The Alice Murders Read online

  Kline saw her fist curl into a ball and realised he’d gone too far. ‘Don’t you dare put my issues up in my face to use as a shield against yours.’ She did it, she tapped her head.

  ‘You have to sort it, Joe.’

  He reached and took his sandwich from the dashboard. Anger helped Angie fight her demons, but his adrenal glands had run out of adrenaline long ago. Tiredness crept bone deep through his body; emotional fatigue from fighting too many battles.

  He hadn’t stopped. Even now, he continually pushed his body passed limits he didn’t know it had. It needed to be cleansed of impurities. He could feel the swelling in his ankles and feet caused by the retention of fluid. Toxins sang high-pitched and out of tune in his brain.

  He tried to change the subject again. ‘Why’s the radio off?’

  She waved a hand at it with frustration and threw herself back in her seat like an angry child, reluctantly accepting the discussion was over. ‘They’ve found a body out at Lords Wood. For some reason everyone’s over-excited.’

  Kline hooked a sandwich out of the wrapper with his forefinger. ‘We should go.’

  She looked at him as if he was stupid. ‘Why would we want to embarrass ourselves doing that?’

  Kline ate a mouthful of sandwich and stared across the manicured lawn at the daffodils. He recalled Jenny’s love of daffodils, the beacons of Spring, she called them. He made a note to get her some for his visit this evening.

  He said, ‘Anyway, we can’t go.’

  Angie looked at him. He spoke as he took another mouthful. ‘I need to be dialysed.’

  Kline knew there was no such word as it applied to him, but he always said it. His way of trivialising the serious nature of something that he was allowing slowly and inexorably to kill him. Or was that his subconscious making a plan? Take himself to the edge of death, then kill Jenny. Then die himself.

  He sensed Angie frowning at him and turned to face her. She said, ‘But you only had it done a couple of days ago.’

  He breathed gently, happy he’d managed to change the subject. ‘Four sessions a week now. Four hours each.’ It was like describing a part time job stacking shelves in Lidl.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Concern filled her voice. When the medical profession gives you more of something, you know you’re in the shit.

  Kline gave the nasal laugh of a condemned man facing slow, crawling inevitability as his cart rattles across the cobbles towards the guillotine and round him the crowd call out obscenities.

  ‘Little bugger’s packing up.’

  Actually, Kline thought, it’s a big bugger, twice the size of its inept, defunct partner. Grown like the bicep on a body-builders arm because of its extra workload. But now it was getting tired. The little glomeruli had run out of the will to keep filtering all the shit from his body. If Kline wanted to ignore it’s warnings, then it was happy to let him die.

  So, to stay alive, he now had to lie on a bed for four hours, two catheters in his arm, one sucking the life blood out of him, the other pumping freshly scrubbed blood back in. Initially, Kline found it weird being cleansed by a machine, but he became attached to it by more than tubes, emotionally, it was saving his life. Problem was, it wasn’t cleaning out the real shit in his brain.

  Kline started his second sandwich and Angie started the engine. ‘Any news on a transplant?’

  He wondered if Angie knew, the way Dr Parr knew. He hid behind his chewing to avoid answering and turned on the police radio, throwing up another barrier.

  Someone was cursing because SOCO were slow getting to the scene of crime. The body was still in full view and a drone had been spotted. Press or TV could be controlled, it was the private, social media voyeurs who were now the enemy. Grab twenty seconds, get it on social media and have yourself twenty-seconds of fame.

  Angie was shaking her head. ‘Someone should just throw a sheet over it.’

  How interesting, Kline thought, how we dehumanise to protect ourselves. A person. A body. The deceased. Had become ‘It’. Angie was full of ‘its’ today. Maybe her mind was getting lazy.

  Kline wanted to give her something to hang onto while he was gone for four hours. ‘I’ll have a word with the boss, see if we can get involved.’

  Angie clenched her teeth as a dam against the words she wanted to say. She turned her head to look out of the rear window. Her anger released in the way she spun the Audi and carved a mark across the gravel. They’d abused each other enough for one day.

  Kline saw the jaw muscles tense, reading her thoughts. He was no longer a leader. He was distracted. He put less and less time into their team of two. Angie was vocal and cover as she may for his absences, his lack of energy and for his brain slowing down as he carelessly poisoned it with his own toxic waste, they knew the Chief would have to do something about it, him, sometime soon.

  Angie steered them out onto the main road and they headed for the dialysis unit at Chandlers Ford. Kline rested his head back and closed his eyes against the pain in his side and the throbbing in his temples.

  It promised to be an exciting afternoon. There were forty plus dialysis stations. You never knew who you might meet there.

  But best of all, it was a place to escape to and hide.

  From all the shit in his life.

  *

  Diary entry for DI Joseph Kline

  I watched you, Joe, from the grounds and I’m so disappointed. You really are the biggest of cowards.

  Years ago, I showed you how to do it. How to take a life. Evie. Remember? How to make it easy, painless, a thing of beauty. Even how to be apologetic and show some remorse.

  I prepared you for this time, these days. For the excruciating pain that was coming your way. Maybe it’s a good thing we’ve waited this long because now you do understand one thing, Joe. That love is destructive. It means that one day you will understand me and what I’ve done.

  Passionate, unrequited, unquestioning, unambiguous love is like the most virulent virus that arrives one winter’s day and infects every cell in your body. It infiltrates your DNA then replicates itself a million-fold at your expense, before destroying the cell and moving on. Love is like a virus; it needs a host to survive. It is a living being.

  We have both allowed ourselves to love deeply, Joe. To expose ourselves to the slow destruction of our bodies, one cell at time, as the virus of love eats away at us. You invited Jenny into your DNA, Joe. Now you have to destroy her before she destroys you.

  Come on, Joe, you know all about psychopaths, people like me. There’s a psychopath lurking inside everyone, Joe. It just needs the right set of circumstances to let it out. Search it out, Joe. Dig for it. You need it. Taking a life really is the sweetest thing.

  Do you know that I keep my love with me always? The lengths I’ve had to go to you will not believe. Like you, I can’t let her go. I cry when I think of her gone. But I kill for my love, Joe. I am willing to take the life of another to protect my love.

  You have something I need, Joe and to get it back, Jenny has to die.

  So please, kill her for your sake.

  Kill her for her sake

  Kill her for ME.

  Chapter Two

  Angie collected Kline from Chandlers Ford four hours later. He eased himself into the Audi and accepted more coffee. Angie automatically headed back towards West Quay and the station.

  Kline was exhausted. Dialysis, always did that to him. It was meant to remove just the impurities, but it seemed to drain every battery cell in his body.

  At the first set of lights Angie pulled up, looked across at him ‘All good?’

  Kline nodded. ‘Purified.’ He made it sound like he’d been to confession, but he did feel calmer after the events of the morning. He sipped. ‘What have you been up to?’

  Angie shrugged and focused too hard on the red light. ‘Couple of house interviews. Someone’s decided that now is a great time of year to steal bikes.’

  The flat tone in her voice said it all. Kline
knew they had to be the most qualified, least productive team on the Hampshire force. That said, it doesn’t take four hours for two interviews about stolen bikes. She’d been somewhere else, but he wasn’t going back into that argument.

  There was a crack of static on the police radio. A female voice said, ‘SOCO want another hour, then we can wrap up.’

  She was replying to a question they hadn’t heard. It suggested the investigative team were on a more discrete wavelength. And that was interesting.

  Kline squinted as the road turned south west and the low afternoon sun blasted them through the windscreen. He nodded at the radio. ‘Let’s get up there. See what’s going on.’

  He dipped his head to look up at the sky out of the side window. The sky was clear and a deepening blue as evening approached. The sun was low enough to up-light a couple of jet trails a pale orange. He reckoned they had an hour or so.

  When they got to Lord’s Wood, it was clear the main activity was over. Officers were leaning against cars for support as they pulled off boots and shrugged out of heavy jackets and yellow bibs. Angie was still forced to park way back down a rutted track that had police vehicles lined along it. They walked beside them, reached the tape, needlessly showed their ID’s, logged in, kitted up and followed the SOCO foot boards to the white tent.

  It was in the middle of a grassy open space that was surrounded by tall pine trees. At the far end was a random horse-chesnut tree, laden with large glistening brown buds. Kline let his eyes and body spin three-sixty, roaming, absorbing. Body near the track, in the open, it was meant to be found.

  Kline was searching for the detective in charge, then saw DI Pete Simpson duck out of the tent. He exchanged a few words with a couple of junior detectives. One detached himself, walked towards them and then past them with the faintest of nods.

  Kline didn’t know him, but from the smirk and lack of ‘sir’, he knew Kline. Angie as well. She avoided his eyes, but he still gave her the dismissive look you save for the pathetic down and out. You could read the thought, ‘the two outcasts have arrived.’

  Kline could see Pete Simpson eyeing him warily as they approached. He muttered something under his breath to the junior detective. Kline knew it would be along the lines of ‘what the hell do they want?’.

  When Pete Simpson thought they were close enough, he took a step towards Kline. A territorial response. Unconsciously protecting his crime scene.

  ‘Joe.’ No warmth. Expressionless face. Flat tone. He glanced at Angie, said nothing.

  Kline nodded. ‘Pete.’

  There was an awkward two seconds, then Pete Simpson crossed his arms. ‘The boss gave this one to me.’

  Kline nodded disarmingly, flashed a smile. ‘Yea, yea. But we were passing. Just wondered what was going on.’

  Kline peered round Pete Simpson’s left shoulder at the tent. A bright arc light suddenly lit up the inside, illuminating two moving shadows. Kline caught the aggressive stare of the other younger detective. He stared back for a few moments then let it go.

  Simpson said. ‘What do you want, Joe?’

  Kline glanced at the tent again. Simpson knew exactly what Kline wanted, what he’d wanted from every murder scene for the last twenty years. A hope that had become desperation. ‘Just to take a look, Pete. That’s all.’

  Simpson took a step closer, glanced at Angie and decided to ignore her. He focused his bitterness on Kline. ‘This is my case, Joe. I won’t let you take it away.’

  Angie shifted her weight, suddenly interested because he was so defensive. Kline frowned back into the stare that was flicking to and fro across his face. Right eye, left eye.

  ‘So, there is ….’

  ‘What there is, Joe, is something and nothing.’

  Kline looked at the tent again, a bright white beacon, calling to him the way a beer hidden in the fridge calls to an alcoholic. He felt his breathing shallow out, he had to get in there before they removed the body.

  Kline put his hands up in front of him, palms out. ‘Pete. Look at the two us.’ His eyes flicked to Angie and back.

  ‘You know where we are. A couple of washed up, traumatised, has-beens. You think Dave Barker will give me lead on a high-profile case? Want me leading a big team? Standing in front of TV cameras?’

  They stared at each other and Kline could see Pete considering the brutal sadness in his honesty. Then a head in a white hood poked out of the tent. It was also masked and goggled. ‘Something for you, Detective.’ It was male.

  They both moved simultaneously but Pete Simpson tugged at Kline’s arm, pulling him back, ensuring he went first. Simpson dropped his voice.

  ‘You effing dare and I swear…’

  Kline lifted the tent flap to let him through, then stepped inside himself. Angie and the other detective followed.

  Kline dropped his gaze to the body, the arc lights creating an unnatural marble whiteness against the green of the grass. He felt his gut slip and slide and chest go still as his brain stilled his breathing. Then a tear squeezed itself from the duct of his left eye. He blinked it away, waiting until the watery images clarified themselves once again.

  Angie was studying him. ‘You all right?’

  Kline nodded, swallowed, deeply and painfully. The tear wasn’t for the woman it was for him, for the release, finally, of something that he’d forcibly buried inside for years. In a hidden part of his brain a strong box unlocked itself and memories tumbled over each other racing to fill a vacuum in his conscious.

  He breathed. ‘You should have called me.’ His tone wasn’t annoyed, it was accusing.

  Simpson gave him a dismissive shrug which said, ‘what was the point?’.

  Kline let his eyes roam over the harsh white nakedness below him. It was a woman, about fifty. The hands had been placed forty-five degrees from her sides. Galvanised heads of large nails showed through the palms. She’d been nailed to the ground. Nails that would never have held her there if she was alive. It was symbolism. A message that Kline knew. A telegram forwarded from his history.

  Her right breast had been removed and there was a small white flower resting in the dark gash that remained.

  Worse was below. A dark red line ran from her sternum to her navel. Blood was smeared across her body. Kline looked up at the suited figure, his expression asking the question.

  The white suited shoulders shrugged. ‘I’m guessing some organs have been removed. I can tell you lat…’

  Pete Simpson’s voice cut across the tent, harsh and demanding. ‘You’ll bloody well tell me.’ He glared at Kline. ‘And only me.’

  Angie was stepping carefully round to the other side of the body. Kline saw what had caught her attention, something small placed on the palm of one of the hands.

  He squinted. ‘What’s that?’

  Angie crouched and leaned close. ‘It’s a doll. I had one as a kid. My Carly had one. Most little girls do.’ They all waited, then into the silence she said,

  ‘Alice. It’s called an Alice doll.’

  *

  DCI Dave Barker threw his pen onto his desk. It skidded across some paperwork and stopped at a family photograph. He was angry at Kline’s intrusion and Kline was incandescent at his exclusion.

  ‘You don’t know it’s him.’

  ‘Or her.’ Kline fired a warning look at Angie standing beside him. Not now.

  The boss turned on her anyway. ‘Women don’t do that to women. As you should know.’ Angie let it go. They’d got used to sarcasm and implied incompetence long ago.

  Kline tried to keep his tone reasonable. ‘Dave. I should have been called. It’s the same MO.’

  ‘Not quite, from what I hear.’

  Kline blinked as his brain did a memory dump on him, showing him the image of a woman called Evelyn Arnold that had never left him.

  Evelyn had been attacked in her bedroom while asleep, knocked out with an injection of propofol then immediately killed with an overdose of morphine, again injected.

 
Next, she was taken downstairs where she was stripped naked, laid out and her hands nailed to the old oak floorboards of her farmhouse. Her right breast was carefully removed and a small white flower placed on the wound.

  The final touch was a photograph of a child, not Evelyn, placed on her pubic region. The child in the photograph had never been identified.

  Dave broke through his imagery. ‘Joe. I know how close this is to you.’

  Kline slapped the back of the chair he was leaning on. ‘Close?’ He hit the chair again.

  ‘Dave, the murder of Eveyln Arnold lives inside every cell of my body.’

  Kline could hear the tone of his voice changing as it got louder. Her murder was like a virus that had inserted itself into his DNA. ‘That murder destroyed my wife. It as good as destroyed our marriage.’ He stopped short of saying it put Jenny into a coma, because that had been a car accident. But still….

  Kline could see Angie looking at him, a frown creasing her forehead. She didn’t have a clue what was going on, what they were talking about.

  Kline gave her an abrupt explanation but spoke at Dave to force his message. ‘Evie… That is, Evelyn Arnold, was Jenny’s sister.’

  It wasn’t quite that simple, thought Kline, but the extra complications in the relationship were something nobody would ever know about. Mustn’t ever know about.

  Angie let her head roll back on her shoulders, then she nodded as she let the new knowledge sink in. She said, ‘And the MO was the same?’

  Kline spoke before Dave Barker could open his mouth. ‘Breast, nails, flower. The rest is new.’

  Angie asked, ‘And the Alice doll?’

  Kline was gripping the chair and forcing it back and forth on its rear legs. ‘New. But it’s him. He’s back.’

  Dave Barker had a new pen that he was bouncing end over end. He gave Kline a clever smile. ‘But did he ever go away?’

  Kline’s frustration boiled over. He’d waited twenty years for this moment. He threw the chair forward. It clattered into the desk then rocked back. ‘Jesus, Dave. Let’s not get side-tracked with semantics.’ He jerked a thumb at his chest. ‘This should be my case.’