Oleander Soul Read online

  Oleander Soul

  By

  James Arklie

  Text copyright 2019 James Arklie

  All Rights Reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, character and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Day One.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Day Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Day Three

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Day Three

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Day Four

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Day Five

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Day Six

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Day Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six.

  Day Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Day Nine

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Day Ten

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  For Maureen

  A mother who gave love, dedication and devotion.

  The mother in law of your dreams.

  A Grannie made in heaven.

  Psychological manipulation

  ‘The deliberate and insidious influencing of another with the intention of undermining that person’s morale, complicating their lives and creating insecurity and to then exploit that person’s weakness to advance the interests of the manipulator.’

  Day One.

  Chapter One

  Tashfield Street, East London

  Oleander Soul knew something was wrong as soon as she saw the black bin sacks. Three of them, thrown into an angry, random pile outside the door that led from her one room flat onto the street.

  The plastic sweltered and smelt in the hot June sunshine. Plastic and chemicals interacting and changing composition like her shitty life. Sweat and old clothes heating up and releasing new unpleasant odours. Poverty in a bag stinks in the bright sunshine of everyone else’s perfect lives.

  She let go of her daughter Lily’s hand, told her to wait at the bottom of the stone steps and marched up to the door. She hammered with her fist and flakes of red paint drifted to the concrete step.

  ‘Amal. You Pakistani son of a bitch. What the hell’s going on?’ There was an edge of panic in her voice. She sensed her life was about to fall into a black abyss. Again.

  Amal opened the door. A middle-aged man, the belt of his baggy trousers held up his paunch, brown stains on the front of his shirt showed he didn’t care, more grey stubble than hair enhanced his air of self-neglect, bare feet spoke of a life indoors.

  ‘Given you’re from Grenada, Ollie and as black as the mole on my arse, I will accept that as old-fashioned abuse and not a racist attack.’ He spoke carefully; smiled sadly. Ollie glared, he sighed.

  ‘The police have been here again. They say they are treating the disappearance of Stephan as suspicious.’

  Ollie’s gut churned in the way it does when trying to rid itself of a bad strain of E.coli. ‘Your brother ran out on me. Left me with Lily and sod all else.’ There was fight and spite in her voice. Trying to resist the blame for something she hadn’t done.

  Amal moved his head from side to side, pondering while he sucked on a sweet. ‘The suggestion is that you killed him.’

  ‘You know that’s rubbish.’ She fought back the fear of life back on the streets. Of tarmac and rubbish bins, the stench and the degradation, the alleyways and hand-outs.

  She heard the hardness in Amal’s voice. ‘You fought with Stephan a lot. I heard you.’

  Ollie could feel the midday sun heating her back. She wished she was in a dress and not jeans. Why was it so bloody hot? Because it’s a heatwave in June, Ollie. But it was getting to her and aggression was starting to take over from reason.

  She stepped closer. ‘Okay. So what did I do with his body?’ She pointed.

  ‘How did I get him from up there, to out here, without you or your nosey bitch of a wife seeing.’

  Amal scratched his paunch. ‘I am only saying what the police intimated to me.’

  ‘DI Small?’

  ‘Among others. Yes.’

  Ollie turned and checked on Lily. She was sitting on a wall, kicking her heels and watching cars. If they lost this room, they had nowhere to go.

  She turned back to Amal. ‘I’ll give you more sex.’

  He sighed. ‘I also need some rent. Money. I gave you your final warning last week and now you’re out.’

  Oleander stepped up to him and poked his paunch. ‘And I gave you sex. I’ve been paying you with blow jobs and bouncing on my back on your shitty bed for God knows how long. What’s changed?’

  He shifted on his feet, the hot sun on his face was making him sweat. She could see the comment was making him uncomfortable.

  ‘Things change, Ollie. Life turns and now you have to go.’ He flicked a dismissive finger in the direction of the street.

  Ollie smelt the cinnamon sweet on his breath and watched his eyes roam over her body greedily. They hovered over her crotch then came to rest on her breasts, pushed up, cleavage exposed in a tight vest top. She didn’t understand. It was there for him to have, so why this?

  ‘Sod you, Amal. I’ll tell your wife, then I’ll tell the authorities.’

  Amal shifted the sweet across his mouth, looked down at Lily and at a car that had pulled into the kerb opposite.

  ‘My wife knows and doesn’t care because it keeps me off her. And you know as well as I do that females renting get discounts for sex. You see any men in the other rooms?’ He pointed upwards. ‘The authorities only care about the right statistics.’

  Oleander felt the tightness of the inevitable start to rise in her chest. She had nothing else to offer.

  Amal’s brother was the problem here and it wasn’t her fault. Stephan had disappeared six months earlier. Vanished without trace. Left his passport and cash. Amal had let her stay out of duty to his brother’s daughter. When that had waned, he’d moved on to his brother’s wife, but now he seemed to have had enough.

  ‘Come on, Amal. I’ve got nowhere to go. Lily and I need somewhere to sleep tonight. Sex now. Any way you want it. At least give me a few days to sort something out.’

 
; He leant against the doorframe, arms folded, looking down at her, eyes roaming over her face, the diamond in her nose, the pale blue ring through her right eyebrow, the bleached blond cropped hair that gleamed against her dark skin.

  ‘You know your problem, Ollie? You run from your responsibilities.’ He looked at Lily who was now sitting on the bottom step, ten years old, yellow ribbons bright in her dark hair, face to the sun.

  He went on. ‘You ignore your history. Sex, drink, drugs, stealing. A partner who just disappeared and who happened to be my brother. Where is he, Ollie? Back in the day your own father vanished without trace. What happened to him? Then there’s your mother, in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Why aren’t you working to look after her?’

  He tipped his head towards hers to make his point. ‘Trouble follows you, Ollie and I want you out before more arrives on my doorstep. You are a person of interest to the police. DI Small? She wants you as desperately as I do on a Saturday night after a few beers.’

  Ollie stepped closer. ‘You bastard. Were you keeping me close so you could watch me because of your brother? And I thought you were just a pervert who wanted to screw his brother’s woman.’ She looked into his eyes.

  ‘And what do you mean, ‘before more trouble arrives on your doorstep?’ What do you know? Is someone after me?’

  ‘Trouble is standing on my doorstep right now, Ollie. That’s what I know.’ He straightened. ‘The room is rented to someone else. Those are all your things. Take them and go. No trouble, please.’

  She stared hard at him for long seconds until he looked away across the street. This wasn’t the usual Amal. He was an aggressive slob, but he was also an honorable bastard. This made no sense. He was almost apologetic. And he still wanted her, she could tell by the way he was looking at her.

  ‘Lily is part of your family. What about duty.’

  He pulled a twenty from his pocket, folded it tightly and held it out between his fingers. ‘So you can eat tonight.’

  Ollie looked at it, thought about telling him where to stuff it, but knew she needed it. She snatched it from his hand then lashed out with a kick at the bags.

  ‘Keep this shit.’ It was all cast offs from the Sally Army shop, or handouts, or stuff she’d been able to steal.

  She eased down the steps and took Lily’s hand. She turned back once and saw him watching her walk away. He looked sad and annoyed. The fear that was starting to overwhelm her told her something wasn’t right. She gave him the finger anyway and heard him hawk and spit into the bin on the top step.

  But the phlegm wasn’t for her, it was for the man in the car across the street. He smiled at the futile gesture and gently eased his car away from the kerb.

  From behind her Ollie heard Amal slam the door on the only sanctuary she had from the shit life that now awaited her. She started to think where the nearest food banks were and where the soup kitchens would be set up later this evening. And where they could sleep.

  Into her mind flickered the image that always made her feel sick and ashamed. A ragged homeless mother towing a child around the streets of London. Judgement and pity in passing eyes, self-loathing and anger burning in hers.

  A dangerous dull ache had started over her left eye. She knew what it meant, what would come if she couldn’t control it. Soon the seething, streaming river of pain would start swirling and swimming through her brain. The threatening kaleidoscope colours of reds and purples damning all rational thought.

  Then would come the wild, demanding, dervish she couldn’t control, the monkey that would leap and screech from brain cell to brain cell until it burst from every pore in her body in an explosion of anger, hatred and violence.

  God help her for the horrors she’d seen and for the atrocities she’d committed but couldn’t remember doing. If only they could all understand and help her instead of blaming her, then the demon could be stopped.

  Chapter Two

  DI Donna Small skipped lightly up the stairs at the back of Wood Green Police Station and weaved her hips between the desks packed into the crowded office space. She arrived at the two desks occupied by her and DS Andy Mann. Some days were good in this job and some were shit. Today had started as a beauty.

  She flipped the manila folder onto his desk. ‘Closer by the day, Andy. Little by little.’

  Andy looked up at the rare sight of his Boss smiling and saw that today was a dress day, always a good indicator of mood. Medium length blond hair was also loose. On a bad day it was jeans, trainers and hair pulled back to a severe pony-tail. Someone always suffered on pony-tail days.

  He looked down at the folder and she encouraged him to open it with a jerk of her head, as though it was a late, surprise Christmas present.

  He reached forward but then, as he knew she would before he could start reading, she began summarising the contents.

  ‘Soul’s DNA was found at both the squats. Hair and fingerprints.’

  Andy made a face. Small’s relentless hunting down of Oleander Soul was becoming embarrassing, colleagues turning it on him, taking the piss in the pub, making him the target of office jokes.

  Soul had worked the streets for years. Small had worked the same streets as she clawed her way up through the force. The pair of them had clashed time and again. Drugs, prostitution, robbery, but never once had Small made anything stick.

  Until now, when she felt she had the chance to finally nail her nemesis. Not only for this case, but for what Small referred to as the ‘back catalogue’. Andy knew he was caught up in the middle of battle of wills over which he had no control.

  This case was nearly a year old and Andy tried to introduce some perspective. ‘But, Boss, it was a squat used by junkies and she was a user so…’

  He was scanning the report. Two different squats, female dead in one, a male in the other. Oleander Soul present in both. Then he saw why Small was so excited.

  ‘The samples were taken from the bodies?’

  ‘We have her at the scene of both crimes and we have her intimately associated with both victims.’

  ‘Robbery? That’s what junkies do. All they want is to pay for the next fix.’

  ‘Read on and stop being a prat. They were both murdered, Andy. Someone injected both victims with some chemical concoction that was homemade. I’m betting it was a tester to see what happened.’

  Andy wanted to scratch his head, but daren’t. The gesture would suggest puzzlement and irritate her. Small’s animosity towards Soul went way back before he’d teamed up with her. On his watch, Soul had made a fool of Small over the disappearance of Stephan Khan. Walking free with a finger in the air.

  Small lifted the report, perched on her desk and used it to fan away the June heat.

  ‘I reckon Soul was making junk. Moved up from junkie, to dealer to chemist.’

  ‘That’s a leap, Boss. Her education stopped at sixteen.’

  ‘Anyone can train a monkey, Andy. She’s bright, devious and streetwise. She’s been out there and survived on her own for fourteen odd years. No number of ‘ologies’ can do that for you.’

  Andy had heard this one before, it was going the way of Soul’s moral code having been turned off. He ambushed the repetition and an argument over psychology and personality disorders.

  ‘She was swabbed down when we last took her in, including hands and finger-nails. We can ask forensics to dig out the swabs and test for specific chemicals.’

  Small nodded. ‘Do it.’ She carried on fanning. ‘Another thing is bugging me. I still think it strange she stayed with Amal Khan. She’s our main suspect in the disappearance of his brother and he let her stay there?’

  ‘Family, Boss. The daughter, Lily is his niece.’

  ‘Let’s get back on Amal. Maybe there’s something more in that relationship.’

  ‘What? Like Amal and Soul were in it together?’

  Small shrugged. ‘Why not? Soul decides she prefers Amal, so they get rid of Stephan.’

  ‘But Amal’s marr
ied and let’s face it, Boss, bit of a slob. Would you…?’ Inappropriate, he told himself and stopped.

  The smile had faded and he could see his picky questioning building frustration in Small. Her voice now had an edge. ‘Or maybe Amal is the father of Lily? We won’t know unless we start digging through the shit of her life.’

  I’ve done it already, he thought, several times, but he heard the unspoken ‘so get on with it’ and let the random shot go by. There was no point in annoying his Boss any further because she was right, when you studied the life and times of Oleander Soul, one thing was inescapable.

  Oleander Soul’s best friend was the Grim Reaper.

  And wherever she went, death followed.

  Chapter Three

  Lily brightened when Ollie told her she was going to visit Grannie Alesha in the respite home. It would give them respite too and a roof for a few hours. If she got her mother to order some tea and biscuits Lily could eat something.

  As they walked through the gardens of the home, Ollie told Lily to pick some flowers for Grannie. Ollie ignored the glare of the receptionist and marched them both past the desk without signing in, found her mother’s room and threw her bag on the chair.

  ​Lily jumped onto the bed and offered the flowers which were accepted with a kiss and hug.

  ​‘Well, here’s a double surprise. Shouldn’t you be at school young lady?’

  ​Ollie jumped in. ‘For someone with onset dementia and slowly debilitating Motor Neurone Disease you’re remarkably astute, mother.’

  ​‘Except I haven’t got a clue what day it is. Yesterday I forgot my name.’

  ​Ollie kept her in the present. ‘How are the scars?’

  ​‘Very impressive, love. But healing nicely.’ Lily had opened Alesha’s bed blouse and was running a finger along the purple tracks of triple heart bypass surgery.

  ​‘Consultant says I can leave next week. Did you arrange a place for us all like you said?’

  ​The stress was hitting Ollie like a pressure wave travelling out from the explosion of an atom bomb. It was crushing her brain, mushing her thinking and squashing her mood into an ever-tighter space from which it would explode.