El Mono, page 35
‘Helena. She is twenty-one now and will not speak to me. From the day of her birth Morten showered her with attention, gifts, stories and all manner of poison and when Morten and I eventually separated for reasons I’ll tell you later, he lied, paid lawyers and bent all the rules of the land to keep custody. It broke my heart. It still does. Helena has not yet become a twisted version of the child I initially raised – unlike her brother – and I’ll fight tooth and nail to prevent that. But the fact is I have two children by two different men, yet Morten, who is the father of only one, has taken control of both.’
Karin’s face flushed with emotion. She blurted out: ‘This can’t be true. Morten has no other children than Peter. He has always had a very low sperm count and that I became pregnant at all is something of a miracle!’
Thelma smiled ruefully. ‘Is that what he has told you? I’m very sorry; I didn’t know or I would have broken this to you more gently. But I am afraid it is Morten who has made up that story, not I. Helena is our daughter. He has one other daughter, too, that I know of – with Patricia Ramírez – so I guess that is news to you, too. He certainly has a very active sex drive and has bedded many women over the years, in and out of wedlock. Karin – I’m very sorry to be so blunt about this but I’m afraid that this really is the truth.’
Claudia’s hand reached under the table and searched for that of her friend. Karin meanwhile became more and more agitated.
‘No, Thelma. You can’t be right. Morten told me not to trust anything you said. Obviously you hate him and are trying to get at him through me.’
Claudia drew her chair closer to Karin.
‘Karin,’ Thelma said quietly, ‘you don’t have to believe me. Patricia Ramírez now works in Cali with TMG. You could talk to her about her two-year-old. With regard to my and Morten’s daughter, you can find her easily. Helena Fields is now a postgraduate mathematics student at Harvard; is listed on their website, and can be phoned direct if you want to hear her corroborate what I say. She won’t answer any calls from me, however. Come to think of it, Morten has probably instructed her never to accept direct calls from Colombia unless it’s from his own personal line. But you can look her up and I’m sure that, between the two of you, you will be able to find a way to speak to her. Try an indirect way to mention her father and see how she reacts. Sorry to sound so devious myself but I’ve learned how to fight him over the years. That’s why he doesn’t want us ever to meet.’
‘It cannot be … it can’t be true.’ Karin was fighting back the tears. ‘You get me here on the pretext that Peter is somehow involved and now you throw all this crap at me trying to undermine my marriage …’
Thelma continued, relentlessly pursuing her story like some soft-spoken juggernaut. ‘Karin, you have to know what you and your baby are getting into. Morten is a very possessive, dominant individual. You must have seen that. Yes, he can be so charming, so generous, so winning in his ways … yet he manipulates people so skilfully to get exactly what he wants. If anyone stands in his way, he can be frighteningly vengeful. He has long lines of acolytes who faithfully follow him and deliver what he orders. It hurts me in ways I cannot describe to say that Leo is one. Leo is the reason we broke up. I wanted to get Leo and Helena away from his evil influence as quickly and as far as possible. I failed!’
Now it was Thelma’s turn to get emotional. The professional veneer began to slip; the collected exterior transformed slowly and steadily into that of an angry, devastated mother who had lost her one and only son and was desperately fighting to retain some hold over her daughter.
‘You cannot believe what a beautiful little boy Leo was and how he has been turned into a terrifying machine to serve his master’s orders. You said yourself, Claudia, what a frightening person he is now. You have no idea how such a comment hurts me to my very core. But … but you are not the first one to say such things.’ This usually stony-faced executive struggled to retain her composure. ‘Give me a moment and I’ll tell you his story … my story … and you can judge for yourself Karin whether or not this information is relevant to the welfare of your baby boy …’
There was a cut-glass decanter of water and four tumblers on the table. Thelma poured water into one tumbler, took a sip and regained her self-control.
‘David Smith and I met in our freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Would you believe that I fell pregnant with Leo when I was only seventeen? How dumb and innocent of the world I was then! Well, becoming a mother at such an age and trying to keep track of my degree programme while raising an infant soon made me grow up. And Leo was such a difficult child! Instead of things getting easier as he developed, things became steadily worse. He simply did not conform to any of the guidelines that parents and baby books lay down for young mothers. He wouldn’t sleep! He was either feeding or crying. His appetite was ferocious: I blew up like a balloon breast-feeding him! Physically, he was healthy though hyperactive, and something was badly wrong with his behaviour. I … I was a wreck, however. It was only thanks to my parents and some very supportive people at MIT that I could stay sane, postpone much of my studies and somehow keep in touch with what I was supposed to be doing at university.
‘Leo became a very intense, uncommunicative little boy. Silent, he would shut out the rest of the world to concentrate rigidly on whatever caught his attention. He couldn’t cope with even the slightest changes to his routines and would fly into uncontrollable fits if disturbed. David and I were living together, trying to share the burden of parenthood, but David couldn’t cope with it anymore and after a couple of years I was on my own.
‘When Leo first started school that, too, was a disaster. By their standards, he was a slow learner. He was certainly intelligent but the problem was he would only study what he wanted and could not be shifted to do anything else. As regards his relations to other children, they took him to be a freak. He was unable to socialise and as a result he was frequently and sometimes brutally bullied. I changed his school a number of times and each time I was struggling to understand what the problem was and what was I doing wrong as a mother. Leo was meanwhile growing up to be a highly introverted, sullen and aggressive individual. The way he learned to cope with bullying was to become a ferocious little fighter himself. That only served to increase his unpopularity and social isolation.
‘Finally, some godsent psychologist – one of many who had been tried and found wanting – diagnosed him as having Asperger syndrome. I didn’t know what it was then, but I soon found out and Leo fits the bill, though he’s on the extreme edge, bordering autism.
Thelma stopped. ‘Have you ever met people with Asperger before?’ she asked.
Karin and Claudia looked at one another … no.
‘It is a psychological disability. It is permanent: part of your personality. People with Asperger simply cannot read others’ emotions; they have no sense of empathy; cannot understand jokes; do not really understand why other people feel and react the way they do. It all made sense. When Leo was a tiny two-year-old I once smacked his bottom for being so naughty. He had no idea whatsoever why I did so. It was like bolt from the blue and it shocked him rigid. I never ever raised a finger against him after that since he simply would not have been able to understand it. Finding out so many years later why he could not read my feelings made an enormous difference to me, to my understanding of my son and to my self-confidence – not having to keep blaming myself all the time. Of course, it didn’t mean too much to Leo: he was as difficult as ever.
‘Leo is very wary of people he does not know. That means pretty much everybody. He doesn’t trust people because for him they are totally unpredictable. Similarly, other people’s pain is meaningless to him. It simply doesn’t register. Strangely enough, having just said that, Leo is very good with animals: so gentle and kind. He wouldn’t hurt a fly … so long as it is a fly or some other dumb creature. Unlike humans, he does not have to read their expressions and try and figure out what they mean, or why they hate him as they do. Can you imagine someone so kind to animals but so distant with people?’
Claudia answered: ‘Funnily enough we can. That reminds me of someone we knew a couple of years ago, though the one we know isn’t hated …’
‘Well, somehow I finished my degree at MIT and I got myself my first job with Triple F as a trainee accountant. Balancing work with bringing up a difficult child became no easier. I was now in my mid-to-late twenties, having missed out almost entirely on a normal gregarious undergraduate life, with student debts up to my eyebrows to pay off and with Leo still demanding much of my attention, day in, day out. I wondered if I was ever going to get my head above the grindstone. Then I met Morten.
‘He was handsome, successful, talented, splashed money around like water … and I don’t know what he saw in me. Well, I do: it was easy sex. I’ve always had a good figure, I’m not unattractive and, my God, with all the stress and running around in my life up to then I was certainly slim, physically fit and – as far as he was concerned – undemanding. He could have me when he wanted and, if he was out partying with others, I wouldn’t complain. When I found out he was sleeping with other girls my only reaction was: OK … so long as he stays with me. I didn’t want to lose him and particularly the financial security he represented.
‘He must have liked the arrangement because we got married. He knew all about Leo and yet still he wanted me. Can you imagine my relief? Was I in love with him? No. Not really. But I sure needed him.
‘He was quick to learn how to handle Leo. Morten is no fool – he knew what he was doing and, unlike me at the time, he knew where he was going. He saw early on that Leo could be an asset to him. He could be moulded. You cannot touch Leo or crowd his personal space. He goes off the rails if you do. Routines are essential and cannot be changed. But he was amazingly single-minded at whatever he chose to do and always delivered results on a deadline, if not before. Deadlines he actually needs, in order to perform. In addition, by his late teens Leo had grown to be a big, very strong and physically imposing young man.
‘It was around then that I saw what Morten was up to: paying for his weightlifting, martial arts and self-defence classes. Always supporting him, encouraging him, building up his ego as well as his physique. He began slowly and steadily poisoning his mind against me. He wanted a faithful acolyte. He wanted a bodyguard and, ultimately – to my utter dismay when I found out just recently – a ruthless soldier and hitman. From information I’ve received over this last year, and now just confirmed by yourself, Karin, I’ve found out that Leo is Morten’s personal, loyal and highly effective assassin. They tell me that in Triple F security, he is informally known as “the nuclear option”.’
Thelma stopped. Her face was blank. Karin and Claudia stared at her in utter amazement. Then Thelma’s eyes filled with water.
‘He was my beautiful baby boy …’ She dissolved in tears. ‘And look what Morten has done to him.’
With a cry out loud, Karin exploded into tears as well. It was all too much to take in.
‘No, no, NO! I can’t … I can’t accept any of this. You are turning my husband into a monster. Why have you come to me with this story? Why are you trying to wreck my faith in the man I married? What is this all about? I should never have come. I shouldn’t believe a word you say. Morten is right. Why are you telling me this? Go away – leave me, leave us both!’
Thelma Marshall nodded. Her face quickly adopted the serious, rather wooden expression that was almost second nature to her. She was a proud woman.
‘I’m sorry. I understand. Since you ask, I can tell you that the real reason why I asked to see you was that I promised someone I would. However, that story is so unbelievable, if I had started with it you would have probably walked out right at the beginning.’
Thelma Marshall stood up, preparing to leave. Karin was now in floods of tears and Claudia had her arm around her shoulders. She looked daggers at the woman standing across the table from them.
‘Try us. One more chance: Who did you promise that you would talk to us?’
‘Someone I got to know in Popayán. Someone who saved me from being mugged, though you would never believe how. I spoke to him afterwards and, obviously, wanted to know all about him. When he heard who I was, he asked me to see you, Karin, and to tell you to take care … He made me promise.’
Karin looked up. Tear-stained and devastated as she was, she had to ask: ‘How did he save you? Tell me the truth!’
‘By a swarm of bees. I told you you’d never believe me!’
Karin let out a wail. It came from deep inside her … Months and months of suppressed emotion were released in one awful, prolonged howl. She knew. Everything that Thelma Marshall had said was true. Her life was turned upside down in that instant. It meant the end of her marriage.
Thelma looked at Karin in shock but Claudia understood.
‘You’d better sit down again, Thelma,’ Claudia said. ‘That is the one thing you could never have made up and it is the one thing you couldn’t know we would believe. You were talking to Daniel, weren’t you? El Mono.’
6
Confrontation
The three women stayed together for a further fifteen minutes, exchanging various phone numbers – how to reach Patricia Ramírez, the best way to contact Helena Fields and where to phone Thelma over the next few weeks. Karin was totally deflated but she was adamant that she would check out Thelma’s story first and gather what evidence she could before she confronted her husband, as she knew she must, and as soon as possible.
Then it was time to return to baby Peter. Karin had promised Ana María she would be back home in an hour and that time had long since elapsed. Claudia and Karin stood up and thanked Thelma Marshall for contacting them. It was the most traumatic experience for Karin, and Thelma apologised for that; Karin and Claudia for their part apologised for their disbelief at first, but they agreed that no matter how shocking these revelations had been, it was better that it was done now and not any later. Karin grimaced at the thought of what she had to do next but thanked Thelma again and said she would be back in contact soon, probably within the next twenty-four hours.
Claudia drove Karin home. It was a short ride and when they arrived Peter was thankfully still asleep. Karin had to sit down first and try and calm her nerves but then she picked up her mobile and phoned Patricia Ramírez – Morten’s personal assistant before her. It was the number of the TMG offices in Cali, two hours’ flight away.
‘Hello, Patricia, this is Karin Roth. Remember me?’ She paused to let the message sink in. ‘Yes – it’s certainly been some time since we last saw each other, hasn’t it? I was just an intern at Triple F then – but I guess you have heard what has happened to me since?’
Patricia Ramirez answered with a very non-committal expression: ‘I heard. I gather I should offer congratulations.’
‘Thank you, Patricia. I am not sure just at the moment if I deserve congratulations. But the reason I am contacting you is that I have heard some very disturbing news. Very disturbing …’ Karin could not keep the emotion out of her voice. She was still very upset after the morning’s exchange with Thelma Marshall and she knew that the answer to her next question was going to make her even more upset, whatever the response would be.
‘Patricia, since I think you know my situation now, you will perhaps excuse me if I ask a very personal question – something that I am desperate to know about. You have a baby daughter who must be now two years old?’
‘Ye…e…s.’ Patricia could guess precisely what the next question was going to be.
‘Forgive me, but who was the father?’
‘Morten Fields.’
Karin could hardly speak. She had to breathe deeply. ‘Thank you for telling me. Patricia, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I owe you an explanation for this call: Morten told me he was infertile and had no other children … You have now proven the lie.’
That little confession from Karin’s side brought a rapid response from Patricia who instantly recognised another woman, a sister in kind, who had similarly been mistreated by the man she had fallen for.
‘Karin, we should meet up sometime and I can tell you all about it if you wish. Yes, he fed me the same story and I fell for it, too. He was all over me like honey when I was pregnant but that changed after he found out I was expecting a baby girl. Then he dumped me. He paid me off. I let him pay for all my medical bills on the understanding I disappeared. Stupidly, I agreed. I still loved him. He spread all sorts of lies about me that everyone else believed. I could go on but I think you know now what you wanted to hear, haven’t you?’
Karin had put her phone on loudspeaker so that both she and Claudia could listen. They both looked at each other. Karin was past tears now. She was angry and getting angrier by the second.
‘Patricia, I cannot thank you enough for what you’ve told me. This is the second time today I have sat and listened to things that have shaken me to the core. The result will be the end of my marriage but at least I can start to rebuild my life. I do hope to see you sometime soon but first I have to confront Morten.’
‘In that case, be very careful. He is a powerful man. But good luck with all that you have to do.’
The call ended. The two friends had heard it all together and now thought the same thought.
‘The bastard!’ Karin said.
She paused in thought. Thinking of her next move; how best to stack up the evidence for the prosecution.
‘Claudia, can you do something for me. Go to Morten’s office while he is out of the way and call Helena Fields. That way, she’ll answer. The phone here is linked in with the headquarters, so I can listen in from here and even talk to her directly. We can use some story about Triple F wanting to fund a research project at Harvard. I used exactly the same procedure in contacting Durham to get Matthew Williams out here so it’s a valid introduction. Say anything actually that gets her to confirm who her father is.’
