The Alice Murders

by James Arklie

  ‘Lovely fragrance.’ She gave him a ‘well done’ look.

  ‘Great choice.’

  Kline stood abruptly and handed back his half-finished tea and untouched biscuit.

  ‘Only she hasn’t died.’

  Yet.

  *

  Angie waited patiently outside the office of Anna Dee, Manager, Human Resources, in the administration wing of Southampton General Hospital.

  After she’d left Joe, Angie had driven herself to the office and gone through Artie’s workload with him. He seemed happy enough, but Angie knew from experience that Kline was never aware of workloads. He just kept asking and adding.

  Artie had handed her a summary file on Audrey Waters compiled by the investigating team. He’d highlighted the one thing that stood out as relevant; Audrey had worked in Southampton in 1994 as a nurse at the General Hospital.

  He’d told her, tucked his pencil behind his ear and sat back, pleased with himself.

  Angie had called for an appointment and then filled the time making follow up calls to the four other people who’d responded to the appeal. A male thought it was his missing wife, but the other three were mothers who were missing daughters. It left her feeling beaten up.

  The emotional resonance was like a tuning fork from hell. They’d all disappeared as teenagers, years ago and each mother had the same hopeful, grasping, pleading comment. ‘I think that’s what she’d look like now. I’m happy to take a DNA test.’

  Angie shifted on the plastic, springy seat, looked up and down the hallway and then pressed her head back against the wall. She thought of her own daughter. What do you look like now, Carly, my love? She flipped open her wallet and smiled grimly at the face of her ten-month old baby. In a few days you will be ten years old. A big girl. A schoolgirl. Hopefully a bright, bubbly and intelligent girl.

  Angie’s head told her there was no way she would recognise Carly now. But every beat of her heart told her otherwise. To which her head responded, liar, liar, you liar. The constant, stressful battle within her own body was exhausting. But Angie clung on to hope. On one lonely walk by the sea, she’d stood and watch waves batter limpets clinging to a rock. That’s me, she thought, hanging on for dear life.

  She ran her finger over Carly’s face. My hope and faith will not be moved and if I can cling to that rock then someday, somewhere, we will meet again.

  Angie pulled herself up straight as the door cracked open and Anna Dee ushered out a couple of female employees. They looked ready to start a fight with each other.

  Anna waved her inside with a smile and they settled either side of Anna’s desk. Angie put her at about forty, dressed for the office and looking knackered. ‘I always joke this job would be easy if it wasn’t for the employees, but some days….’

  Angie explained what she wanted. Anna was surprised.

  ‘Audrey Waters worked here? Wow.’ She started tapping on her keyboard.

  ‘No promises, but if she did it may still be in the system.’

  She flicked, clicked and commented. ‘I’m giving you this off the record, but if you want anything formal….’

  Angie nodded. ‘Got it and appreciated.’

  ‘Well, well, here she is. Worked here for five years, from ’89 to ’94.’ She used a finger to trace something on the screen. ‘I’m going to guess she left suddenly for some reason.’

  Angie focused and flipped open her notebook. ‘Why?’

  ‘She took all of her annual holiday in one go. Four weeks. Usually, that means pissed off, or a better deal somewhere else. Occasionally, travel. But Audrey’s next forwarding address is a position at the Royal London Free. She started the following week.’

  Angie wrote as she asked, ‘So better deal or pissed off. Does it give a reason?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘But not unusual to keep that off the record. Especially if it was a complaint against the hospital. The Royal Free is in Barnet, in case you didn’t know.’

  ‘Anything else.’

  ‘That’s it.’ Anna Dee sat back, the question on her face. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she came back to Southampton last year.’

  ‘Not to work here.’

  ‘Can you tell me who was in charge of Human Resources back then?’

  Anna pulled a scrap of paper towards her. ‘I can. Sylvie. Retired now, but she was my boss when I first started here.’ She smiled as she handed it across.

  ‘She’s like a teacher in reception, remembers them all.’

  Sylvie lived out in Hove in a detached, whitewashed bungalow. Her husband, also retired, was busy planting yellow pansies in a border at the top of the garden. An old black Labrador rested on wide haunches watching him. Angie and Sylvie sat on a bench in the sunshine and watched them both.

  ‘Audrey Waters. Yes, I remember her. I read she’d been….’ She moved her head from side to side, avoiding the word.

  Angie said it for her. ‘Murdered.’ She sensed the annoyance in her voice but was too late to stop it. ‘You didn’t think to come forward?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that you’d asked for friends and ex-colleagues to do so?’

  ‘You’re right, we haven’t. Sorry, bit sharp. A frustrating investigation. What can you tell me about her?’

  ‘Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was a bit of a pain. Kept making complaints against one of the porters. Claimed he wouldn’t leave her alone. Said he was stalking her outside the hospital as well.’

  ‘And? True? False?’ A ‘bit of a pain’? Thank God times have changed, thought Angie.

  ‘He continually denied it. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but he was good at his job and likeable. Ready smile. Good with the old ladies.’

  That’s great, thought Angie. Let him molest the nurses because he was ‘good with the old ladies’.

  ‘Was it just stalking?’

  ‘No. It was all the usual stuff that nurses had to put up with back then. Slapping of backsides, arms round shoulders, squeezing. Once or twice she claimed there was contact with her breasts.’

  Sylvie’s husband stood, eased into his back and then took the tray of pansies further along the border, knelt and started again. The Labrador cast them a glance, considered gardening more interesting and then followed.

  ‘One of the younger doctors confronted him at a party and was found badly beaten later that night. No proof it was him though.’

  ‘What did you tell her to do?’

  ‘Police, love. Go to the police. We had no evidence. I’ve seen stuff caught on CCTV these days, but not back then.’

  Angie refused a top up of her tea and wondered if she would be able to find a copy of a report that far back. Had anyone even bothered to write it down?

  ‘Can you remember the name of the porter.’

  ‘Easy, because he was a contradiction. Sam Little. Big man. Six feet plus. Liked a couple of beers so a tad overweight. But he’s no longer there. He disappeared with one of the other nurses, so someone loved him.’

  Angie accepted another chocolate biscuit. ‘Disappeared?’

  Sylvie started watching her husband as she spoke. ‘It was a strange one. We all knew there was something going on between them but one day they were there, the next gone.’

  ‘You mean a romantic ‘going on’?’

  Sylvie nodded. ‘And it was nice, because she had no family and neither did he.’

  ‘But they disappeared.’

  ‘We mentioned it to the police who went to their flats. I was told that both flats had been cleared of personal belongings. The assumption was they decided to take off together. For all I know, they’re living in a nice place in Australia with envious sea views and three kids.’

  Angie finished her biscuit. ‘Do you remember the nurses name?’

  ‘Now there you have got me.’

  Angie pulled out a business card and tucked it next to the teapot. ‘Well, if you remember….’

  Angie sat in her car and called Artie. ‘Sam Little. Background an
d current location.’

  Artie heard the urgency in her voice. ‘Important?’

  ‘Don’t know, but I think we have our first suspect.’

  *

  Kline dragged his cleansed and purified, but exhausted body to the SOCO lab where he met up with Angie and Artie. The three of them stared in self-absorbed silence at four white plastic trays. Laid out in them were the album cover, the protective plastic cover, the vinyl LP and….

  Kline glanced at Andy Johnson who indicated that if Kline wanted to speak first, he could. Kline glanced at Artie, whose good eye was blinking like a camera shutter. There was fascination on his face and disbelief in the eye. Angie, as usual, had shut down her emotions. They’re either nothing, thought Kline, or they boiled over out of control.

  Kline started with, ‘Based on what Cassie has told us, our killer has probably left clues at all the murder scenes. Problem is, he thinks he is, and probably is, a clever bastard. Result being that his clues will be obtuse. So well hidden that the detectives in the ALICE murders won’t have thought about looking for anything more than the obvious.’ Kline paused and the wide eyes of Bowie stared up at him.

  ‘We have to find those hidden clues. More importantly, we have to read what our killer intends them to tell us.’

  Kline looked along the row of trays. ‘This is the first example. SOCO have been over Audrey Waters apartment and found nothing unusual. Except they didn’t go deep enough, and they didn’t have any knowledge of the ALICE murders. There was a stack of LP’s in some shelving. I remembered the police report from the officer in New Zealand mentioned an LP playing.’

  Kline’s gaze came to rest on the final tray. ‘Thinking we were clever, that led us to the Alice Cooper album. No clue there, but he was leading us, keen to demonstrate how smart he is. Asking, did we have that extra brain cell to match him.’ Kline pointed at the scrap in the final tray.

  ‘Our killer removed the right breast of each ALICE victim. One LP from the past had a sleeve that if you held it up, was the silhouette of a breast.’ Kline pointed to the cover and the transparent sleeve. ‘PinUps, Bowie.’

  Andy took over. ‘Cleaned, preserved, dried and slipped into the album sleeve. The skin of a female breast.’

  To Kline, it looked like a piece of old, brown paper parchment. There was nothing there that revealed the horror or pain or death.

  ‘Any chance of DNA?’ Angie asked hopefully.

  ‘None. Too old, dried out and denatured through the preservatives.’ Andy looked at Kline, who read a warning in his eyes. ‘But there is no need.’

  Andy reached into the tray with a gloved hand and it turned over.

  Kline blinked, his stomach rolled and the energy seemed to drain out of him. Written in small letters and careful numbers across one corner was –

  ‘Eveyln Arnold. May 1999.’

  Artie whispered, ‘He is a collector after all.’

  Andy’s voice was heavy, ‘And some. This is the careful cataloguing of a specimen.’

  Kline steadied himself by leaning into the bench with both hands, his head spinning. He squeezed his eyes shut. Evie, oh Evie. I am so sorry.

  Angie took Kline’s arm and turned him away. For once he was glad of her coldness.

  Her voice was low. ‘And it’s a message, boss. He’s telling us it’s all about ALICE.’ She took Kline’s other arm and turned him to face her.

  Kline was letting the thoughts spin through his head with the pain. He said softly, ‘He could have chosen any of the women.’

  Angie took Kline by each shoulder and held him at arms-length, studying his face, trying to read his emotions. ‘It’s for you, boss. This is specially for you.’

  Kline shrugged himself free and took a few steps away before he turned, the contents of the trays no longer in his sight. He chose Evie, thought Kline. Gave me back something of hers. Except collectors don’t give things away, do they? Not their most prized items. They sell them or they swap them.

  I give you something, you give me something in return.

  Kline looked up into three concerned faces.

  ‘He’s going to want something back.’

  *

  Kline hadn’t eaten since going for dialysis and he needed to so, rather than return to the office, they headed to West Quay. Kline bought pizza at L’Osteria, one pepperoni and one roasted vegetable, no cheese. To Kline that wasn’t really a pizza, but he was learning that sometimes it’s best to keep your thoughts to yourself.

  Artie set up his laptop and they gave each other a round-up of the day so far. Artie took notes. Kline was embarrassed that his contribution was essentially nil.

  Between slices of pepperoni with strings of melted cheese that stretched from Kline’s mouth to the table, he listened to Artie’s summary of what he’d discovered of the ALICE women so far.

  Artie reconfirmed that as at 1994 they had all lived in the UK, but he’d drawn a blank on finding even a whiff of an immediate link between them.

  There was frustration in his voice. ‘Get this, they were all born and raised in the UK, but they were born in different towns; all lived in different towns; went to different schools; had different jobs; they all emigrated to different countries; their physical appearances were all different….’ He sat back.

  ‘They’re all….different….except for one common fact; they all emigrated in 1995.’

  Kline wiped at his mouth with a napkin. ‘Welcome to life as a detective. If you don’t want to be frustrated, annoyed, disliked, abused and lied to, go find a new job.’

  Kline reached for a slice of the roasted vegetable pizza. ‘But this is what we knew already, yes? The link between them was never going to be straightforward. So, move on and take a look at the parents. There may be something there. Bank accounts, debt, dive into…’

  Angie stopped him before he could say mobile phones, laptops and make a tit of himself.

  ‘Remember, this was the 90s, boss.’

  Kline let out a short laugh and swallowed his age and pride with a mouthful of pizza.

  ‘What about the two people who identified the woman as, what was her name, Bryony James?’

  Artie was examining a piece of pizza to ensure it wasn’t ‘infected with meat’ as he put it. Trusting it, he put it on his plate and very politely started to eat it with a knife and fork. Kline couldn’t believe it tasted the same as grabbing a slice from a box, hanging the point above your mouth and taking a bite. Still, manners maketh….

  Artie collected a fork full of pizza and said, ‘Their basic details were taken by Central last night, name, address, phone numbers. I’ve called, but no answers, so I’ve left messages.’

  Kline wiped his fingers on his napkin and took a sip of water. ‘Are they male, female?’

  Kline had to wait for Artie to finish chewing. There was no way he was going to speak with his mouth full.

  ‘Both males. One lives in Salisbury, the other in Winchester. I’ll work on backgrounds and social media back in the office and then call again.’

  Thirty minutes later that’s where they were. Kline kept the leftover pizza close by on his desk for his dinner in the evening. He knew it would disappear long before that as late afternoon munchies.

  He felt it was time to open contact with the other detectives who’d worked on the ALICE murders in the other jurisdictions. If he could let them know what was happening, raise their interest levels, maybe they would reopen their cases with fresh minds. Ideally, he would like to sit down with them and have a good old-fashioned chat. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  After he’d made the calls to Athens and St Malo, he didn’t think it would be happening at all. After eventually finding someone in each office who could speak English, he was told that both Nick Stamelos and Pierre Gaspin had retired; no, they couldn’t give out a private home number; but yes, they would pass on a message.

  Kline’s phone crashed to the cradle making Angie and Artie look up sharply. Kline had to laugh a
t Artie. ‘It’s a shit life, being a detective.’ Artie grinned back, even his black and blue, bloodshot eye seemed to smile.

  Kline refocused. The calls to Australia and New Zealand would have to wait because of time differences, so he turned his attention to the blown up, high resolution photographs of the crime scenes. He started at the beginning with Anastasia Pappas.

  The blown-up size was no more than A4 because after that the resolution had gone. Kline reverted to his magnifying glass, selected four pictures that had an image of the kitchen table and the fridge beyond.

  Next, he pulled them up on his desktop and used an enhancer to scroll over the images area by area. It was the way Jenny had checked out the pattern or the stitching on something on Amazon before she purchased it. Everywhere there are reminders, he thought.

  He looked and looked, then found the oddity. ‘Angie. Did Anastasia Pappas have children?’

  Kline waited, enhancing the image that was nibbling at him. Angie answered. ‘No.’

  ‘Grandchildren?’

  ‘Too young.’

  Kline called her over and pointed. ‘Letters of the alphabet. Greek. What’s it called? Cyrillic script?’

  ‘Looks like nonsense to me.’

  ‘But you’re not our uber intelligent killer, are you?’ Making his point again, thought Kline. He went on, ‘Aren’t those the things that kids stick to the fridge to make words?’

  There was a silence behind him, so he turned. Angie’s eyes had filled with tears. She nodded. ‘Fun way of teaching them the alphabet and how to spell as they grow up. I bought some for Carly.’ She gave him a grim smile. ‘They never made it out of the box.’

  She knew how to do the parenting, thought Kline. Just never had the child.

  Kline looked harder. There were some strings of letters. All random, some vertical, some at an angle. ‘Artie. Get me someone Greek. Fast as you like.’

  There was no one in the building, so Kline sent him scurrying out to West Quay, to the Greek restaurant. He came back with the owner, Stephanos.