by Nikki Owen
Chapter 36
Scottish borders.
Present day
We drive to a car park one hundred kilometres away from the Project site over the border in England and stop.
It is late, the night black and heavy, a warmth to the air where a southern wind is trying to get through the atmosphere. Isabella is asleep in the back of the car, Chris having gently laid a blanket over her to keep her warm.
Engine off, he turns to me now and scans me from head to toe. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I have some scratches and bruising, but that is all.’
He lets out a breath and for a moment I think he is going to speak when, from his eyes, tears suddenly spill.
I am unsure what to do. ‘Why are you crying?’
He wipes his face. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, it’s just that…’ He billows out a breath and I have a strange urge to reach forward and stroke his cheek. ‘It’s just that I thought… I thought I’d lost you.’
‘But you did not. You found out where I was.’
He smiles, crinkled creases forming and for a moment, we don’t speak and the sounds that float in the air are the gentle rasp of Isabella’s breath and the distant sound of a sheep bleating in a field.
‘Did you see Patricia die?’ Chris says after a moment.
I close my eyes, images of the bullet going into my friend’s skull, her milk bottle skin, of her beaten body toppling to the ground replaying in my mind. ‘Yes. I saw her… I saw her die.’
I feel Chris’s fingers close to mine, feel the warmth of his skin touching my hand and I don’t pull away. Instead we simply sit there, the two of us, the smooth belly of his palm resting on top of mine, five fingers spread out in a star.
One minute must pass, two, three, both of us resting, hands together until, opening my eyes, I turn to Chris.
He looks at me, moves his hand. ‘You ready to get going again?’
I nod.
We drive for fifty more kilometres until the sun begins to rise and the daily commute on the roads begins. We dip off and away from the main routes, not wanting to be spotted, and park up by a woodshed café and get some take-out breakfast of bagels and black coffee.
There is a shop next to the café, and Chris brings from it some simple medical supplies, which I use to tend to Isabella. The welts and scars are a little infected, but once I treat them and clean them and bandage them up, I feel better, and when she smiles at me and thanks me, a warmness inside flows up, and I breathe a little easier.
When Isabella again is resting, Chris and I open up his tablet and devices and bring up all the data we have.
He clicks on the microfiche files patched through from Abigail and scans them. ‘It was good of her to send these.’
‘Yes.’
We look at them and I think of what she did for me. The data is full and complete, detailing each element of the lone man plan Black Eyes said was due to be put in place.
‘Jeez,’ Chris says, ‘it all implicates Harriet Alexander, the head of the CIA – everything. They’re all in on it.’
He taps his device and begins to transfer the documents. ‘I was thinking we could expose the Project with this, but, to be honest, I’m worried it won’t be enough. I don’t have all the files we had before, the one from Hamburg, and without it, it could just look like another conspiracy theory.’
‘Why do you not have the files?’
‘When we sent it to the Home Secretary’s email, it threw a worm to my files and automatically erased everything, all the back-up, the lot.’ He exhales. ‘They could see us coming.’
‘And if we have the Hamburg files, you think it could really work?’
He nods. ‘Hell, yeah. I have that many contacts, we could fire it everywhere, viruses, and newspapers, TV, Twitter – the lot.’
I think about this. ‘Do you have a knife?’
‘What?’
‘Do you have a knife?’
He frowns at me then, leaning to the glove box, he pulls out a small Swiss Army knife and hands it to me.
Taking it, I put the point of the blade to my thumb and start to slice open the skin. It stings.
‘Holy shit! What the…? What the fuck are you doing?’
I cut into my thumb, a sharp pain shooting down my arm, but ignore it, ignore the blood that immediately trickles from the wound until, ten seconds later, I set down the knife and pull from under the flap of skin now hanging loose, a tiny black computer chip.
Chris’s mouth hangs open. ‘Is that?’
‘It is a chip containing all the files you and I downloaded from the Project detailing all the data and information on their entire activities.’
‘Holy crap!’ He squints at it, rakes his hands through his hair. ‘When… when did you put it in… in your… in your thumb?’
‘When we were at the airport in Madrid. I carried out the small procedure in the toilets there, at the sink. I wanted to be sure we wouldn’t ever lose the data we had.’
He laughs, light, a dance of a child’s feet on the sand, his lips smiling, infectious and I cannot help but smile, too. He cups my face in his hands and, staring at me, still smiling, he kisses me on the lips. It is warm, soft and I don’t want to pull away.
Eventually, Chris sits back, shaking his head. ‘You’re amazing.’
He takes the chip from me and I wince.
‘Ooo, sorry! Are you okay? Do you want me to put a plaster on that?’
‘No. I can do it myself.’
I take the first aid kit, patch my thumb up as, by me now, Chris gets busy downloading all the data I had hidden for so long, and prepares to send it out to the world.
In the back seat, Isabella yawns and wakes up. She blinks at us and smiles, her skin wrinkling around her mouth and eyes.
‘Hola,’ she says.
‘Hola.’
‘Is everything okay?’
I look to Chris, to his laptop and the computer chip, look to the microfiche data revealing the lone gunman plans, look to Chris’s hands, how they can spread in a star shape for me, just like Patricia’s did. I have my friends. I have my memories. I finally know who I am.
‘Everything is okay,’ I say. ‘Everything is okay.’
Epilogue
Maria’s villa, Salamancan hills, Spain.
Present day
I return from my morning run and stretch outside. I throw my arms up high in the air as, along the perimeter of the villa, the sun beats down in the early morning heat where the cypress trees drift in a lazy breeze and the sky fills with the pungent perfume of the orange and lemon tree groves beyond. Olives hang in small green baubles from the stubs of olive tree rows that line the far area of the grounds, and in the distance, a murmuration of starlings swings in a large black pendulum in the sky.
I breathe in, close my eyes and, kicking off my trainers, feel the scorched grass underneath my feet, and let my body slide through a series of yoga movements. Up and over my body goes, my mind focussing on my breath, on the fluid movement of my limbs, bending, reaching, stretching as, aloud, my mouth chants the words I have now spoken each day since we all arrived here.
‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. I am free. I am not a member of the Project. I am free to be who I am. I am free to be me.’
I recite the words over and over, feeling the ground beneath me, the movement of the earth, the gentle click and brush of the animals and insects. Four, five minutes pass as I repeat the process until, slowly opening my eyes, I stretch one more time then, counting the twenty-four steps back into the villa, I enter the kitchen.
I open the cupboard and take out one of three white coffee cups that sit next to three plates, three bowls and three wine glasses. Shutting the cupboard, I turn to the coffee pot and, filling my cup with the black, hot liquid, I pad into the lounge area.
Chris sits on a crate with his laptop open, feet bare, body brown, his shorts black, his t-shirt blue. He looks up to me when I enter and smiles, and I see the now familiar creases fan out fr
om his deep, sunken eyes.
‘Hey, Google. Good run?’
I nod. ‘Is that the news story?’
‘Yep.’
I drag another crate next to him at just the precise angle and watch the news reel that plays now on the screen, and when I see his face appear, I hold my cup mid-air and do not move.
‘Hey,’ Chris says. ‘Breathe.’
‘It is Black Eyes.’
‘Yes.’
Chris touches just one of my fingers, his way of reassuring me as now, he turns up the volume and the newscaster’s voice springs into the room.
‘… in what everyone is calling the world’s biggest cover up, the major investigation has begun today into the corruption and potential murder that has been happening right at the heart of governments around the world. Today, Dr Samuel Carr will give evidence for an organisation known as Project Callidus, in a trial that is set to last for months. Dr Carr, who is currently being held without bail, is at the centre of an alleged plot to carry out terrorist attacks on European soil and already, the UK Home Secretary, Harriet Alexander, has been arrested along with other key figures so far from both the US and Spanish governments and secret services. Dr Carr and associates of the Project and MI5 and the CIA have been implicated in what can only be described as an immoral programme that used people with Asperger’s, including illegal drug testing. At the centre of the programme is this figure, Dr Maria Martinez, who was acquitted of the murder of a catholic priest one year ago. Dr Martinez, innocent in all of this, has been asked to give evidence, but has so far declined to speak…’
Chris hits the mute button and turns to me. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to give evidence?’
‘No.’ I look now at Black Eye’s face as he goes to trial and feel a shiver run down me, despite the warmth and the sun. ‘It is done now. I will let the system deal with him.’
‘Okay.’
I sip my coffee. ‘Okay.’
Once we finish our drinks, I take a shower, write in my notebook about the trial and, glancing to the piano, I walk my fingers on the keys and stop as my eyes rest on a series of photographs that sit in small frames of wood made by Chris. I see the photograph of my Papa, him smiling big and wide and warm at the camera; of Ramon when we were little playing in the pool, one of us eating churros, chocolate on our faces. Another has in it an image of Chris and I, a selfie, he called it, taken on his phone, and the other is the one of Balthus, tan showing, teeth glowing, and it stands next to the old worn picture of Isabella with me swaddled in her arms as a baby.
But the final frame I linger on a little longer until Chris calls to me that they are ready: the picture of Patricia.
I gaze at her milky face, long limbs, swan neck one more time then, feeling a heaviness inside me, a weight, a hole that will never be quite filled, I walk outside to the end of the garden where the two people I know stand.
Chris and Isabella.
Isabella’s wounds now healed, and the sun having warmed her skin, she seems brighter, more alive, her grey hair flowing long and free, her bare feet peeking out from a white cotton skirt that billows in the morning breeze.
She smiles at me. ‘Are you ready, mi hija?’
I nod, look to Chris, see five fingers on his thigh and, one by one, we kneel on the ground. Taking in turn a candle each, we strike a match and light the wicks and small orange flames flicker in the air.
Turning, we place each one of them against small wooden boards that sit in flowers in the soil, each carved by Chris in smooth curves and angles, and on each board, sits a name.
Harry.
Ramon.
Balthus.
Papa.
Patricia.
Leaning forwards, I feel the brush of the Salamancan sun on my cheeks as I take my candle and set it down by Patricia’s name, Chris and Isabella placing their candles down too, until each memorial is joined together.
I kneel in the long grass that sways now in the warm wind and I look at the names on the wood. One minute passes, two, no words spoken. The birds flying in the air, the sun glowing down on the hills around us, we slowly rise to a stand, Chris taking my hand in his.
And as we turn, the three of us together heading back to the villa, in the soft beat of the gentle morning where the cicadas click and the citrus trees spritz their fresh, fragrant aroma, the candle flames flicker and dance in the breeze, keeping alive the memories of the family and friends I will never, ever forget.
Acknowledgements
As this is the final book in the trilogy, there are so many people to thank, that I have to do a catch all and say a huge thank you to everyone. All of you. Thanks to the HarperCollins HQ publishing team. Thanks to my old gang at PFD and to my new one at Curtis Brown. Thanks to all my amazing foreign publishers. Thanks to Maxine Groves, who definitely gets a mention this time, and thanks to the entire Aspie community. You are all awesome. Thanks to the cool Stroud Spacehoppers gang for providing me with (literally) the room to write this book. Thanks to my close friends and gorgeous neighbours new and old, who let me rant on. To my ace author buddies who I can have a proper vent to – and a belly laugh with. We are all stronger together. Thanks to you, the reader – I am chuffed to bits you read my book. But, as ever, the biggest thanks goes to my amazing little family – Dave, Abi and Hattie – who make every day perfect. Love you lots.
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © Nikki Owen 2017
Nikki Owen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9781474050760