The yellow legal pad shone
like a beacon against the jumble of papers strewn across her desk.
A
steaming cup of coffee she’d hoped would help focus her thoughts sat next to an
ashtray that smelt of lost weekends and defeated dreams. It was crowded with
squashed cigarette butts—some smoked down to the chemical sting of their
filter, others abandoned halfway in disgust or distraction.
Anna rubbed her eyes and
stretched in her seat as she tried to reboot her brain to make sense of the
papers littering the tabletop like super-sized confetti.
It wasn’t her case she was working on, she was only assisting. But she felt
involved, intrigued. It was one of the oddest cases she’d ever come across—even
in the pages of all those textbooks she’d waded through at law school. The
facts were unremarkable, but the people involved and the circumstances
surrounding it would make it memorable.
She couldn’t see what all the
fuss was about. Why so much pressure to convict and punish the sad, silent man
who’d refused to take the stand, offer any kind of defense or even recognise
the court? Of course, there was the hint of a terrorist plot, but she hadn’t
found anything to support that amid the reams of papers.
Sure, he’d stirred up some
unrest, but that was hardly remarkable in these days of disenfranchisement,
disenchantment and the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, was it? Every
Tom, Dick and Harriet was out there rabble-rousing these days—and a good few on
the extreme who backed up their angry words with knuckle-dusters and knives had
been overlooked by the authorities. So why pick on the bedraggled figure who
had sat staring at his hands neatly folded in his cheap-suited lap at the
initial court hearing?
But who was she to question? A high profile case would
look good on her resume, especially as a conviction looked like a certainty,
albeit one she wasn’t really comfortable about.
Taking a sip from her coffee
and lighting a fresh cigarette, Anna looked back down at the photocopied letter
in a clear plastic folder. It was only background, circumstantial, unimportant
to the case, but something about it kept drawing her back to it.
Dear Tom,
I’m writing to you because I know that you haven’t
been swept up in the madness. You’re a rational man, not one to get caught up
in the mania that’s infected those desperate to believe something more than the
simple truth.
I don’t suppose you’re happy to get this letter. I
know I’m not going to win any popularity contests from now on. But I hope
you’ll read on.
You must be wondering why I did what I did. I had no
choice, or so I thought. Now, I hate what I’ve done, what I’ve become. But I
couldn’t let things carry on like they were, hurtling at break-neck speed
towards destruction. I had to do something to pull him back from the brink
before his madness ate him alive, and perhaps salvage something of the dream of
mending a broken world that had brought us all together in the beginning.
I believed in him from the start. I saw something that
could lead us to something better, kinder. I became his right-hand man, his
most passionate advocate. Even—I hoped—his friend.
But something changed. I’m not quite sure when I first saw it, that odd look
in his eye. Something more than the spark that lit a fire in us—it was the
glint of mania. It didn’t help that that she was always there,
whispering nonsense in his ear about him being “The One”. Soon, he started
believing his own words just as completely as the sheep around him.
I still loved him. I still do. But he scared me.
I had helped him weave a web of pretty half-truths and
I could see it was heading for something nasty, loud, maybe dangerous, and
definitely too much of a threat to be ignored. And he’d be the one to pay the
price.
I thought I could save him from himself. That's why I
went to the press, and then the police. I really thought they’d just pick him
up and deliver him to calm-voiced, white-coated experts in quiet,
pastel-painted corridors who would soothe him, exorcise his demons, help him
see things as they really are.
But I was wrong. They chewed me up and spat me out
like an old piece of gum, making sure that I knew full well that it was me who sealed
his fate. Now I’m hated,
reviled, forever branded a traitor. Even you turned away when I tried to
explain.
That’s why I’ll be lying on a cold slab by the time
you read this.
I’m more sorry than anyone can ever know. I hope you
can forgive me.
Don’t give up. We need people like you to make a
difference. We just don’t need any more martyrs.
Jude
No matter how many times Anna
read the letter, it got to her. Something kept pulling her back to the dead
man’s words. A sense of affinity, despite herself.
An urgent bleep brought her
back from her thoughts. A text from Theo, her boss, reminding her that he
needed the papers on his desk by 8am tomorrow—in just six hours.
His words as he gave her the
assignment echoed through her mind: “Let’s get this fruitcake sorted, so
people like you and me can get on with things.” Like she was part of
some secret cabala of privilege that couldn’t afford to let the boat rock too
much.
Perhaps she was?
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