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.
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