The Alice Murders Read online

  Barker let out a short laugh. His voice had a tone of infinite patience. ‘Joe. Please. You know you can’t take this on.’

  Kline stared at him, until Barker threw this pen as well then pitched his chair to its back legs and locked his hands behind his head. Antlers out. Aggressive. ‘Joe, you and your brain have been AWOL for the last few years.’

  Kline waited, resolute. He had to have this case. He lasted five seconds then unloaded into the silence.

  ‘You know one of the things I’ve hated all my career, Dave? The gratuitous violence of men against women. You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it and with Evie, I had to live with it. It sickens me. Men quick with their fists or fast with a knife.’ Kline pointed at the family photograph on the desk

  ‘Wife and two daughters, Dave. Out there is a sick predator, on our streets. The same streets they walk.’ Kline pointed past Dave’s head.

  ‘He’s killed again. Mutilated. I want him. I want this bastard for what he’s done to me, to Evie, to this latest woman, but more than anything, I want to stop him doing it again and again.’

  Kline grabbed the back of the chair again, resisting the anger in his head that raged against the impotent position he found himself in. It wanted an outlet in physical violence and was silently encouraging him to hurl the chair across the room.

  He breathed deeply and slowly. ‘So, give me something, Dave. Give me a chance. Let’s stop at least one fucking male from doing this to women.’

  Barker rocked some more, his face impassive against Kline’s rant, then he decided something, jerked his head at Angie. ‘Leave us.’

  Dave Barker waited until the door closed. ‘Sit on that chair, Joe, rather than trying to crush it.’

  Kline did as he was told and Barker let his chair drop to four legs before opening a drawer, rifling through some folders and removing two. One red. One green. The red one had Kline’s name stencilled across the top.

  He leant forward, placing his palms on them, taking some deep breaths. His eyes were fixed on Kline. A policeman’s eyes. Assessing, appraising, deciding, concluding.

  ‘You look like shit.’

  Kline grunted. ‘And that’s after my soul has just been purified.’

  Dave Barker flipped open the red folder. Red means danger, thought Kline. His breathing stopped.

  ‘They want me to retire you, Joe. WIE. With immediate effect. This seems like a good time to discuss it.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Her as well.’

  ‘Her name is DS Angie Tyler.’ Kline was dancing on the razors edge, but what the hell. He was dying from the inside anyway.

  ‘You want retirement?’ Barker tapped the open folder. ‘It’s a good package. Give you time to sort yourself out.’

  Kline didn’t want this conversation. He’d come in here to vent his frustration and to demand the lead on a case, not to be retired.

  ‘I’m not going.’

  Dave Barker shook his head. ‘Not the way it works, Joe. HR can pull all sorts of tricks. Redundancy, illness, performance issues…. Wheat from the chaff and all that.’

  Barker paused again and watched Kline’s face as he peered into an uncertain future. Sensing the fight disappearing from Kline.

  Now I’m chaff, thought Kline, to be blown away by the wind. Kline tried to resurrect some anger, but he couldn’t. This had thrown him and try as he might to summon some energy, some fight, the moment had gone. And in ten seconds his career may have gone as well.

  Dave offered pleasantly, ‘You want a desk job? I can get you one.’

  ‘I’d rather die.’ Then Kline laughed. ‘Mind you, unless I get a transplant, I’ll be dead in a year or two anyway.’

  Dave Barker nodded, closed the red folder and pulled the green one on top of it.

  ‘We trained at Hendon together, remember those days? You were as good as me, maybe better. You should be sitting in a seat like this seat.’

  The suggestion Kline had let himself down hung in the air. Barker didn’t ask what happened, because he knew. The murder of Jenny’s sister; Kline’s sworn promise to a broken-hearted woman that he would find her sister’s killer; the pressure of a childless marriage; a car smash caused by a bereavement they couldn’t get over; his sodding kidney’s…

  Kline couldn’t find the killer. A broken promise, Jenny grieved, his marriage slipped into silent recrimination then slowly died. The world turned but his life had become a daily void he drifted through aimlessly.

  ‘You’re too good to lose, Joe. At least the old Joe is.’ He flipped open the green folder.

  ‘And I have to agree there are similarities between the murders. I’m thinking that it won’t do any harm to have two, independent but linked, lines of investigation open on this one.’

  He removed a sheet of paper, read the top line. ‘One last chance, Joe.’ He nodded at the closed door. ‘For the pair of you.’

  He handed Kline the sheet of paper. Kline read the name at the top and shivered. A familiar black beast slithered up the skin of his back, took over his body and then churned and writhed round his insides like an eel twisting from a hook.

  She was back in his life.

  Evelyn Arnold.

  Evie.

  One last chance to face the nightmare.

  One last chance for revenge.

  One last chance for forgiveness.

  *

  Kline opened his mouth to say something, but Dave shook his head and jerked it towards the door, so Kline took the file and walked out. Angie was waiting by their desks.

  ‘Nice speech, boss. Still got a job?’

  Kline checked his watch. Six pm, he needed to see Jenny before they started preparing her for bed. He wanted to give her the news.

  He snatched his car keys from his empty in tray. ‘Better than that, we have a case.’

  He quickly turned for the door making Angie jog round her desk to keep up with him.

  ‘Case? What kind of case?’

  The surprise in her voice said it. They hadn’t worked a case on their own for nearly two years.

  Kline battered his way through swing doors and skipped down four flights of concrete stairs to the underground car park. His body and his brain were waking up. This is better than lead on the new case, he thought, far better.

  ‘Eight am start, Angie. I’ll collect you.’ Kline pressed his key fob, yanked open the driver’s door and dropped into the driver’s seat. ‘And get a good night’s sleep. Keep off the internet. We have something new to focus on.’ Maybe it would do them both some good.

  It took Kline fifty minutes to get out to the Hospice Care Home in North Baddesley. At one of the sets of traffic lights leading out of West Quay, he bought a bunch of daffodils from a child risking their life walking up and down the lanes of static commuter traffic. He placed them on the passenger seat beside Charlie, a black, fluffy gorilla with an inane smile and piece of gold bling round his neck with the number ‘1’ on it.

  ‘Not for you, fella. Something for Jenny.’ He then told Charlie the news. ‘This time, fella, this time, it will be my time.’

  Kline felt the depression and guilt land on him like a blanket the moment he walked into the Hospice. Maybe when he told Jenny the news it would help lift it.

  He used a vase from her bedside cabinet for the daffodils. They looked neatly arranged in their elastic band, so he did the male thing and left it on. He looked round for somewhere to put it. On the sideboard at the end of Jenny’s bed there was already a small bunch of lilies in a vase.

  ‘It will have to be here, beside your bed, love.’

  Kline pulled up a chair, sat down and placed one of Jenny’s hands in both of his, loving the warmth. Her little smile was lighting up her face and he smiled back. He didn’t think of switches on the wall and he didn’t think of death. Only of how to tell her the news.

  ‘I was thinking on the way over, love. Do you remember that holiday we had? The special one, to St Lucia? To try and take our minds off everything? Just after Evie had….’ Kl
ine still couldn’t make himself say the words.

  He took a breath, smiled. ‘I was reminiscing with Charlie on the way over. Reduit Beach, remember? We took a water taxi across to Pidgeon Island. ‘Orgasm’. The name of the boat was ‘Orgasm’. He snapped his fingers at another memory.

  ‘And that fruit boat covered in palm leaves, and the two roti ladies having a roti war on the beach. Let’s not forget the floating bar. Remember it. Spelt ‘Flooting’, and the boat was pink, with a pink outboard. We had two rum punches each and spent the afternoon in bed, asleep.’

  Kline reached for the hairbrush on the shelf by Jenny’s bed and gently brushed her hair. He touched up her lipstick, even though he knew they would remove it shortly as they settled her for the night. Not that she needed much settling because she only moved if they moved her.

  He checked her nail varnish wasn’t chipped, still putting off the moment of telling, but kept hold of both her hands. Without thoughts of her death swinging over his head like an empty noose they were deliciously warm with her life. One day the heat would be gone from them and he knew he could never bear to hold them if they were cold.

  Kline shuffled his chair closer. ‘You’re probably wondering why I’m talking memories, love. Well, it’s just that the Chief has put me on a new case. Sort of a swansong, I think.’ Kline dropped his voice to a whisper.

  ‘But it’s that case, love.’ He paused listening for a change in the heart rate monitor. If anything would wake her it would be this. It gave an extended beep, but then subsided.

  ‘That’s right, love. Evie, your sister. We have a chance to get our revenge. I have another chance to find the bastard.’ Kline’s eyes held a bitterness as he looked into her smile

  ‘And I’ll nail him, sweetheart. I promise. To the floor. Just like he did to her.’

  *

  Chapter Three

  Kline collected Angie at eight am next morning. She was waiting outside her apartment building in Ocean Village. Angie had inherited money when her parents died and spent it on buying the penthouse apartment. It was located on the marina front and the main feature was a top floor, south-facing, wooden-decked terrace.

  Kline knew it was Angie’s fortress against the world, a barrier to the harm she felt had been done to her. A place where she could hide with her disillusionment of humanity and bitterness against the deal that life had thrown at her. A refuge where she could sit undisturbed with memories of her daughter.

  She was generous enough to let Kline join her occasionally and he would sit there some evenings to watch the sea, drink beer and wallow in the pit of self-pity that was his love for Jenny.

  Charlie was sitting in the passenger seat when she opened the car door. Kline told her the seat was taken and to sit in the back. It was an old joke. She reached in and tossed the black, furry bundle onto the back seat.

  Kline waited for her to snap the belt buckle into place. ‘All good up with God in the Penthouse Suite?’

  She was eating toast and marmalade and flicking through her iPhone. Kline knew what she was looking for and opened his mouth to speak but she shut it with a look. They drove in silence for a couple of minutes. Angie showed no interest in wanting to know what the new case was about, so Kline dived straight in.

  ‘Barker wants to get rid of you.’

  She shrugged, not caring. ‘Shit person doing a shit job. Not surprised.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘What? Shit person?’

  Kline smiled. ‘No, all three. But he’s given us a last chance. To turn it round. I don’t care about me, Angie, but you need to take it. Start trying to rebuild your career.’

  She pushed the last of her toast into her mouth and focused harder on the screen of her mobile. Eventually, she said, ‘You know I only want one thing.’

  ‘But ten years, Angie…? It’s too long.’

  She made an annoyed noise. ‘Are we going to start the morning like an old married couple arguing about one another’s faults?’

  Kline swung off West Quay towards the station and negotiated the car towards the ramp to the underground car park. ‘Nope. You’re going to stop trawling through websites, switch on your brain and read up on the new case.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I say so. Because I have one last chance as well. And because I want to nail the bastard who murdered my wife’s sister and the woman out at Lord’s Wood.’

  Angie’s mobile dropped to her lap. ‘Evelyn Arnold? That’s our new case? The one that will save my career.’ She loaded her voice with disbelief. ‘Give me a break.’

  Kline pulled into a space and turned to face her. ‘Bad day already?’

  ‘It’s Carly’s birthday.’

  Kline took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. ‘Every day I live with a car crash in which I was the driver. Every day I go and visit the woman I love and whose life I have taken away. You have to do the same, Angie. At worst you made a mistake, it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No, Joe. I am the mistake.’ She opened the door, got out and ducked her head back in.

  ‘So, you go and see your mistake, because at least you’ve got that. My mistake is invisible and it eats me from the inside.’

  They glared at each other for long seconds. Kline realised he was the only person Angie had that would listen and understand her pain. And birthdays for absent family are always raw days.

  Kline climbed out of the car walked round the bonnet and hugged her. ‘Sorry. We’ll have a couple of drinks tonight.’

  Angie buried her head in his shoulder for a couple of seconds, then stepped back and dabbed at the tears that were starting to make their way down her face. She nodded.

  She took a deep breath that quivered in her throat. ‘Okay. Where do you want me to start?’

  ‘Read the report. It’s not that long because we had no clues and no leads. Log it in the system with me as lead and you as number two. Let’s get this on the official list. Search us out some support. One extra person for now. I’ll be back in a few hours.’

  Kline returned three hours later with coffee and pastries. An extra desk had been placed across the end of theirs and laid out along it were five files. Angie was scribbling notes on a pad as though her life depended on it. Kline placed coffee on the table beside her. She ignored it, instead looking up at him. There was something in her expression he couldn’t read.

  She asked, ‘When you were investigating Evelyn Arnold did you look any further afield for similar murders, similar MO’s?’

  Kline frowned. ‘In the UK, but it was twenty years ago, databases weren’t what they are now. The cross-referencing, the search algorithms, the mutual international assistance to allow it.’

  ‘Not abroad then?’

  Kline shook his head. He dragged his eyes from Angie to the five files and back again. Angie stood, took her pad and walked to the blank white board that took all their allocated wall space.

  ‘This is deep, Joe. I’m not sure what we’re getting ourselves into here.’ She pushed a hand through her short hair in an agitated, nail scratchy way.

  ‘If this is a serial killer, if this is his MO, his call sign, whatever, then, logically, there will have been others. I’ve searched globally.’

  Kline waited and watched as Angie took the cap off a black marker pen. Glancing at her pad, she wrote five names on the white board.

  Anastasia Pappas

  Lisa Maughn

  Imogen LeClerc

  Chesney Arthur

  Evelyn Arnold

  The cap went back on the pen with a snap as she turned back to face him. ‘Five women, Joe. Murdered in this order, one every May in five sequential years. Five different countries; five murders; all aged thirty; one breast removed and never recovered; photographs and flowers; laid out naked. Inviting attention and investigation. Challenging.’ Her eyes held Kline’s.

  ‘Yet no clues, no suspects, no theories. All looked at in isolation, never solved so shelved and, because of that, never linked.’
She tapped the board. ‘Until now.’

  Kline opened his mouth, but Angie held up a finger, picked up a red marker pen and carefully drew a large loop that took in the first letter of each Christian name.

  ‘And then there is this.’

  Kline blinked, saw the doll in the hand of the latest victim.

  One word.

  One name.

  One killer.

  ALICE.

  *

  Angie sat beside Kline. She tore open the bag containing the pastries and selected a cinnamon whirl. Kline sipped and swallowed the bitterness of his Americano. They both stared at the names and at the name.

  Angie spoke first. ‘Could be coincidence?’

  Kline shook his head. ‘No. It’s a message, a calling card. A ‘this was done by me’’.

  Angie pulled at the rings of the swirl. ‘Could he be a she? Is Alice her name?’

  ‘It makes this a signature and that would be unusual.’ Kline put his feet up on the spare chair, just one day after dialysis and already he could feel the swelling beginning in his ankles.

  ‘Serial killers have massive egos, boss. This is my name, look at what I’ve done, try and find me.’

  Kline was staring at the names, but no longer seeing them. ‘This isn’t any old serial killer, Angie. This person is global.’

  ‘A global serial killer. Must be some kind of first.’

  Kline let his feet to the floor and reached for the first file. Anastasia Pappas. ‘What do we have here?’

  Angie said, ‘Each one is a synopsis of the full report. I have requested the full report from each jurisdiction.’

  ‘Best I read through them, then.’ Kline pulled the pastry bag towards him. ‘There are questions here already.’

  Angie dunked a strip of pastry in her coffee. ‘Such as?’

  ‘If he was spelling out a name, then how premeditated were all the murders? Why did he stop after five?’