by James Arklie
Kline went on. ‘Precisely, but we’ve identified her blood now because of advances in the world of SOCO, policework and databases. That’s the first gate open. Next, we go asking how it could have got there. There are several possibilities, but we get one answer from Professor Roper, that stuns us. A surgical technique, in its infancy then, but now commonplace. NOTES.’ Kline took a breath, then went on.
‘So, we rattle the next gate trying to find out more. That leads us to the nearest surgeon at Southampton General and then on to Johnny Batten, surgeon in charge in Southampton over the crucial period.
‘I didn’t even ask Batten for a name, he produced it for me and opened the final gate. Richard Brownlee. He was so arrogant, he left a clue to his identity that he didn’t think could be solved and it wasn’t, back then. But now…’ Kline finally sat back, spread his hands and smiled.
Angie said with a soft intensity, ‘And now we’ve opened all the gates and found the bastard.’
Kline added, ‘Mistake or message, I don’t know or care. It’s another clue. He spread them all round the crime scenes, but no one saw them. I’ll bet there are others we haven’t found yet.’
Artie was silent and they both looked at him. After a few seconds, Kline sighed and said, ‘Okay. Speak.’
Artie pressed his lips together in thought, then said, ‘Only, I have the same question again; why leave the same message twice in the same place? And why only this once?’
Kline spread his hands again and let out a little laugh of jubilation. ‘Like I said, because it’s a mistake.’
Artie shook his head. ‘No. You’ve said it, boss, this man doesn’t make mistakes. I agree, it’s another message, but it’s a double message.’ He looked apologetic. ‘You haven’t opened all the gates yet. He’s expecting you to be as excited as you are. And then he’s expecting you to be stupid enough to stop here.’
For a moment there was a stunned silence and then Angie patted Artie on the knee and laughed. ‘Nice one. Calling the boss ‘stupid’.
Kline was silent and annoyed with himself, Artie was right, he was feeling so pleased with himself, he’d blinded himself. ‘Criticism accepted. How do we open the next gate?’
After five minutes they had no further ideas and Kline was aware that both he and Angie were making early starts in the morning. He wound up the meeting.
‘Okay, we need to find out how Bryony’s blood got from Southampton to New Zealand. Artie, it’s down to you. I suggest you start with the hospital. I’ll leave a note for Dave Barker to get you a warrant. Dig through her records. See if she was a blood donor, or if it was taken for some other reason.’
Kline was thinking back to his dialysis days. Samples of his blood were always being taken and checked for toxin levels. Although they were never stored. Or so he thought.
Kline stood, stretching out his back. Angie looked up at him and said, ‘Something else occurs to me, boss, we haven’t traced the bodies of all the ALICE women to their final resting place.’
Kline frowned down at her. ‘I’m not following.’
‘Well, we know about Bryony through Bleakley, but what happened to the ALICE women? Were they flown home? Cremated where they died by husband or boyfriend?’ She shrugged.
They both looked at Artie. Angie smiled an apology and said, ‘Sorry, Artie. Start by looking at the statements of any husbands or boyfriends. You may have to call them. Then speak to Samuel Arthur and Millie Maughn, they are the only surviving parents.’
Kline checked his watch. Eight-thirty pm. ‘Feed it to us on the run.’ Then he squeezed Artie’s shoulder. ‘And don’t forget to run Brownlee to ground in your spare time.’
They all laughed and Kline said, ‘Right, everyone up.’
They stood facing each other and he circled his arms over their shoulders. They did the same and dipped their heads to touching. Kline gave a little shake of empowerment. They were three people with issues, indulged by a police force and by colleagues because they were a threat to no one. But Kline wanted his respect back. He wanted them all to walk tall again.
‘Let’s show them,’ he whispered forcefully. ‘Let them see what three traumatised misfits are capable of achieving.’
Chapter Sixteen
Day Fifty-Four
Kline didn’t mess round. At six am, he met Angie at her apartment in Ocean Village. They had coffee and went through travel arrangements. Angie had reserved their seats and printed out boarding passes.
She glanced at his small rucksack and Kline said, ‘Laptop, tee-shirts, underwear, washbag, credit and debit cards, passport, no condoms because my teenage years are long gone.’
Angie smiled, Kline held her eyes, injecting a serious note. ‘Tell me you will be all right.’ Angie nodded, but it was the quick nod of uncertainty.
Kline reached for her hand. The last hand he’d held was Jenny’s, in the morgue. It was an unusual gesture between him and Angie, but this situation, this case was unwinding and he didn’t want Angie unwinding with it.
‘You have to set everything else aside, Angie.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Focus on this. Let’s get this man.’
She nodded again. ‘I’m good, Joe. I promise.’ Her face was hard, but her eyes were soft. Kline could sense the battle raging inside her. He said it before he really thought.
‘And I promise you, as soon as this is over, we will go after the person who took Carly. We’ll go searching for Carly.’
She looked deep into his eyes, the way Jenny had that heart-wrenching morning he’d told her that her sister, Evie, had been murdered. And what else the killer had done. They’d cried together and he’d made the promise. The one that until now, remained broken. And now he’d made another.
Kline was at Gatwick and on a flight to Dubai by mid-morning. Flying Emirates to Dubai, two-hour turnround and then twelve hours direct to Sydney. He was paying, so it was Business Class and a glass of chilled Sauvignon before lunch.
Kline hadn’t bothered to ask the consultant if he was all right to fly. He was going anyway. He’d stopped pissing blood as such. It was now more of an initial coagulated plug that popped out first and then it ran clear. He took this as a sign that Jen was with him, not against him. He ignored the fact that the plug was a blood clot.
Angie had given him a sheet with her travel details and for the first leg was flying with Aegean to Athens. She joked and teased him about her lack of business class. Kline offered to save her a croissant.
Artie was left behind. He seemed relieved.
Kline had spoken to Pete Simpson before he left the office. The CCTV footage and witnesses had Artie free and clear of murdering a police officer. But it did put Luke Walton, or whoever he was, firmly into the frame and a person of immediate interest.
Usual procedure would be to have a picture circulated to media, but there wasn’t one. Instead, there was an artist’s impression drawn up by Artie and confirmed by Kline. It must have been hard, thought Kline, to create a picture of your boyfriend so that the police can hunt them for murder.
Kline was settled into his seat and relaxing back into the luxury of Business Class. He’d left one concern forty-thousand feet below him in the form of a dried, pressed lily. He knew the flower to be a calling card and it had been left for Artie. Was it anything to do with Walton? Or was it a message to all of them. A presage of death. Artie is next.
Kline hooked into the in-flight communications systems and ordered filet steak for his lunch while he downloaded emails. He only had three. One from Angie, telling him to stay safe. A second from Artie saying there were no other forensics results from the other murders. And one from an unknown sender.
Except they weren’t unknown to Kline. He looked at a string of sad-faced emoji’s, the last one of which was crying. It was followed by five letters.
ALICE.
Kline looked at it for a good minute, breathing deeply and steeling himself as to what might be inside. Eventually, he tapped the screen.
It was a messa
ge.
‘Hey Joe. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Where are you going? You think there is something down there for you after all these years? Think again.
You think stepping off the road I’ve laid out for us is going to upset me, goad me, twist me into making a mistake?
You’re missing the point, Joe. We are going to meet. We have to meet up. Face to face. You just haven’t worked out why. I’m just getting the preliminaries out of the way.
The key to all of this is what happens when that day arrives. All you’re doing now is delaying it. And frustrating the fucking hell out of me.
But, hey Joe, let’s breathe, it’s okay.
While the cats away…..’
Kline read it through several times, trying to let it’s meaning sink in. Looking for hidden messages. Wanting to drag from it any insights he could. It was only after five minutes he realised there was also a pdf attachment at the bottom of the email. He opened it and scrolled down through six similar emails that had never been sent. They were all labelled as ‘Diary entries’. The killer had been keeping a diary of his thoughts, his actions, his pretend conversations with Kline. Now he was sharing them.
Kline’s horror grew, then the terror of dealing with a controlled yet out of control mind. A person with moral ambiguities and no morals at all. Thought processes and phraseology they thought were clever. Blending love and hate as the reason, the excuse, for violence and death.
His empathetic analysis of Kline. The personalisation of their relationship.
Kline sent them all to Angie and Artie. He added a strong reminder about personal security. The calmness, alongside the implied brutality, concerned him.
He sent them to Cassie for analysis and comments.
He sent them to Dave Barker because it was a breakthrough. Kline had swept the pieces from the board with a single stroke. All alignment, planning, cohesion and control was gone. The pieces would have to be reset. It had worked. Like a careless dentist, Kline had touched a nerve so raw that the killer had unleashed his anger directly at Kline.
Kline’s filet steak arrived. Rare. The blood oozed across the plate. The steam engine was starting to grind out of the station. Good or bad may result, but Kline knew one thing for sure. There was no stopping it now.
*
DS Angie Tyler met her pre-arranged driver at Arrivals at Athens airport. His name was Michaelis and he was a Greek who was proud of his city. He seemed intent on showing her the sights on the way to the Hospital. He pointed out the Acropolis, sitting like stark bones, dominant on its sun-dried hill overlooking Athens. Next was the Panathenaic Stadium, the running track and the white marble, glowing brilliant white in the sunshine.
Michaelis didn’t comment on the four lanes of slow-moving traffic that crawled in each direction. Or the smog hanging thick and heavy in the thirty-five degree summer heat. Or the thousands of motorbikes and scooters that wove in and out of traffic with the carefree precision of a murmuration of starlings before nightfall.
Whenever they idled in traffic, she checked for messages and listened to the lazy click-click as Michaelis flicked his rosary in his hand.
Artie had obtained photographs of Richard Brownlee from the hospital records and forwarded them. He had also tracked Brownlee to a private hospital called the ‘Midi Clinic of Athens’ on a street called Solonos.
The Hospital stood out from the part finished, bare-brick buildings round it. Eight storeys high, the exterior was freshly painted, the steps up to the wide, clear glass main doors, clean and swept clear of rubbish. Reception was brightly lit and professional. This was not a place where the poor came for recovery.
A retired and overweight Nick Stamelos was waiting for her there. Jeans supporting a paunch, black trainers, white polo shirt and jacket.
He had a ready smile in a bearded and swarthy face. ‘Kalispera. Good afternoon.’
They shook hands, exchanged smiles and greetings and settled at a low table in quiet corner of the reception area.
Angie gave him a five-minute overview of where they were with the investigation until he stopped her as a female nurse in her late fifties approached them.
Nick introduced her. ‘Despina has worked here since it opened.’
Despina had the open, smiling face of woman confident in her profession, but also the harried air of a busy person.
Angie took her iPad from her rucksack and gave a loose explanation about following some ‘people of interest’. She worked hard to keep her face smiling and her body language friendly. She spoke in general phrases.
‘It’s about finding people, who knew other people, who may have the piece of information crucial to the case.’ She didn’t want them thinking that Brownlee was a main suspect.
Angie needn’t have worried. She showed them a picture of Brownlee and the admiration flowed from Despina like a river pounding through a canyon.
‘Such a lovely man. And what a fantastic surgeon. Everything perfect and precise. Always.’
‘Any deaths?’
Despina looked shocked. ‘If only every surgeon showed such humility and attention to detail.’
Angie could hear the hero worship dripping from the warmth in every word. ‘What sort of operations did he perform?’
‘All kinds of procedures. From the routine to the specialist. We have a heart unit here, so some patching up and I remember two transplants, but he had a specialist team to back him up with that.’
‘Extraction of organs through mouth, anus, vagina.’
Despina shrugged, thoughtful, asked herself a question. ‘Maybe? But I think that was a bit too advanced for us back then?’
Angie showed Nick Stamelos pictures of the original crime scene. He took the iPad from her and swiped through the pictures too quickly.
He shrugged. ‘I have to be honest. Athens is a city of three million people. I know we had ten murders that week. Complex cases get buried because of manpower.’
Angie pointed to the fridge. ‘Do you remember this?’
Nick read the name ‘Aletheria’ and shook his head. ‘Important to you now but meant nothing then.’ He looked at Angie as the significance dawned on him.
‘All these murders were planned in advance?’
Angie glanced at Despina. She didn’t want too much of this becoming common knowledge. ‘Looks that way.’ She took back the iPad. ‘Why were there no forensics?’
Nick took the implied criticism in his stride. ‘There were. Initial blood test showed morphine as the cause of death. As I said, we got very busy…’
Angie asked about flowers. ‘Only what you see there. The lilies.’
‘Music?’
Nick shook his head. ‘Look, my overall sense was this. She was attacked and killed silently and swiftly with morphine. Her breast..’. He glanced at Despina and changed his sentence. ‘She was laid out in peace. That’s the overall impression I took away from the scene. It was a place of peace. She could have been laid out in a church.’
Angie could see this wasn’t going anywhere. She changed tack, opened a new file on the iPad and handed it back to Nick.
‘Do you recognise any of these faces?’
He took more time, pausing and studying. He got to the end and then flicked back.
‘This one. English. He was found murdered the same week. Body floating in the water of the ferry terminal in Piraeus.’
Angie took back the iPad and looked at the pale, unshaven face of Sam Little. She frowned. ‘You sure?’
‘Two English deaths in one week? Never before or since, so, yes, I’m sure.’
Angie’s mind was working. If Sam Little was here… ‘Definitely, none of the others?’
He shook his head. Despina held out her hand. ‘May I?’
Angie handed over the iPad. Despina flicked, stopped at the third picture and smiled fondly.
‘Well, I recognise her. Obviously.’
Angie leaned forward. ‘Who?’
Despina held up the face. ‘D
ebs. Debbie Brownlee. His wife.’
The pretty face of Deborah Wilcox smiled back at Angie. Sad and serene. Lost.
*
Angie thanked Despina and let Nick Stamelos walk her out to her car. Michaelis jumped out to open the door for her, but a quick exchange in Greek had him back in the driver’s seat.
Stamelos waited until the door was closed. ‘You get what you came for?’
Angie nodded, she could see he was intrigued but she was desperate to get into the car and call Kline. He’d need this information for his arrival in Sydney.
‘More than. But it’s going to take some processing. It’s opened up several new lines, new theories.’
Stamelos gave her a patient smile, knowing he was being palmed off with phrases. He carried on fishing. ‘You think it’s this Brownlee?’ He looked back at the main entrance, some doubt in his voice. ‘Plenty of respect, devoted to his wife. Clearly a brilliant, clever man.’
Angie had got that message loud and clear. Despina had said it with passion, she wasn’t lying to protect him. Exactly the attitudes that a psychopath wanted to generate, thought Angie. Loyalty and adoration which stoked the self-loving flames of the ego and helped to elevate them above suspicion.
Angie remained non-committal, swimming round the fishing hook. ‘Brownlee, Deborah and Sam Little were all in Southampton at about the same time. It suggests there is a link between them. Until we can work that out…’ She looked at her watch. ‘And I have a plane to catch.’
Stamelos shook her hand and opened the rear door. ‘When you know, let me know. It will be nice to share an ouzo with old colleagues and tell them this one is solved.’
Angie moved to step in, then remembered Artie’s research on whether Anastasia was buried or cremated. She asked Nick if he knew.
‘Buried. Greek Orthodox. I attended. There was one anomaly though. There was an argument with the hospital because some of her organs were removed for donation. The parents were upset.’
