Chapter Five

Please read the prologue and all previous chapters

Chapter Five

So that’s how I ended up in a half built shack in Cuba, reading a police file. Sort of, I’ll explain more later. Lets get back to that smoke filled room with the sun still burning my exposed neck, through the ineffectual flimsy curtain. Lisa handed me the brown envelope, her hands shaking a little.

‘This is it,’ she whispered again. She stared determinedly at me, ‘I know it is.’

Our contact Jorge smiled a slow greasy smile while the guard lit up a thick cigar, his gun hanging limply by his waist. I took another look at Lisa in the half shadows, her face was a mixture of relief and disappointment. I hesitantly opened the file.

The first thing I saw was the picture. It was so realistic that at first that I was fooled, but I looked closer at it and saw it wasn’t a photograph at all, but a painting. Miniature brush strokes captured every detail perfectly. It was a painting of an ordinary man, handsome. He had a smooth, wide face and a large expressive mouth that seemed to be smiling and frowning at once. A mess of thick dark hair cropped closely and dark but warm eyes.

I put the picture aside, feeling Lisa’s eyes burning into me, harsher than the sun.

Patient admitted 24^th March 2010

Patient. I repeated the word in my mind. I looked up at Lisa, she nodded encouragingly for me to keep reading.

Patient admitted 24^th March 2010. After entering Holguin police offices of his own will. He requested calmly to be physiologically tested after confessing to the murder of Marietta Benavente, one day previously. After questioning it was revealed that the Patient knew details about the crime scene which were not publicly printed.

Due to lack of evidence, the confession was not enough for the police to make an arrest, so patient was referred to us. Tests showed a number of personality disorders, depression, possibly bi polar, as well as a disregard for conversation and interaction. Though symptoms and signs were present for disorders and defects, the results of the tests were inconclusive.

Doctor’s opinion’s differ on the patient, frequent changes in behaviour are common as well as manipulation of the staff and other patients. Despite this, the patient has been calm and polite towards staff members.

I had read enough. I placed the file back on the table and wrapped my hands around the arms of my chair to keep from punching something. The sun burnt me still and the sick feeling in my stomach became an angry pull, it was dragging me through the brick and earth and down into a hole. I breathed deeply.

Lisa was watching me with pleading eyes and I hated her for a moment. ‘Well?’ She asked, I began to hate her even more.

‘I think we’d better go,’ I said through gritted teeth. I wondered how much English Jorge could understand, clearly more than he was letting on. I tried to focus on the black fly circling my head. ‘Why are we here?’

‘For answers,’ Lisa said, her eyes were wide and glittering. I had never seen her so confused, I had always been so ready to follow her until now.

I snorted, ‘for another dead end,’ I said, I kept my tone calm.

‘No,’ she said, eyes blazing now, ‘I know. You heard me when I gave you the file, I know.’

‘Ten hours,’ I hissed back, ‘for this.’

‘Lawrence,’ Lisa started softly, ‘he confessed.’

‘Because he’s insane!’ I couldn’t contain myself any longer, Jorge’s dark smile, the nonchalant guard and the heat swirled over in my mind, playing like a montage. ‘This is the file from a mental institution.’

Lisa clicked her tongue impatiently, ‘you don’t think someone who could do this would be crazy?’ She tried to rationalize, ‘besides, he knows classified information.’

‘So do you!’

‘You don’t even know his name yet,’ she said.

‘What’s his name?’ I humoured her.

‘Jarl,’ she announced confidently, ‘that’s Norwegian.’

‘Yes,’ I nodded, somewhat sarcastically, ‘yes it is.’ I paused, ‘doesn’t start with an M though,’ I smiled.

‘That just proves what we already thought,’ she smiled wider than I had, ‘it’s too much of a coincidence.’

‘No,’ I shot back, ‘it’s just a normal coincidence. There is still no evidence or proof.’ I breathed in sharply, ‘Lisa, is this really how you want to end it?’

I was scared by the look on her face, it reflected Jorge’s smile too much. I knew that she had done something stupid.

‘It’s not over yet,’ she whispered. ‘We’re going to talk to him. Jorge can get us visitor’s passes.’

That was exactly the stupid thing I was afraid she had done.

‘I’ve had enough,’ I stood up from my chair and the guard went rigid. He stamped out his cigar and aimed his gun right at me. He started shouting at Jorge in rapid Spanish.

‘We have to pay him,’ Lisa said calmly.

‘We already did!’ The heat and the headache wasn’t improved by having a gun barrel in my eye line. The aeroplane food threatened to make a reappearance, it rumbled unsteadily in my stomach.

‘We paid him for file,’ Lisa said as the Guard’s shouts got louder, Jorge replied just as loud and rapidly, he had stepped up from his desk. ‘We didn’t pay him for the visitor’s passes.’ The guard took a step closer to me.

‘In my bag,’ I said quickly, if it was between a mental institution or my life I would have to take the former.

Lisa scrambled through my bag and pulled out my wallet, she threw everything I had on Jorge’s desk. Then it was like a cloud descended on the whole scene. The Guard lowered his gun and Jorge sat down quietly, he counted his money. After he was satisfied and my heart had stopped threatening to burst out of my chest, he handed Lisa a small blue wallet and nodded.

After the shouting, it was deathly silent, it was as if it had never happened. Not for me though, I felt a new wave of empty fear wash over me. How convenient for Lisa, for me to have to agree to her crazy, futile plans at gunpoint.

I could feel the layers of sweat rippling off me as Lisa took my hand and squeezed it. She smiled hopefully.

Chapter Four

Please read all previous chapters and the prologue

Chapter Four

I was dozing in bed as the harsh winter sun cut slithers of white against the carpet and the unwashed pile of clothes. The light ran across the clock face on the wall but not enough to be able to see it clearly. I was sure it was late, even on a Sunday. I heard the indistinguishable voices and footsteps of the people making their way through life. I was carefully examining the line of dust as it sparkled across the room.

This Sunday morning meant a lot to me, it was two days since I was questioned by the police, and I was free and home. Of course I didn’t have any right to be happy, to push my toes into the mattress and smile at my own brilliance for outsmarting the police. Angelica’s death was just another thing I had pushed to the back of my mind, one day expecting it to burst into my thoughts and cripple me. But not today.

Across my bedroom lay the evidence of two years of single life. Various mugs and half full water glasses jutted and balanced on every surface. A full inch of dust on the windowsill and an overflowing rubbish bin, not to mention the worrying vintage of the crumbs and scraps of food.

I smiled smugly, if I had a girlfriend I would have to clean once in a while. Luckily it was just me, and mess was my natural habitat. Who can imagine Sunday Lunch with the parents when your underwear is still hanging off the kitchen chairs. I felt a stab of guilt, I wondered how Angelica’s parents were this morning, or every morning for the rest of their lives.

The doorbell cut through my sleep mangled thoughts. It was the buzzer for the outside door, it makes the same noise that the buzzer on a game show makes for an incorrect answer. The sound shot straight to the part of my mind which controls anxiety. I was wide-awake immediately.

As I raised my creaking body out of bed I glanced at the clock. I had been wrong about the time, it was half eight in the morning. Now I was really worried, the voices and footsteps I had heard before had clearly been in my mind, or I lived in an apartment block with mental cases. Nothing ever happens at half eight on a Sunday morning, nothing good anyway.

I picked the cleanest looking pair of jeans out of the clothes pile and threw on a t-shirt that had been hanging from the bed post. I held my hand over my eyes while they got accustomed to the full blast of day.

Now the venerable, squashed feeling came back to my stomach. A worry so deep it was almost pain. I stumbled through the angry sunlight past empty pizza bottles and C.D cases, I made into the hallway, lined with shoes. My feet got tangled up in a blanket which was hanging half off the sofa, but somehow I made it across the battlefield and to the front door

I pushed the buzzer. ‘Who is it?’ I asked in a voice choked with sleep.

‘Lisa Taylor,’ the voice said expectantly.

I rubbed my hand over my face, trying to remember. Lisa Taylor? An ex girlfriend? No, than was too unlikely. Someone from work? ‘Who is it?’ I asked again.

‘Lisa Taylor,’ the shrill voice repeated angrily. ‘Lawrence Duncan?’

It didn’t really sound like a question, this person already knew who I was. Maybe she was with the police, the guilt and panic hit me again. ‘Lawrence isn’t here,’ I replied crispy.

‘I know you live alone.’

It sounded like a threat

‘Listen,’ the voice said, ‘we need to talk about my sister, and I’m going to wait here all day if I have to.’

Oh, that Lisa Taylor. A new wave of guilt passed through me, I looked out at the room and was suddenly aware of the mess. I let her up without another word, I should’ve expected this.

All I remember of Lisa Taylor was that she lived in the same house as Angelica. Other girls didn’t really pass on my radar back then, and she had already left school when I started. She sometimes glared at me through the doorway, she had the same eyes as her sister.

I moved away from the door, I could hear her clacking footsteps and I wondered how far away she could be. The door was thrown wide open and it banged against the wall. She was a formidable figure, her hair pulled tightly back from a harsh face, storming into war like an army sergeant, patent black heels cutting a path through the filth on my floor. She was five foot seven or eight in the heels, but she was a giant to me.

‘Why?’ She spat at me. There as such hatred in her voice, such venom. ‘Why did they let you go?’

I didn’t know the answer to than myself, I was just grateful that they did. ‘I…I’ I mumbled weakly, at least it was something like that, before I got cut off.

‘Do you have any idea what my parents are going through?’ she hissed like an angry cat. ‘You can’t even contact us? You can’t even explain yourself.’

‘Surely the police…’ I trailed off again, the look in her eyes enough to make me want to sew my mouth up forever.

‘The police?’ She laughed hollowly, ‘they told us there wasn’t enough evidence. But,’ she waved her finger at me, it looked like a loaded gun. ‘I want to hear it from you, I want to know.’

I had no idea what she wanted to know, her eyes still silencing me I said nothing. ‘No guilt?’ she said quietly, it sounded like a question but I couldn’t be sure. ‘No shame? Just looking at your smug face makes me feel sick.’ I wasn’t feel too smug at that moment. ‘You were the only suspect and they let you walk out, I want to know why.’

‘I…I…’ was all I managed to weakly splutter.

‘Defend yourself!’ She screamed at me. ‘Tell me you didn’t do it!’ She had taken another step towards me, I could see cracked red veins running through her eyes. I still didn’t say anything. ‘Tell me you didn’t do it!’ She punched me on the arm, her small hand still managed to hurt me. ‘I remember you,’ she said, her eyes narrowed and hurtful now. ‘I remember the way you acted around her. Always there, always staring at her. If you know something, if you know something I don’t.’ She wagged her finger at me, her hand was shaking and her eyes were wet.

‘I don’t know anything,’ I said in one breath.

‘You’re withholding information!’ She screamed like a banshee, every word emphasised and screechingly painful. ‘You can’t lie to me!’

I stayed rooted to the spot, held in shock by her outburst. I had no idea what she wanted to hear, what would make her feel any better, what would make her hand stop shaking. I focused on the door and not on her wild eyes. ‘I didn’t kill Angelica,’ I managed to say.

This at least stopped the screaming. She opened her mouth angrily and then shut it abruptly. Then followed the worst awkward silence I had ever suffered. Lisa’s eyes darted to the mess, they scanned every pile of rubbish like a computer.

Then something horrible happened. Her whole body went limp, she didn’t faint, she just fell. She slumped down onto my sofa, the beer bottles wedged between the cushions rattled together. She put her head in her hands and began to sob. If there’s one thing that terrifies me it’s a woman crying, in my flat. She was shaking violently now, shoulders, hands and legs quivering. She looked like she was having a seizure.

‘I didn’t kill your sister,’ I repeated, because it had had an effect the last time.

‘I know,’ came the thick voice from between her hands. ‘You’re just as useless as you were as a schoolboy.’ It was probably the wrong time to be hurt by anything she said. ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ came the long whine. She looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. ‘Just look at where you live,’ she wailed, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes.

I moved nervously towards her. ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘Coffee,’ she said through a loud sniff, ‘black, one sugar.’

It took about ten years to make the coffee. The whistle of the pot was the loudest sound ever recorded. As least it covered the sound of her crying.

I placed the mug delicately on a pile of magazines.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and the sudden words jolted me. She had stopped shaking. ‘I didn’t really think you had killed her. I just needed to be angry at someone.’

I considered the range of emotions she had gone through in the last ten minutes, she must be exhausted. ‘I really don’t know anything,’ I said softly.

‘I just need to understand why the police would let their only suspect go.’

‘There was no proof,’ I said.

Lisa banged her mug down on the table, coffee dribbled all over last month’s FHM. ‘There’s no proof of anything!’ She shouted, the shrill, bitter tone rising again. ‘No sign of a struggle, the neighbours didn’t hear anything. There’s just you.’ She looked at me as though I were a cancerous growth.

‘There can’t just be me. I’m a nobody,’ I confessed. Lisa nodded in agreement. ‘What about her friends? Those neighbours you mentioned.’

‘You remember Angelica,’ Lisa sniffed, ‘she had a close circle of friends, but they’ve all been questioned. They have alibis, so do the neighbours. She’d been single for over a year, no jealous exes, no cult groups known in the area.’

‘She did pick just a few close friends,’ I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone, ‘but there were always admirers around her. And what about colleagues? It’s only been three days, it takes so much longer to complete a police investigation.’ She sobbed loudly again, I would try anything to prevent her from crying. ‘They’ll find something.’

‘They won’t find anything,’ she spat. ‘I’ve seen the police report.’

I thought about this, ‘how have you seen the police report?’ Then I thought some more, ‘actually, how did you know where I lived?’

She ignored me, her head was in her hands again. I heard a raking sob spread through her. I could handle anything but the crying, so I did something stupid. I was just trying to help her, to comfort her, but what I said next is going to rule the rest of my life.

‘We’ll find out who did this,’ I said. I think I meant to say ‘they’ll find who did this.’ Whatever the reason for my Freudian slip, it happened.

‘Then you’ll help me?’ Her face broke into a dark smile.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Please read the prologue and chapters 1 and 2 otherwise it won't make sense!

Chapter Three

Norway, Scotland, London, The Bahamas. I glanced at the map again, at the red line I’d drawn across it, linked by the four red pins I’d added. I’ve seen this thing so many times in films, it’s what they do. It’s behind the chief of police as he bangs his fist angrily on the table. I’d always figured that I was in far too deep, this whole mess was too much for me, so I revert to my fantasy life to cope.

Also, there didn’t seem that much I could do. I had placed the map on my wall because to track the locations, that part was Lisa’s idea, but it was my idea to link them all up. The locations formed a diagonal line across the world, even though there was a whole ocean between the last two. It was the only pattern or reason I could find.

The police didn’t know what me and Lisa knew. I kept pleading with her to tell them, we were withholding information. Despite my constant badgering and warnings that they would eventually everything like we had done, she still refused. She turned her calm professional gaze on me and there wasn’t a lot I could do to argue.

She was probably right for now. I was so grateful to be out of that interview room that I really wouldn’t want the authorities to know I was still involved. What I really wanted at this point was to forget the whole thing at go back to my life, but Lisa had made it clear that I didn’t have that option anymore.

The thing about Angelica’s murder is this, I was not only a suspect, I was the only suspect. There was no other evidence of anyone she had met or spoken to on that day. There were no fingerprints, no D.N.A, no fragments of clothing or shoe prints, even the ink in the pen which had written on her skin hadn’t been traced. They made me write the words over and over and it never came close to the original handwriting.

I had half heartedly turned my flat into a study, until Lisa pointed out that it would look better for me if she kept all the files at her own flat. So all I had in my study was the map, hanging above a recently purchased desk. I sat at the desk with my head in my hands, peeling the label off my beer bottle. It was four in the afternoon, outside, the winter sun shone down upon the windows, creating patches of bright sun and shadow across the bed.

I was just about to fall asleep when the phone rang, the shrill angry bleeps jolted me out of my daydream.

‘Hello?’ I answered as a question even though I saw Lisa’s name flash across the screen. Considering the sort of research she did I was always worried that someone else might be in possession of her phone, someone dangerous.

‘Lawrence?’ She asked, even though she had been calling my phone. I guessed she wondered the same thing about me.

‘Have you found anything?’ I felt a little sickened at the excitement in my voice. I needed a moment to remind myself that we were dealing with lives and people.

‘Cuba,’ she said. She sounded tired and strained, her voice was thin, ‘a week ago.’

‘Do you know…?’ I trailed off, expecting her to know what I was about to ask.

‘Firstly,’ she said, the control in her voice was astounding, she might have been observing the weeks spreadsheets. ‘the closeness, The Bahamas, now Cuba, it makes sense. Even the police are making the same connection.’ She said the word ‘police’ with the same tone of voice most people use to describe a gang of youths that haunt a local bus shelter.

‘That’s not all though?’

‘No,’ once again the control, her clipped tones chilled me into caring again, being less eager to hear the grisly details. ‘The words,’ she said.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘On her left thigh, clear as day.’

I bit my lip, ‘is there anything else?’

She hesitated this time, ‘you’re not going to like this.’ I didn’t say anything because I knew I probably would like what she had to say, in a disgusted morbid way. ‘She had her head removed,’ Lisa said. There was really nothing I could say to that. ‘The same jagged imprecise cuts,’ Lisa went on. ‘No other cuts on the body this time, minimal blood splashes.’

‘What was her name?’ I asked, it seemed appropriate after hearing about minimal blood splashes.

‘Marietta Benavente,’ Lisa replied straight away, I hoped she understood why I had to ask. ‘She was a maid, she had a three year old son.’

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what Marietta Benavente might look like. ‘Was she dragged?’ I asked when I’d finished having my moment.

‘Not this time,’ Lisa said, ‘obviously she was already dead.’ Lisa had a clever knack of making me feel stupid without even trying.

‘I guess I’ll add her to the map,’ I said, it was the only useful thing I had been able to do.

‘Wait,’ Lisa began, and now there was emotion behind her voice, a thick tremor. ‘There’s something else.’

It had to be bad to make her voice darken so much, ‘what?’

‘Someone confessed,’ she said, there was a long breath that followed the words.

‘Cracked under questioning?’ I asked. It didn’t seem that big a deal, after all, I had to endure the interview room, and I image the police questioning in Cuba is a lot worse than it is in England.

‘No,’ there was that strained tone again, the deep breaths. ‘He walked into the police station, and confessed.’

I had a long trip to pack for.

Chapter Two

Please read the prologue and the first chapter

Chapter Two

Two months after my police interview I found myself in the blistering midday heat of Holguin in western Cuba. My head was thumping and my eyes were rammed with sleep after the ten hour overnight flight. Alongside me, tense and strained still, face grimly set, was Angelica’s older sister Lisa.

I turned to look at her through the interweaving shadows made by the banana trees. She was smaller than Angelica had been, with pointed pixie like features. Her face less curved, she didn’t have Angelica’s smile. But she hadn’t cut off her long dark hair like Angelica had, she now wore it built into a messy bun on her head. She had Angelica’s brown eyes and coffee coloured skin. Looking at Lisa was almost like looking at a different version of the girl I had been obsessed with, and sometimes that threw me.

In case you were wondering, I don’t usually make a habit of travelling to the Caribbean with family members of murdered teenage crushes. This was a business trip, the business being that afore mentioned murder. This should’ve been the last stop on a gruelling journey which had taken us from airport to taxi to hotel for the last two months.

We faced this last trip with determination, not hope. We wanted to find the answers here, but we were anxious, scared to find the last piece of a puzzle where we wouldn’t like the final picture. In typical fashion, we had gone too far to give up, we had travelled across a whole ocean for this, and Lisa’s set face told me that it would happen whether I was ready or not.

We dodged the low lying branches and stumbled over the uneven earth. My stomach ached and groaned, the airplane food rattling around inside it and pushing uncomfortably against my bowels. I lit my second cigarette, determined not to feel light headed and sick this time. We were walking dangerously close to a road with no pavement, and no space to run from traffic. The old cars, some rattling where they were held together with string, flew past us at illegal speeds, leaving trails of dust in our eyes.

The sun seemed to be in my face and on my back at the same time, and I felt the sweat running from me in pools. Lisa and our stony faced guide were far ahead of me as I stumbled through the palms like a bewildered animal.

The fields were filled with emaciated cows feasting on the dry brown grass. Houses and settlements stuck out every so often, the houses were bordered by official buildings, heavy iron gates and armed guards watching the confused white man squinting at the scenery. The largest trees housed vultures, some spreading their huge wings to circle the area. As you can imagine, this gave me little comfort.

Lisa spoke to the guide in fluent Spanish, I couldn’t understand a word of what was said and this began to anger me in my agitated state, I had no idea where we were going, only that we were to meet a contact who would give us the information that might end our search and help us sleep a little better.

The smoke from my cigarette hung thick in the air and I coughed and put it out, looking down at my impractical beach shoes and cursing. By this time we had been walking for an hour, the sweat streaming down my back. I glanced at Lisa, she wasn’t even glowing, her dark skin just glimmered beautifully in the heat. I quietly hated her.

Nothing seemed to lay for miles except a few horses tethered loosely to a tree, all around were the same dry rocky fields, though in the middle of the field was some kind of renovated shed. It was really three houses in one, the upper level looked as if someone had dropped it on the dark grey stone beneath. The top was covered in heavy magenta paint and a rickety balcony with a metal handrail that looked more like prison bars.

Our guide motioned towards the building and shouted at us in rapid Spanish. I noticed, not for the first time, the hand gun tucked into the waist band of his trousers, my eyes met with Lisa’s briefly, but she was perfectly still and calm. She blinked nonchalantly and followed the guide. I wanted to grab her, hold her back and tell her there was no way we were doing this. But I didn’t, as usual I closed my mouth and followed the order.

We walked through the faded curtain that I suppose worked as a front door. Threadbare patches let the sun stream right through and bleached the orange flower pattern an ugly yellow. The house itself was a room, a mess of overstuffed furniture, rickety stairs winding through the middle. The sofa pattern reminded me of my grandmother’s flat, that also stunk of smoke and coffee.

The chairs and tables were pushed so closely together it was hard to move, and I wacked my shin on a dark chest of drawers that seemed to spring out of nowhere, I resisted swearing. Instead I wiped the sweat away from my forehead with my cap. Lisa stroke through the room as if this was no different than any other day. Our guide was standing by the faded curtain, his gun raised now.

Our contact, Jorge, was sitting at a plain white table on the far side of the room. On his desk there was a phone and a mug of coffee, his hands were placed out in front of him and two plastic chairs were set at the table. He looked lazily at us under his stone grey eyes and heavy brows.

He reached onto a shelf and placed a plain brown file on his desk. Lisa’s eyes darted to the file and I could feel her confidence slipping away as if it were a physical force. Jorge motioned us to sit and Lisa almost ran to her chair, I was feeling a scared now, if she was falling apart I didn’t know how to hold it together. He didn’t offer us any coffee or even water, despite the fact my throat was so dry it was burning.

Jorge smiled widely, his white teeth glimmering against his dark skin. Lisa took the money out of her purse; five thousand pesos. She pushed it towards him on the table and Jorge counted it, torturously slowly.

Lisa took the file from him, I saw her eyes scanning the page and after a moment she looked up. ‘This is it.’ She said.

Chapter One

Part One

Chapter one

It all started with a girl, such a simple thing, such a cliché, but so often that’s the case. Like every muse, she was beautiful, ethereal in her very presence, and completely unobtainable. To add to the irony, her name was Angelica. I stuck to Angelica’s side like a parasite for three years, to her credit she never got angry with me, never spelt out the harsh truth. She did turn me down though, many times, and like the beaten dog that has no choice but to follow its master blindly, I kept coming back for more, blindly believing she was the only one I could belong to.

The further we became friends, the further we slipped out of the realms of romantic possibility, I stupidly believed I had more of a chance with her. She used to tell me the things she would tell her girlfriends, all about her latest crush, the bad relationship she had with her absent father and the type of dress she should wear to her latest party. She got drunk and cried on my shoulder countless times, of course I always wished her hugs would get less comfortable, that she wouldn’t push my hand away from her thigh. I wished that she would look me in the eye and finally understand.

Angelica knew exactly what she was doing, I played the fake boyfriend when she saw an ex or when one boy danced a little too close to her. She looked away from me, avoided my attempts to pull her face towards mine. I’m telling you things you don’t need to know, I’m getting lost in the details. As I write I feel like an exasperated gardener, trying to battle with the intricacies of my story is like wrestling with ten foot weeds that keep getting bigger. I need to find a balance.

Yes, I’m still angry about the way Angelica treated me. I’m even angrier now that so many people saw the way I acted around her and took note of my inappropriate behaviour. It didn’t add in my favour when the police settled on me as a suspect. At the time Angelica’s body was found I was the last person to have seen her alive.

When I first met Angelica she was sixteen and I was fifteen. She held me in that power that only seems to affect fifteen year old boys. It’s some mystical spell that girls hold over us. I knew instantly that she was so much better for me than every girl in my class. She was so much more ‘my type,’ as boys often bullshit about beautiful girls. When my mother moved from our home in Middlesbrough to a quite, dead suburb in Kent it felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me. My brother Marc, being ten years older than me, never had to go through the change. He lived with his then girlfriend, and he didn’t go with us. After the divorce my mother wanted to get far away from my father’s side of the family. It seemed at the time she didn’t care about me moving schools or leaving my friends. I sulked for almost a year about the move.

At my first day in St. Johns I forgot my sulk immediately. It was replaced by a longing, a longing for a half Italian, dark haired, brown eyed girl with her skirt hitched halfway up her arse and a lazy smile that made me shiver. All the girls in my class wore braces, and were either lanky or overweight, at the time I had no idea teenage girls could look like that. I stopped brooding over Yasmine Bleeth and Cindy Crawford and began what now feels like a lifelong obsession with Angelica Taylor.

My fifteenth year was spent daydreaming. Running my hands through her thick hair, over her coffee coloured skin, all the while smoking a cigar and drinking a martini. Sometimes all this would happen while I was placing a million on black in Montecarlo or speeding through the Californian countryside in a black Aston Martin.

I first talked to the girl of my dreams at a party for someone lucky enough to have his parents leave for the weekend. We were getting drunk in the only way teenagers can get drunk, downing anything that looks vaguely alcoholic until you throw up. I’ve never been entirely happy with my appearance; I have slightly sunken pale and uninteresting eyes, there is an avalanche of freckles covering my whole body. I have thin, lank hair which I’m told will disappear altogether one day, and a tendency to lose weight more rapidly than I can gain it, which at six foot two doesn’t look too appealing.

I was going through that awkward oddly shaped phase when I first spoke to the mythical Angelica Taylor, after watching her drink a whole bottle of cheap wine by herself I felt the mood was right to make a move. I strolled over to her with confidence, asked her slyly and confidently if she would give me a blow job in the bathroom. This request was unsuccessful, though I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, but I was alone, and I was passed out in the bath. This was after the wave of vomit which destroyed an expensive Egyptian rug.

I was able to apologise later with an air of ‘I do this sort of thing all the time.’ Trying my best to appear the party animal. To my surprise, she went for it, at the time I think it was only because she wanted to get invited to all these parties I was supposed to have been going to. Despite her obvious vanity in having me by her side, she never seemed to give up on me, or give up on the idea that I would understand our relationship was plutonic.

Eventually, of course, I got disillusioned with the whole thing. I discovered there were girls in my league who I could actually go out with. I began to realise that in all the years I had clung to Angelica, I had never listened to a single word she said. I was always too busy trying to look down her shirt to notice that she might actually have a personality. We drifted apart in the sense that I stopped caring about what was down her shirt and that seemed to suit her fine. I found the sea full of less beautiful fish and more or less forgot about Angelica.

It was eight years until I saw her again, I had finally flown the nest and was living in North London. I had a pretty comfortable yet uninteresting job at a P.R firm. I could’ve been happier with my life, but I had been prepared to put up with any level of boredom as long as it provided me with security. On one uneventful Saturday afternoon I caught a glimpse of someone I remembered vaguely getting onto the same tube as me. At first I couldn’t place her, she had cut off all her hair and was now wearing one of those pixie cuts, she was also slightly larger than I remembered at school, or maybe I had just made her more perfect in my memory. She was still beautiful though.

She saw me before I saw her, and I think she purposely got on the same carriage as me. She approached me wearing that wide lazy grin that had turned me into her shadow for three years, and she remembered my name, she seemed genuinely happy to see me again. She sucked me in on sight. I’ve had a chance since school to grow into my shape, and the discovery of Skinny Jeans and beanie hats has helped me significantly. As we talked about the past over coffee I got the feeling I would see her again, that I actually had a chance this time. She even gave me her phone number. I strolled home confidently that night.

Angelica’s body was found approximately two hours after we were seen leaving the coffee bar together. Jagged incisions had been made in several places, the weapon had been dragged into these cuts at about two inches across the skin’s surface on every cut. The incisions went deep into the skin. She had been stripped and dragged across the kitchen floor of her small Battersea flat, where it was estimated the initial cuts had been made. She was dragged through the back door and lay to rest in her small patio garden. There was no blood trail before the entrance to the kitchen, and none after the place her body was found. When she reached the garden, her right hand and most of her lower arm had been removed, again with jagged, imprecise cuts.

Because the cause of death had been blood loss, and apart from the trail there were no other blood splashes at the scene, the police speculated a ritualistic murder. There was a method of blood removal they had come across several years ago. A criminal had designed a mechanical device for such a procedure. The red marks around Angelica’s wounds suggested a similar device had been used here. In London there are more of these types of killings than you would like to imagine. Ritual sacrifice isn’t just for the Mayans, apparently.

Apart from being the last person who saw her alive, the forensics team found that the weapon used to make the wounds had been made from some kind of ivory or bone. It was well known that I had a small ivory dagger on my mantelpiece, it was an antique weapon, a present from my eccentric grandfather who collected such oddities. Things didn’t look too good for me as I squirmed in my hard plastic chair in the police interview room.

A blank faced and monotone police officer spoke to me as though horrible murders were slightly more inconvenient to him than a light shower of rain. They eventually showed me the pictures of Angelica’s naked, torn body. The brown eyes sparkled out even in the black and white. When I think of being in the interview room for those long hours, being accused of harvesting blood, my initial memory is of the tedium.

This sounds cold I know. Of course I was disturbed and saddened, I remember firstly a selfish sadness for myself, for my wasted teenage years. It seems strange to think of this now, but when I first heard that Angelica was dead, the news was so much easier to deal with than the gut wrenching misery I used to feel every time she rejected me. It almost made me laugh bitterly to think that the first time I had seen her in eight years I had ended up in a police station accused of her murder. She was dominating my life again after one cup of coffee.

Anyway, back to the questioning. There’s so much legal interference, so many things they can’t say, facts they can’t state, that the whole operation is really dull. I know now that as I rested back in my creaking chair, both hands firmly on the desk in front of me, the blank, unmoving face of the police officer was reading everything I wasn’t telling him. It did seem for one prickly, heart thumping moment like I was being framed. There were too many people who knew the way I used to act around her, my determined lust.

It was lucky for me that there were several things that just didn’t add up. The specific wounds, the missing hand and the collected blood. These things spelled out psychotic behaviour in letters so bold they were screaming. The facts still pointed to ritual, to religious cults. My ivory dagger was taken and tested, and was apparently not the weapon used. Even though the murder seemed frenzied, it was not frenzied enough to be the work of a jealous obsessive.

There was just one thing about Angelica’s body which could’ve turn me into this psychotic, devil worshipping, cold and purposeful killer. I could’ve been a suit with a dark centre because of four words written carefully in black biro around her left ankle. ‘In death we love.’

Prologue

Project 45

Prologue

The smell in the air makes me think of the darkness, the heavy curtains always drawn over every window. The chill reminds me somehow of the sun burning on my face. There’s an echo of the screams, rushing through my ears as if the wind were carrying them to me. It all comes back as I throw the doors wide open, they crash against the walls, creaking and spluttering from the years they’ve been locked and abandoned. Now ivory has spread like mould over the peeling white paint, I hear the roots crack, weak as common weeds.

I make it inside the building before the doors slam back the other way; it’s a satisfying feeling, my pace a relaxed stroll, taking a glance in the rusted mirror at my cowboy boots. It makes me feel in control again, my clapping footsteps determined and steady. It seems impossible that someone has really been in here, the deadbolts on the front doors had been as stiff as the ones on the outer gate. I had to hack into the steel with the heavy axe still grasped in my completely dry hand, nothing but a distant voice in my head to betray what I should be feeling about being here again.

Even though it’s so silent, despite the lack of living creatures for miles around, someone had been here, and very recently. The trail begins at the entrance, stopping (or starting) right against the doors. It runs through the corridor, all the way down to the doors on the other side. I allow myself just a fraction of breathing time before I bend down and confidently press my index finger into the liquid. It’s cold now, but still wet and shimmering, not showing any signs of drying, even around the edges. One thing I’m sure of is that this trail wasn’t here the last time I was. I lift my finger to my nostril, taking in that sticky smell, almost rust, almost rotten, but overwhelmingly sweet. I begin to falter, resting my knees back on the heels of my boots. That was just a glitch, a tiny unnoticeable moment before I’m back on two feet.

I need another glance in the mirror, my boots untouched by the blood, my face still cold from the outside, my hands dry. The smell of blood alone would’ve been enough to crack me once, but today I wait, and let myself get used to it.

I speak directly to the mirror, ‘Lawrence Duncan,’ I address myself so, because that is my name, ‘keep your head together.’ My voice doesn’t carry very far in the stillness, but it sounds commanding and powerful to my ears.

 I think about how thick the trail is, and understand without compassion how deep the cuts must’ve gone to spill blood this dark. It’s the kind of blood you keep locked inside you, flowing to the organs that need it most, rich with life giving oxygen. Clean and pure blood, I remember that much, I wish I didn’t. I think that’s why I’m so calm, I’ve dedicated my life to keeping these truths from everyone else, and I’m not going to stop.

The white tiled floor contrasts almost beautifully with the velvet blood, soft and flowing against hard and unmoving. It’s like a scar down a beautiful face, it doesn’t have to make the face less beautiful, only unique and exotic. As much as I try to accept the smell, it refuses to work any gentler on my senses. I wipe my finger on the floor next to trail, and it’s only now I realise how neat it is. There are no splashes, no deviations from the track. The trail leads in one perfectly straight line, so perfect it’s impossible to tell which side of the corridor it began and where it ends. I have no option but the follow my path.

There’s a prickly doubt creeping over me as I walk, like a child on a macabre treasure quest. There are several things I find strange, all the bright neon lights are switched on, despite the daylight breaking through the windows. One of the lights ahead flickers wildly, the years of crumbling, decaying moths sparkling erratically against the walls, also tiled white. The daylight and the uncovered windows worry me enough, the daylight used to remind me of the things I did, my gut clenches painfully at the intentions I know are behind this symbolic gesture. My feet start to slow, but my palms are still dry. I toss the hair back out of my eyes with a confident grin, aimed at whoever might be watching.

I get a sudden and uncontrollable fear that grips me like icy chains around my chest, I only hope whatever is at the end of the bloody road is distinguishable as a human. If I can’t do anything else at least I can make sure they’re not forgotten, I can tell the family, and even if I can’t do that, maybe I can imagine what their face would look like unclouded with the fear of death. The fear goes as quickly as it came, my heroic thoughts act as a sponge, soaking up my doubt. I have always been selfish in my bravery, imagining the smiling faces and silent tears as they look up gratefully towards me.

The doors on the other side of the corridor are locked also, they look as if they haven’t been touched, a large spider web sprawls across the glass, glimmering in the harsh artificial light. The edges of the windows are heavily coated with dust. I raise my axe high and aim disastrously at the padlock, the axe gets wedged into the door frame, the wood splinters and crackles. I take a deep breath and try again, swinging less like a lumberjack this time, reigning in the morbid excitement. The rust crumbles and speckles the white floor and the metal falls away effortlessly, just like the other bolts and locks have done. The scrape of the metal against the rust still screams through my mind like an echo, but I try to ignore it. The rest of the padlock lands with a clunk in the blood, causing droplets to deviate from the strict line.

The doors open less dramatically this time, slithering over the tiles with a dry squeal, a sound like a shiver down the spine. The trail stops directly at the door’s edge, once again there’s nothing after it except polished white. The doors open onto a large hall, nothing in the room apart from pale wooden church benches pushed tightly to the side of the walls, an altar neatly tucked away in the far corner. The high ceiling opens onto a glass dome and the sunlight illuminates everything. Every detail is unchanged, the hall exactly as it was.

There is a large metal barrel perched at the room’s edge, blue paint peeled to reveal the tin beneath. I feel a little giddy and a little sick, I think I have found the grim treasure at the end of the bloody rainbow. I grit my teeth and move a step closer, feeling the slightest flutter of a shaking hand. With a set jaw I peer into the barrel.

I hadn’t managed to acclimatize myself to the smell, not at all. The liquid is as thick as molasses, eerily black though the bright lights betrayed the deep earthen red that it really was. I take my face swiftly from the edge and breathe in the cleaner air. At least now I know, and what was in that barrel was never going to be identified as a human. I could’ve tried harder, but the sweetness of the smell is working its way into my stomach, and I have to swallow hard to keep from vomiting.

I move back quickly from the barrel, counting the seconds it took to steal my confidence and make my heart beat like a ticking bomb against my tightening ribs. I need to get away from here, away from this smell and this place and the mess my foolish heroics has gotten me into again. Something catches me eye and has an effect on my strained, nervous state of mind. It could be the light glinting off something in the distance, the stone angel that was once part of this church, I’m looking at her with different eyes, or I’m caught by the spider returning to it’s web. Whatever it is, it throws me off balance. I topple onto my knees, my beautiful cowboy books skid in the blood, the white leather ruined.

I somehow manage to gain control of my nerves and my balance, but without looking down I slip in the blood once more, and as I crash back to earth I know this is the big one. I fall straight into the barrel, my broken yelp dying in my mouth on the way down, the evil red glint in the liquid seems to be laughing darkly at me. I land heavily on my back, crashing into an adjacent door, the wood banging against the walls also sounds like laughter, all my bravado and confidence washed clean away from my body.

It’s too late. The blood, the crushed chunks of pale bone, the sickening white smears, the dark purple things, fragments and pieces, resting on the surface of this human lake the way I imagine a diseased and polluted stream running over an abattoir floor. The filth of a thousand cattle. There is a mass of clogged and matted hair. This time I do scream, and the slosh makes it’s slow progress towards me. I scramble wildly away from it, backing further into the room.

Only then do I realise where I am. I crawl around to face the wall, someone has turned the projector on once more and its image spreads over the entire back wall. A golden sun rises over and over on a juddering loop, the great mass heaves itself over the horizon. The cracks in the wall break up the image and the real sunlight dulls it. There are bricks gouged out of the room’s structure and the old jammed film ignores them so that there are black spots like cancer over this flat sun.

I put my head in my hands and start to cry. Thick shivering tears spill down to join the slurry that moves closer to me. This was project 45, this is what we died for.