The only people she ever really got to see while she was in isolation were the same two officers she had seen on her first two days on the regular wing of the prison: Mathilda and Aidan. They were both given the boring task of seeing to the lone prisoner as punishment because her attack was deemed their fault. The Governor blamed new recruit Aidan for the attack happening on his watch. But he mostly blamed Mathilda, because she was Aidan’s line manager and was supposed to be still training him in. The whole incident was embarrassing for Aidan, though he got over it as time passed. He liked the job of looking after Joy in isolation because it left him with no real mistakes to make. He’d escort her to the yard a few times a day and they’d often sit and talk. He and Mathilda shared eight-hour shifts looking after Joy. Though Mathilda didn’t speak much during her shifts, well, certainly not on any personal level. She upgraded her usual stern muteness to a ‘Good morning’ or an odd ‘How are you?’ over the months, but the smallest of small talk was about as big as it ever got between the pair of them. Whereas by now Joy had known that Aidan had become a prisoner officer even though his real passion lay in catering and cooking. And he knew that she cheated during her Leaving Cert exams by sneaking notes into the classroom. That was the depth of discussion they had bonded over during those months. She would plead with him to believe her innocence whenever the topic of her sentence arose. But it rarely did, in truth.
It was starting to infuriate Joy that Shay had yet to visit her. Though she could somewhat understand his hesitations. She had spoken to him on the phone, on her first day in isolation after she had been attacked, but she knew by his tone that, although sympathetic and sincere, he was still uncertain and unwilling to commit to her claims of innocence.
The other phone calls she made were reserved for her father. He was a full-time resident in Muckross – a care home for the vulnerable that was situated on the Dublin border. Noel Lansbury was the youngest full-time resident in that home by far, but he took his wife’s painfully slow death in the middle of her life so bad that he lost all sense of belonging and began seeking semblances of solace in alcohol. Bottles of it. And then, in the midst of his own depression while slipping into alcoholism, his grandsons went missing two years before his daughter was arrested for their murder. He sunk so low that he was offered a room at Muckross, even though it is essentially a home for elderly folk. The move has worked for him in some respects, though – he has been sober for the past eighteen months anyway. But his life as he had known it has well and truly ended. He didn’t make it to Joy’s trial, couldn’t bring himself to. And despite pleading with his daughter over the phone that he genuinely believed her version of events, Joy has never been quite sure what his true thoughts are.
‘Well, if it isn’t Annie… “It’s a hard knock life, fo’ us”,’ a Texan-Nigerian accent attempted to sing. Joy looked up through her curls to see Christy smiling her yellow teeth at her. ‘Welcome back, sista.’
‘I’m so scared, Christy,’ Joy sobbed immediately. And then Christy grabbed her into a tight embrace, resting her chin atop Joy’s curls.
‘No need to be scared, come here… sit down, girl.’ They entered Joy’s cell and both perched on the side of her thin mattress. ‘I told ya. That chick – Stella – who attacked you, she gone, girl. After her isolation, they packed her off to a’other wing. They was thinkin’ bout sendin’ you to a’other wing, too. But I pleaded with them that I’d look after ya. ’Sides, Nancy Trott put in a good word, too. Said she’ll see to it that her girls don’t go near you again. She says she didn’t put Stella up to attackin’ you, but I don’t know whether to believe a word that bitch says.’
‘But if you don’t believe what she says, amn’t I still a target?’
‘Relax,’ a strange prison officer said, poking her face around Joy’s cell door. ‘The whole wing has been swept clean. You have nothing to worry about. Nobody’s out to hurt you.’
Joy contorted her face at Christy, then whispered, ‘Who’s that?’
‘Oh, she the new screw lookin’ after you. They took that new guy what’s-his-name, off your watch…’
‘Aidan!?’ Joy shouted. And then she flew out of her cell all up in a rage; marching down the steel staircases of Elm House until she reached the officers’ station close to where she had spent the previous four months in isolation. The only person she had struck up any bond with, any relationship with, since she’d been inside was gone. She dropped to her knees outside the officers’ station – her heart genuinely pained. But her cries fell on deaf ears.
‘Don’t worry, sista,’ Christy said, gripping Joy in a tight embrace as a crowd of both prisoners and prison officers gathered around them. ‘I’m yo best friend. Anything you need. Anything you want, Christy’s here… ya hear me?’
Joy sniffled and snotted and coughed and cried… then she looked Christy in the eyes and offered a smile through the stray strands of her frizzy hair.
‘Why are you being nice to me? You don’t even think I’m innocent, do you, Christy? You said you hadn’t worked me out.’
‘Christy works everybody out,’ one of the prisoners shouted. ‘If Christy says you’re guilty, you’re guilty. If she says you’re innocent, you’re innocent.’
Some prisoners scoffed and jeered.
‘It’s true. God speaks to her,’ another prisoner shouted. ‘You want the truth, Christy Jabefemi will give you the truth.’
For most of the crowd, the drama was over, and they dispersed, content to allow Joy to be sucked into the delusional bible-bashing clique if she so wished.
‘Well,’ Joy said, wiping at her face. ‘Have you worked me out yet… do you believe I’m innocent?’
Christy laughed, then took Joy in for another hug, kissing her on top of her curls.
‘I haven’t seen a vision for you yet, girl… but if you want, and when you want, I’m happy to give it a try. Just lemme know when yo ready.’
2,859 days ago…
It didn’t take Joy long to let Christy know she was ready.
‘I want you to believe me… to believe I’m innocent. I need somebody to,’ she pleaded.
Since Joy had been in isolation, Christy had won over a small number of prisoners by conducting mind readings and telling fortunes. She had surprised even the most sceptical in the prison with a number of nailed-on predictions. She had even predicted that Joy would be attacked the day before she was actually attacked. She said that’s why she was befriending her, because she got a sign from God that Joy needed protecting. Then Christy predicted that some famous public figure would die soon which just so happened to be the night before Whitney Houston took her own life. There was also the time she predicted that Michelle Doherty – a heavily tattooed prisoner in Elm House – would get her love life back on track soon. And lo and behold, two weeks later Michelle’s ex-boyfriend Darren visited the prison for the first time in over a year to declare his undying love for her – telling her he wanted them to move in together as soon as she got out.
The cult of Christy was small, but it was growing pretty much week on week, though only because it was a case of either teaming up with the deluded following of insane-but-placid Christy Jabefemi, or teaming up with Nancy Trott and her cohorts of untrustworthy scumbag criminals.
It was no surprise that all of Christy’s recently-recruited associates were in attendance to watch her grip both of Joy’s wrists across one of the dining room benches, but it was a surprise that Nancy and her gang of cohorts had also joined in. Although Christy’s gifts had been put to the test plenty of times before – to some shocking successes and some embarrassing misses – trying to get a read on the most notorious prisoner in the country was being deemed as the ultimate test of sorts. Even prison officers who had, in the secure confines of the prison officers’ headquarters, snorted at Christy’s claims of being able to see visions, joined the growing crowd in the dining room.
‘You are really, deeply, sad.’ Christy said.
Then she let go of o
ne of Joy’s wrists to hold a hand towards the crowd in an attempt to stifle the sniggers that had already ignited.
‘No shit,’ one prisoner shouted, and the laughter grew in volume.
‘I mean, deeply sad. I can tell you certainly believe you are innocent.’
Another jeer went up, but it was silenced by the shushing that hissed through pockets of the crowd.
‘You lived a happy life. In Rathfarnham. You married well. You had two boys. You were really happy. Actually… hold on… your husband was a real success story, wasn’t he?’
‘Ah here, for fuck sake, can you tell us something my nanny Margaret couldn’t fuckin’ tell us?’ one prisoner snidely snapped. And then an eruption of laughter suffocated the eerie tension that had struck up as soon as Christy had sat down to grab at Joy’s wrists.
Eventually, those who were desperate to listen, shushed down the jeers, to the point where only the crashing and clanking of the pots and pans in the kitchen could be heard in the distance.
‘You are a Capricorn, my visions are telling me, that right?’
Joy nodded once, her eyes widening.
‘Cudda read Joy’s date of birth in the papers,’ one prisoner whispered to another.
‘Well, do you know Joy’s date of birth?’ the other prisoner responded. Then they both just shrugged their shoulders at each other, and zoned back in.
‘And you are an only child, that right, Joy?’
‘Uh-huh?’ Joy said, the frown on her forehead creasing further.
‘And I can tell that you always wanted a career… you were ambitious, right? Until you got married and then you became a housewife… a mother?’
Joy nodded again, and as she did she noticed eyes shifting from side-to-side in the crowd behind Christy.
‘Oh… I’ve got it. I’ve got it!’ Christy said, her Nigerian accent taking over, her volume rising. ‘The woman in the pink hooded top… I can see her… I see her.’
There were puffs of laughter produced from pockets of the crowd, but nobody was walking away, not yet anyway. ‘And the figure is walking. Walking down the mountains. Her hands are dirty… her fingernails are dirty. I can’t see her face. Just the hood. But I am running towards her.’
More jeering fired up. More shushing stemmed it.
‘Wait… wait… I’m catching up with her,’ Christy said, her breaths growing in sharpness as she gripped Joy’s wrists tighter. ‘Come here you. Come here you.’ She released her grip from Joy, stretched her hand out to grab at nothing and then yanked herself backwards.
‘Turn around bitch. Turn around!’
Slam!
Christy slapped her hand on to the bench. And the whole dining room fell silent. Then she opened her eyes. Wide; so wide, Joy could see the blood rings around both the top and bottom of her eyeballs.
‘Was it her? Was it Joy?’ a voice from the crowd asked.
‘Did she do it? Did she murder her boys?’
Christy slapped her hand to the bench once more.
‘You didn’t do it. It wasn’t you under that pink hood.’
A yell of hurrays went up – a few in support of Christy’s gift, most mocking – before the crowd disbursed, shaking their heads either in astonishment or in laughter. But some stayed, either to touch Christy in her moment of enlightenment, or to embrace Joy in solidarity.
‘Must be awful what you’ve been through,’ one prisoner, whose face Joy hadn’t seen before, whispered into her ear.
2,858 days ago…
Joy had been tossing and turning on her bed during the two nights she had been back at Elm House. The mattress she had slept on for the four months she was in isolation had been at least two times thicker than the one in her regular cell.
She was still yawning from a lack of sleep, but leapt out of bed as soon as her cell door clicked open. And, with the two officers assigned to her flanked by her sides, she stormed her way across the landing to push open the door of Christy’s cell.
‘Mornin, sista,’ Christy said, looking up from her bible. ‘What can I do ya for?’
Joy stepped inside, leaving the two officers standing by the door.
‘I’ve been tossing and turning all night, Christy… I never asked you yesterday, not with all the excitement that was going on afterwards, but… you say in your vision that you took down the woman’s hood so you could make out her face… to see if it was me or not.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Christy said, placing her bible on her pillow and standing up.
‘Well… you were able to tell everyone it wasn’t me.’
‘Yep. It wasn’t you, Joy. You innocent. You didn’t kill those boys.’
‘Then who did?’ Joy asks, fidgeting with her fingers.
‘Huh?’
‘What did her face look like?’
Christy picked up her plastic bottle and took a large swig from it, swirling the warm water from cheek to cheek. When she finally swallowed, she patted Joy on the shoulder.
‘Let’s go eat some breakfast, huh?’
They sat on the same bench Joy had been attacked on four months prior, but being attacked wasn’t on her mind right now, nor were the two slices of cardboard toast that lay on a plastic plate in front of her.
‘C’mon, Christy. Please. Tell me. What did the face look like?’
‘I told ya, sister… I don’t know the face. I don’t know her. I just know she ain’t you.’
‘Please.’ Joy pressed her two palms together. ‘Just tell me what she looked like.’
‘Listen, I don’t see a full face. Just some features. I just saw enough to know she wasn’t you. She didn’t have big curly hair like you under that pink hood. She had straight hair.’
‘What colour?’ Joy said, her eyes squinting.
‘Brown.’
‘And you say you see features, what kind of features?’
Christy tore a slice of Joy’s toast in two, then curled one-half of it into her mouth and chewed.
‘She had kinda like an oval face. Pale. White. Definitely white. Red lips. Maybe lipstick.’
‘She was wearing lipstick?’
‘Yeah. Think so,’ Christy said. ‘Her lips were all bright red.’
‘Did you see her eye colour?’
‘Brown. I’m sure they were brown.’
Joy gasped, then held a hand to her mouth.
‘What is it, sista,’ Christy said, stopping chewing, ‘you think you know this bitch? You think you know who killed yo boys?’
❖
Delia licks the tip of her thumb, then flicks through the papers whilst the gallery wait in silence. They’d spent over three hours in this courtroom the previous afternoon following the trial’s opening arguments, watching her doing exactly as she is doing now – rifling through paperwork.
‘Now then,’ she finally says, her voice booming through the microphone. And as it does, everybody in the gallery sits a little more upright in their benches.
The new courtrooms inside Dublin’s Criminal Courts contains rows of pews – not unlike a church – in front of which are two benches where the trial lawyers and the defendants sit. Further in front of those two desks, raised higher than any other chair, is where the judge resides, looking down on everybody.
‘Mr Gerd Bracken, can the defence please call their first witness?’
‘We can indeed, Your Honour,’ Bracken says as he stands. ‘The defence calls Mr Philip Grimshaw to the stand.’
A shaven-haired man rises from the gallery and strolls solemnly up the thin aisle of scarlet-red carpet before sitting himself into the witness box adjacent to the judge. After his affirmation is completed, Bracken walks his way to the centre of the courtroom floor and clasps his hands.
‘Thank you for being here today, Mr Grimshaw,’ he says. ‘Can you please state your profession for the court?’
‘Of course,’ Grimshaw says in a thick northern-English accent. ‘I am a dog handler. But a specialist dog handler.’
‘Okay, but it is fair to say,
Mr Grimshaw, that you don’t work for the police in your native country, right? You are a freelance dog handler who has, on occasion, been hired by the police force in the UK, is that correct?’
‘That is correct, yes.’
‘And it is true to say that in early January of 2009, you received a phone call from a detective of An Garda Siochana here in Ireland, requesting your assistance in what was then a missing persons’ case? Two boys, Oscar and Reese Stapleton had gone missing and it was suggested you travel to Dublin to help with the investigation.’
‘It is true to say that, yes.’
‘Now, you testified at Joy Stapleton’s original trial that after spending twenty minutes inside the Stapleton family home, your dog Bunny barked which indicated to you that there was a presence of scents associated with decomposing bodies, correct?’
‘Eh, well, I can’t be certain of the exact words I used. But it should be stated for the record that Bunny made indications, it doesn’t have to be a bark. It may have been a sniff and a long pause. But yeah, Bunny gave me an indication that a decomposing body or bodies had been present in an upstairs bedroom of the Stapleton home.’
‘So, Bunny doesn’t bark… what does he do exactly when he comes across what he thinks are indications to the presence of decomposing bodies?’
‘He stays in or around the area. Then sniffs his nose more forcefully… he might bark. Sometimes he barks.’
‘So, his reactions are inconsistent – sometimes he barks, sometimes he doesn’t?’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘Well then, how do you personally know the difference with any degree of certainty? Does a bark not indicate something different to a non-bark?’
The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy) Page 4