The Alice Murders

by James Arklie

  Kline sat up straighter. ‘Why did they respond to the appeal?’

  Artie let out a little laugh. ‘Apparently, Bryony was as beautiful, vivacious and flirty as these pictures would have you believe.’

  Kline’s turn to laugh. ‘They fancied her?’ Mind you, he could see why.

  ‘The doctor admitted he was infatuated. Worshipped the ground she walked on. The administrator said he would walk the long way round the hospital corridors in the hope of meeting her.’

  Kline raised his eyebrows and looked at Angie who gave him half a smile. ‘Workplace stalking.’

  Kline returned his gaze to Artie. He was impressed with the research he’d done.

  Artie went on, ‘Bryony, though, was unavailable. Totally in love with a consultant. Only problem was that these two, and they said other colleagues, suspected the consultant of physically abusing her.’

  ‘What? Domestic abuse?’

  Artie nodded. ‘They saw bruising. Excessive use of concealer. The doctor treated her once for a couple of cracked ribs.’

  Kline felt the vibration in Angie’s aura that defied him to make any comment directed at Artie. He eased back in his chair and slid his hands into his pockets. This connection was interesting him.

  ‘What’s the suggestion? He pushed her down the stairs? Or, he hit her and she fell down them?’

  ‘Either that, or he beat her so severely it looked like she’d gone down the stairs.’

  ‘Do we know who this doctor is?’

  Artie lifted a picture from the desk in front of him and stuck it to the board. ‘Alan Bleakley. This picture is about fifteen years old. It’s from the hospital.’

  Kline looked at the clean shaven, angular face of a very respectable looking man. He looked the way a consultant should look. Slightly superior and intelligent. The gaze held the camera and the condescending half-smile at the corner of the mouth cracked a couple of crows-feet at the eyes.

  Artie added. ‘He was, is, ten years older than Bryony.’

  Kline asked hopefully, ‘Still there?’

  Artie shook his head. ‘Not that lucky. Retired. Sort of. Lives in Wales. Builth Wells. And, you’ll like this…he established a small care home for women from London who need to escape from domestic violence. They can run clean away to the country and hide in his centre.’

  That got Angie’s attention. ‘That’s either a very guilty conscious, boss…’

  ‘Or an out of the way place to carry on abusing women used to abuse.’

  Kline’s brain flashed an image of women chained to a wall in a cellar. He said, ‘Do me a favour, Artie. Contact him and arrange for us to meet him tomorrow morning.’ Kline added. ‘And do not tell him what it’s about.’

  Kline checked his watch, stood suddenly and eased into his jacket. The scar in his side still pulled when he stretched.

  ‘I have to pop out.’

  For the first time in a long time, it wasn’t for dialysis.

  It was for something far, far worse.

  *

  Kline paused outside the doors to the morgue at Southampton General Hospital. Angie had insisted on coming with him and waited beside him. The doors were the heavy plastic flappy kind, transparent enough to see through, but not enough for detail.

  Kline stalled for time with an inane joke. ‘I guess not many visitors breeze through these doors as if they are entering the local pub.’

  Angie’s voice carried some concern. She knew this was a big moment. ‘You all right?’

  Guilt resonated through Kline’s voice as emotion returned. ‘I haven’t seen her for six weeks. I should have come before.’

  Angie spoke with a quiet, resigned impatience. ‘Joe. This is the shell. The container that held a great and lovely woman. That’s all it is and all it ever was.’

  Kline smiled sadly. ‘It was a bloody lovely looking container.’

  ‘Eye of the beholder, Joe. And some would say what shines on the outside is a reflection of the beauty inside.’

  Kline gave her a surprised look and she laughed. ‘Read it somewhere.’

  Kline took a deep breath and pushed through the flaps. A waft of something chemically and hospital like hit him. He left Angie in the waiting area having coffee. Five minutes later he was standing beside Jenny. He lifted back the heavy white sheet gently, as if he may wake her.

  He felt immediately sad. Her face was a curious shade of grey-white. There was no expression, no painted-on smile. Her cheeks were sunken and the eye sockets dark. The lights had been turned off. It was the shell.

  He took her hand. It was cold and it filled him with terror. ‘You’ve lost weight, love. They can’t be feeding you that well.’ He sat on a chair placed by the slab.

  ‘Thought I’d pop by to say ‘hi’, have a chat. Say sorry again that I didn’t catch the man who killed Evie. If I had, you would still be with me now.’

  He smiled and pulled up his shirt to show the scar caused by the transplant. ‘And thanks for the kidney, Jen. It works a treat. And will you look at that scar.’

  Kline dithered over her body. There was one thing he had to confirm for himself. He slowly pulled the sheet down to her waist, let out a breath and raised his eyes to God.

  He looked back down at her. ‘I will get him, babe. I really will.’

  He walked round the table and stopped. There was an incision on this side of her body where they had removed a kidney. But there was also one on the other side. He went back and checked.

  What the hell?

  Kline called the supervisor through the window. A young guy, unshaven. Kline pointed.

  ‘She donated one kidney, not two.’

  The supervisor looked, made a disinterested face and said he’d fetch the paperwork. Kline called Angie on her mobile and she joined him. A terrifying scenario was playing out in his brain.

  The supervisor came back with a brown file and he started flipping through the papers. He pulled one out. ‘Here. Here, copy of the donor form. You consented to her organs being used. Looks like they only used the kidneys though.’

  Kline snatched the sheet. Angie looked over his shoulder. His eyes scanned the sheet and his words came out sharp and fast. ‘I didn’t sign anything. I would never have consented to Jenny being cut up.’

  Then Kline saw his signature. A beautiful flowing script in black ink. His words came out as an understanding whisper. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’

  Angie was looking. ‘What?

  Kline had seen the writing before. In the card with the lily.

  The cryptic note that was no longer cryptic.

  The one that said.

  ‘Thankyou’.

  *

  Angie was driving them to a different part of the hospital complex. Kline was glaring out of the window at the world. A misty summer mizzle that had moved in from the Solent wasn’t helping to ease his mood.

  ‘Bloody hell, Angie, he stole part of her body.’ Kline was angry and couldn’t believe the bastard’s audacity. ‘He killed her and then stole…’

  Angie swung the car too sharply into the packed hospital car park and started searching for a space. ‘Does it really matter, boss?’

  Kline missed the bitter edge in her voice and turned on her. ‘Of course, it bloody matters.’

  He choked back the next comment as the messages coming from her body smashed their way through his dense skull and finally reached the sensitive part of his brain.

  Angie’s suppressed trauma was silently screaming at him. Jenny wasn’t killed, she was already dead. And someone stole a dead person’s kidney, so bloody what?

  Someone stole my daughter and she is still alive and out there somewhere. She could be in a nice home, but more likely she stars in child porn movies, is half-starved and abused in ways I can’t bear to think about because it would throw me over the edge.

  Kline slowed his breath, knowing he needed to keep some perspective. Focus on the big questions. The why and how the killer had done it and where had the kidney gone?
He needed to maintain his professionalism as a detective and drop the selfishness. Rediscover some empathy for the problems other people faced.

  He sighed. ‘Sorry.’

  Angie shrugged. She was doing a lot of shrugging, thought Kline. Too much not caring about anything was not good for you. ‘No worries, boss, because I know you don’t mean it.’ She suddenly swerved the car right, frustrated at the lack of spaces.

  ‘I can’t be arsed with this.’ She bounced the car up the kerb and onto a grass verge.

  Kline tossed a ‘Police on Duty’ sheet onto the dash. ‘Why would you take a kidney?’

  She shrugged again. ‘We know he’s a collector so I’m guessing trophy.’

  ‘Christ.’ That turned Kline cold. Then something struck him and he frowned, trying to remember.

  ‘Forensic examinations of the ALICE women, I don’t remember seeing any reports.’

  They stepped out of the car and into the warm misty rain. Angie said, ‘Me neither. I’ll check.’

  Angie called Artie as they walked, hung up and made a face. ‘You’re right. We weren’t sent any. He’ll chase them down.’

  Kline made his complaint to a lady in hospital administration called Diedre. The fact he was a police officer made no difference. She was as good as, no, make that better than, useless, hiding behind client confidentiality. Kline pointed out it was a murder investigation (a glance from Angie reminded him that was not strictly true); Jenny was his wife; and, it had been him who’d given the authorisation for the removal of one kidney.

  A piece of paper supposedly signed by Kline and saying otherwise was waved under his nose. Angie bagged it as evidence, which annoyed Diedre, and then took over as Kline started to bubble on the cooker.

  On a ‘no names’ basis Angie managed to extract the information that the match had been picked up on the European transplant system; a proper request sent to the hospital; that a hospital courier had rushed it to Ashford in Kent; where it had been handed to a French courier sent from a hospital in Paris; who’d done an about turn and jumped on the next Eurostar back to Paris. More paperwork was waved in the air. Kline grabbed and bagged that wad too.

  Kline couldn’t hide his exasperation. ‘So, it’s somewhere in Paris?’

  Diedre’s non-committal, don’t really care, shrug said it all to Kline. This was routine practice. Their killer had simply used the system. There was no trail to Paris for them to follow. Paris was his gateway to Europe. Or to anywhere. They had the name of a private hospital and they would make a pointless phone call. Killer and kidney were somewhere else.

  Kline stomped off and ten minutes later they sat in the car sipping coffee. The windows were steaming up round them, created not by passion, but by damp air and annoyance. Kline dropped his side window.

  Kline couldn’t let it go. Part of Jenny was missing. Worse, it was in the hands of her killer. He burnt his mouth on his coffee and swore. ‘Maybe he sold it.’

  Angie was quiet then took in a breath. ‘Boss, this takes us back to a question we’ve asked before.’

  Kline rested an elbow on the sill and looked sideways at her. She carried on. ‘Why you, boss? Why you and Jenny? And why now? Why this escalation?’ She blew on her coffee and then sipped.

  ‘He hasn’t done all this to steal Jenny’s kidney. It’s a pointer to something. This is another part of his game.’

  Another roll of the dice, thought Kline, not a new game but a continuation of the old. We are not finished yet, come on, come out to play and see if you are more intelligent than me. Kline felt like a mouse being bullied and flicked round by a cat’s paw. Terrorised and tormented before the life finally drained out or the cat pounced for one last time.

  Kline said, ‘Do you think his end game is to kill me?’ Angie’s head whipped round in surprise. Kline laughed it away as a nonsense comment. ‘Don’t know where that came from.’

  Kline leaned forward into his growing annoyance and wiped at the mist on the inside of the windscreen. He couldn’t see past the misty drizzle outside. Great metaphor, he thought. Yes, they were gathering more information, but it was like forcing their way through the sea of faces and confusion on a Christmas Eve shopping day in the West Quay Centre.

  As for a game, Kline was struggling to find the boxing ring. He thought of Artie’s bruised and bloodied knuckles. Kline challenged his demons again. I will get there, he told them and when I do the gloves will be left at the ringside.

  He grimaced into the weight of the burden that had been laid on him. Evie and Angie. ALICE. He owed it to all of those women.

  He clenched the fist of his free hand and looked down at it. The knuckles turned white. Angie glanced down at them. Made her own fist and touch it against his. ‘With you there, boss.’

  This was going to be bare knuckles and blood.

  Chapter Eleven

  Day Fifty

  Kline and Angie set out at six-thirty am for the long drive to Builth Wells. The mizzle had cleaned the smog from the air and the day had dawned offering up a clear blue sky. It lifted their spirits and they would need it. The drive was four hours each way and would take them out of London on the M4, all the way to and across the Severn Estuary, then into the land of the Welsh Dragon.

  Then they’d drag their way up through Abergavenny and across the Brecon Beacons. Kline was glad it was summer because it was not a route he would choose in the dead of winter.

  Alan Bleakly lived in a small cottage next to the golf course. The town itself was dominated by the rivers Wye and Irfon. It had a pretty bridge, a nice High Street and was surrounded by rolling countryside. All nice and perfect really, thought Kline.

  They pulled up outside Alan Bleakley’s cottage, got out and stretched the stiffness from shoulders and legs. Angie looked round and said it first. ‘Great place to hide from abuse, but not the kind of place to hand it out.’

  Kline had to agree. He wasn’t sure how many secrets anyone could keep here. The theory of Alan Bleakley still abusing women disappeared totally when he opened a picture-perfect front door that was framed with pink roses.

  They stared at a broken man.

  Life had defeated him, but he was shuffling onwards to the end with defiance. He was only sixty, but he had a lined, creased face and sad eyes. He was about six feet two, but skinny and hunched at the shoulders. The world had smashed him round and he’d let it. Maybe it was some form of self-redemption.

  He’d laid a farmhouse table for breakfast and from the Rayburn in the corner pulled a tray of already cooked bacon. He made a pot of coffee, Kline and Angie made bacon sandwiches, and they settled down.

  Alan Bleakley started. With a confession. ‘All the way from Southampton, so this has to be about Bryony.’ Kline confirmed it with a nod.

  ‘I miss Southampton. I miss the sea and the endless horizon. Hills and mountains are fine, but you can’t see very far. But I miss Bryony most of all.’

  Kline opened his mouth, but Bleakley waved a hand to stop him. ‘I used to hit her, beat her, all the time. I was a bastard, quick with my anger and easy with my fists.’ He looked at his large hands and held them up to Angie, his face a perplexed frown.

  ‘Why do men do that?’ He held out the palm of his hand and then closed it into fist.

  ‘Why do they get a trembling, trusting beauty in their hand and then try and crush it? Destroy it’s fragrance physically and mentally.’

  Angie just stared at him, if he was looking for understanding, she was not the person to ask. Her voice was dismissive. ‘Ask a psychiatrist.’ Kline sensed she’d left off the words, ‘you tosser’.

  He snorted a laugh. ‘I have, many times. The women who come here…..The social consultants who visit…’ He paused and looked at Kline instead.

  ‘The women come here, they escape it all, they see what they can have, but then they go back. Why do they do that? What is it inside us that drives this bizarre behaviour?’

  Kline wasn’t getting into that discussion with him either. This
was like Bleakley’s confession time. Twenty-six years of torment and now he had to let it all out.

  ‘Yes, Bryony suffered from my fists and my anger. Yes, I did hit her and she fell down the stairs. Yes, I put her in a coma. And yes, after six months I pressed the switch myself that turned off her life support and……’

  Kline finished for him. ‘Killed her.’

  He nodded and Kline thought he was going to start crying. ‘Yes. That’s it exactly. Twice. It was like I’d killed the woman I loved, twice.’

  Christ, thought Kline, this had been eating him up for the last twenty-six years. From the inside out. Kline realised he hadn’t touched his bacon sandwich. He continued to ignore it, while he tried to work out the man sitting in front of him. He and Angie both waited for him to continue.

  ‘Have either of you lost anyone close? Felt that pain?’

  Something inside Kline went to alert. Could Bleakley know about Jenny? Beside him, Angie’s silence was alarming. She needed to breathe. She clearly didn’t like this man, this self-confessing beater of women. Kline was searching Bleakley’s face and words for some indication he knew about the traumas in their lives.

  Angie went on the offensive. ‘Did you beat up other women before Bryony?’

  Bleakley looked away, through a window and up the garden to where the lawn had been mown in perfect stripes. Perhaps seeing the young, beautiful and flirty Bryony. Kline could see Angie’s interpretation of what surrounded them. Bleakley was living the perfect self-indulgent, miserable life he wanted, but he had killed Bryony. Wrap it up however you wanted, it was as good as shooting her. Angie would make sure more shit was coming his way.

  Bleakley dragged his eyes and thoughts back to them. ‘Always. That’s why I came here. Set this up.’

  Angie didn’t try to hide the sourness in her voice. ‘This is to say, sorry? This is an apology?’

  Her eyes were like saucers. She was clenching her teeth to keep the bitter comments inside her. Kline took the conversation back to facts.