Chapter Ten

Please read everything that comes before this starting with the prologue

Chapter Ten

Despite everything, I couldn’t resist. It was too beautiful, the pull of the Atlantic too great to keep me away. The sand glittered like a thousand gems in a setting, with the crystal ocean as its centre piece. The sun glowed and burned as it pushed that rich azure towards me.

The beach was dotted with sunbathers, dozing or reading, sipping rum cocktails. They weren’t concerned with a murder investigation, they didn’t care about anything but their tan lines on this morning. Children screamed and darted past me, water wings flapping in the wind, their excited faces painted white with sun lotion.

The hotel only offered all-inclusive, so we had to pretend this was a holiday, but I had never thought about the possibility of any of these trips being an actual holiday. The very thought made me disgusted at my insensitivity.

Something was a little different now though, some of the puzzle was slotting together. If Jarl really had killed Angelica, it meant a lot. There was no doubt he belonged where he did, and it would be a long time before he got out of there. After the scene he had created yesterday he was being regularly sedated and physically restrained. The events of yesterday seemed impossible now, as I looked out over that vast expanse of turquoise.

I strode confidently across the beach, my snorkel mask gripped in one hand. I slipped my feet into the gentle waves, tiny rocks and pale sand. I laughed as a child splashed and paddled past me. Despite the heat, the water was still cold, and it was refreshing, I sank further into it.

The ocean floor gave way as soon as I started swimming, it’s always an amazing feeling of freedom for me, swimming out of my depth, especially in the ocean. It’s a tiny slice of excitement that is easy to achieve, seeing miles of open space in front of you and feeling nothing below you. I stayed where I was just looking out at several wind surfers, treading water and letting the warming sensation fill me now that I was used to the temperature.

As I descended under the gentle waves I opened my eyes, a small grey fish wriggled past me. I took the snorkel mask from around my neck and practised breathing for a little while before submerging myself, with another little thrill of excitement. It was safe excitement this time, something I welcomed.

There were fish darting in and out of the rocks far beneath me, more tiny shimmering grey ones, and large yellow fish with open mouths, bobbing along peacefully, glancing at me briefly. The rocks formed caves and arches for shelter, another city what felt like miles below. The fish retreated from my path into the safe holes as I cast a dark shadow over their world.

There was something coloured a dull pink hiding under a larger rock, I wondered if it was a crab, the ones which I had seen so far were small, scuttling along the seabed with that look of urgency which I find fascinating. This one seemed much bigger, I swam on, I’m always eager for a story about bravery when facing giant creatures which could kill me, slightly exaggerated of course.

Something streamed out in the water, some kind of plant life, loose tendrils of seaweed, except that it was a dark brown.

Then the water started to flood my lungs. The dull pink I had seen was skin. The streams of seaweed were hair, hair streaming out from a face, the bloated and decaying face of Marietta Benavente. Two open eyes stared up at me from within the mass of flesh, they were glassy and blank, jagged flaps of skin swayed with the hair around the neck, a beetle crawled from her nostril.

I tried to yell out but my mouth filled with water at an increasing speed, I ripped the snorkel mask from my face and I tried to swim back to the surface. The cold panic started to fill me as my arms grew heavy, heavy and head like the mass of hair and bone staring up at me. Her empty eyes were pulling me back down, calling to me.

I awoke to disjointed pink spots floating across my eye line, my water logged ears heard my name.

‘Lawrence,’ it was calm, but serious, concerned but controlled. I coughed and water dribbled down my chest. My lungs were on fire and I couldn’t move my legs, the effort of trying hurt too much to try again. All I could feel was the numb cold and the burning, the hard ache that seemed to slow my heart as I tried to breathe.

‘Give him some room,’ the calm voice commanded. I heard other voices then too, speaking lowly. The pink spots dissolved as the voices quietened, I saw anxious faces in their place. My fingers flexed briefly, I was afraid I would be paralysed again, so I used all my effort to grab out. I made contact with Lisa’s wrist.

I tried to speak, I tried to tell her what I had seen, but there was a sharp stab in my throat as I squeezed out a coarse groan. I coughed again and the water that escaped me burned like alcohol.

‘Lisa,’ I scratched out eventually.

The sunlight was so painful I closed my eyes again, but I saw her face, her eyes darting to the watching crowd. When I closed my eyes I saw the other face, eyes staring at the sky, hair streaming out, the deep blue tainting her features. The jagged cuts.

The jagged cuts. I had read that police file a hundred times, a weapon of bone or ivory, in every murder but one. A realisation crept over me like a putrid fog I had been ignoring.

‘Don’t try to speak,’ Lisa said, and I felt her comforting hands touching me, holding me. The strangers were leaving now, they didn’t even throw me a second glance, their own blurred shapes fading into the scenery. I gripped Lisa’s wrist tighter and tried to pull myself up.

‘You’re hurting me,’ she complained, it was the same wrist that Jarl had grabbed yesterday. Jarl, I felt sick.

‘The cuts,’ a voice like my own but reduced to a harsh rasp, Lisa looked about her with nervous eyes. ‘A weapon of bone or ivory.’ Every word was harder to push out, but I needed to speak, it needed to be said.

‘He did it with his teeth, God, Lisa, he did it with his teeth!’ And I slumped back into the sand.

*

The memory of the cold water was still hurting me hour later. I lay on my hard bed shivering, sudden cold ripples flowing over me. I felt like my body temperature had been permanently altered, this was all there was now, I would remain this way for the rest of my life, cold and frightened.

I saw Jarl’s honest grin when I closed my eyes, I saw his eyes go dark as he grabbed Lisa and then I saw his eyes change into those blank staring ones. It was then that my eyes flew open and I had to look around the room, to make sure I was really awake. This routine went on for what felt like hours, until I couldn’t even close my eyes at all and I just stared into the dark hoping sleep would come eventually, if I lay here long enough.

I slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room, I knew Lisa wasn’t sleeping either because I didn’t hear the deep breathing that always follows our brief good nights. I still had the memory of her comforting hands, of all the things that were burnt into my mind, I was glad of that one. I wanted hold her, to let her know without words that I believed her and I was there for her. More than anything I wanted to be next to someone warm.

She shifted in position when I crawled under the covers but she didn’t speak. I slid my arm around her and she turned to face me. I pulled her closer and my heart was still hurting me when it tried to beat faster. We were almost nose to nose, and I put my face into her hair, her pillow and her cheek were wet and she still smelt like the beach and the sea.

That sweet salty smell made me shiver again and I was nearly overcome until she kissed me, and for a brief moment none of our misery existed.

Chapter Nine

Please read everything that comes before this, starting with the prologue. This chapter contains one use of very strong language

Chapter Nine

We were waiting in stark white visitor’s room of St Joseph’s psychiatric hospital, two hours drive from our hotel in Cuba. We were wearing white badges with ‘visitor’ printed across the front, the fake passes had worked, I almost hoped they wouldn’t.

I hadn’t been sleeping on the hard mattress in the hotel, so as I yawned, out of genuine tiredness, Lisa threw me a sharp look. She was still trying to convince me of her convictions, and I still couldn’t share them. I was keeping an open mind, but something about this place and its normality told me we wouldn’t find answers here.

It was too clean, the white sofa we sat on didn’t have a spec of dust on it, a woman came with a trolley to bring us coffee. St Joseph’s was unlike any hospital I had ever been in, suspicious yet welcoming.

Beyond the entrance hall and the secluded room we were in now I saw nurses and doctors, looking harassed and scattered like any hospital. Patients were walking around serenely, padding in slippers across the white floor. I had expected screaming, crashes, fights, wild people banging on glass partitions. The sound I mostly heard through the door was calm chatter and laughter.

The receptionist smiled at us with the look of a shop assistant. She turned to everyone waiting in the room and gave them the same smile. There was a family, a mother and two teenage children, and a man on his own, the man was pacing up and down the lino.

A doctor pushed the door open so that it banged on its hinges, he was carrying a white file. He looked down at something on his file and then looked at Lisa and me. He exchanged words with the receptionist and I felt Lisa jolt beside me. She smoothly and calmly got to her feet. Despite her cool exterior, I knew her well enough now to know the cracks were appearing. Even though I was still sceptical, I felt my heart beat a little faster.

Lisa gave the doctor a firm handshake before announcing our fake names with confidence. ‘Harriet, and this is Sam.’

Dr Quevedo gave us strange glances, he knew we didn’t belong, but we had the visitor’s passes displayed proudly, there was nothing he could do about it. I sweated a little when I shook his hand, this is why I let Lisa do all the talking.

‘You family?’ he asked in fractured English. Lisa answered him in Spanish, so I couldn’t understand much of it, but they were talking rapidly. Her tone sounded spot on, serious and concerned.

‘So who are we?’ I asked wearily as we stared started moving through the corridors.

‘Relatives,’ she shrugged, ‘non specific.’ That the doctor wasn’t concerned who we really were did not inspire much confidence in me.

‘What did he tell you?’ I asked.

Lisa bit her lip, ‘Jarl has been quiet over the last few days, they’re running tests on his behaviour.’

‘Quiet?’

‘He hasn’t spoken to anyone for two days,’ Lisa went on, still gnawing on her bottom lip, ‘he’s been sitting in the same position, not moving.’

I didn’t want to be proven right, in that moment I wanted everything to fall into place for Lisa. She needed an answer, and I was afraid we would find what I always expected we would, a mental patient who knew as much about Angelica’s death as we did.

‘Anything else?’ I was digging for something that would save the situation.

Lisa shrugged, ‘just what we already know, he’s polite to staff, calm, there was a problem last week, he didn’t get involved.’

‘A problem?’

‘A few fights broke out,’ Lisa shrugged again, she didn’t seem to think it was important, for reasons I couldn’t explain, even to myself, I had the feeling that information was being held back from us. Whatever happened, I didn’t know if I could handle the situation if it didn’t go the way Lisa had planned. I had a tight, uncomfortable grip twisting my stomach.

The doctor stopped by a white door, there was a glass partion against a wall, and through the smoky glass I could see a figure with dark hair. The doctor asked Lisa a question and she nodded, I could see her eyes betraying her exterior. The doctor pushed the door open.

I could hear Lisa’s intake of breath as we walked inside. The room was as white as everything else in the hospital and impossibly clean. There was a thin bed along one wall and a green fern growing in the corner. In the centre of the room was small desk, sitting at the desk on a white plastic chair was Jarl.

He had both hands placed on the desk and had the strained blank expression of someone who wasn’t there. The artist who had painted him had done a good job, he looked exactly like the picture I had seen. The wide, handsome face and dark eyes were without expression, but when he saw us he smiled, and his face was transformed. It was an honest, kind smile, the smile of an uncle or father figure, someone you could trust.

He was huge, I couldn’t guess how tall he might be when he stood, but sitting in the chair he had the look of someone hunched, who didn’t fit in usual furniture. His heavy muscle bound arms were covered in thick veins, his shoulders bulging out of the white vest he wore. There were a series of shimmering burns down his arms.

‘Jarl,’ the doctor spoke hesitantly, like speaking to a child. Jarl did nothing. He turned away from us and his face changed, it became blank again. The doctor then spoke to Lisa in Spanish.

‘He has a sedative and he’ll be watching through the glass,’ Lisa explained to me. I felt my stomach lurch painfully again, if they really believed this man were a killer, they wouldn’t leave us alone with him. I glanced at the empty dazed look on his face and I was fearing the truth.

The doctor closed the door gently behind him and we were left alone with Jarl. We both jumped as Jarl pulled his head back violently. ‘Finally,’ he sighed. His accent was British, but there was something else cutting into it, Scandinavian maybe, a harsh clipped tone.

Lisa glanced at me, it was hard to tell what she might be thinking. Jarl smiled at us again, I guessed he was thirty seven or thirty eight, but there was something innocent and childlike in his dark eyes.

‘So you’re my relatives?’ He asked, still smiling widely, showing white teeth.

I stole another look at Lisa, I couldn’t judge her expression though, it was as blank as Jarl’s had been moments ago.

‘Tell me,’ Jarl continued slowly, ‘are you my relatives from Norway, or Scotland, England or France?’

Lisa took a step closer to him, I reached out to try and take her hand but she ignored me. ‘Explain,’ she simply said, her voice was cruel and cold.

‘England,’ he closed his eyes. ‘I can’t pretend I had anything to do with Norway or Scotland, in fact, I would have to apologise for those events, not that you mind, they led you here.’

Lisa took yet another step closer, she was being sucked in, his soft voice was doing something to her, or maybe she just wanted to believe so much that she did.

‘Big open eyes,’ he said out of nowhere, he said it as if it were a conversation starter, an interesting fact. ‘I killed your sister,’ he said calmly, I was so unconvinced I snorted. He barely acknowledged it.

‘Why?’ Lisa whispered.

‘No,’ I pleaded with her, and I tried again to reach her hand, to pull her back, to take her away from this place and shake her roughly until she woke up. She ignored me once again, she kept her hands firmly at her sides.

Jarl wasn’t looking at me either, his eyes were burning holes into Lisa. ‘You’ve been on a trail,’ he said slowly, ‘and you’re the first to find me.’

‘There are others looking for you?’ She asked, she gripped the desk tightly.

‘Of course,’ Jarl said with another grin, ‘there’s four other families who have been through what you have, they’re all dissatisfied with the police, they’re all making the right connections.’

‘Why?’ Lisa asked, I knew that whatever she believed or not, she wasn’t going to stop digging.

‘Because someone had to,’ he said, almost nonchalantly, ‘because we need help.’

‘Help with what?’

I had to cut her off, my head was throbbing angrily, the room without windows was stuffy and I still had that worried feeling in my stomach that had turned into pain. In short, I had had far too much of this.

‘Why this path?’ I asked, and Lisa jumped a little, obviously she had forgotten I was there. ‘Why put a whole ocean between the murders if you wanted us to follow you?’

He smiled to kindly again, ‘I like the Caribbean,’ he said, he locked his honest eyes onto mine. ‘It is beautiful, you have to admit; have you been swimming? You can see right down to the sea bed, wherever you are.’ He sounded like a travel agent, I sniffed indignantly.

Lisa glared at me with more anger than she had so far shown Jarl. ‘Why do you need our help?’ She asked again.

‘There are things I can’t do,’ he explained with a smile, his grins were starting to make me ill. ‘All of you have the wild passion of someone in grief, someone suffering, that’s powerful. It’s far more powerful than anything I can accomplish with violence.’

‘So you killed my sister to prove a point?’ Lisa’s knuckles had turned white on the table edge, her lip had curled back from her teeth.

‘I killed your sister because I had to,’ another dazzling smile that have me a headache, he belonged in this place.

‘That’s not a reason,’ Lisa hissed back.

‘You have to stop them,’ he said, it came out of nowhere, it hit me like a lighting bolt, he sounded so honest and so sincere.

‘The people who killed Heimlaug Gunderson and Tony Callister?’ Lisa asked, she was barely audible, her voice was so low, but the room was deathly quiet now.

‘What are your names?’ Jarl asked.

‘Lisa,’ she said without a moment’s hesitation, I made a grab for her arm but she threw me off. ‘This is Lawrence.’

‘No!’ But it was too late, a madman in a mental institution knew our names.

‘All the Ls,’ he grinned, ‘should be easy to remember.’

‘Why do these deaths mean so much to you?’ Lisa asked, completely ignoring my desperation. ‘You’ve killed too,’ and finally there was hatred in her voice.

Jarl fixed his eyes on me, though he spoke to Lisa. ‘It’s where those murders came from, it’s what will happen over and over, it’s what no one will be able to stop. Their failure means more than they realise.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of what they did,’ his voice was animalistic and raw. A dark shadow passed over his face.

‘Who? Who are they?’ Lisa sounded desperate.

Jarl ran his fingers slowly down the length of the table, his head rolled forward and he stared at the floor. No one spoke for a minute that seemed to last an hour. He looked up and I felt Lisa flinch when he looked in her eyes.

‘Project forty five,’ he spoke the words as if they were a disease.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Lisa took a step back, I couldn’t tell if she was angry or disappointed.

‘They were stupid,’ Jarl growled softly, ‘they’re not paying for their stupidity, but they will.’ His eyes glowed briefly, I felt as though a sudden weight had dropped inside my stomach.

‘What is Project Forty Five?’ Lisa sounded weary now, her hands were held out in front of her in exasperation.

I had to do something before Lisa drowned in bullshit. ‘You’re making this up,’ I accused him, ‘and the worst part is, you know it, there is no Project Forty Five, you just invented it.’

He laughed, it was deep and guttural, ‘you have so many barriers to get across,’ he smiled, ‘you remind me of someone.’

‘Alex?’ Lisa whispered, I turned to stare at her. There was a horrible moment of silence in which Jarl’s eyes really did get darker. They were almost black, and the light flickered over them, they shimmered like beetle’s eyes. He smiled again, but this time his smile left me feeling cold, I had the sense that Lisa had pushed it too far. He wasn’t looking at Lisa though, his dark gaze was fixed on me.

‘You shouldn’t be passing that name around,’ he said, and he meant it. Something scared him, he knew the name Alex, whether he was a good liar, and that’s all there was to it, I was forced to believe him.

‘Who is Alex?’ Lisa asked, I glanced at her, and her eyes were wide, not with fear, with excitement. Did she believe she was getting somewhere?

‘I told you not to use that name,’ Jarl snarled at her.

‘Did Alex kill Tony Calister?’ Lisa wasn’t letting up.

Jarl’s black eyes were shimmering again, ‘Let’s talk about Angelica,’ he said, low and deep. ‘I could tell you everything you need to know.’ I sniffed in annoyance, he glanced at me briefly, then turned back to Lisa. ‘I could tell you how she blushed when she took her clothes off for me.’

Lisa’s whole body tensed, she turned, and she spat in his face.

‘You shouldn’t have done that, you stupid cunt.’

He grabbed her arm, Lisa screamed hoarsely in pain, it came out as a disjointed squeal. I could see the veins pushing on her arm, pulsing out as he squeezed.

‘I could tell you how her skin ripped apart,’ he growled, Lisa tried to move away but he yanked her back, her eyes were watering from the pain. ‘I can see the blood pouring from the useless stump of her arm, and how even then she begged me to hurt her.’

‘Lawrence!’ Lisa’s breathless cry woke me up. I banged on the glass and the doctor stared blankly into space. He didn’t move, he didn’t even look at me, I banged again, I banged and shouted for him.

‘Go to Havana,’ Jarl’s low voice vibrated through the room, I felt myself shake. ‘Do you really want the blood of a thousand open wounds to be on your hands? Go to Havana.’

Finally the doctor’s stormed into the room, two of them and a huge bulky orderly built like a wrestler. He prised Jarl’s fingers away from Lisa’s sore skin and the doctor plunged a needle into his neck. Jarl slumped forward over the table.

I half carried Lisa out of the room, I needed to be gone from there and I didn’t care about her, I didn’t care that she wasn’t even shaking. Her eyes were still filled with determination. I was almost dragging her as she dug her heels into the white floors. The Chaos died around us but my heart was still beating like a ticking bomb.

My eyes started to deceive me. As we walked past the glass, Jarl raised his head and gave us one last dazzling smile.

Chapter Eight

Please read the prologue and chapters one to seven first

Chapter Eight

There was nothing to prepare me for the bitter cold of Scotland in February. I know it’s colder the further north you get, but Scotland is part of the U.K right? How bad could it be? I was totally unprepared for our first investigative excursion. The moment I got off the train I felt everything me tense up, the icy wind hit my bare hands and face with such an unrelenting force.

I was then terrified about what we were doing, if I couldn’t even handle the weather, how was I going to handle anything else? I was so unready for any of this, and that fact staggered me momentarily.

I wasn’t in the best of moods anyway when I we arrived in Glasgow. I was stretched and weary from lack of sleep, the constant buzz of the train doors opening was beating against my temples, playing on a loop. There were patches of brown sludge and solid, frozen snow littering the streets and the sky was ash grey. It seemed a dreary and industrial place to me, like any other ready made town centre. A group of teenagers in tight jeans were playing on skateboards, I wondered for a fleeting moment if they had been Tony Calister’s friends.

Lisa had been silent and thoughtful for hours, she sat on the train with her arms folded, occasionally sleeping, often glancing at the clock. I’ve never been very good at making small talk, especially on this kind of trip, so we had barely spoken.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked as my teeth clattered. I hoped her answer involved a warm hotel room.

Lisa was clutching an A to Z of the city, ‘we’re visiting Tony’s school,’ she said. She had probably been planning this for the entire journey. ‘I’ve got his locker number,’ she said with her eyes glinting.

I didn’t even ask how she had gotten his locker number, in all honesty, the thought of sneaking around a deserted building excited me too much. These were the kinds of things I used to daydream about.

‘Won’t the police have already searched his locker and taken everything?’ I asked.

Lisa smiled slyly, ‘everything they can take, she said mysteriously. When I stared blankly at her she rolled her eyes. ‘You remember Anita Sands?’

Then it made sense. Anita Sands had been a girl at our school, she had leukaemia. At St John’s there was a plague on the wall for her and her achievements in Mathematics. We had lit a candle and had a two minutes silence in assembly. Angelica’s locker was right next to Anita’s, she said how sad it made her feel every day just to look at it, and the stickers and graffiti that decorated it.

Those Backstreet Boys stickers and the various names scribbled out in love hearts were evidence of a young girl’s life, it was the only vandalism in the school that the caretaker would never scrub away. It’s probably still there now.

‘It should be revealing,’ Lisa said, ‘we already know that he was an attention seeker, this is his advertisement to the rest of the school.’

She was right, of course, and because she was so often right, I later found myself standing next to the intimidating gates of Haverley College, Secondary School. It was hidden from the main road, and this secluded location gave me the shivers. It was Saturday and the stillness of the tennis courts and running track was the same stillness you experience in a historical sight or a graveyard.

School has changed a lot since I was there, all I can remember is a beaten wooden fence. At Haverley College there was a gate around nine feet tall, solid glittering steep bars topped with twisted metal spikes. Luckily the CCTV system was broken, but there still remained the problem of getting inside.

Lisa jammed her foot in-between two of the bars, it was tight enough to hold but she could wriggle it out. I watched her launch herself up this way, wedging her feet a little higher and supporting herself on her hands. She avoided the metal spikes by going higher than she needed to until she was just balanced dizzyingly on her toes, then she gracefully side-stepped the spikes and climbed down the other side.

I stared at her with my mouth open. ‘Army cadets,’ she shrugged, ‘your turn.’

I stared up at the gate, it seemed to be laughing at me in its cold metal voice. I had no choice other than Lisa’s method, although my feet were significantly wider than hers, and I required a lot more wiggling. I was almost completely stuck more than once. The edges of the bars began to feel sharp, and the higher up I got, the more I had to hold on. There were thin indents all over my hands.

This was the classic spy work I had dreamt of, I should’ve felt like James Bond but I just felt slow and awkward, and increasingly sweaty. This meant I kept slipping down, my heart leaping to my chest every time. The top of the gate was a worry for me, having the anatomical problems which Lisa didn’t. But somehow I managed to squeeze past, I could survive with the tiny rip in my jeans.

Lisa looked half asleep when I touched down on the floor, I wondered how long it had taken, it felt like I had been climbing for years. I was happy to see that there was a rip in her jacket, so she wasn’t perfect after all.

We found a door around the back of the school, a door that was half buried in climbing plants, lost in the dark grey stone. It would be easy to break into as the wood was cracked and peeling at the key hole was large and rusted. I got another thrill of excitement when I wiggled one of Lisa’s hair pins in the key hole and the door creaked open, I used to practise that on the doors in my old family house.

We had entered a woodwork room, it smelt of sawdust, a scattering of which seemed to cover all the heavy, dangerous machines which were glaring menacingly at us. The dated, peeling grey lino echoed our every step ten fold, it was cold and eerie inside the building, every glimmer off the displays of silver paper seemed to be someone moving silently behind us.

Classrooms with bright numbers above the doors lined the corridor and in the large hall wooden benches were pushed to the side before a large stage, painted sets scattered across it. The cafeteria still smelt of Friday’s lunch. It was next to the cafeteria that the lockers were located, they were spread across both walls. Lisa pointed to number 137 with a triumphant smile.

It was covered in Graffiti, and I might have even guessed whose locker it was even if Lisa hadn’t known. There were gothic crosses scribbled all over it, and inside were lines of dark poetry and bleeding love hearts. There were thick dents made with keys, names scratched into the grey paint. There was one design repeated inside and out in permanent marker, at least ten times. It was a skull, a basic design, but on the skull’s forehead was written the initial M.

Lisa gave a little gasp as she pointed right into the far corner of the locker. In swirling Victorian print were the words ‘In death we love.’

*

‘So it’s all a coincidence? The words are a song lyric.’

We were sitting in a greasy spoon café, we were barely touching our coffees and the waitress hovered over us, her eyes narrowed on the disregarded menu at our table.

Lisa picked up her mug then set it down again, she looked at me with contempt. ‘That’s not what I’m saying,’ she said, ‘it’s a lyric for a hundred songs, a hundred amateur poets have probably used it.’

‘So it is a coincidence,’ I said, ‘he copied it out of a poetry book and thought it would make a cool tattoo.’

Lisa stared off into the distance, the way she did when she didn’t want me to know her thoughts. I glanced at the newsletter on the table while her eyes glazed over. There was a piece about a young man, twenty-two, who had recently died from a heroin overdose. I was just reading something about a rehab centre in France when Lisa snapped out of her trance.

‘But where’s the connection?’ Lisa asked wearily, ‘Angelica never mentioned those words, ever.’

‘There really is no other connection to the murders though,’ I said.

‘Except the blood loss,’ Lisa reminded me. She was right, but at the moment it felt as if we had nothing else to go on, we sat in strained silence.

‘There are other things I need to know too,’ she admitted, ‘about Heimlaug Gunderson as well. About their behaviour before they died.’

‘What are you thinking?’ I asked, taking a sip of my cold coffee, just as I saw the waitress about to approach us.

‘If Tony learnt those words from his killer, and not from a song line, then there should be evidence of someone he knew, somewhere…’ she trailed off. ‘Do you know why I picked this weekend to come here?’ She asked seriously.

‘No, enlighten me.’

She glanced at her watch, ‘It’s Tony Calister’s funeral today.’

I stared at her, this didn’t have much significance as far as I could tell, unless she investigating all this death had driven her to such macabre behaviour. Then something clicked slowly in my mind. I stood up so quickly my chair scraped with a painful sound on the floor, several people turned towards me.

‘No,’ I whispered, gaining command of my voice. ‘It’s immoral, no.’

Lisa snorted at my choice of words, she remained calmly sat in her chair. ‘When are we ever going to get an opportunity like this again?’

‘I’m not gate-crashing a funeral,’ I hissed under my breath.

Lisa jolted, ‘what are you talking about?’ She looked as shocked as I imagine I did, ‘I was talking about taking a look in his house, because we know all his family are going to be away for at least a few hours.’

I sat back down at the table, everyone looked away from me and got on with their breakfast. ‘It’s still immoral though.’

‘You remember being a teenager,’ she shrugged, ‘they’re better at hiding things than the C.I.A. It might be stuff like Porn, his supply of weed, but you never know, we could find something useful.’

I hesitated, this wasn’t like looking at police files, or reading graffiti, this was breaking into a dead boy’s life, in his private sanctum. It was wrong on every level, but I was hooked on the pull of new evidence, something no one had discovered. Lisa smiled wide, and for a moment she looked just like her sister, and I couldn’t even pretend to fight it.

It was instantly clear which room was Tony’s. There was a large poster of some rock star hanging over the door, he had long black hair covering his face and tattoos down his arms. As a teenager it would’ve been two fingers up to the clean beige interior of the house, now it was an unchanging shrine to a dead son.

There were elegant cross designs and pentagrams carved into the white paint of the door, some etched in with blank marker, they cast a dark cloud over my mind and heart, this was his life, the kind of boy he was. I looked out over the neat house, homemade curtains and pot puri in glass bowls.

The walls of Tony’s room were painted black, it gave the already tiny space the feeling of a dungeon. The walls were covered with more pictures of brooding rock stars, a hundred pairs of eyes watching Lisa and me with distaste. More symbols and crosses were carved into the bedposts and a few scraped out of the black paint.

Lisa was already digging around in drawers and pulling shoeboxes from under the bed. ‘Help me,’ she motioned.

We pulled out school records, doctors certificates, photo albums filled with drunken smiles. Most of the shoeboxes under his bed contained C.Ds, music that he was now embarrassed to own, some childhood things, Dusty Action Men and broken sports car models.

I was picking through photo albums when I discovered an older shoe box, squat and broken from all the weight on top of it. My stomach contracted in excitement when I looked inside. There were piles and piles of handwritten papers, song lyrics painstakingly copied in gothic designs, a few famous poems. Under all this there was a simple dog-eared notebook, dirty and partially scribbled over in black marker.

‘Jackpot,’ I whispered, scared by how fast my heart was beating.

Lisa dropped the pile of clothes she was rummaging through and grabbed the notebook out of my hands. She gasped, it was a diary, she handed it back to me tenderly, like it was buried treasure. She was not even trying to hide her grin.

‘The pain is like a knife twisting through me, tearing though blood and bone,’ I read, I looked up at Lisa, ‘wow, this kid was really messed up.’

Lisa shrugged, ‘weren’t you angry as a teenager?’ She asked. I couldn’t admit that if I was angry as a teenager it was only because of her sister.

There were pages and pages of the same dark words, until about halfway through the diary, where the words became numbers. The numbers were pushed tightly together to indicate double figures in some places, with large gaps between them. This went on for at least twenty pages, right through the rest of the notebook.

I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing, I tossed the notebook into Lisa’s hands. She rolled her eyes and smiled slyly, ‘teenagers are so predictable,’ she said.

She had already started to decode the message, ‘M kissed me today,’ she read, ‘it felt like waking up.’

I remembered the locker, the skull and the letter M, repeated so many times.

Lisa was unimpressed, ‘I figured that was the Gothic version of a love heart,’ she said. ‘This code is too obvious, even for a teenager, it looks like-’

‘He wanted someone to read it,’ I finished for her.

‘Wait,’ she said, and she pointed to a series of numbers that were repeated over and over, at least five times, just on the first page.

9 14 4 5 20 8 23 5 12 15 22 5

‘I think I can guess,’ I whispered, looking in her eyes. We had found another piece of the puzzle, another clue, the feeling was so exhilarating it was like being drunk.

A door in the background slammed shut and we both jumped. I stared at Lisa, panic stricken for a moment. I heard a woman screaming and wailing desperately, a man’s voice was trying to calm her, all I could make out were harsh screeching tones and heavy grunts.

Lisa ran to the window, she motioned to me. The funeral party was back, but there was only one car, and I only heard those two voices. Downstairs had been plates of sandwiches, wrapped in plastic, glasses set out on the worktop, everything ready for a party.

I didn’t have time to wonder, I saw what Lisa was really pointing at, there was a jutting garage right under Tony’s window, we could easily jump from there to the ground, this jolted me further, I thought about the interview room and the consequences if we were to be found.

The wailing was getting worse, doors were crashing all over the house, heavy footsteps storming through rooms. I heard glass breaking. Even though we were directly above it, the screaming words were incoherent, muffled by heavy tears and what sounded like the plates of sandwiches being thrown across the floor.

And then one clear shout broke through the chaos. ‘HIS BODY!’ the heavy Glaswegian accent cried out like nails on rust, ‘WHERE IS TONY’S BODY!’

Chapter Seven

Please read all the previous chapters starting with the prologue

Chapter Seven

It was midmorning on a hazy yet cold Saturday, the sun was stretched lazily across my flat, giving me a dull, frustrated headache. It was that part of year when it hasn’t decided if it’s winter or spring, and London is unbearable both above and below ground.

I had just spent an awkward week at work where half the employees had found out that I had been questioned over a murder and the other half were being told by that first half. It had been on the news, and even though my name hadn’t been mentioned, most of the gory details had. All the people who didn’t know me, despite the fact I had been working there for two years, soon learned my name and repeated it in the corridors.

My situation left me hungry and exhilarated, me and Lisa had just started out on our search for a killer. Who wouldn’t be excited by that? Staying up late into the night and reading over police files, discussing weapons and motives, making lists of suspects. It was like the sort of movie I used to watch with my dinner balanced on my knees. It sounds despicable I know, but I felt like when Angelica died, my life kick-started into action.

Lisa was sat cross-legged on the rug, she was still too afraid of what was living in my sofa to sit on it. She was surrounded by a wide circle of papers, files set out in neat piles all around her. She had personal statements, school grades, names and backgrounds of police officers and histories of local areas. Lisa had always told me that you could find anything if you looked hard enough, and I never questioned her methods, because it was something I really didn’t want to know.

Her hair was loose and falling over her face and the file she read, I couldn’t tell what expression she might have, but my eyes kept leaving my own crisp sheet of paper to watch her.

‘Heimlaug Gunderson,’ the mass of hair said, her hands hidden inside her oversized jumper. ‘What do we know?’

I cleared my throat dramatically, ‘twenty seven years old.’ I looked down at the picture and lost my pace, Heimlaug had reddish blonde hair cut into a short bob around a plump heart shaped face. It was her passport photo, so she wasn’t smiling, but she still looked like she might break into laughter, there was something playful about her pale eyes. I looked at her pretty face and words flashed through my mind, ‘eye to cheek.’ The words got a hold of my mind and would let go, horrible images flashed like subliminal messages. ‘Ripped eye to cheek.’

‘Norway,’ I said, pulling myself together. ‘Differs from other murders,’ I turned the picture over and tried to block out her face. ‘Police suspected a dog attack because of the torn and jagged nature of her wounds, and,’ I gulped down the bile, ‘because there wasn’t much left of her.’

Lisa nodded coldly, she took a sip of coffee. I stared at her, maybe she was tired, but I could see no compassion in her bloodshot eyes. ‘The words “in death we love,” were written on the sole of her foot,’ I paused again, ‘the foot found a metre away from the rest of the body.’

Lisa nodded again, but deeply this time, and she closed her eyes, was she afraid I would actually see her compassion? Her chin pushed into the scratchy material of her jumper, she pressed her fist into her forehead. ‘It’s those damn words,’ she said, ‘why aren’t the connections being made?’ Not looking at me she waved her hand out expectantly and I gave her the papers. ‘What have they missed?’

I stared blankly at her, not certain if I was supposed to answer or not. She was talking about the police of course, and I had to agree that it defied belief that these murders really weren’t being connected. This is why I always tried to push her to tell them.

‘Similarities between Norway and Scotland?’

‘The words, that’s all.’ I admitted

Lisa banged her fist on the stack of papers. ‘Tony Calister,’ she pointed to the paper she was holding. ‘What are you hiding,’ she asked his picture.

‘They were both dragged,’ I said, remembering, ‘all three victims were dragged.’ Her teeth curled over her lips at my use of the word ‘victim’ so describe her sister.

‘They were all dragged while alive,’ she said, ‘the only problem is Tony Calister.’ She held the page out to me.

It was the typical missing photo, he looked happy, an arm without an owner was around his shoulder and he had a drink in his hand. He had a thin face, high cheekbones and a devil may care grin. His face was surrounded by heavy black hair, two streaks of electric blue across the enormous fringe that covered one eye, the other eye rimmed in thick black make up. He had only been seventeen.

‘First assumption was suicide,’ I said.

‘Only the wrist slashed,’ Lisa said, frustrated, ‘but the same jagged cut. The line of blood suggested he crawled back into his bedroom to die.’ She smiled evilly at me, ‘the only problem with that theory is the lack of blood found.’

‘And there’s the problem with the words,’ I said. There was a big difference, Tony had them tattooed onto his skin, the tattoo was still scabbed and fresh.

‘So he did it himself?’ Lisa asked.

I looked at the picture again, ‘or he was influenced to,’ I said. ‘Tony was,’ I rapped by hand against the picture, trying to remember the word. ‘You know, he wore a lot of black, listened to angry music.’

‘That doesn’t make him suicidal,’ Lisa said. ‘The other scratches on his arms, they were shallow. He barely drew blood, it’s a cry for attention.’

‘Okay, so he didn’t kill himself,’ I said, ‘which means someone else did, but I can’t believe it was the same person.’

‘In death we love,’ Lisa said out of nowhere, ‘don’t you think it’s too much evidence, they were so clear, every time.’

‘Because the killer wanted them to be seen.’

Lisa banged her fist on the table again, ‘I just need to…’ She trailed off. ‘How much holiday do you have left?’ She asked me.

This jolted me out the murder investigation, it bought be crashing back into a world that didn’t include violent death. ‘About three weeks.’

Lisa started counting on her fingers, ‘I still have bereavement leave,’ she said, ‘and two weeks holiday, do you feel like taking a trip to Glasgow?

Chapter Six

Please read all previous chapters and the prologue otherwise you won't know what's going on!

Chapter Six

I won’t bother going into the details of how we got back from the middle of nowhere. You don’t really need to know about my bitter frustration and the dark looks I threw Lisa behind her back. The thing is, we needed to work together to get out of this mess and to our hotel, so I couldn’t really be angry with her, except in my mind, it was vital she didn’t realise my anger until we were safe. I don’t remember much of the journey because it was spent rehearsing the speech I had devised for the hotel room.

For a while it seemed she was in a trance, she said very little and was constantly staring out reflectively. My t-shirt was digging into my burnt neck, without exaggeration, I felt as if I were on fire. Even my cap around my scalp was burning me, contributing to the headache of the century.

The surly taxi driver had grabbed the money out of my hand before I even had time to contemplate how much money it’s possible to lose in one day. He drove like he was running from the law, a cloud of dust thick behind him.

It was already dark by the time we got to the hotel, the hard sun had been replaced with a steamy night, the sky blanketed with mosquitoes. A lizard with a curly tail rushed through the hotel lobby, shallow pools vibrating with the sound of what seemed like thousands of toads. In the pools stood stone statues, huge leafy plants climbing out onto the marble floors.

My eyes were drawn to a picture placed on a low wooden table. There was a candle burning next to it. The picture was of Marietta Benavente, the dates of her life and death were printed under the picture. She had her dark hair piled high on her head and a healthy smile. The photograph looked professional. I nudged Lisa but she barely noticed, I was left with a worried knot in my stomach.

The hotel complex was so huge it took us another half an hour to find our room. I was still confused about where we were even after we had found it. The only people coming back to their rooms now were the late night stragglers, laughing loudly and baring their burnt shoulders to the night.

The maid had folded our blankets into swans and I wondered again about Marietta. Did her son have somewhere he could live now? Lisa sat on the very edge of the bed and looked out distractedly into space. All I wanted was a shower.

‘We’ll start digging tomorrow,’ I said enthusiastically, I was trying to inject some excitement back into her, into myself, sometimes the investigating got a little too personal and it helped to think of it as an adventure.

‘Why do we need to?’ She said blankly, the air-conditioning making a few stray hairs blow around her tired, empty face. ‘We already know enough.’ She shrugged.

This was about as much as I could take. I grabbed Lisa’s bag from the bed. ‘What are you doing?’ She spat at me.

‘I must’ve missed something,’ I glared at her, pulling the file from the bag and letting the rest fall to the floor with a metal thud. I looked at her, she was wearing appropriate walking clothes, her skin wasn’t burnt at all, on her feet were trainers designed to cool you down. There had to be an explanation, there had to be a reason why she believed.

I stared at the file, I sat on Lisa’s bed while she watched me and read everything, there was nothing. It was the same file. I felt a warm hand on my own and pleading eyes on my face.

‘Stop,’ she whispered.

‘I’m just trying to understand,’ I sighed.

‘Can’t you just look in my eyes,’ she squeezed my hand, ‘trust me.’

I shook my head, ‘I can’t.’

She pointed to the picture, ‘he killed Angelica.’

*

The next day at breakfast Lisa seemed awake and alive, just about. She was on her third black coffee, playing with her fruit platter while eyeing my eggs and bacon with distaste.

It was the height of the season and the holiday makers buzzed around the buffet cart like flies, clutching plates and picking at the food with wide eyes. They were already in their flip flops, t-shirts pulled over swimming shorts and bikinis, looking anxiously at the cloudy sky.

‘We need to start with the other staff,’ Lisa said brightly, ‘find out if they know anything or saw anything suspicious, any hotel guests they were weary of.’

I nodded, I didn’t have the heart to tell her we wouldn’t find anything, besides what we already knew.

It wasn’t easy to get information out of the hotel staff. Mostly because we were playing the nosy, over enthusiastic foreigners wanting the morbid details, the staff were mostly tight lipped, sticking to the hotel’s official line on the incident.

By midday the sun was hurting me again, it seemed relentless in its pursuit of my vulnerable British skin. After getting nothing back from the housekeeping staff we were in the brightly decorated beach bar forming a plan. Lisa was dressed like every other girl here, a simple white dress and wet hair from the pool. I was wearing swimming trunks and a logo t-shirt. We looked like we were enjoying the sun, a little too much in my case.

We ordered beer, and more beer. We sat close to the bar, but not too close to anyone would notice we were disposing of the bright liquid into plant pots and an empty bottle of water, and anything else we could get hold of.

After a while we had a nice collection of empty glasses in front of us. If we got the barman talking now, there wasn’t much he would be afraid to tell a couple of drunken tourists who wouldn’t remember anything tomorrow.

When he bought us the third pitcher of beer I thought I would go for it. ‘On this beautiful day I would like to raise my glass to the poor woman whose picture I saw in the lobby.’

His eyes narrowed for a second and he nodded sadly as I raised my drink, I could see in that instant how he felt about his job.

‘You knew her?’ Lisa asked, she was pretending to look embarrassed by her drunk and inappropriate boyfriend.

It was late into the afternoon now and the sun was shimmering over the turquoise sea, it glittered like a precious gem. I felt an unexpected chill thinking about what had happened here.

‘Everyone knew Marietta,’ he smiled, speaking in perfect, clipped English, ‘it’s a big hotel, but she made an impression.’

‘She was killed in the hotel?’ I asked loudly and confidently.

‘I’d rather not…’

‘Of course, of course,’ I waved my hand airily.

Lisa subtly touched his arm, she read his name badge. ‘Carlos, I apologise for my boyfriend,’ she said gently, ‘he’s had too much to drink.’ She smiled sweetly at him, ‘I work in a bar myself, back home,’ she said, ‘I know how difficult customers can be. I bet you have some stories to tell.’

It didn’t work on Carlos, he just stared blankly at her, whether he was onto her or he just didn’t understand her, I wasn’t sure. ‘Please don’t ask me any more questions,’ he said, shaking his head heavily. ‘Marietta was a good woman.’

‘She was acting strangely?’ Lisa blurted out, ‘before she died?’ I threw her a furious look.

‘Gossip travels fast around here,’ Carlos grunted. ‘Well I don’t believe a word of it, she was a deeply religious woman.’

As he rushed back to the bar, moustache quivering, me and Lisa exchanged triumphant looks.