‘Joy has never been measured at that height. Lots of different heights, yes. Likely because of her great big mop of curls. But never five foot and three quarters of an inch.’ Delia holds a fist under her chin as she swivels left and right in her chair. Then she hears footsteps and a familiar one-knuckle rap at her door. Her stomach immediately turns itself over before she can shout ‘Come in, Callum.’
Her son’s eyes squint at her as he enters.
‘Were you okay in court today, Mum?’ he asks. ‘You looked a little… distracted.’
She shakes her head back at him and puffs out a short snort of laughter.
‘I’m fine, dear,’ she replies.
‘Distracted by the hunk in the witness box, huh?’ he says, plonking himself into the seat opposite and giggling.
‘Bit of a cliché, don’t you think? Tall, dark, handsome, thick French accent, all wrapped up in a skinny designer suit,’ she suggests.
‘Well, if that’s what cliché is, let cliché rain down on me any day of the week. And twice on Sundays.’
Callum giggles again, then stops abruptly when he notices his mother stare down at her lap, her face still, her fist to her mouth – just as she had been through most of Dupont’s testimony.
‘Mum… seriously, what’s up with you?’
Delia shakes her head.
‘Was interesting testimony, don’t ya think?’ she says, swallowing back the bile.
‘Certainly was. Though I think Jonathan Ryan crossed well… did his best to undermine Dupont’s credibility.’
‘Did he, though? Did he really undermine him?’ she asks.
‘Made his testimony pretty darn unconvincing, seeing as he hadn’t even measured the suspect herself.’
‘Still… all-in-all, his testim—’
Delia stops as her speakers ping, and a flashing box appears in the top corner of her screen. Without hesitating, she drags her icon towards it and clicks at her mouse.
Return a Guilty verdict and this footage will stay
between us. Deliver not guilty… then this goes everywhere.
‘Mother fuck—' she mutters before stopping herself.
‘Mum!’ Callum says, his brow dipping. ‘What is wrong with you today?’
Light footsteps followed by a knock at the door distracts them.
‘In you come, Aisling,’ Delia calls out.
Aisling enters, offering a friendly smile to Callum.
‘Transcripts,’ she says, handing a small pile of papers across the desk to her boss. ‘Fascinating reading. Considerable testimony today, huh?’
‘What? You think so too?’ Callum says. ‘You sure you girls weren’t just swayed by that neat stubble… or was it the dimple?’
‘Weren’t you?’ Aisling says. ‘Pretty much a turning point in the case in my humble opinion.’
‘Nah,’ Callum says. ‘The turning point, if it’s ever going to come, will come tomorrow. Shay Stapleton takes the stand first thing in the morning, right? If anybody has come up with answers to this mystery over the years it must be him. Poor man must have obsessed about this case non-stop for the twelve years since his boys first went missing.’
‘We’ll see,’ Aisling says, before she sweeps out the door, dragging it shut behind her.
‘I mean, I get that Dupont came with new technology, but really? I thought Jonathan Ryan handled him well,’ Callum says as he watches his mother rifle through the paperwork.
‘You seem to be transfixed on how Ryan handled him,’ Delia says, without looking up. ‘But the gem of his testimony lies in the answers he gave to Bracken’s questions. This is… this is…’ Delia holds her fist to her mouth again and burps loudly into it. Then she bends down and drags the metal bin from under her desk closer to her feet.
‘Mum, Mum,’ Callum cries, standing up and chicaning himself around the desk. He hunkers down beside his bent-over mother and rubs at her back. And as he does so, glass crunches beneath his feet.
‘What the hell?’ He bends down to pick up the smashed photo frame and stares at it. ‘Oh, it’s the one of you, Dad and me,’ he says. ‘When did you break this… how did you break this?’ He leans in closer to his mum, gripping her in a one-armed embrace. ‘What’s wrong, Mum? Tell me. You can tell me.’
He places the photo frame back on the desk, a large V-shape of glass missing from the centre of it, and then purrs a sorrowful look towards his mother. Delia sucks up the dribbles that are threatening to run on to her top lip before she pats her son’s shoulder repeatedly.
‘I know I can tell you anything, son,’ she says, rubbing the ball of one of her palms into her eye. ‘But you are the one person I can’t show this to.’
‘Show?’ Callum asks, his voice all high-pitched.
‘Forget it,’ Delia says, waving him away.
‘Show me what?… Mum?… Mum?’
Delia leans forward, her two elbows on her desk, her hands slapped to her cheeks.
‘Callum… I… we…’ She drops both forearms down onto the desk, then sits back in her chair and begins to wiggle her mouse. ‘We’re being blackmailed.’ She opens up her emails, then reaches out to her computer monitor and tilts it ever so slightly, so that it’s more face on with her son. ‘I don’t know what to do… who to…’ she says, almost sobbing. Then she reaches for her mouse again, clicks on the video link and baulks backwards, wrapping her arms around her head.
Callum inches his nose closer to the screen, and realises the torso on it belongs to him; his penis throbbing, his knuckles wrapped tight around it. He watches himself tugging and grunting. Tugging and grunting.
‘Holy fucking shit!’ he says, turning to his mother. ‘Holy fucking shit. That’s my computer, recording me. My computer! Somebody hacked into my computer. They must have accessed my camera and…’ He covers his mouth with his hand, then stands backwards against the wall of Delia’s office. ‘Who the fuck sent you that?’ he asks.
Delia removes her arms from her head, then clicks at her mouse, bringing up the last email she was sent.
Return a Guilty verdict and this footage will stay between us. Deliver not guilty… then this goes everywhere.
‘Eddie fucking Taunton,’ Callum says. ‘Didn’t you say he wanted a guilty verdict? Mother fucker had somebody hack into my computer, triggered my camera while I was watching porn and… and… well… The dirty, fat, perverted bastard.’
‘Callum, please!’
Delia holds her fingertips to her temple, her stare glaring down at the small pebbles of glass glistening beneath her feet.
‘Well… y’know what… it’s not that bad. It’s not that bad,’ Callum says, kneeling down beside his mother’s chair and staring up at her. He grabs both of her hands. ‘Yes, you are being blackmailed. Yes, somebody hacked into my computer and… yes, it seems we’re in trouble. But we’re not. Not at all. All you have to do is return a guilty verdict. Then this is all over and that video can… go away. Just get on with the trial as if everything is normal… then at the end of it just deliver your guilty verdict.’
‘Even if Joy is innocent?’ Delia asks.
‘Mum… you don’t… no. You don’t think she’s innocent, do you? You’ve never thought she was innocent…’ Callum places a hand either side of his mother’s face and stares up into her eyes. ‘Mum, seriously, talk to me… you don’t think she’s innocent now… do you?’
1,978 days ago…
‘I am innocent,’ Joy said, her hands on her hips, one eyebrow arched to mirror Debbie’s glare. ‘The only reason I’m in this kip is because of that pink hoodie, and that is not my pink hoodie in that CCTV footage.’
‘It could only have been fuckin’ you,’ Debbie snarled.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’
Debbie stepped closer to Joy, and Joy’s heart thudded. Debbie Hart was a new inmate at Elm House, but she had already made her presence felt. She was loud and brash and certainly stocky – as wide as she was tall. Her greying hair was all sha
ven on one side and she had a swirling tattoo on the side of her neck that looked as if it had been designed by a four-year-old. But thankfully, for Joy as well as the other smaller girls in Elm House, Debbie wouldn’t be hanging around for too long. Two months. Max. Inside on a GBH charge. Which is why Joy’s heart was thudding right this minute. Because she knew all too well that Debbie could handle herself. Yet, despite her fear, Joy still couldn’t stand there and listen to a prisoner insist she was guilty of killing her sons. Not to her face. So, she plucked up enough courage to take a step closer to Debbie and held her breath.
‘You’re a fuckin’ child killer,’ Debbie snarled.
‘I am no child kill—’
Before Joy had finished her retort, Debbie shoved her, and the other prisoners gathered around them to watch the fight in as close proximity as they possibly could.
‘That’s enough!’ a voice boomed.
And as it did, the crowd parted to allow Christy to walk through.
Joy was leaning on her forearms on the concrete floor, Debbie hunched over her, her fist balled.
Christy stepped towards them and offered Joy a hand while curling her top lip at Debbie.
‘You wanna pick on someone, pick on someone yo own size. Wanna piece of me, bitch?’
Debbie stared into Christy’s bloodshot eyes, contemplating. Then she broke her stare to glance at Joy before grunting and storming back down the grated landing and towards her cell at the far end of Elm House.
‘What was all that about?’ Christy asked. And as almost everybody in the crowd tried to explain that Debbie had approached Joy for a fight, Joy sulked away, chicaning through the crowd until she found herself back in her own cell. Alone. And crying – sobbing as heavily as she had done the first night she had arrived.
It wasn’t long until Christy had come to her rescue, perched, as she had done countless times over the past two and a half years, on the edge of Joy’s bed, consoling her with words of wisdom that were filled with profanities and verses from the bible that weren’t.
‘You very emotional, sista… you wanna tell me why yo face look like Niagara Falls… and don’t say it’s cos that Debbie Hart bitch be intimidatin’ you. I know you stronger than that.’
Joy sniffed up her tears.
‘Fuck Debbie Hart,’ Joy said. ‘She doesn’t mean anything to me. Besides, she’s gonna be outta here in a matter of weeks. I would’ve fought her, though. I was willing to stand up for myself, even if she did hand me a beating. I’m not gonna just stand there and have somebody call me a child killer to my face.’
Christy dabbed at Joy’s eyes with the sleeve of her sweat top.
‘Then tell me, what else got you all emotional?’
‘I dunno,’ Joy said, lying back onto her bed, her legs hanging over the side. ‘It’s loadsa different things but most of all… I guess… I mean… I don’t know what to tell you, cos I’m embarrassed about it… but a few months back I tried to… I tried to kiss Aidan.’
‘Kiss him?’ Christy’s red eyes widened, and she held a hand to her mouth.
‘I mean… I was a bit… I don’t know. He was just standing there one day, and I was vulnerable and alone and sad. And I just threw my arms around him and… and…’
‘Ah!’ Christy said, ‘That’s why that boy ain’t been around us much these days, huh? He keepin’ his distance from you, ain’t he? That’s why you haven’t been yourself.’
Joy answered by sobbing. So, Christy lay beside her, to hold her in a tight embrace and whisper into her ear, life lessons filled with profanity and bible verses that weren’t.
‘Ah, good. I got the two of you together,’ Mathilda said, interrupting their moment. ‘Stapleton, you’re coming with me. Jabefemi, you’ve an appointment in the Governor’s office.’
‘The Governor’s office… wot I do?’ Christy asked.
Mathilda shrugged her shoulders.
‘How t’hell would I know? Just get your lanky ass up there. Meanwhile, Stapleton, step outside with me.’
‘She didn’t start anything,’ Christy said. ‘Debbie came over to her, pushed her to the ground and then I stepped in and put a stop to it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jabefemi,’ Mathilda said. ‘And I don’t care either. Stapleton, c’mon, let’s go.’
Mathilda led Joy down the steel staircase, across the landing of Elm House and deeper into the bowels of the prison. It had been pretty much close to a year since she was last in this vicinity; when she was being led to a surprise meeting with her husband.
‘Here y’go,’ Mathilda said, stopping outside the exact same yellow door Joy was certain they had stopped outside that time last year.
‘It’s not… it’s not Shay again, is it?’ she asked. And then without saying anything, Mathilda gingerly pushed open the yellow door to show Joy the greying face of her husband.
‘I gotta put these on first,’ Mathilda said, whipping a pair of cuffs from her waistband.
‘Well, well, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ Joy said as she sat across from her husband, chained once again to a loop under the desk. She stared at him, noticing that some of the blue had returned to his eyes. ‘You look good, Shay. How’s the outside world treating you?’
‘Eh…’ he said, leaning forward on the table, ‘I, eh… well, I’m doing good. Better. How about you?’
‘Same as you. Better. I’m getting used to it, aren’t I? But I guess I may as well. Ain’t nobody coming to rescue me, are they? I had to get rid of my last lawyer. Think the creepy prick fancied me or something. He’d turn up all smiles and compliments, but he never did anything. For eighteen months he tried to work around things so he could get me a retrial, but… I’m not sure he was doing anything at all to be honest.’
She shrugged her shoulders, causing her cuffs to clank.
‘So, who’s representing you now?’
‘I haven’t got anybody. Don’t see the point. I’m gonna be here the rest of my life and I guess I’ve just had to come to terms with it.’
Shay thinned his lips at his wife, then he reached a hand across the table and placed it on top of hers. It was the first time they’d touched since the week before Joy’s original trial – just over two and a half years ago.
‘I, eh… I didn’t actually come here to talk about this place.’ He looked around himself. ‘I came here to ask for a divorce.’ Joy was surprised that she was surprised. She had expected this request as soon as she was found guilty, yet Shay had never so much as raised the topic. ‘I, eh… I met somebody else. Jennifer. Jennifer Stevenson. She’s a vet.’
Joy held her eyes closed.
‘How old?’
‘How… sorry? Your first question is how old is my fiancée?’
‘Fiancée?’ Joy threw her arms to the air, but the chains clanked and dragged them back to the desk, causing an echoing racket. Though the shooting pain in her wrists wasn’t as severe as the throbbing pangs in her heart.
‘I had to move on. Course I had to move on. I, eh… I met her last Christmas, at a charity function and we… we hit it off. I asked her a couple of weeks ago to marry me and she said ‘Yes’. So, I, eh…’
‘So, you’ve come to see me to ask me to sign a piece of paper that’ll free you up to marry her?’
‘Well…’ Shay shifted himself uneasily in his chair, ‘I don’t have any papers with me. I am just here to tell you – face to face – that I’m filing for divorce. I’m sorry. I’m so sorr—’
‘You don’t need to apologise,’ Joy said, cutting her husband short. ‘When you have the papers, send them in and I’ll sign ’em. Shay… congratulations. I’m glad you’re happier. Your eyes have turned blue again. Mathilda!’ she shouted, ‘I’m good now. You can take me back to the cell.’
Mathilda pushed the yellow door slightly open and peered through the crack.
‘You have fifty-five more minutes, you two. Might as well make the most of it.’
Joy sighed, then stared across
the cramped desk to look into the eyes she once thought she’d be spending a lifetime getting lost in.
They didn’t talk about much, aside from a quick catch-up, before Shay eventually left. Joy relented and then exaggerated; telling him she was having a hard time of it with the bullies in the prison; that in fact just before he had come to visit her, she had been beaten up. He could well believe her, what with her face swollen from all of the crying she had done earlier.
‘So, there we have it, after all these years, Shay Stapleton finally gonna divorce your ass,’ Mathilda said as she led Joy back around the maze of landings.
‘Mathilda,’ Joy said, stopping. ‘Shut the fuck up and stop listening into my visitations.’ Then she stomped herself all the way back to her cell, like a fourteen-year-old who’d been sent to bed early for misbehaving. But she only stayed in her cell for a matter of minutes; too emotionally drained to be in her own company. She knew what she needed; the calming Texan/Nigerian drawl of her best friend. Her only true friend. The only person who could right her wrongs; who could stop her mind from travelling to the darkest of places. The only person who truly believed she was innocent.
She paced across the landing and pushed at Christy’s cell door, but it wouldn’t budge.
‘Christy. Christy, you in there?’ she said as she slapped her open palms against the door. ‘I need you. I need you. You’re not gonna believe this. Shay wants a divorce. Mother fucker’s getting married again… Christy? Christy?’
She hunkered down, to stare through the boxed gap in the centre of Christy’s cell door. But the cell looked vacant.
‘She’s gone,’ Aidan’s voice echoed. Joy, stunned, spun around and looked up to see him standing on the landing above her, leaning over the rail. ‘Governor came to her about an hour ago, told her her time was up. She’s a free woman now, Joy. Christy’s already back on the streets.’
1,977 days ago…
Linda rubbed at Joy’s legs, but it didn’t seem to be having the calming effect she was aiming for. Joy was still stretched out on her mattress sobbing, just as she had been for almost the entirety of the past twenty-four hours.
The Coincidence (The Trial Trilogy) Page 11