by Vince Vogel
Kline shuffled to the table, never taking his eyes off Jonny, and sat down opposite with a thud that shook the room. He continued to gaze malevolently at the journalist as the guard took off the handcuffs and then went and stood by the door.
One of Kline’s eyes was false—the result of a prison attack some years ago—and it gave him a look that confused Jonny. Made it so that he was never sure if the guy was looking at him or through him. Probably both.
“Come on then, Robert,” Jonny said. “Why’d you contact me? What’s this new thing you’ve got?”
Out of the blue, Kline had sent a letter to Jonny through his lawyer. It was a simple note. It merely requested an interview where the killer would reveal details of himself, as well as something new. Whether that was the confession of a new crime or something else, the journalist wasn’t sure.
“I’ll get to that later,” a deep and unfriendly voice barked back at him. “First, I wanna clarify some things. That book you wrote was a piece of shit.”
It was true. At least in the sense that Jonny had written a book on Kline. It had been published back in 1996, several months after the serial killer had begun his life sentence. Kline had refused to speak with Jonny back then, so the journalist was forced to write the book based on interviews he did with Kline’s family and friends, as well as the investigating officers.
“You refused to give an interview,” Jonny stated. “What choice did I have but to print other people’s words?”
“The reason I didn’t wanna be interviewed was I didn’t want no more headaches. You people always wanna know everything. Peck at me with your questions.”
“Then why am I here now?”
“Because I got somethin’ for you an’ I wanna clarify some stuff.”
“I know I’ve already asked, Robert, but what is this thing?”
“Clarity first,” the old man grunted. “I ain’t got long in this world an’ I wanna provide some clarity.”
“Then clarify.”
“Okay. First. In your book, you say I was a killer always. That the kill drove me on. I was a born killer, you called me. But I didn’t like killing until much later. It weren’t something I dreamed about as a boy, like what you wrote. I only ever dreamed about what I’d like to do sexually to girls. Nothing to do with killing them. The first time I killed was because I didn’t wanna be caught. Simple. If I could’ve, I would’ve let that boy go. I strangled him with my eyes closed. When I opened them, he was gone. I threw his body into the river and spent the next twenty minutes throwin’ up.”
“So you were remorseful?”
“I felt bad for havin’ killed him.”
“Then why’d you have to?”
Kline lowered his eyes. Jonny knew why. The boy had been sexually assaulted. It was the only known time Kline ever assaulted a male victim. He’d already established himself as a rapist by then, but the boy was an anomaly. He’d parked his truck nearby. The kid could possibly identify it later. The imagined embarrassment of being caught with a male victim had pushed Kline to kill for the first time.
“I just saw him there,” he mumbled. “He was fishin’ an’ looked so peaceful and happy as I drove my lorry over the bridge and see him standin’ on the bank. ’Fore I knew what was happenin’ I was down there with him. Talkin’ ’bout fishin’. Then for some reason—I don’t recall why—I had me arm ’round his shoulder. He jumped an’ began shoutin’ at me. I grabbed ahold o’ him. Pulled him into me. I looked about. There weren’t no one around, but still, I was scared. Then I… I did the business with him in the tall grass o’ the bank. Afterwards, in a daze—like a dream or like bein’ drunk—I had my hands ’round his neck. I closed my eyes an’ heard a crack. An’ the next, he were on the floor.”
Jonny gazed across the pockmarked table at Kline. He didn’t look sad or remorseful. Merely blank. As though describing it had been the same as describing what he did at work today.
“Is that what you’ve really brought me here for?” the journalist asked. “To glory in it all?”
“Nothin’ like that. I told you, I want to correct you.”
“Then tell me what else needs correcting.”
“In your book, you say that my parents were God-fearing. That my ol’ man was a Jamaican in the British army—a hero in World War Two—then worked on the London docks after he emigrated. What you don’t mention is that he was a cruel drunk who took his hatred toward the world out on his kids an’ wife. Who missed Jamaica an’ cursed the day he swapped it for a London slum. You write that my ma was a good church goin’ woman who tried to install discipline in her five children. What you don’t say is how my mother would sing like a bird in church on a Sunday then take me to bed on the Monday night while her hubby was away at work. You don’t mention none of that.”
“Then tell me about it,” Jonny insisted. “Take me through it. You’ve never opened up to anyone.”
“That ain’t true. A couple of the psychiatrists here I’ve spoken to, I’ve told them things under hypnosis. It’s how I come to learn what I’d kept hidden from myself all these years.”
“But nothing in print. You’ve never given people out there a clue as to what motivated you to do the things you did. People need to know what signs to look for in the future. How we can catch men like you before they cause as much damage as you did. That’s the debt you owe to society. To help prepare it so it can spot the future Robert Klines.”
Kline grinned. He looked like a cat bearing down on a cornered mouse.
“You’ll never stop every man from killing,” he stated with some authority. “Some will always slip through.”
“Then help make the gaps in the net smaller.”
7
The small country lane that ran through Boreham Wood was now completely closed off. In its center, a press box had been set up and a crowd gathered in front of it. The parents had been taken away, driven out of there as far away from their dead children as was possible.
Commander Philip Ross of the Metropolitan Police was giving a press conference to the assembled mass that filled the road, some of it spilling into the trees that stood on either side. Cameras flashed and white halogen light illuminated him in a shimmering haze. He was in full uniform. The round silver buttons dotted up his middle, his medals sitting proudly over his heart where his vanity belonged. A supercilious look remained on Ross’ face at all times, even during those of turmoil. Physically, it was waxen and shaved to gray skin. His brown, neatly side-parted hair was devoid of a single one out of place, so that Ross actually ended up resembling a waxwork of himself.
Somewhere at the back of the throng, far back from the cameras and microphones that bustled at the front, a man stood like a statue with his arms crossed over his chest. He was watching Ross intently. Feeling such exhilarating power running through him. Feeling as alive as the white light that surrounded the uniformed cop.
“At the moment,” Ross was saying, “we are treating this as an isolated incident.”
This made the man smile. He felt such superiority to the arrogant cop at the front. The uniform and medals didn’t impress him. They merely stated that Ross was a career man more used to buttering up superiors the right way than actually getting his hands dirty. A successful sycophant on the ladder of nepotism, he thought. Happy to face the press but utterly incapable of facing someone like himself. There wasn’t much man behind that uniform. No, it wouldn’t be men like Commander Ross who actually came after him.
“Is this a terrorist attack?” someone in the press asked.
The grin grew larger, stretching across his face. This was beginning to be fun. Terrorist, he thought. I like that. Like the idea of them all cowering in terror. All those ugly people filled with fear.
“I cannot stress enough,” Ross retorted, “that this is not being treated as a terrorist attack. We believe this may have been personal.”
“Who would do this to children?” a voice cried out from the crowd.
“A ver
y sick individual who needs to hand themselves in immediately.” Ross faced the cameras with the intensity of a veteran news anchor. “If you are listening,” he went on in a solemn voice, “I ask you to come and hand yourself in. There is no good hiding from us, we will find you. A crime like this is almost impossible to hide from. Do not have us come for you. We will use every force necessary to neutralize you.”
A threat, the man thought. I shall glory in taking as many of your cops with me as I can, Commander Ross.
“I also call upon,” Ross continued, “anyone who notices something different about a friend, coworker, or loved one, either recently or in the coming days, to contact us immediately. If you notice a person acting strangely or out of character. Any change in their behavior. Because no matter how cold-blooded a person we’re dealing with here, a thing like this will change them, and if you know this person, you will notice.”
What if he has no one? the man thought while staring across the crowd at Ross. What if his whole life he’s been invisible? No one noticed him before, so why would anyone notice him now? And how would they know what was out of character if they never knew his character in the first place?
8
“The only one I ever felt any real remorse for,” Robert Kline was saying while Jonny’s dictaphone picked up everything the giant said, “as far as the rapes were concerned, was the first. I was young, I suppose, and I felt bad for havin’ done it to her.”
“But you said you felt bad for the boy?”
“That was the killing. I felt bad for the first two kills. It was only the third where I felt something deep inside. A power you could say that rose up in—”
“You were saying about the first,” Jonny interrupted.
He didn’t want to get stuck with the old man reminiscing about his crimes again.
“Well, I was eighteen when I raped a woman for the first time. It felt good. I’d wanted it. But afterwards, I felt terrible. Like I’d killed something inside of me. I actually cried.”
“Didn’t you cry after Mavis Chapman?”
“Yeah. I felt sorry for her, too. She reminded me of the first, you could say.”
“In what way?”
“In that you could see she was a good person. I mean, she gave me money afterwards 'cos she thought I was homeless.”
Chapman had been lucky to live, Jonny thought. She’d come a year before Kline began taking a liking to killing his victims.
“Anyway, the rest I felt nothin’ for,” Kline went on. “They were a means to an end. The first was different. She was different.” He shook his head. A look of sadness had taken hold of his features. However, it was quickly replaced with anger. “It don’t mean nothin’,” he said irritably. “I mean, did you know that I was dropped as a baby on my head?”
“No.”
“They never mentioned that. Not even in court did my lawyer mention that. I spent many weeks in hospital as a result. It gave me a malformed skull. I still believe that my ma did it on purpose.”
“You blame this injury for your crimes?”
“Why not? A doctor from America examined me ten years ago. He said that I had slight brain damage as a result and that it could have something to do with my lack of remorse.”
Jonny gazed across at him. He didn’t want to get into a conversation about blame or remorse.
“Tell men about Betsy Eden,” he said instead. “You apparently spent nearly a whole day with her at her house.”
“I s’pose,” he grunted. “What you wanna know?”
“Talk to me about her.”
“Well, I’d done my usual thing for the past two weeks. Stalked the address to make sure she had no regular visitors. Family staying with her. That sort o’ thing. Then, when I was sure, I broke the window open.”
“You used to use your bare hands to break open the catches on the windows. That’s how they knew you.”
“Yeah. Those council houses that those women lived in were cheap. If you could squeeze your fingers underneath the frame, you could rip the thing off its lock. Most of them ol’ girls would have probably lived if they had of had better windows. Anyway, I popped Betsy’s open and climbed inside. When I switched the light on in her bedroom, she got up straight away and put her glasses on. Then she sat up in bed an’ gazed at me. I used to like standing there an’ sayin’ nothin’ for a bit. Watch the fear an’ panic go through them. Only if they grabbed the phone would I dive at them. But Betsy was different. She was funny about it. She said, ‘Are you lost?’ I almost laughed. I told her I was there to rape her. She began to cry. It made me angry so I leapt on her and began. It was then that she started to whisper. I asked her what she was whispering about and she told me she was saying a prayer for me. It struck me cold. After that I took her downstairs and we watched telly together. I even made her a cup of tea and gave her a cloth to wash the blood off.”
“The police report claims you spent the whole day with her.”
“I did. She wanted to be my friend. She was like a mother. Said she forgave me. I honestly meant to leave her alive. We spent the day watchin’ telly. She even cooked me dinner. I kept sayin’ I was sorry. She never even asked me to leave.”
“But you did initially leave the house. Why?”
“Like I said, I meant to go home. Leave her alive. But the moment I was out on that street, I realized I couldn’t leave her alive. I went back ’n’ did it. She hadn’t even closed the window I got through yet. When I came back in, she began crying. Got on her knees. Closed her eyes. She knew the moment she saw me come back in what was gonna happen. I didn’t get such a good kick off that one.”
9
The Darlington Club was situated in the heart of London between St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bank of England, in that land of ancient stone blocks and red buses. It was one of those wooden paneled gentlemen’s clubs that you find all over the heart of London. Close to where the money is kept.
Jack made it inside through a back door where they usually took deliveries. Harry had been insistent upon this. A member of Dunn’s staff was waiting for him at the entrance.
“Arms up,” the gorilla of a man grunted.
“Really?” the detective grumbled back.
“Mr. Dunn is most insistent.”
Jack lifted his arms. The guy frisked him heavily, not holding back when he tapped away at Jack’s groin. He took the detective’s phone and wallet, placing them in a metal box.
“When you’re done, you’ll get it back,” he stated.
Once that part was done, Jack glad he wasn’t going to be asked to bend over, the man took a metal detector wand and ran it over him. Having removed his belt, Jack was allowed through, where another giant man led him up a back stairway used by the staff. Along the way, they passed morose-looking men in shirts, waistcoats and bowties, carrying trays of drinks to and fro
They entered the thick carpets, portraits of Earls, Dukes and Kings, and wood-paneling of the rooms. They passed men sitting in tall-backed leather chairs reading newspapers and drinking cognac, being served by those in bowties. Silver platters and white gloves everywhere.
Eventually, Jack found himself shut inside a room that resembled an ancient study. A large, stone fireplace with a moose head hanging above it took up most of the back wall. Inside, the fingers of a roaring fire climbed up the chimney. Two chairs had been placed before it. They were angled slightly towards the fireplace, and in one of the chairs, Jack could see Harry Dunn’s crossed legs, but not his face.
“Take a seat,” Dunn’s gruff voice demanded.
Jack placed himself in the other chair so that he and Dunn were angled inwards, facing the flames. It was the third time in the last six months that Harry Dunn had given Jack information. It was done in a businesslike way. Quick and to the point. There was no talk of the past. No camaraderie between the two. Merely an understanding that whatever Dunn could do for Jack, he would.
“Bloke by the name of Tommy Lewis,” Harry Dunn began without turning
from the rising flames. “Deals in that type of gun. American stuff. Show off. Sells to collectors. Nothing on the streets. Deals almost exclusively in American hardware. I thought he’d be a good bet to find out who sold your hollow point .44s.”
“Is that the rapist pedophile Tommy Lewis?” Jack asked.
“The same.”
Tommy Lewis was a wealthy property owner who five years ago was sentenced to four years in prison for the statutory rape of a thirteen year old girl found at his house. He was out in only two and a half.
Jack had seen the pictures. He’d strangled the girl with a cord. There were other marks and bruising on her. Lewis had struck her severely. The girl had escaped and ran to a local police station. It looked like a clean-cut rape to the detective. But the victim—a petrified and traumatized child—had been classed an unreliable witness by the Crown Prosecution Service. They ended up giving Lewis a plea-bargain, knocking it down to statutory rape so that the witness wouldn’t have to take the stand.
“You sure there’s no one else that could have supplied those bullets?” Jack inquired.
“I’ve spoken to everyone. The only name that came up was Tommy Lewis. I was told that he was keen to show off his guns to most people that go ’round his place. You should go around yourself, Jack.”
“I will.”
That was it and Jack knew it. He stood up and made his way out of the room. They never even said goodbye to each other.
10
After three hours inside that cramped, electric-lit cell, Jonny was feeling pressed in by the shimmering yellow walls. He’d removed his tie, opened his collar up several buttons and was feeling a little exhausted. He’d sat and listened to Robert Kline’s life of depravity. Heard him list his offenses as any other old man would list his accomplishments. Heck, in the end, that’s what they were. Those rapes and murders were the only accomplishments that Robert Kline had ever achieved. Like most sexual killers, they were all he had.
