by James Arklie
‘Did Bryony have family?’ Bleakley shook his head.
‘Funeral?’
‘Cremation.’
Handy. ‘Why did you leave Southampton?’
Kline saw his eyes shift. What was that? Annoyance? ‘Because I was being hounded. There were malicious rumours. I’d lost the respect of my colleagues. Nurses would try and change shifts rather than work with me. I was getting notes pinned to my locker. ‘I know what you did’. That sort of thing.’
Angie had her teeth into him. ‘But you did do it.’ Her eyes stared at his face, looking for the slightest twitch of a muscle that would give something away.
Kline asked, ‘Any idea who was doing it?’
‘Several people. They forced me out.’
Kline pressed on. ‘Did you know Audrey Waters?’
‘Auds? Yes. Left just before me. Word was because of porter the stalker.’ He smiled at his failed alliteration. ‘Aka Sam somebody.’
Angie. ‘Was he?’
‘A stalker? He was a strange guy, but whether he was a stalker.’ He shrugged. ‘But the nurses said so, and they would know.’
‘You know she was murdered?’
He nodded. ‘I read it online.’ He felt Angie’s eyes and he looked at her defensively. ‘I liked Southampton. I subscribe online to the Daily Echo. It keeps me up to date.’
‘You ever meet up with anyone from back then? Or go back to Southampton?’
He let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘None of them want to meet me, so there’s no point trying.’
Then his eyes narrowed. His brain was still sharp. ‘If you mean do I meet Sam the porter and the woman he disappeared with…Debbie somebody…..the answer is a definite ‘no’.’ He glanced between them. ‘And on the day Audrey was murdered I was here.’ He added sharply. ‘And I have witnesses.’
Kline could see Bleakley was now trying to second guess their thinking, which suggested he was worried about something. Also, he was counting the deaths and disappearances. Kline could see it in his eyes. Bryony, Debbie and Audrey.
Angie started laying out pictures of the ALICE women. They were cropped from the crime scene pictures to show just the faces.
‘Do you know any of these women?’ He shook his head.
Angie slid the name under each. ‘This help?’
He shook his head again, but suspicion had clouded his face and a wariness entered his voice. He sat back in his chair, sweeping a palm across the pictures.
‘I hope you’re not about to tell me these are more nurses who disappeared mysteriously?’ He looked from Kline to Angie and back.
‘Shit. You’re looking for a link to me?’
Kline tilted his head, gave him a couple of seconds to dwell on that and then decided to be ambivalent. ‘We think there may be a link to Bryony somewhere.’ He shrugged. ‘And Bryony is linked to you, so…’
Bleakley looked puzzled, looking again from one to the other, seeking an indication of what they were really looking for. ‘You’re investigating the death of Bryony? But I’ve just told you that…admitted to you that….’
Kline sensed there was something not right, so he didn’t clarify, deciding to leave Bleakley confused and uncertain while he switched tack.
‘Anything else you want to mention?’
Bleakley let out a short laugh of disbelief. ‘That sounds like halfway to reading me my rights.’
If Kline knew Angie, he would be hearing them in full soon enough. Bleakley took a huge breath in, let it out and surprised them.
‘I’ve had two other relationships where my partner has died suspiciously. One supposedly took an overdose of anti-depressants prescribed by me. I don’t believe she would have done it. The other drowned in a loch at a campsite in Scotland. She went kayaking early in the morning while I was still asleep in the tent.’
Kline looked at Angie who gave him the tiniest shake of her head. Why hadn’t Artie picked up on this?
Bleakley sat forward and showed his annoyance by jabbing his forefinger into the tabletop. ‘Suspicion still rests on me, for both. But I can tell you, categorically, it wasn’t me. I have no idea what happened.’ He suddenly looked weary and tired.
‘You know what? Dead women follow me round. I feel I’m being haunted and hunted for my sins.’
*
They drove in silence for an hour, Kline sifting his thoughts, Angie simmering with her anger. Eventually, Kline swung into the car park of a country pub just outside Bristol and parked up.
‘What did you make of him? It was like sitting in a confessional.’
Angie unclipped her seatbelt. ‘Sad, sick, bastard, wallowing in self-pity who thinks that buying a house and looking after a few women is enough payback for the physical pain and permanent emotional scarring that he will have caused. He will have left countless women’s lives wrecked and destroyed.’
Bloody-hell, thought Kline, all said without a breath. Angie had been dwelling on it.
They got out of the car and walked to the pub garden at the back. They sat at a bench table and Angie turned her face up to the sunshine. It brought a half-smile to her face.
Kline said, ‘Looks like he’s been through shit though.’
Angie’s voice was a dismissive monotone ‘Nothing like the shit he put his women through.’ She shielded her eyes and looked at Kline. ‘I’ll call the local force when we get back.’ She tipped her head back up to the sun.
Alan Bleakley may have thought he’d found some form of self-healing and apology to the world, but if Angie had her way his true day of redemption was just round the corner.
‘Give it a few days, Angie. Perhaps he is doing some good up there.’
Angie made a disparaging noise to dismiss the comment and Kline decided to let it go.
They ordered alcohol free beers and bar meals guaranteed to arrive with too many chips. Angie was distracted by a mother and baby group meeting for lunch. Mats were laid out on the grass to create a play area. Babies cooed and cried, mother’s cuddled and compared. Angie writhed in torment.
Gammon, egg and chips arrived and Kline worked hard to keep Angie’s mind and attention away from the torture she was putting herself through. ‘He could be responsible for the deaths of three women.’
‘If that’s true, then he’s accustomed to killing and we’ll find more.’
Angie wasn’t to be drawn and the silence resumed until two of the babies started demanding attention. Angie glanced across. ‘Do you think if I offered to play minder while they eat…?
Kline’s emotional trauma of the last year was now a wound with stitches in it. Figuratively and actually. Kline hoped that over the years, he would be able to slowly unpick those stitches and remain intact.
Angie’s loss of Carly was still an open wound. It was raw and it was becoming infected. No information and no body meant it was impossible for her to close out. Not patches or stitches were going to help her. She needed to use ALICE as part of her cure. She needed Kline and she needed honesty.
‘No, Angie, I don’t think so. I know that deep down you know so too.’
Kline selected a chip and dipped it into egg yolk, remembering the way Jenny used to do it. He tried again, ‘Think Bleakley’s our killer?’
Angie’s eyes returned to his. ‘Our ALICE murderer? Disappointing looking if he is.’
Kline dipped again and ate. ‘But?’
‘Right age. Could easily fit the profile. All of that could have been an act. The ego of the psychopath playing out. Acting out in front of us will have given him a huge buzz.’
Kline finished up his meal, leaving half the chips. ‘Let’s see what Artie’s got.’
Artie had been busy working at the speed of the guilty. ‘I’ve pulled the local investigation reports. It’s just as Bleakley told you. Two suspicious deaths. Both remain unsolved. He’s still the main suspect in both.’
‘Why him?’
‘No sign of anyone else round at the time of both deaths. When the overdose occurred th
ey were staying in a B and B together on a walking trip in the Lakes; when the drowning occurred they were camping together loch side in Scotland.’
Angie was listening on speaker and spoke a brutal truth. ‘He isolates them and then kills them.’
They paused while their plates were cleared and Kline ordered two coffees. It meant his bladder would stop them at a service station later, but hey, two functioning kidneys did that.
He resumed. ‘And Jenny? What about those couriers?’
‘Sorry, boss. Dead end. The paperwork is all fine, but the Parisian courier firm doesn’t exist. It was supposedly bound for the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris. I called the transplant unit there and they have no record of expecting one and there was no patient there waiting for it.’
Kline thought of himself, prepped, prepared, waiting, scared. How could all this happen? Artie gave him the probable answer.
‘Paperwork says it was for a private patient. They paid thirty-thousand Euros for it, plus costs...’
Plus costs? What the…? Somebody was making money out of Jenny’s body?
‘…That’s a lot of money to an NHS Trust. I think Southampton General really believed it was going to the Saint-Louis.’
Their coffee arrived and Kline nibbled at the small, homemade biscuit. He spoke the thought out loud. ‘What’s going on here? Have we accidently stumbled into some kind of organ harvesting operation?’
Audrey and now Jenny. Body parts missing.
They needed more information on the ALICE women.
He hung up on Artie and spoke his thoughts outloud. ‘It could all be part of the game that he’s playing.’
Angie didn’t answer. She was totally absorbed in the children.
*
Chapter Twelve
Day Fifty-One
Kline set his alarm for two am, dragged himself out of bed and across to the bathroom. He resurrected his senses with cold water on the face and by cleaning his teeth. He thought about coffee, decided it would prevent him from sleeping again and went straight into calling first New Zealand and then Australia.
In New Zealand there was some kind of holiday. It seemed to involve drinking a lot and roasting a whole lamb over a barbeque pit. Because Kline sounded interested, Andy Samuels, the traffic cop who’d been first to the scene, took a quick picture and sent it by WhatsApp.
It looked impressive. Andy included a selfie of himself, shaved head, overweight, grinning with a bottle of beer in hand. Oh, sweet retirement, thought Kline. Maybe it would be good to get there after all. He wondered if you still felt guilty after you retired.
Kline brought Andy back to the point of the call. ‘Yea, Chesney Arthur. I’ll never, ever forget that one. Never saw cruelty like that again, ever.’ Kline heard him swig. ‘You opening the case again?’
‘Not your case, but ours. Evie Arnold. But we reckon it was the same killer.’ Kline told him how their search had picked it up, then went straight to the point. ‘There’s not a lot of information in your file, so I wondered what else…’
Andy interrupted. ‘You need Bennie for that, mate. He was the Dick in charge. Hold on.’
Kline heard him call out and a minute later they’d switched to WhatsApp video. Kline now had two of them relaxed and drinking beer.
Bennie (aka Detective Ben Torode) looked almost the twin of Andy Samuels. He was apologetic. ‘That murder was a one off, mate. Never saw anything like that again.’ He thrust his beer bottle towards the camera.
‘I can tell you it was meticulously planned. Chesney and her boyfriend worked shifts. He knew the timings, because he attacked when she was alone, asleep and the boyfriend was at work.’
‘What about the flowers?’ Kline wanted lilies.
‘Gardenia. There was a tree in the garden. Probably picked them on the way in.’ Torode paused, remembering. ‘That’s what I mean, he knew exactly what he was going to do.’ He frowned, ‘You’ve seen the pictures?’ Kline nodded.
‘See any blood?’ Bennie waved the bottle again. ‘Not a drop. He even gave himself time to clean her up.’ He swigged again, let out small belch as the gas hit his gut.
‘That murder in one word, mate? Clinical.’
Kline was thoughtful. ‘Another thing. The record that was playing…?
Andy leant in. ‘Local punk retro-band called Lice.’
Of course. Drop the ‘A’ and you’re still left with part of ALICE. It was there all the time.
Bennie accepted another beer from someone off screen and used the lip of the empty bottle to flip the cap off. ‘And you want to know how precise this guy was? Six tracks on that side. Total playing time twenty-four minutes. Boyfriend came home, found her and called us immediately. Andy arrived after eighteen, just as the last track was playing.’
Bennie leant close to the phone’s camera. ‘Got what I’m saying, Joe. You be careful. This guy killed her, cut her, cleaned her, arranged her, waited round until he knew the boyfriend was a minute away, dropped the needle to the vinyl and walked out cool as you like with his trophy.’
*
Kline called Australia. Detective Jared Jarvis was retired but worked part time as a consultant. He was drinking coffee, not beer. They had a similar conversation via WhatsApp and Jared agreed with the word ‘clinical’.
‘Yea, clean and clinical. Neat and tidy. Not a shred of evidence. Perhaps we’d pick up a fibre or a hair now, but I wouldn’t bet on it.’
Kline asked, ‘Did you think he was a man who knew police SOCO procedure?’
‘You think the killer was a cop?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’
Jared made a so-so face, then, ‘Problem we had was that the murder was a one off. Thank Christ for that, of course, but we had nothing to follow up.’
‘Could it have been a person who was at her party the night before?’
‘All accounted for and questioned. This was a wealthy clique of thirty-somethings and they all knew each other. A stranger would never have got in.’
Kline told him about the ALICE links scattered round like playground taunts. Jared was intrigued and Kline saw him write something down in front of him. He refocused on Kline and smiled, almost laughed.
‘Well that explains something that’s always bugged me.’
Kline sat straighter. ‘What?’
‘You got the pictures from the crime scene handy?’
Kline reached for the folder and tipped them across his kitchen table. He held one up. Jared nodded. ‘That’ll do it. Now take a look on the sideboard. Beyond the body. See it? The party was the night before, so why, more than twelve hours later…’
Is there still an ice bucket filled to the top with ice.
*
Kline’s bladder woke him again at seven am. He went to the toilet and started pissing blood. First came a black, blood clot and then a stream of pink urine. Kline knew what it meant. It was one of the first signs of rejection. Kline looked away from the bowl. Please, please, don’t do this to me, Jen.
The team gathered at eight am as planned, but Kline deferred the meeting until later. Cassie had agreed to meet at nine and the consultant could squeeze him in at ten. Kline wanted Cassie’s input on Sam Little and Alan Bleakley. From the consultant, he wanted reassurance.
Cassie was deep in her usual chair, long legs crossed. She looked pink and fresh. Smelt the same. Sitting beside Kline, Angie was worn out and tired, stifling yawns in the car after another late night of booze and social media hunting.
Cassie dismissed Sam Little with a shake of her head and wave of the hand. ‘A stalker and a bum squeezer will not make a serial killer. They have other issues.’
Angie was interested. ‘Such as?’
‘Desperately needing love and attention and not knowing how to find it. In their mind, they will create the fantasy of a loving relationship that doesn’t exist. They believe they are being loved. That the reactions they’re getting are all part of the courtship ritual.’
‘What if they g
et continual rejection?’
‘Agreed they can turn violent, but most move on. Some will become stalkers, believing they can reverse the rejection if they are just given the chance.’
Kline could tell Angie wasn’t letting go of Sam Little. ‘What if their fantasy love falls in love with another. Threatens to marry them. Would that provoke a violent response?’
Kline frowned at Angie. ‘Where are you going with this?’
‘One of Debbie’s friends said she hadn’t seen or spoken to Debbie for over a month, but prior to that Debbie was talking about getting engaged.’
Kline shrugged it away. ‘Yes, to Sam Little.’
‘That’s what we assumed, boss, because it fitted with them running away together. But what if….?’ Angie raised her eyebrows. ‘What if that was an abduction made to look like an elopement?’
Kline scratched at his slowly evolving goatee. The good old, ‘what if’s’. It was a fair point. ‘Okay. Get back to that friend and any others. Try and find out who she was getting engaged to.’ Kline turned back to Cassie.
‘Does that make him a killer?’
She shrugged. ‘Possible, but Debbie’s his fantasy. It’s more likely that if she was abducted against her will, he’ll have kept her locked up.’ She gave Kline an apologetic smile, before adding, ‘It’s rare that we destroy and discard the people we love.’
That hit Kline and rocked him back in his chair. Is that what he’d done subconsciously with Jenny? Acted like an abductor? Taken her away and locked her up in a room just to keep her with him? Just to keep his fantasy alive even though logic always told him that Jenny had died on the day of the crash?
Kline looked up. Cassie was watching him with a sad, concerned interest. ‘We can always talk later.’
Kline shook his head, sat forward and re-engaged. He didn’t need an old friend dissecting his screwed-up thinking. ‘Right, next up is Alan Bleakley.’
