, sits forward. ‘Yes. Of course.’

I glance to the window, the swell of the curtains sweeping across the side of the room. ‘She was part of MI5,’ I say after a moment, my eyes locked on the curtains.

‘They knew the priest and I were investigating the whereabouts of Father Reznik. The priest discovered that Reznik didn’t exist, not as a name, not as a real person.’ I turn, face him, squeeze my palms to stay calm, tell myself to trust him. I am in therapy, therapy designed to help me. ‘I find myself not knowing if I killed the priest from the convent or if someone else did. I get…’ I pause, take a sip of water. ‘I get confused, sometimes.’

‘Maria,’ Kurt says now, soft, low, ‘you have to remember you were convicted of killing Father O’Donnell—a guilty verdict, prison. And I think the repercussions of the prison environment, for you, may be adding to your sense of…your sense of anxiety, perhaps, your confusion. Prison is a hard place to be. You have been through a lot already.’

‘But you know I am innocent,’ I say. ‘You know what happened in the…in the…’ I stop, a slap of reality hitting me hard. Innocent. Not guilty. The two terms suddenly seem alien, odd, two strangers in the street. I don’t know what I believe any more, what I am capable of. ‘They put Michaela in Goldmouth to keep an eye on me,’ I say now. ‘They put her in there to ensure I said nothing over Father Reznik, about what—who—he really was.’

‘And what is he?’

I hesitate. ‘A retired intelligence officer.’

Kurt shakes his head. ‘Maria, can you hear what you are saying? MI5? A Catholic priest a former intelligence officer? How can all that be? And besides—’ he pinches the bridge of his nose ‘—retired implies no longer active, no longer working.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

He inhales, taps his pen. ‘I believe that you believe it. I believe that you have been through a very traumatic process for someone like you. It is common for people in your position to…fabricate stories. To merge fact with fiction to create your own storyboard. It could be a way of the brain protecting itself from reality.’

He thinks I am making it up. My eyes dart left and right around the room, at my hands, my legs, my feet. ‘This is not fiction,’ I say, quietly. ‘It is the truth.’

But he says nothing. Instead, I simply hear the click of his pen as he writes some notes. I rub my eyes. I cannot handle this, cannot cope with the feelings coursing through me.

The scent of paint is in my nostrils now. It is too much. Standing, I trail my fingers along my bag strap and walk to the window. I stop, hoist it up, longing for air, for a mouthful of freedom. Sunshine blasts in through the bars and hits my face. I inhale. I miss Salamanca. Sometimes I find myself thinking of my childhood home in Spain. Papa with the newspaper on his lap, oranges and lemons fat and ripe in the groves beyond. My brother, Ramon, and I running, shouting. Brown limbs. My calculator in my pocket. My brother crying when I broke his arm by accident. Papa negotiating a settlement between us. Always the lawyer. Mama cradling her Ramon, screaming at me to fetch the doctor, then apologising later for her anger, an anger that I never fully understood.

‘Maria, I would like you to sit down now.’

I turn. Kurt is clutching a cup of coffee. I do not recall it being delivered. I return to my seat. Kurt taps his Dictaphone.

‘We’ll explore your compromised memory later. But for now, tell me what happened when you were taken to the infirmary, following the incident with Michaela Croft. You came across a newspaper article…Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ I reply. Kurt smiles like the sun. I press my lips together. Thinking about my barrister, about what he did to help me—it is hard. ‘The article concerned a QC in London,’ I say finally. ‘He’d recently won an appeal case. The appeal was thought to be futile, yet he was successful in overturning the original verdict.’

My throat is dry. I reach for the coffee.

‘And this QC,’ Kurt says, ‘did you think he might be useful for an appeal?’

I sip. ‘Yes.’

‘And he contested the original DNA evidence, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but—’ I see something. Up there. Another cobweb on the ceiling. I clutch the cup tight. Kurt mentioned a compromised memory. Is that what I am experiencing? Is that what his therapy is uncovering, following the trauma? And so is the cobweb just part of my imagination?

‘The QC’s name was Harry Warren. Correct?’

The cobweb. It looks like the lace headdress my mother would often wear to church for mass or to visit Father Reznik.

‘Maria? Did you hear me?’

‘Pardon? Oh, I wrote it down,’ I say, focusing again. I place my cup on the table and slip my notebook from my bag. ‘It is all in here.’

He eyes the writing pad, his gaze probing the cover. ‘Could you read it, please?’

I open the page, scan the codes, algorithms, procedures, muddled memories, dreams, until I reach the correct date entry. It takes all my concentration not to check if the cobwebs are real.

I am in the hospital wing hooked up to an IV drip.

There is bandaging on my torso. I have three broken ribs, two lacerations to my right arm and one to my left. My eyes are bruised and my nose is swollen. CT scans have been done: no bleeding on the brain; my right cheekbone is chipped; my knuckles are scraped. I feel drained, worn out, no energy left in me, no fight, no strength.

Michaela was in segregation, and now she is in solitary. Following a brief disciplinary hearing, she will remain there for two weeks. Her punishment. Governor Ochoa informed me himself. Twice he has visited me, sitting, watching. I do not know why. He does not say much, just blinks. Not a lot you can say to someone who drifts in and out of morphine-induced sleep. They have tried to quiz me about the beating, about what Michaela did, but events are hazy, a blur of words and images, nothing concrete, nothing I can grasp on to. She must have hit my head harder than I thought.

I reach out, pick up a newspaper. Pain shoots down my arm. I flop back and exhale. The hospital wing is bright and rest is impossible, so I have taken to reading periodicals. They keep me alert. Yesterday, my legal counsel again refused to support my application for appeal and while I pleaded with them, while I begged them to help me, still they refused. Despite the Governor saying he would help, I do not know what I am going to do. I do not know anyone in this country. I have no friends here, no life. The appeal application deadline is fast approaching.

It is on page five of The Times that I see it. An article. A QC has secured a famous chef his freedom after he was found guilty of murdering his sous chef. New evidence. Following a lengthy trial, the conviction was overturned.

Overturned. I scan for the QC’s name.

Harry Warren.

Could this be it? My new counsel? Could he help me? There is a photograph of him next to the article. I study it: black skin, wide smile, round stomach. Good-looking, once. A man of money and paid help.

Metal clatters to my right. I glance up. A bedpan has been knocked to the floor.

I return my eyes to The Times and look closer. The man looks familiar, yet how can that be? To the right of the page there is a short biography. It says he is married, two grown-up children: twins. His wife is a solicitor. They are both fifty-eight, both charitable figures. But all that to me is irrelevant, because, to arrange an appointment with him, what I really want is right there, at the bottom.

His office: Brior’s Gate Chambers.

Which means Mr Warren works here. In London.

Chapter 7

Five days in the hospital wing and now I am out.

The guard links my arm like a crutch as I hobble to my cell. Inmates stare and whisper. No one comes near me, a leper, a marked woman, strange, weird. I hold my head up as much as I can as I shuffle forward, but inside I am lonely, sad, completely desolate.

I enter the cell to find that I have a new cellmate. Her name, the guard says, is Patricia. She is moving around the cell now as I sit on my bed and touch the Bible, the new hiding place for my notebook, tucked behind the cover. Thankfully, prison is not a place where people read scripture. There’s no room for God here.

‘Hello?’

This new person is standing before me. Her hair is shorn, fuzzy against her scalp like the blood-soaked fluff of a newborn chick.

‘Patricia O’Hanlon,’ she says, holding out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

I blink at her fingers.

‘Well, go on then. You’re supposed to take it.’

I shake her hand up and down five times, but my grip must have been too tight, because when I let go, she gives her arm a rub.

‘Jesus, you’ve got some muscles on you there.’

Curious, I study her arm in lieu of a reply. On her wrist there are two small tattoos. One is of a blackbird. The other is of the Virgin Mary. She is the only person I have seen with a virgin on their arm. Her body, when it moves, is lithe, like a piece of wire, and her head almost skims the ceiling. The last time I saw someone that tall they were playing basketball.

I bend forward to get a better look.

‘Whoa,’ she says, before taking a step back. ‘Getting a bit close there.’

‘Patricia,’ I say, stepping back. ‘It is the female form of Patrick. Patrick means “nobleman”.’

She pauses for a second then smiles. There is a gap where a tooth should be, her cheeks sit buoyant and bobbing on her face like two ripe red apples, and when I sniff her, a scent drifts out. It reminds me of soft towels, warm baths, talcum powder.

‘Your accent’s not English,’ she says. ‘Where you from?’

‘Salamanca. Spain. I am Dr Maria Martinez.’ A wave of exhaustion hits me. I rub my ribs.

‘I heard, by the way,’ she says.

I wince. ‘Heard what?’

‘S’all right. I know about that Croft woman. Word gets round.’ She runs a palm over her scalp.

I step straight back, a flicker of a memory in my head. ‘What do you know? What?’

‘Whoa! Calm down a little.’

I remember something now from the beating, something to do with accents and Father Reznik, but the memory is still smudged, unclear. I shake my head, try to nudge it out.

‘You okay?’

I gulp, focus. My breathing is heavy, my fists tight, cemented to my side. I sense Patricia moving slightly to the side, her head tilted. I make myself look at her and see that she is smiling, eyes crinkled, shoulders soft, hands loose. Will she hurt me, too? I look at her hands again. No fists.

‘So,’ she says, ‘you’re a handy woman to have around, Doc. Can I call you Doc?’

‘My name is Maria.’

‘I know. But would you mind if I call you Doc?’

I think about this. ‘It is okay.’

Patricia picks up a small duffel bag and begins to unpack. There is a toothbrush, toothpaste, toilet roll, two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts and six pairs of thick walking socks, too warm for prison. The last item she pulls out is a small family photograph in a cardboard frame. No glass allowed.

A buzzer sounds. ‘Ah, that’ll be lunch, then,’ Patricia says. She sets down the picture. ‘Come on, you need to eat.’

I stare, unmoving, still uncertain as to her intentions, still uneasy. ‘You’ll never survive here in one piece if you don’t eat.’

My eye sockets are beginning to throb and when I lift my arms they feel heavy, dead like two lumps of decaying meat. I ache all over. I want to go home. I want to stop time, or at least roll it back. And the canteen. Lunchtime. All those people, those sounds, smells, colours. I do not know how much of this I can take or for how long.

Patricia walks over to me. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘It’s all right. You’ll be fine. I’ll stay with you, okay?’

I glance to my bed. No pictures frame the wall. No family photographs stand on the table.

‘Come on, Doc,’ Patricia says. ‘Everything will be great.’

I am tired of being lonely. Ever since my father died, I have been lonely. The priest saw that in me, but he did what he did and died. Father Reznik left me, too. But, I cannot be on my own forever, can I? My papa had me and I had him. But he is long dead. So now who do I have?

Patricia holds out her hand. ‘Let me help you up, okay?’

I hesitate, then nodding, allow her to link her arm under my shoulder without flinching at her touch too much.

‘That’s the spirit.’

She helps me up and leads me through the door.

And in my brain, in my abnormal, high-functioning, emotionally challenged brain, all I can think of is the word ‘friend.’

I think I may have found a friend.

‘How would you define the word “friend”, Maria?’

Kurt has been asking non-stop questions. He has not moved. He has not once appeared to even breathe. It is exhausting. I need a break, but none are allowed. All part of the therapy technique, I am told.

I tap my foot. ‘Why do you ask this question?’

‘Because I want to know what you understand.’

‘Friend means companion—it is someone with whom you have a non-sexual relationship.’

Kurt keeps his eyes fixed on my face, my mouth, my cheeks, almost swallowing me like a cool drink. ‘A dictionary definition,’ he says finally. He puts his head straight and writes on his notepad. ‘And she was your first friend, this Patricia?’

‘Yes.’

He looks up. ‘Really?’

I place my hand on my throat. Talking about Patricia causes my chest to tighten, my eyes pool. She was my friend, Patricia, my friend, and I do not have too many of those.

‘You had no other—’ he pauses ‘—companions when you were growing up? When you were at work?’

‘No. Other than Father Reznik, no.’

‘Why?’

The reason. The reason is me. I am why I have had no friends. No one wants to be friends with a social freak, the outcast, the pariah. ‘People do not understand me,’ I decide to say.

‘People do not understand you?’ He shakes his head. ‘By saying that, you do realise, don’t you, that you are implying it is the fault of others, not yours, that people are not your friends?’

‘No. I am not implying—’

He holds up a hand. ‘Would you say that you are the type of person who does not take responsibility for their own actions?’

The dread in my stomach is rising again. Kurt seems to be leaning closer to me. Just one or two centimetres, but I sense it.

‘Maria? I would like you to answer my question.’

‘I take responsibility for my actions. And I do not like your questions.’

He sits back. ‘Okay.’ He taps his pen. ‘Answer me this: what was it about Patricia that made her your friend?’

I glance down to my hands. ‘She used to touch me. If I was distressed, Patricia would lay her hands in front of mine so our fingertips touched.’

I press my palms into my thighs. ‘She understood me,’ I say. ‘She accepted me. I did not have to explain anything. I did not have to speak. She would just lay her hand in front of mine.’

Kurt coughs. When I raise my head, he is staring. A breeze blows in and lifts the cobwebs in the corner, making them float up and down like a dance, a tease. For the first time, Kurt’s eyes flicker to where they dangle, but I don’t know if he sees them as I do. He does not look at me. Does not speak.

‘There are no spiders on the cobwebs,’ I say.

‘You think you can see cobwebs?’ He picks up his Dictaphone. ‘Spiders can be dangerous.’

‘I can see them,’ I say. ‘I can.’ I glance back to the ceiling, and that is when the thought strikes me: if this room has been freshly painted, why are there cobwebs in the corner?

Each morning we awake. After I transcribe my dreams to my notepad, record any new codes that have appeared in my head, I use the toilet, then Patricia does the same. We clean our teeth, yawn and splash water on our faces. Patricia brushes her scalp, I comb my hair. Once dressed, Patricia collects the post. It is the nearest I have come here to establishing a routine; the nearest I have come to being myself. I feel better than I have done in weeks, not happy, but altered, say, like a petal in the wind, not attached to the flower it belongs to, but at least able to experience what it is to float in the air.

Today, Patricia returns dangling a white envelope.

I look up. ‘I have informed you already I do not want a pen pal.’

‘This isn’t a pen pal, Doc.’ She holds out the letter. An unmistakable blue embossment is stamped on the underside.

Patricia thrusts it to me. ‘It’s from—’

‘My mother.’

I take the envelope and immediately my hands betray me, wobbling, slippery. I steady myself as much as I can and study the paper. Green ink. Mont Blanc fountain pen. Only the best for Mother. My pulse speeds up. It is a long time since I have heard any word from home, since I have spoken to Mama, to my brother, my prison sentence breaking them, rendering them mute, the two of them blinking in the sunlight, shielding their eyes, knowing with me there is a storm on its way and that the clouds will always be black.

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