Project 45 Chapter Three

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.