Oleander Soul

by James Arklie

  Ollie rolled onto her back, angry. ‘Jesus. You fell for this shit?’

  ‘He was NCA and I didn’t want to piss them off.’ He took a deep, needy drag.

  Ollie stared at the ceiling. This didn’t make sense, then suddenly it did. If Stockton-Marston, imitating the NCA agent, had paid similar visits to Welfare, the respite home, and Lily’s school, he will have created the shit she found herself in. Sown the seeds with all of them that she was a woman under investigation. A drug addicted prostitute involved in crime and a woman who couldn’t look after her daughter or her mother.

  Then Stockton-Marston pulled the trigger and put her on the streets with a little girl, only to arrive like the saviour Jesus Christ with a deal she couldn’t resist. One she had to take.

  She now understood why he pretended to be NCA, but why all the other complexity? The apartment and the money to specifically target her as the person to spy on George.

  ‘Do you watch TV Amal? Did you know this Marston was found murdered yesterday?’

  Amal sat up, couldn’t see an ashtray and flicked ash on the bedside table.

  Ollie went on. ‘He had pictures of me, on the steps outside. The police think I killed him.’

  Amal looked confused. ‘But if he was NCA…?’

  ‘That’s the kicker, Amal. He wasn’t NCA. He lied to you and to me.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  Ollie shook he head. Amal finished his cigarette, went to the window and flicked the stub into the night. He kept his back to Ollie and she wondered if he realised he was bearing all to the street.

  Eventually, he turned. ‘I get to shag you again tonight?’

  Ollie looked at him, his shoulders were slumped, his eyes sad. This wasn’t a moment to be flippant or bargain. He realised he’d been screwed and used.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Once, after he visited, I followed him. He went into the Costa around the corner.’ He came back to the bed. Kissed her on her arm. Looked up at her.

  ‘That strange looking friend of yours with the Rasta hair?’

  ‘Joanna?’

  ‘The one at the Café. He met her there.’

  * * *

  Donna Small checked her watch. It was one a.m. She woke Andy and sent him home. He trudged out of the door. He looked knackered and he walked exhausted.

  She was staying. Today, she thought, sometime first thing, the results would be through. Her results. And then, she thought, I will get my serial killer.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Ollie got back to the apartment at four am. Amal had offered to hide her. He had friends. She knew he would and could, but she couldn’t abandon Lily and her mother. She’d done it before, but those days were gone.

  She undressed for the second time that night and crawled into bed beside Lily who stirred and nestled into the warmth of her mother’s body. Human instinct, an animal’s instinct, they could have been birds in a nest or rabbits in a warren. It brought tears to Ollie’s eyes. Security, food and warmth. Three of the hardest words.

  Ollie slept for two hours and then her body clock woke her at six. Rather than fight it she got up and made a pot of coffee. She drew back the curtains of the lounge to let in the early morning light. The thunderstorm had passed. Looking up she saw a blue sky peppered with the odd fluffy cloud. The temporary blip in summer was passing.

  Then she raided Lily’s school bag for a notebook and coloured pencils. She was having trouble sorting the jumble in her mind, but if she could tease out the ends on paper she may be able to make some sense of it all.

  She took a sip of the strong, black brew and it was then that she noticed them. They weren’t real, they were paper, but it was a bunch of Oleander flowers and propped against them was a single, a vinyl single.

  She stood, walked across and picked up the record. ‘Baby Love’. Diana Ross and the Supremes. She sang the words in her head.

  ‘…missing you, miss kissing you…’

  George. A message. He was still out there. Somewhere. But how had he got inside the apartment?

  Her mobile buzzed on the table like a cicada in summer. She grabbed it greedily. George? No Saran.

  ‘Outside, Sweetie, with hugs, kisses, coffee and pastries.’

  It was still only six-thirty, but Saran had come running in response to Ollie’s text. She let her in, held her tight and cried into her shoulder.

  Five minutes later they were at the table in the lounge. Ollie had swapped strong black, for a flat white and was tugging pieces off an almond croissant.

  Saran was looking around. The room still had a ravaged look.

  ‘What the hell happened here, Sweets?’

  Ollie’s response was to burst into tears again. ‘I’m in trouble, Saran. Real trouble.’ Shit when had she last cried?

  ‘Tell me. I’ll go sort them out. We’ve never let them beat us.’

  Ollie shook her head. ‘That’s the problem. I can fight one thing, but this is all sorts. And it isn’t me. It’s like someone is making this happen to me. One thing after another.’

  Ollie unloaded. Mike Stockton-Marston, George Sapphire, Mark Anderson, the picture from the Demo, the blood-stained vest top. The open investigation into Stephan’s disappearance, the way the police were trying to link that to the murder of her natural father and the disappearance of her stepfather. The two junkies.

  She left out the body in the suitcase. Saran knew Joanna, Ollie didn’t want to start rumours and send trouble Jo’s way. It wasn’t fair after all she’d done, and was still doing, for Ollie.

  Saran had stopped eating after about two minutes and listened with wide-eyed, open-mouthed silence. She latched on to the visit to Amanda Southern and the murder of her natural father.

  ‘You haven’t told the police about what you saw?’

  ‘You’re the only person I’ve told.’ Ollie didn’t want to ask but had to know.

  ‘Did you know?

  ‘Shit, Toots, we were just children. Parents don’t discuss murder with their children.’

  Ollie felt tears fill her eyes again. Saran edged round the table and hugged her. ‘What’s really worrying you, Toots?’

  ‘That I killed him.’

  ‘And?’

  Ollie smiled grimly at her friend. Saran was a doctor, she knew how the mind worked. How it fretted and could screw itself up.

  ‘What if that treatment as a kid has messed up my brain? What if the police are right? I was walking this morning in the early hours, and I tried to drag up memories of moments, recent times, and I couldn’t.’ She squeezed Saran’s hand.

  ‘It’s like Amanda said. Drunken blanks, except I wasn’t drunk. Then I think about all the shit I’ve put into my body and brain over the years. Junk mixed with God knows what. My brain must be a blank bank of dead cells, a white hole created with cocaine and heroin and fuck knows what.’ A tear spilled and raced down her cheek. What the fuck had she done with her life?

  ‘I was there, Saran. For all the killings and the disappearances, I was near enough to have done it. The police banged on about motive because, yes, I did want Mark out of the way and this Marston out of my life.’

  Ollie rubbed at her eyes, trying to get rid of the weakness in the tears, but they became gulps and sobs.

  ‘What if I am a killer, Saran? What if I kill, but then my psycho-cauterised, therapised, fucked-up, drug dismembered brain doesn’t remember?’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  DI Small was on the phone to forensics at eight am demanding her results. She’d been checking her emails every five minutes for the last hour.

  She listened for a few seconds, watched Andy deposit coffee and bacon sandwiches. ‘Sorry. Not available yet doesn’t work. I said it was priority.’

  She listened again and slammed the phone into the cradle. It bounced out and Andy picked it up and gently replaced it.

  ‘All-nighter, Boss?’

  ‘One pm. We have to wait until one bloody pm.’ She took the offered sandwich
and popped open the plastic case. ‘And you look like shit yourself.’

  Andy opened his sandwich and spread tomato sauce from a sachet. ‘That’s because I did something I shouldn’t have done. Last night, I got an off-duty mate in uniform to follow Soul when she left here.’

  DI Small smiled. ‘Bad boy, Andrew. And?’

  ‘He called me out at two am. Soul was at her old digs with Amal Khan. Stayed there until four am. I’m guessing there was sex going on because at one point he appeared at the window naked.’

  ‘What? She’s sleeping with Amal? Despite our warnings she could have murdered his brother?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘So, secret shag, early hours of the morning suggests…?’

  ‘They’re in it together.’

  ‘I think we need to go and see Amal.’ She chewed on her sandwich. ‘And, after she left?’

  ‘Went to her apartment and I went home for a couple of hours kip.’

  Small looked at her white board. ‘That apartment, have we found the owner yet?’

  ‘Owned by a Cayman Island company. We’ve got the address of the registered office in Cayman and contacted the Cayman police. But it’s going to take a court order. Hopefully tomorrow.’

  ‘Ownership is being deliberately hidden?’

  Andy shrugged, crunched his packaging and blew on his coffee before taking a sip. He anticipated a question. ‘We found two residents still living near the house where Billy Jones was murdered. Both remembered the police activity at that time, but they saw nothing, heard nothing.’

  ‘Are they covering or lying?’

  ‘Don’t think so, Boss. This isn’t a criminal community where they are all covering for each other. Some of them are old, respectable immigrants from the sixties. Assume a stab in the throat and no struggle, then there will be no noise. We are asking if they saw a body being removed in some way. If they’d seen that they would have told us.’

  ‘What about the break in at Soul’s apartment?’

  ‘One of set prints we can’t match. But here’s the strange part. The prints are in the system, but access is denied. You need to go higher, but we’ve been here before. Usually turns out to be a toe-rag criminal turned part-time informer who’s under protection.’

  Small took a deep breath and let it out long and slow. The morning had started better than she thought. ‘We need that DNA result. Until then we use the time by interviewing Alesha Soul and Amal Khan.’

  Am I using the time, she thought, or just killing time until I can move in on Soul with a slam-dunk?

  The Manipulat-ed

  ‘The manipulated have only one way back. They have to recognize the manipulation and take control. Only then can they breakaway. As soon as they try this, the manipulator will realise and intensify the pressure on their victim, trying to break them once and for all. Then the victim will learn of the real reason for the manipulation.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Saran dropped Ollie at the entrance to Brick Lane, promising to call that evening, pop round if necessary.

  ‘That could be to a cell.’ There was false laughter and an awkward, car seat hug.

  ‘And I’ll do some research, Toots. Ask about that treatment. Set your mind at rest.’

  Ollie walked down the Lane, teeming with tourists, thinking, ‘set my mind at rest’. That will be for the first time in about twenty years.

  The café was buzzing with breakfast preparation. Eat-ins and takeaways. Jo had a glow on her face and was bustling and bossing in shorts and vest-top. She wore an apron, faded black, a huge retro, ban-the bomb symbol in white defied any country to drop one. Though these days they fire them, thought Ollie.

  Jo wasn’t smiling and seemed very aggressive, stressed. ‘Ollie. Can you work the grill? I need omelette specials and scrambled eggs as fast as you can cook them.’ She nodded to the garden area. ‘Bloody TripAdvisor. We’ve got a garden-load of Yanks and Japs all wanting a vegetarian English. Don’t they know that the café down the Lane does the full fat real version?’

  She turned away, snatched a new order that had just been pinned to the board. ‘And we’re closing at midday. Chinese trade delegation is arriving. We need to give them a very warm welcome.’

  Ollie took the order and was jolted by the aggression in Jo’s eyes and her language. It was wild, scary. Jo stopped and turned back to face her.

  ‘Join us, Ollie. They’re the worst polluters of our precious planet. Human rights are shit. No free speech. People disappear. Tiananmen Square has been erased from their history. They are farming the rest of the planet to feed their ridiculous over-population. You’ve seen Al Gore, Attenborough and the rest. If we don’t start serious action now, we won’t have a planet left. Someone has to take the lead.’

  Ollie pulled her eyes away. You could throw those accusations at most countries. Jo was an angry ball of aggression. Violence filled her face and her voice.

  Ollie reached for the bowl of fresh farm eggs and pulled in a mixing bowl. She didn’t want to give an answer.

  After a pause, Jo grabbed Ollie’s forearm and leaned close to her ear.

  ‘You owe me, Ollie.’ Then she turned and walked away, anger in every stride.

  Ollie cracked eggs. Was there a threat in Jo’s voice? The last thing Ollie needed was to make an enemy of Jo. Out of the window she could see the waiting tables, but beyond them something else caught her attention. Two black vans on the far side of the car park.

  She beat the eggs. Four men and four women. Boots, jeans, black tee-shirts. Cropped hair, even the women. Clones. Demonstrators. Radicals. Extremists. They oozed trouble, their body language spoke of latent violence.

  Ollie mixed in herbs, tomatoes, peppers, spices, chopped potato. She paused when her eyes focused on the number plates. They were European but she couldn’t quite see from where. France? Germany?

  She ladled the mixture into four omelette pans. What the hell was going on here? The men wrenched open the backs of the vans and the women climbed in. There was equipment of some kind inside that Ollie couldn’t see, but the women were lifting it, checking it, nodding to the men who nodded back.

  Ollie flipped the omelettes, beat more eggs, started some scrambled, called out to Megan for sourdough toast. Then Jo was back at her shoulder.

  ‘Be there or be square. That’s what we said in the Sixties.’ She looked out at the vans. ‘You know I’ve set fire to an effigy of every Prime Minister since Harold Wilson? The Queen receives them, I burn them. I’ve burnt the fucking lot of them. All useless. Nothing changes. Well, Thatcher changed a shitload and had her Falkland’s ‘Conflict’, but let’s not go there.’

  Jo anticipated the omelettes and the scrambled eggs and had eight plates laid out. ‘Forty fucking years I’ve been fighting to change things for the better and what’s happened?’

  Ollie was starting to wonder if Jo was pissed.

  ‘Sod all. Politicians politic and don’t give a shit about us. Civil Servants do whatever they do as long as nothing changes.’ Ollie started folding and turning out the omelettes onto the plates. Megan delivered the sourdough toast.

  Jo leaned in. No alcohol on her breath. Just venom and vitriol. ‘But now we are taking it up a gear, Ollie. Straight to the end game. You need to be proud that you will be a part of it. You have to be angry about this to stop it.’

  Ollie had busied her hands through all of this, but now everything was served. She was scared. She made up a thin lie.

  ‘Jo. I can’t. Mum. We’ve been waiting for three months to see the consultant. If we miss it…’ Instinct guided Ollie. Get onto Jo’s wavelength it screamed. She stepped up her language and fired sharp anger into her voice.

  ‘The bloody NHS has screwed us over so many times. If we could afford private, then Mum, her diagnosis for MND, the heart operation and now the dementia, would have been sorted a couple of years ago. Bastards the lot. And with money we could have her in a nice nursing home in the country.’

&nb
sp; Jo went to speak, but Ollie got in first. ‘You know that the bastards left her at the bottom of the list to die? I found it out. Hand-written note on her case file. Don’t waste the resources on an old lady whose days are numbered. Decisions on death made by consultants who drive a Porsche to the hospital in the morning, consult in Harley Street in the afternoon and whizz off to the Caribbean every winter for a couple of weeks.’

  Jo just looked at her. Ollie couldn’t read the thoughts. Carried on.

  ‘So, yes, Jo, I am bloody angry and I do want to bite back. I’ve been fighting the system for fifteen years. Battering my head against walls built out of forms and bureaucracy. You know I want to join the fight, but I can’t make today.’

  Jo’s eyes stared into Ollie’s flicking this way and that, searching for something, or did they know something and were looking for an answer? After a few seconds Jo leaned in, hugged her briefly, kissed her cheek and backed away.

  ‘Next time then.’

  Jo waved over Megan and they loaded the plates onto a couple of trays. Then Jo asked, ‘Have you seen George lately?’

  Ollie blinked. Jo asked that as if she knew a relationship had started, but surely she meant had Ollie seen him here?

  ‘He hasn’t been in for three or four days. Maybe he’s changed to the bagel café at the top of the Lane.’ She tried to release her tension into a smile, stay on her wavelength. ‘Or maybe the full fat down the Lane.’

  Jo gave her a deep look before swinging the tray to her shoulder.

  ‘Same again, please, for the Yanks.’

  Ollie started cracking more eggs and watched the black vans. Something was seriously wrong here. She knew Jo had always been a classic anti-everything, extreme in her views, very argumentative person. You wouldn’t invite her to a dinner party unless you knew the guests could take it. You also knew that it would degenerate into a war of words while your culinary skills were ignored.

  But this was something more. There was a violence in her words and her actions. The Chinese, the Yanks, the Japs, she was sounding aggressively racist. Jo was linking peoples to the pollution of the planet and blaming them. Whole countries. She was making it sound like she wanted to strike out at whole countries.