Simone stood back, looking at Mary lying awkwardly in the bed, half inside a patterned nightgown. She was out of breath and angry.
She’d seen the nightgown in a charity shop in Beckenham and had decided to buy it for Mary. It was a good place to pick up bargains; the people who tended to donate to charity shops in Beckenham were much better off than they were in her area and you could pick up some nice stuff.
The nightie had set her back twelve pounds. She’d hesitated before spending so much, but she loved the pattern of cherries against the white background, and she’d thought it would really suit Mary.
The problem was that it didn’t fit. Mary’s shoulders were too broad and Simone had spent fifteen minutes trying to wrestle her limp form into it, only for it to get stuck. The old lady was now lying with the garment over her head, pinching her shoulders together, which in turn lifted her arms so they jutted out limply in front.
Simone paced the small room. It was only minutes until protected mealtimes, when nurses would come round and feed the patients. Mary wasn’t eating, but someone was bound to open the door.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were bigger than a size twelve?’ said Simone. ‘You’re not eating. I spent a lot of money on this!’
She grabbed at the collar of the nightgown and pulled. Mary’s head flopped forward and then back, unsupported as her torso was lifted off the mattress. Simone wrestled with the nightie until it suddenly came free with a tearing sound and Mary flopped to one side, her head hitting the safety bar with a thud.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said Simone, holding up the torn nightdress. ‘I can’t even take it back to the shop!’ She shook the old woman, feeling her limp body, small and frail, in her grip. She let go. ‘Why is it that people always disappoint me?’
She roughly pulled Mary into her backless hospital gown and shoved her back under the blankets.
‘I won’t be talking to you for a while,’ announced Simone, folding the nightgown and shoving it back into her bag. ‘You’ve disappointed me. You’re nothing but a fat old woman, and ungrateful too. I spend my hard-earned money on nice new clothes for you and you don’t even have the decency to fit into them!’
Simone pulled her bag onto her shoulder and opened the door. The sounds of moaning echoed down the hallway outside.
She turned to Mary. ‘No wonder George left you… I’ve got someone else I’m going to visit.’
54
Erika opened her eyes. The living room was dim and gloomy. It was dark outside, and a breeze was rushing in through the open patio door. She got up and felt pain throbbing through her head: the beginning of a hangover from all the whisky she’d drunk.
A small pile of leaves had blown through the patio door and now flapped on the carpet in the breeze. She leant down and picked them up. They were long and waxy in her hand and she recognised them as eucalyptus. She put them to her nose and inhaled the honey-mint smell, fresh and warm. She felt warmth inside her chest as the memory of Mark came back. Eucalyptus had been his favourite smell. She used to buy him small bottles of eucalyptus oil to put in his bathwater. She held the leaves to her nose and stepped through the open patio door into the dark garden. Cool gusts of wind ruffled her hair, and she could see the dark outline of the huge eucalyptus tree out on the road behind the houses.
There was a crack of thunder, and a large raindrop hit her leg. Moments later there was another and another and then, with a roar, it began to pour down. She stood for a moment, turning her face up to the rain, enjoying the feeling of the cold water pounding down on her. Thunder crackled and rumbled as the rain moved up a gear, crashing down in sheets, soaking her to the skin and washing away the tears and sweat of the day.
And then she realised. The patio door had been closed when she’d sat down on the sofa and fallen asleep. She turned and looked back at the open patio door, gaping black. She couldn’t see indoors. She moved to the edge of the garden, grabbing a large rock from the thin flowerbed running along the fence, and hefting it in her hand, she went back inside the flat.
She flicked on the light. The living room was empty. She moved through the hall, turning on the light, holding the rock up, ready to hit with it when she turned on the bathroom light. Nothing. She reached the bedroom door and turned on the light. It, too, was empty. She crouched down and checked under the bed, and then she saw it.
A thick cream envelope lay on her pillow. Written on it, in blue ink, was: DCI ERIKA FOSTER.
Erika stared at the letter, her heart pounding. She braced herself with the rock and moved through to the living room. She slammed the patio door, locking it. It was pitch black outside and the rain thudded onto the glass. She went to her bag and found a spare pair of latex gloves. It took several attempts to pull them onto her trembling hands. She returned to the bedroom and approached the note cautiously, lifting it off her pillow.
She’d been inside… inside her home. It was the Night Stalker, Erika was sure. She brought the note back through to the kitchen and placed it on the counter. The rain continued to hammer on the windows. She gently slit the envelope open with a knife and pulled out a card. It showed the image of a sunset above the sea. The sun was like a vast, bloody egg yolk, bursting on the horizon. She took a deep breath and carefully opened the envelope. Inside, in neat blue handwriting, was written:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
Beneath the poem was written:
You must learn to let him go, Erika…
From one widow to another. THE NIGHT STALKER
Erika dropped the card on the kitchen counter and took a step back, pulling the latex gloves off her shaking hands. She moved around the flat again, checking the windows and doors were locked. The Night Stalker had been inside the flat; she had been inside as Erika slept. How long had she been there? Had she watched Erika sleeping?
Erika looked around the living room and shivered. Not only had she been inside her home, it felt as if she were now inside her head. The poem was beautiful. It spoke to her, spoke to her feelings of loss and bereavement. How could someone so sick and twisted connect with her so deeply?
55
Simone was running fast through the back streets, of which there were few in Central London. It was pouring with rain and she could feel blood running down the side of her neck; her mouth was numb and her top lip felt painfully engorged with blood. It hadn’t gone to plan. She’d fucked up.
It started out smoothly. She gained access again to the Bowery Lane Estate flats in her nurse’s uniform. The second floor hallway was empty and she moved stealthily, passing the open kitchen windows. Through one window a man lay sleeping in front of a flickering television. Simone stopped and stared at him for a moment. His feet splayed out in front, an arm across his chest, rising and falling in the flickering light…
She forced herself to move on through the shadows until she reached number 37, Stephen Linley’s front door. She pressed her ear to the red paint and heard nothing. She slid the key in the lock and the door opened with a soft click.
Stephen Linley came home an hour later. She lay in wait for him, downstairs in the shadows, listening as he moved about in the kitchen. Through the glass hatch in the living room she watched him pour a large glass of the juice she had laced with the date rape drug. He drank it rapidly, then poured another and took it with him upstairs.
He passed so close to where Simone waited, behind the thick folds of the curtain in front of the large glass window. She felt th
e air shift as he moved past, and she smelled him: a sweet, overpowering scent of cologne, dank sweat and sex. It focused her hatred of him.
She listened as he went into the bathroom and she followed in the darkness, making no sound on the soft carpet. The bathroom door was pulled to and she heard the clink as he unhitched his belt and started to pee.
Hold onto it, it’s the last time you’ll get to use it, thought Simone. She moved through to the bedroom and softly opened the money belt she kept around her waist, pulling out the neatly folded plastic bag.
She moved to the bed and lay down on the carpet, sliding underneath. Simone enjoyed this part, the lying in wait. It reinforced all those childhood nightmares of the bogey man under the bed, of monsters crouching in a darkened cupboard. She was a monster, she knew that, and she revelled in it.
She listened to the muffled sounds of Stephen in the bathroom. The sound of the water being turned on, the rustle as he pulled the shower curtain across.
He finally emerged minutes later, and she watched as his feet appeared in her line of vision, as he unsteadily made his way around the bed. His phone began to ring, and he cursed, fumbling in his trouser pockets. There was a click as he cancelled the call, and then the phone dropped to the carpet beside her. Its screen glowed. Then he lost balance and crashed down onto the bed. Simone shrank back further under the bed and into the shadows. The mattress shifted above her.
‘Jeez, how much did I drink?’ she heard him murmur. Simone waited another minute before moving to where the phone lay on the carpet. She reached out and pulled it towards her, then switched it off. Slowly, softly, she slid out from under the bed. She could see he was lying on his side with his back to her; his hand was moving shakily over his face. She stood for a moment and watched him, listening to his groans, and then moved quietly from the bedroom and back down the stairs. The electricity box was in a small cupboard under the spiral staircase. She opened it and flicked off the power.
Her eyes had adjusted to the light. She looked across at the books he had written, which lined the shelves: Descent into Darkness, From My Cold Dead Hands, The Girl in the Cellar. It was Stephen Linley’s mind she hated and feared the most. Her husband had enjoyed his books, had enjoyed the horror and the torture. She thought of how Stan had held her down and poured boiling water over her naked body… how he had lifted this particular torture out of From My Cold Dead Hands.
She stood for a minute and drank in the silence, interrupted by the murmurings from Stephen upstairs.
‘I’m coming to get you. I’m coming to get you, you evil bastard,’ whispered Simone. She moved quickly, back up the stairs and into the bedroom.
The bed squeaked and shifted as Simone climbed in beside him. There was a soft crackle of plastic as she reached across and slipped the bag over his head.
Stephen panicked and lashed out, catching Simone on the side of her head with his fist. She tried to ignore the pain and the burst of stars in her vision and jerked at the string, pulling it tight around his neck. He fought harder and lashed out again, punching her in the mouth. The strength of his blow surprised her; she thought, by now, he would have been very subdued and weakened by the drug pumping through his veins. She yanked the cord roughly and it tightened further, biting into the skin of his neck. He started to thrash around on the mattress, trying to move away from her across the bed. She thought he was trying to escape, only realising what he was doing when his arm came up and something very hard and heavy crashed down onto the back of her head. He didn’t have the strength to land a serious blow, though, and the large object glanced off her head and rolled onto the mattress.
The bag was now tight on his head, the plastic starting to form a vacuum over his face and his groaning mouth. Simone held onto the bag with one hand and searched with her free hand for what had hit her. Stephen’s elbow landed a painful blow to her temple and her hand closed around a large heavy marble ashtray. He was scrabbling madly at the plastic over his face, choking and retching. He placed his feet on the mattress and pushed up with his legs. Simone felt his head pull away from her. She lifted the ashtray high in the air and, with all her strength, brought it down on his head. There was a sickening thud as the front of his skull caved in. She lifted the ashtray and brought it down again, and again. On the third blow, the plastic bag burst and blood and bone mottled the wall.
She sat there on the mattress, shaking. She’d done it. She’d done it. But she’d screwed up badly. It was then that she ran out of the bedroom, falling down half the flight of stairs, and kept running, out of the flat. She didn’t stop until she was safely away, shrouded by the darkness and the pouring rain.
56
Erika jumped as her landline began to ring, cutting through the sound of the pounding rain. She didn’t know how long she’d been staring at the neat handwriting in the card. She grabbed the phone off the floor beside her front door and answered.
‘Erika, help me, he’s dead!’ came a voice she barely recognised.
‘Isaac, is that you?’
‘Yes! Erika, you have to help me. It’s Stephen… I just came to his flat, and found him… Oh God… There’s blood, there’s blood everywhere…’
‘Have you called the police?’ asked Erika.
‘No, I didn’t know who else to call… He’s lying on the bed, he’s naked…’
‘Isaac, listen, you have to call 999.’
‘Erika… He’s dead and he has a plastic bag over his head…’
The rain was torrential when Erika arrived at the Bowery Lane Estate. As her windscreen wipers worked to clear the deluge, the blue lights from the police cars crowding the entrance seemed to mix with the water in streaks. She parked behind one of the large support vans and climbed out into the lashing rain.
‘Ma’am, move your car, you cannot park there!’ shouted a uniformed officer running towards her. She pulled out her ID.
‘I’m DCI Foster, I’m responding to the call-out,’ she lied.
‘Are you the Senior Investigating Officer on this?’ asked the officer, putting a hand up to shield his eyes from the rain. It crackled as it landed on the waterproof covering on his helmet.
‘I’ll know more when I see the scene,’ she said. He waved her past him. She walked towards the police cordon. Police cars were parked up on the pavement, and an ambulance had pulled into the courtyard on the grass, its lights adding to the symphony of blue and red that played across the block of flats.
Erika looked up and noted that lights were coming on in the windows. A uniformed officer was yelling for people to go back inside, and Erika saw a group of young girls in their pyjamas being herded in by their mother.
She showed her ID at the police tape.
‘You’re not on the list,’ the uniformed officer shouted above the noise of rain and police sirens.
‘I’m in the first response team. DCI Foster,’ she shouted, brandishing her ID again. He nodded, she signed his clipboard and he lifted the tape for her.
A large glass door was propped open and she went through to a stark stairwell. The concrete was grey and mottled with years of stains. When she reached Stephen Linley’s flat, it was crowded. She flashed her ID and was given a suit, mask and shoe covers, which she quickly pulled on in the corridor. When she went inside, every available space in the small flat was being dusted for prints, and photographed. The crime scene officers worked silently and paid her no attention as she climbed the spiral staircase with a sense of dread. She could hear soft murmurings coming from above, and the click and squeal of the crime scene photographer’s camera.
The bedroom was worse than she’d imagined. A naked man lay on a white mattress, which was saturated with blood. His body was fairly unmarked but his head was unrecognisable inside a plastic bag. The white wall behind was streaked in red. The room was filled with officers – one in particular stood out to Erika because of his tall frame. Beside him was a much shorter, fatter officer who had one of the drawers open in a large dresser and was pu
lling out a selection of dildos, leather harnesses and what looked like fetish hoods. He held one of the black PVC hoods up.
‘Looks like a fetish breath control device,’ he said.
‘Jesus, no wonder he came a cropper,’ said the tall officer. Erika’s heart sank when she realised who the voice belonged to.
‘DCI Foster, what are you doing here?’ said DCI Sparks.
The large man beside him placed the hood in an evidence bag with his gloved hands, then turned. His eyebrows were long and bristly above craggy eyes.
‘I… I received a call,’ she said.
‘From who? The first response were City of London Police. They called my team in,’ said Sparks. ‘This is Superintendent Nickson.’
Both Sparks and Nickson stared at her from behind their masks. The camera fired off two blinding flashes.
‘You’re a long way from home, don’t you think?’ added Nickson. He had a gruff, no-nonsense voice.
‘I’m… er…. I got a call from the forensic pathologist, Isaac Strong,’ Erika said, shakily.
‘I’m the forensic pathologist, Duncan Masters,’ said a small man with intense eyes, working in the corner. ‘Dr Strong is being interviewed by uniformed officers. He’s not here in a professional capacity.’
‘Hello, Dr Masters,’ said Erika. ‘I’ve been working on the double murder asphyxiation of Jack Hart and Gregory Munro. I’m here also in a professional capacity. I believe that this murder could have been committed by the same person.’
‘And what makes you think that? You’ve just barged into my crime scene,’ said Dr Masters.
‘This man was bludgeoned to death with a marble ashtray and he has an arse full of semen,’ said Sparks. ‘It looks like one of ours. We’ll take it from here.’ He beckoned to an officer. ‘Can you take this woman out to one of the support vehicles? She needs to be questioned about her apparent tip-off about the crime scene.’
The Night Stalker: A chilling serial killer thriller (Detective Erika Foster Book 2) Page 22