The Alice Murders

by James Arklie

  Whatever it takes.

  Kline held the message out to Charlie. ‘What do you think, fella? Is now the right time to do this? Time to keep that promise?’

  He gave Kline his lopsided grin of approval and Kline pressed send. Kline let his head fall to the back of the settee and muttered, ‘Because anyone can be a psychopathic killer, hey Charlie? It lurks inside all of us.’

  Kline let his eyes close, knowing he should get to his bed before he fell asleep. What kind of a slippery slope am I sliding down, he wondered? Robert Brown had led him along the path and shown him the way.

  ‘It’s simple, Charlie. It just about being clever, so clever that no one ever knows.’

  *

  Chapter Nineteen

  Day Fifty-Eight

  It was a minute past midnight when Kline’s mobile threw a sonorous ping into the darkness. It pulled him out of a deep sleep. His head jerked forward from where he’d fallen asleep on the settee. He instantly reached for the ache in his neck, wincing as he eased his head from side to side, massaging into the pain. His mouth was bone dry.

  His mobile pinged again and the screen lit up. It threw a blue light over Charlie’s smiling face where it rested on a cushion beside him.

  The next email in the chain had arrived. Kline blinked through the weight of jet-lag still heavy in his eyes.

  You may be in time to save him, Joe. But I very much doubt it.

  Kline stared. He read it again and his gut twisted. His throat constricted and he tried to swallow saliva that wasn’t there. His brain screamed at him to wake up, to face what was in front of him. This isn’t the way it was meant to happen.

  Kline read the numbers below the message. What were they? Map coordinates. Yes. GPS ready for his car. Any car. To save him.

  Kline was on his feet and calling it in. Panicked, despite his training. Shouting, despite his seniority. All cars, any fucking cars, to wherever it was, is, now, yesterday, officer in danger, officer injured, officer down. Ambulance? Yes, for Chrissake. Just get them there. All of them.

  He was talking with Control, without control. Breathe, Kline. Breathe.

  He shouted, ‘Where the hell is it?’

  A sharp reply. ‘Lords Wood. North end of the Chilworth Drove, off one of the tracks.’

  Kline grabbed his jacket, his keys, Charlie and ran to his car. He fixed his mobile into the cradle. Control were still talking, keeping him updated.

  They remained calm, trained to deal with the panickers. ‘What are we looking for, Joe?’

  ‘I don’t know. A body.’ Kline didn’t want to say his name. Damn him to a death, he didn’t deserve. It wouldn’t be a nice death. Kline knew there was horror to come on this Summer’s night.

  ‘Who, Joe. Which officer?’

  Kline grimaced and raced the engine through its gears. ‘Artie. Arthur Knowleden.’

  As Kline said his name, he knew he was dead. It was like shouting his name from a roll call in front of the Pearly Gates. Announcing the next in line. Step forward to meet your maker, Artie. It is your time.

  ‘Call DCI Barker. Tell him what’s happening. And wake DS Tyler, get her there.’

  Shit, how long does it take to drive six miles, on empty roads running all the red lights, when someone’s life depends on it. Answer; a bloody lifetime. Their lifetime.

  Kline smacked his palm against the steering wheel. What had he done? What the fuck had his arrogance gone and done?

  His mobile pinged making his gut churn. A message slid across the screen –

  You said you wanted to play, Joe. If you’re not willing to suffer the consequences, you should have stayed at home. Travelling round the world, pissing me off. Now let’s see who’s in control, shall we?

  Kline replied in anger.

  Fuck you.

  Seconds later, he received a smiling emoji in reply.

  Kline realised that he couldn’t access the coordinates in Lords Wood from the south and that the GPS router was taking him all the way round the north and back down. Control told him DCI Barker was on his way and that DS Tyler was not responding.

  Please be walking the streets, Angie, he prayed. Please be out there looking for your own demons.

  And then Kline was there. Sliding to a stop behind a motorway police car that had diverted off the M27. Blue lights flickered across tall pine trees, headlights on full beam pointed into the forest. Another car came in behind Kline and he made himself move. If he was to win this battle, he had to confront this.

  He ran into the forest, towards the sounds of crashing undergrowth, towards flickering torchlight, towards the body of the boy, his boy, the young man, he’d condemned to death.

  Two officers were looking up at a tree, but their torch beams were pointing down. Kline held up his badge, grabbed a torch from the nearest officer.

  His breath was coming in heavy gulps. ‘Where?’

  The officer jerked his head up at the tree in front them. Horse chesnut. Conkers aplenty for excited kids in the frosts of Autumn. Piles of brown leaves to kick and throw about in the cold-nosed chill of winter. But in the warmth of a summer’s night when death stalked…

  A hangman’s tree.

  Where someone swings, lonely.

  Disembowelled.

  And left to die.

  *

  A hoarse voice shouted. ‘Seal it. Right back to the road.’

  From the track behind Kline, Dave Barker’s bark was loud and full of authority. Kline knew that he should be the one issuing the orders, but nothing would work. Brain, mouth, limbs. I’ve done this, he thought. I’ve killed him. By trying to be clever.

  Dave Barker came to a running stop beside Kline, panting. For a heartbeat nothing was said while he took in what he saw. Then it came out in a harsh whisper of pity and sadness. ‘Oh Jesus, Joe.’

  Artie hung from the tree, a naked, lifeless ragdoll. A rope round his neck, head forward, tongue out. Arms at his side and legs dangling.

  And he’d been disembowelled. His insides hung from him like a huge snake.

  Kline looked into staring eyes that glittered in the torchlight. They didn’t accuse him, or admonish him, they just looked at him. This is this what it takes to be a psychopath, Kline told himself. You have to be capable of acts like this.

  Others started arriving and Dave took Kline’s elbow and led him away, back towards the cars. ‘Touch anything? See anything, anybody? Cars, vans on the road.’

  Kline shook his head. ‘I was too late. Whoever did this was long gone.’

  What was he saying? ‘Whoever did this.’ Wake up, Joe Kline. He needed to shake off the numbness that was paralysing him.

  He looked round him. Everything was already swinging into action. Roads were being sealed; police CCTV cameras identified that covered all approaches; by dawn someone would be walking the streets for a radius of as many miles as necessary looking for private CCTV, shop CCTV, visiting garages…it went on.

  And the thought of it made him tired.

  Kline shook himself. Come on. Move. He looked back as SOCO arrived and bright white arc lights lit up the wood behind him. Artie hung there, centre stage. His skinny, pale body looked so pathetic in death. A sadness washed over Kline. You had to know him in life to know the fires that had burned within. To know his resilience and strength. I’m sorry, Artie. So, so, sorry. But I will get this bastard. I promise.

  God, Kline. Promises, promises, promises. And you never do it. Never fulfil them. It’s just a convenient word to you. A plaster to cover your failures. Say the word and it will be all right. But it’s more than that, it’s a word that demands action.

  Dave was still at his side, shouting instructions. Kline said, ‘Can’t we get him down?’

  Kline knew they couldn’t, and Dave knew, he knew we couldn’t, so he stayed silent.

  DI Pete Simpson arrived, yawning and dishevelled. Kline had forgotten they were now into the early hours of the morning. He stalked past Kline with long strides, his face grim. He nodded
silently at Kline’s pain, slapped Kline’s arm and headed to where he was needed. He was now investigating three murders.

  Kline looked away and into the darkness of the woods behind them. He stared for a long time, seeking and finding the darkest recesses of his mind. The blackness where beasts and unimaginable horrors exist, waiting to be summoned forward.

  Kline prepared himself. If this was the game, and if this was how it was to be played, then he was ready.

  *

  I didn’t do that, Joe. I didn’t do that to Artie. It was a friend. Yes, I have a friend. But you already know that because you’ve met him on several occasions.

  Where I am precise and careful and see the beauty in my craft, he is brutal and careless. I’ve told him he has to watch out for modern policing, it’s not like it was back in my day…or should I say, heyday. Oh, to be young again with all that energy and enthusiasm for life and taking life.

  You must be near the edge now, Joe. Almost ready, so here’s just one last thing, one last…little…push to send you careering over and into the darkness….

  There we go.

  You have email, Joe. You have email….

  Chapter Twenty

  Day Fifty-Eight

  Kline remained at the scene for another two hours, until the morning sun lit the tips of the tall pine trees, the air warmed and a mist started to rise from the open spaces in the wood.

  The dog walkers would be out soon and the runners and mountain bikers. They would all be stopped and interviewed. It would go on all day, probably for the next couple of days.

  Kline tried Angie for about the tenth time. Part of him was relieved she wasn’t answering. How the hell did he tell her what he’d done? How did he tell her Artie was dead? Kline could still see Jenny when he’d told her about Evie. The words hit her like punches; she’d clutched her stomach and folded in two, pleading with him, ‘Not my, Evie. Please, not my Evie.’

  Would Angie be stronger, able to handle the loss of a colleague they barely knew but had come to love? And will she ever forgive me, he wondered? She’d warned him and he’d lied about clearing it with Cassie.

  Kline didn’t want to face the voice inside him, the one that was accusing him of making Artie the sacrificial lamb, bait, stretched out on the slab to be slaughtered, just so Kline could get closer to Robert Brown.

  Kline sighed heavily and sadly as Artie was taken past him in cadaver bag as black and bleak as his thoughts. Then Dave Barker waved Kline over to a police car. Kline sat in the front with Dave and they waited for Pete to arrive with coffees. Pete settled himself on the back seat, angled between them. They all sipped coffee and Kline answered their questions.

  He didn’t mention the email he’d sent. The trigger. The thing that made this his fault.

  They finished and for a couple of minutes sat in a helpless, hapless silence, watching the steady, methodical activity unfolding round and amongst the trees of the forest.

  Until Kline’s mobile sent a ping, bright and light, that ripped through the grim atmosphere that hung between them.

  *

  Angie knew exactly how long it takes to abduct someone. A second. Maybe two. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. To a broken heart.

  One day, she’d been out walking and a bird of prey, a hawk, she thought, dropped from the sky, lifted a mouse from the grass ten metres from where she stood, and flew away. It all happened in the time it took to say the sound the hawk made; whoooshh.

  The speed, the power and the intensity had made her gasp. She’d been pregnant with Carly. She still saw it as a sign from Fate.

  The previous evening Angie had been taken with that same speed and power. She was standing at the main entrance to her apartment block, had tapped the first number on the entry pad, then a gloved hand covered her mouth, pulled her head back and exposed her neck for the sharp prick.

  She had time to blink and then darkness.

  Whoooshh.

  *

  Kline reached for his mobile. The subject line was an emoji with a sad face shedding tears like confetti. Kline’s anger flared, thinking Robert Brown was twisting a knife into his grief. Then Kline saw the link and knew it was never as simple as that with this man.

  Kline held out his mobile to the others. ‘It’s him.’

  Kline clicked on the link. Pete leaned in from the back seat.

  It was a video recording. The first image was a close up of some tarmac. Then the camera lifted away, rising slowly.

  Pete said, ‘It’s a drone. What’s he doing?’

  Kline recognised the front of the Ocean Village apartments. ‘Shit. That’s Angie’s building.’

  The drone span away, climbing fast, giving them flashing images over the marina, over the Solent, over the City. None of them seemed to breathe.

  The drone hovered, turned and slowly dropped towards the balconies of the top floor apartments. It moved towards Angie’s penthouse balcony. Kline saw the image from a long way up, because he’d seen it before. Something with the thickness of an animal rose up from his gut to his throat. He swallowed hard.

  Then Dave Barker saw it. ‘Oh, shit. Please. No.’

  This man has got us pleading for mercy now, thought Kline. We have to put an end to this. He watched the drone drop slowly, teasing them, playing an evil guessing game, until there was no doubt. It was female body, laid out naked in a star shape.

  Kline fought down the sickness and the bitterness that kept threatening to explode from his gut. He kept thinking, kept hoping, kept praying. He can’t have killed Angie as well. Not even the sickest person can be that callous, that cold, that indiscriminate. Then the word came back to him, dehumanise. Yes, Kline, you know it already, brutality is easy for him. He isn’t killing people, he’s killing things.

  They watched in terrified silence as the drone dropped and hovered, dropped and hovered, until it was about fifty feet above the body.

  Pete squinted at the screen, leaning closer. ‘What the hell…?’ He reached in and used two fingers to expand the picture.

  Dave’s voice exploded with relief. ‘It’s a mannequin. A bloody mannequin.’ He threw himself back in his seat and let out a breath. ‘Shit. The bastard.’ He wiped a hand across a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Rubbed it on his trousers, sighing again.

  The pressure’s building on us all, thought Kline. From behind him Pete said, ‘Jesus. Thank God. But what a bloody sick game.’

  Kline just shook his head. This was a false relief, desperately worried men reaching for any lifeline. Inside Kline a new horror was building.

  ‘Don’t thank anyone.’ He felt them both focus on him. ‘It means he’s taken her.’ This could be worse than death. He swallowed again. ‘For some reason, he’s keeping her alive.’

  Kline felt a chill seep into his bones as his mind span with the images of what this man could do to a person. This was new, unpredictable, and it scared him. Then the chill brought a cold, dawning shiver of realisation. Except it wasn’t new, he’d kept Deborah Wilcox alive for twenty years. This was a return.

  The drone moved again, dropping side to side like a feather through the air. It landed gently on top of the mannequin and the lifeline of false relief was exposed as the weakest of threads. They all leaned in to read the words, written in red across the forehead.

  ALICE. We begin again.

  Kline managed to get the car door open before he threw up. Drowning in the steaming pool of bile was only one thought.

  A is for Angie.

  *

  Dave Barker forced Kline home to get some sleep. Kline refused several times. Dave Barker ordered in two armed guards for Kline. They arrived and gave Kline a good, hard, honest look in the eye. Kline had let out a little laugh, finally being honest with himself. Artie savagely murdered, Angie taken. Who was he trying to kid? Not them, just himself.

  Anyway, he was in the way. An emotionally involved copper, sniffing round the crime scene, was of no use to anyone. He offered to go with Pete to Angie’s apar
tment, at which point, his car door was opened for him and he was as good as led away.

  Kline didn’t think he’d sleep, but his brain shut itself down, despite the armed guard outside his front door, a dead team member still warm in the morgue and another abducted and God only knows where and in what state. Perhaps his brain was trying to run away from the chaos and hide from the pain.

  Kline woke at six pm and fought his way up and through the soft call of the jetlag that wanted to lull him back to sleep. He put on the coffee pot and retrieved two slices of bread from the freezer. He went for a piss and it was back to pink and bloody. Not now, Jen, he pleaded. Don’t desert me now. We’re so close. Or maybe she was just reminding him that she was still there, watching, waiting for delivery of his promise to her.

  He made the coffee strong, layered marmalade thickly across the toast to inject some glucose into his system, then took a deep breath and reached for his mobile.

  Nothing.

  Not an emoji in sight.

  There was a stern text from Dave Barker telling Kline to go to the office when he was rested and ready and not before. But there was no news. The absence told Kline they’d drawn a blank with interviews and CCTV and SOCO either hadn’t finished or were also struggling to find anything of significance.

  Kline finished his toast and drained the last of the coffee pot into his mug. Charlie was on the settee, leaning against a cushion. It was blood red and Kline remembered that Jenny had made the cover out of one of Evie’s favourite cardigans.

  ‘You’re the only person I’ve got left to talk to, fella.’

  Kline shocked himself by the truth in the statement. And if I don’t get Angie back, you’ll be the only friend I have left.