The Alice Murders

by James Arklie

  ‘Dr Alex Parr.’ He was shaking hands with Angie, introducing himself. ‘I was Jenny’s doctor here at the home.’

  Kline opened his eyes and knew that his moment of reckoning had come. A moment he’d been putting off for the last year.

  Dr Parr held Kline’s eyes while he clipped a cycle helmet to a rucksack and then tugged his doctor’s bag from the main compartment. ‘Everything all right, Joe?’

  Kline watched him drop the bag onto a chair and asked, ‘Why are you here?’ Kline knew exactly why.

  ‘The Hospice called me to pronounce Jenny dead.’ Dr Parr dropped the rucksack to the floor and eased it under a table with his foot. His voice was flat, the words short. ‘I told them there was no need. As I’ve told you, and they well know, she was dead the day she was admitted.’

  Kline saw Angie’s eyes narrow and her suspicions rise. There had been no expression of sympathy from the treating doctor. Its absence made a point, his comment conveyed a hidden annoyance. Kline saw her look at him and read the tension in his body. This conversation was only going one way and Kline didn’t want to go there.

  Dr Parr said, ‘This time it’s for real, Joe. You do understand that?’ He crossed to a table and helped himself to a tea bag and hot water from the urn.

  Kline nodded. ‘Of course.’ He glanced at Angie. Her frown showed her puzzlement.

  ‘Good, because it makes the next question easier. Maybe we can get on with it now.’

  Angie couldn’t hold back any longer. She watched Dr Parr stir sugar into his tea.

  ‘Makes what easier? Get on with what?’

  Kline jumped in. He had to stop this. He wasn’t going to let it happen. Jenny had gone, his only decision was how long to leave it before he joined her.

  ‘Angie. Can you check…?’

  She shook her head, staring him out. ‘No, I can’t.’

  Dr Parr had lifted the cup from the saucer. He let it rest in mid-flight, looked surprised and then resigned. Raised his eyebrows to Angie. ‘Don’t you know?’ He looked at Kline, shook his head as the understanding arrived.

  The tone of his voice sang with disbelief. ‘Does anybody know, Joe? Have you told anyone? Discussed it with anyone?’

  The pain of Jenny’s death sucked back over Kline like a receding tsunami. Dragging with it the smashed detritus of the last year of his life. He felt himself shaking and bit back the twitching muscles in his face that wanted him to break down.

  Dr Parr sipped his tea and waited for a response from Kline. When nothing was offered, he snapped. ‘To hell with patient confidentiality. Joe here, has one kidney that doesn’t work and one that is about to explode through overwork.’ There was no sympathy in his face or voice. He nodded towards the corridor.

  ‘Jenny, God bless her, has two perfectly good kidneys that are the perfect match for Joe. She offered him one just before her accident.’

  Kline sank back into his chair, subconsciously trying to distance himself. He watched the anger in Angie flare like a match head. She took an aggressive step towards him.

  ‘You are fucking kidding me? You kept your dead wife alive in here for over a year, while you have been slowly going about poisoning yourself to death with your own shit?’

  She took another step, leaning towards Kline. ‘And all you had to do was what any normal person would have done?’ Her eyes were wide. ‘I asked you. All the time. Any luck with a donor? You always said no. While all the time you had Jenny, lying there.’

  She started rubbing at her hair with both hands, agitated. ‘And you say I’m fucked up? You selfish, bloody bastard. That is such a horrible thing to have done to Jenny. Terrible. Perverted even. How could you? How can you do that?’

  Kline felt the tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t answer because he had no answer to give. You can’t argue with the truth. He was dying. He had six months before his one and only kidney packed in. Lying in the other room, warm and ready in an incubator called Jenny, was his lifeline. Literally. And he had kept her there for a year. What had Angie said about getting so far into the darkness she couldn’t see a way out?

  Kline had never been able to do it. To have that kidney and to save his life, he had to kill his wife. Flick the switch and watch the life drain out of her just so he could kick start the life back in to him.

  He didn’t care if Jenny was brain dead. She was still warm and she was still there. Not rotting in a coffin or a pile of ash scattered among the rose bushes in some Garden of Remembrance. He’d acknowledged it to himself a long time ago. He didn’t have the courage. He was a coward. Now he knew, it wasn’t the courage to flick the switch, it was the courage to face the pain it would bring.

  Now all the barriers had been taken away. Jen could give him back his life, if he wanted it. He thought about his solitary, lonely life in a shitty little bedsit. Hell, a Jehovah’s Witness was becoming his best friend.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  Angie made an angry noise. ‘You don’t have to do anything. Just lie on your sodding back.’

  ‘Maybe I should drift away with her.’

  The doctor let his cup rattle back into the saucer.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, you morose self-indulgent bastard.’ Angie was bent over his chair, leaning into his face. ‘I don’t give a shit how upset you are, this is a one off. Jenny is probably screaming at you to get on with it.’ Kline pressed back in the chair. He thought she was going to hit him, instead she stalked over to the window and turned back to confront him.

  ‘You let yourself die and don’t catch this bastard….’ She was running out of words like a runner runs out of oxygen.

  Kline waited and watched while she took some deep breaths. He knew her, she was organising her thoughts, trying to retrieve rationality. Pete Simpson appeared at the door to see what was going on.

  Angie’s voice was calmer. ‘Look at it this way, Joe. Jenny is giving you the opportunity to catch the man who went into her room and killed her.’

  Kline tried to be cute. ‘You always said that you couldn’t kill a person who was already brain….’

  Angie moved towards Kline, staring intently into his face, insisting on eye contact.

  ‘And the opportunity to catch the man who murdered her sister. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t it one of the promises you always made to Jenny? That you would catch the man who murdered her sister?’

  Kline held her eyes for as long as he could, then looked away. Angie grabbed his jaw and pulled his face back to hers. Kline could barely hear her as she whispered. ‘Don’t leave alone me, Joe. Please.’ He blinked his surprise.

  Pete Simpson stepped into the room. ‘What’s going on?’

  Angie took a step back, her eyes still locked with Kline’s. ‘DI Kline is taking some time off.’

  Pete Simpson’s eyes flicked between them. He frowned. ‘Why?’

  Angie’s eyes never left Kline’s. ‘To have an operation.’

  Kline thought about his promises. He thought about what this man had done to his life. He breathed in the panic in Angie, who feared she would lose the only person who could help her live with her demons. People Kline loved had relied on him. He’d failed two of them and now he was about to fail himself. Why was he so scared of himself?

  He hauled in a long, deep breath and rubbed at his face with his hands.

  He turned to Dr Parr. ‘When and where?’

  Dr Parr glanced at Angie and gave her a grateful smile. Then said, ‘Now. And at the Renal Transplant Unit in Portsmouth. I’ve already….’ He changed tense. ‘I’ll organise everything.’

  Kline looked away from them all and into himself, feeling something change. What was it? A hardening of thought and attitude? Acceptance? He wished the camera was still here. He would love to take a long, silent look into the lens. Just to send a message.

  I’m not scared of you and I’m coming to get you.

  Then again, thought Kline.

  Maybe that’s exactly what Jenny’s killer is expe
cting.

  *

  Diary entry for DI Joseph Kline.

  Sorry, Joe.

  I shed a few tears for you and Jenny as I watched. I enjoy inflicting pain, but then I feel sad. I do need to work that one out. Moral ambiguity in a psychopath? Whatever next?

  What was it they used to say in the Swinging Sixties? When will the power of love replace the love of power? Trite, but clever.

  I need both. I love the power I have over people, but I love love, Joe. I love to love.

  Sad, but who have you got left to love, Joe?

  But now we have to move on.

  There is more to come.

  Chapter Nine

  Kline’s life went on hold. For forty-two mind-numbing days. It takes a long time to recover from a transplant operation, but he’d been aggressively pushing against that barrier from day one. In the end, he accepted that his body had its own pace and that this was it.

  His operation had taken place at six am the following morning. When the consultant surgeon advised Kline he would be out of action for at least six weeks, Kline nearly changed his mind. But, as Angie and then Dave Barker pointed out, Evie and ALICE had waited twenty years, so they could wait another six weeks. Anyway, he could operate from his bed or a chair.

  Kline had been planning all this in his head when the anaesthetist gave him a final, friendly pat on the shoulder, told him, rather disconcertingly, that she’d see him ‘on the other side’, and gently squeezed the plunger.

  Kline counted down from ten; the sedation of Audrey Waters flashed panic into his brain; he remembered nine and then, like Audrey, he could have died for all he knew. Three hours later he woke up in a bed in a private room. He had a couple of tubes in his arms and oxygen to his nose. He’d taken the place of Jenny.

  The painful memory wave of her death hit him, crashing over him like a wave over a rock, and then receded down the seashore. He breathed into the pain and the waves slowly lost their intensity.

  Kline also had a message that first day.

  After the ceiling, it was the first thing he saw. On the bedside table was a single paper lily in a vase. Kline almost yawned; it was getting a bit passe.

  Propped against the vase was a card, cream with flowers round the edge. On it, handwritten in a beautiful flowing script, in black ink, a single word – ‘Thankyou’.

  It was another cryptic message and had been part of Kline’s thinking for the last forty-two days. It was the first direct communication from the killer. He had no idea what it meant, but it was linked to Jenny’s death. Kline wondered if it was sign-off. Job done and I’m moving on. He doubted it. The killer could have walked into Jenny’s room and turned off her machines any time he wanted to.

  Kline was also a calmer man now, which was probably great news for everyone. He’d spent the first four weeks railing and screaming his frustration and anger at the world and anyone else who came anywhere near him or even walked past the door of his room. Why? Because the investigation into the ALICE murders had been temporarily suspended to allow for a ‘reallocation of resource’.

  After four weeks the consultant opened the door to Kline’s cage and let him walk round. He wished he hadn’t. He didn’t mean the car park and adjoining grounds, he meant Kline’s room and the corridor. Kline knew he was being an aggressive and annoying pain in the arse.

  Angie tried to help calm him by bringing him a laptop that gave him remote and secure access to all the ALICE files. Other than that, his visitors dried up. He had no more visits from his serial killer or, if he did, the messages left were so obtuse as to pass him by. But the silence worried Kline, had the killer reallocated his resources as well?

  The only visitors Kline had were nurses, doctors, the surgeon (until he was satisfied Kline was going to live and not reject Jenny’s gift), Angie, Artie and, surprisingly, Luke, the Jehovah’s Witness.

  Luke, whose surname was Walton, explained that he was ‘doing his rounds’, which Kline joked, he thought was a medical term. Although Kline had to be honest, they did have a nice chat about love and loss and Luke only mentioned God a few hundred times. But hey, thought Kline, he probably mentioned Jenny just as much.

  Kline threw him out when he asked Kline if he wanted to pray with him. For Jenny. ‘I can kneel here, Joe, beside you.’ That spooked Kline.

  Dave Barker came once, then never again. Kline didn’t blame him. He gave him so much shit for suspending the investigation.

  Kline recognised that his life had turned a corner. It was up to him to see what was round it. He now had a new kidney that made him feel, well, like brand new. Better still, and weird though it sounded, Jenny was now a part of him and would be forever.

  Kline hadn’t thought about that. A part of her lived in him and it felt so, so good. That kidney, her kidney, was not going anywhere. He would rather die than allow it to be removed.

  The only disappointment was that he’d asked if they would keep the shrivelled piece of walnut that had been his old kidney. Pop it in a jar of formaldehyde. He felt it deserved a little piece of notoriety on a shelf somewhere in his flat. But they said they’d thrown it away. The incinerator had claimed it long ago.

  Right now, Kline had his team back and they were starting over. He may have lost the love of his life, but she had given him a new life. His body was now flushing itself clear and clean of impurities with the efficiency of a Dyson sucking dust from the fibres of a carpet.

  Other than being told not to lift anything heavier than five kilos (the surgeon helpfully advised him that a pint of beer only weighs point five of a kilo) Kline was good to go.

  So, he went. Collected by his team, they went back to their corner. They rebooted their machinery and rebooted themselves. Kline went to the wall-planner and crossed through all the missed days of action including day 48.

  Tomorrow was day forty-nine, but right now, they were all, Jenny inside him included, going down to The Admiral to celebrate Jenny, his new life and cracking the code that was and is ALICE.

  Chapter Ten

  Day Forty-Nine

  Kline gave Artie an annoyed look. Artie stared back defiantly. He had another black eye. It was fresh because it hadn’t been there yesterday. Kline glanced down at Artie’s knuckles and saw his right hand was bruised and cut. He was fighting back.

  Angie had warned Kline on the way to the office, adding that he now had a steady partner.

  ‘You wouldn’t interfere in my marriage, boss, so I think you need to leave him to sort it.’

  ‘I’d interfere if your husband was beating you.’

  ‘Moot point, boss, since he upped and left just after Carly was abducted.’

  Kline shook his head and rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘Sorry. Brain not engaged.’

  Angie didn’t seem bothered. ‘Anyway, it’s not his partner doing it.’

  Kline let it go. It was unacceptable whoever it was and if it didn’t stop, he would sort it. Anyway, right now, Artie was the man with the information.

  Kline sent him to the whiteboard with a nod of his head. It was a head that had a new short haircut (number four all over, please) and a stubble that still existed, but had been shaped ready for something like a nice goatee.

  Kline prompted, ‘The stage is yours.’

  Everything had been carefully reassembled on the board. Artie unclipped the top from a black marker pen and started with Sam Little, the hospital porter and alleged stalker, who’d run away with an un-named nurse.

  ‘No sign of Sam Little. Literally disappeared. No tax, National Insurance, phones, addresses, TV licenses… nothing. I have run the name through Interpol and Europol as well. No family that I can find.’

  One hundred thousand people plus disappear every year in the UK alone, thought Kline, so it was possible. Although, he was never quite sure how so many manage to do it. ‘Identity of the nurse?’

  Artie jabbed his pen at the air, marking a little win. ‘Deborah Wilcox. Worked in the Maternity Unit. Same thing. Not a sign
of her. Both their bank accounts were emptied the day before they disappeared.’ Artie shrugged.

  ‘Looks like they were planning to run away and did.’

  Angie shook her head. ‘Not convinced. What were they running from? Neither was in another relationship. Parents were dead. Both had good jobs. Just about to move in together. Why throw it all in?’

  Kline agreed, they were good and valid points. ‘Make a note, Artie, and do some digging. Old friends and work colleagues…..’ Kline stopped at a glance from Angie.

  Artie moved along the board and stood beside Bryony James, the girl who became a woman and had been laid to rest on all of the bodies.

  He tapped one of the pictures with his pen. ‘Bryony was a nurse at Southampton General. She died in May 1994 at the age of twenty-eight.’ Artie paused, Kline held his breath.

  ‘She was involved in an accident. At home. Claim from her boyfriend come partner was that she fell down the stairs. Examination of her at the scene at the time of the accident gave no reason to doubt it.’

  Kline held up a hand, there was something in the way Artie had said. ‘At the time…’.

  Kline asked, ‘Did she die straightaway?’

  Artie glanced at Angie for help. She offered none, forcing him to deliver the answer.

  ‘No. A severe head injury left her in a coma.’ He glanced at Angie again and went on uncertainly. ‘After a year, her partner agreed that life support should be removed.’

  Kline grunted. ‘You mean, he turned it off.’

  It was a harsh act and it needed hard words. Kline had always resisted the modern purification of anything people found distasteful.

  Not surprisingly Artie stuck by his guns. ‘Removed it.’

  Kline let it drift into the silence. There was no point starting an argument.

  Artie went on. ‘However. I interviewed the two men who responded to the TV appeal. Both were working in the hospital at that same time, one in administration, the other a junior doctor.’