The Night Stalker: A chilling serial killer thriller (Detective Erika Foster Book 2)

by Robert Bryndza

  She found Isaac at a table on the end of the third row. She was shocked by his appearance: his eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles around them. His usually sleek hair was a mess and there were shaving cuts on his face.

  ‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Stephen,’ said Erika.

  Isaac searched her eyes. ‘Thank you. Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m here as your friend,’ she said, reaching out and taking his hand. It was cold and clammy and he was shaking. ‘I’m sorry. I should have come sooner.’

  ‘It’s like a living nightmare, this place. The filth, the screaming, the constant threat of violence and menace,’ Isaac murmured. ‘I didn’t do it. Please believe me, I didn’t do it… You do believe me, don’t you?’

  Erika hesitated. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I found out he was going to a gay sauna in Waterloo. He was screwing guys, bareback – you know, without using protection. I’d suspected it, and confronted him, and he’d told me he was just at the gym. Then the stupid idiot took my iPod and left it in a locker at the sauna, and they got in contact with me… I take it you’ve heard about the phone call where I say I’m going to fucking kill him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t, though. I didn’t kill him. I showed up at his flat for an argument, let myself in with my key and…’ Isaac gulped and his eyes filled up. Tears fell on the table top with a soft patter. He wiped them with his sleeve.

  ‘Hang on, you let yourself in with a key?’

  ‘Yeah, we’d got to that point. He’d committed to me and given me a key. I was so pathetically grateful.’

  ‘His flat is on the second floor, no balcony?’

  Isaac nodded.

  ‘Then it wasn’t a break-in, if it was locked when you arrived. He either let the person in, or they got in with their own key.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? About the case?’

  Erika quickly told him what had happened, about being taken off the case.

  ‘So you’re investigating this, alone? You think you can help me?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do anything, Isaac.’

  ‘Please. I can’t… deal with this.’

  Erika saw she had already used up ten minutes of their precious half-hour.

  ‘Isaac, I have to ask: why Stephen? You have such a sorted life: respected job, home, friends. What attracted you to him? He was a regular drug user, he hired prostitutes.’

  ‘He excited me, Erika. He was a bad boy. I was the good boy who grew up with braces, and glasses, and no coordination and stick-thin legs in PE class. I was a virgin until I graduated from medical school at twenty-three. I’d always done the right thing and worked hard, but Stephen was sexy and dangerous, and unpredictable. He had this sort of abrasive funniness about him….’ Isaac shrugged. ‘He was incredible in bed. I knew he wasn’t right, and he didn’t fit into my life… But I let him back in and it pushed you away… I’m sorry, Erika. You needed me, didn’t you? I even forgot about Mark, the anniversary. I’m sorry.’

  Erika leant across and grabbed his hand.

  ‘It’s okay. Isaac, it’s okay. I’m here, and you are my friend,’ she said.

  He looked up at her and smiled weakly.

  ‘Look, I have to ask more,’ said Erika. ‘I’ve read two of Stephen’s books, From My Cold Dead Hands and The Girl in the Cellar…’

  ‘I know,’ said Isaac, almost reading her mind. ‘He wrote shocking stuff.’

  ‘There’s so much torture of women – and then there’s DCI Bartholomew. He’s meant to be the hero of the books and he’s also a wife beater?’

  ‘An anti-hero,’ said Isaac, shrugging. ‘It was his work, that’s what Stephen used to say. It got all the bad stuff out of his system. Think of all the horror writers out there – they don’t necessarily act out on what they write. And think of what we do – well, what I do? I cut people up for a living. I dissect their bodies. I dig into their brains. What I do is just as invasive.’

  ‘But what you do is different, Isaac. You help catch the bad guys. Stephen was creating them, albeit fictionally,’ said Erika.

  ‘To his fans, his characters were just as real as you and me.’

  ‘Did Stephen have any crazy fans? Do you know of any disturbing fan mail that he might have had?’

  Isaac wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘I don’t know. He didn’t get mail exactly. I know a lot of his fans would write through his Facebook page.’

  ‘Would his agent get any fan mail, on his behalf?’

  ‘Yes. Probably. They’re based in West London…I had a life, Erika… Do you think I’ll be able to go back to it? I know how this system works. I’m tainted. I hold a position of trust and that has now been called into doubt.’ He began to cry.

  ‘Isaac, stop, don’t do this here,’ said Erika, noticing some of the other prisoners glancing over at him. ‘I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of here,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

  He looked up at her. ‘Thank you. If anyone can do it, you can,’ he said.

  64

  The phone box was on the outskirts of London, on Barnes Common. Simone had remembered it. It was part of a long-ago happy memory, when her mother had taken her to Kew Gardens. She’d had to hide in her mother’s coat until they had been past the ticket kiosk, but once they’d got inside she’d loved the flowers and the trees. Her mother had been desperate to go into the tropical house. It was like a giant greenhouse, very warm, and stuffed with plants from all over the world. ‘Rare Flora and Fauna’, Simone remembered the sign had read.

  Of course, her mother had only come to Kew Gardens to meet her dealer. They’d gone off into the bushes to do adult stuff. But the young Simone had enjoyed a couple of hours free to wander. And she’d known that if her mother was happy, she would be happy.

  On the bus back home, she’d pressed her face against the window and had seen the phone box shining red against the expanse of green on Barnes Common. It looked much the same, all these years later. The drought had turned it from green to yellow, and the red paint was peeling off the phone box, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  Erika Foster answered the phone after several rings.

  ‘Did you get my card, DCI Foster?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Although most people would have used the letterbox,’ said Erika.

  ‘I’m not most people, DCI Foster,’ said Simone. She gripped the receiver and looked through the grimy glass across the empty common.

  ‘Do you think you’re special?’ asked Erika. ‘Have you been sent here with a higher purpose?’

  ‘No, far from it. I’m unremarkable. I’m not pretty, or clever, but I’m full of anger and grief… Grief in particular gives you so much energy, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ said Erika.

  ‘I decided to use that energy to take revenge… I’ve been reading about you. About how you tried to do your job, tried to catch that drug dealer and it all went terribly wrong. Not only did you lose your friends and your husband, but the very people who you served turned on you. Blamed you.’

  ‘What if I said that you could get help, if you stopped?’ interrupted Erika.

  ‘What if I said that you could get help if you stopped?’ replied Simone.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw where you live. The pathetic flat. Your worldly goods that amount to nothing. What have you got to show from devoting your life to the force? Wouldn’t life be easier if you stopped trying to save the world?’

  There was a pause again, and then Erika replied with a trembling voice, ‘I’m going to find you. And when I do, I’m going to look you in the eye and I’ll see how smart you think you are.’

  ‘Catch me if you can. I’m not finished yet,’ said Simone.

  There was a click, and Simone heard the dialling tone.

  She winced, not from fear but from pain. It hurt to smile where she had been stru
ck by the ashtray.

  65

  Moss reached up with her free hand and knocked on the door. In the other hand she held a pizza box. Moments later, it opened. Erika stood in the open doorway with her hair on end.

  ‘I thought you might like some pizza,’ said Moss, holding it up. ‘Pepperoni?’

  ‘Thank you, come in,’ said Erika, standing to one side and letting her in. The rain had cleared and through the patio window there was a beautiful dusk as the sun slowly sank down with shades of soft blue and orange.

  ‘I just dropped Celia and Jacob for swimming in Ladywell. Thought I’d pop over and see how you are enjoying your holiday…’

  ‘Just find a spot and put the box down,’ said Erika, pulling out plates from the cupboard.

  Moss looked around and saw that every available space, and parts of the floor, were strewn with paperwork from the Night Stalker case.

  ‘They let you take all this with you?’

  ‘No. I downloaded it to my laptop.’

  ‘So the holiday’s going well?’ said Moss, moving a couple of grey folders and perching the pizza box on the end of the coffee table.

  ‘I got another call.’

  ‘From the Night Stalker?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She phoned to screw with me. She told me she wasn’t finished yet.’

  ‘Did they get a trace?’

  ‘Yes, Crane called me. He’s been reassigned to the case, at Sparks’ request. They traced it to a phone box in West London. Again, no CCTV… He couldn’t tell me much more… How is she not slipping up? How? I’ve been printing everything off from the case. It helps, having hard copies. I’ve been going back through everything.’

  Erika handed Moss a plate and a napkin. She opened the box and steam rose from the thin crust pizza, which was cooked to perfection. As they began to eat, Erika relayed what had happened when she visited Isaac and detailed how she was revisiting all the evidence after the phone call.

  ‘I just feel we never had a real crack at working her out, the Night Stalker. Like the card she sent me.’ Erika handed Moss a printout of the scanned card. ‘Why did she choose that poem?’

  ‘She’s a vicious serial-killing bitch. Why should she be any more imaginative than the rest of us?’ said Moss. ‘As a poem, “Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep” is not hard to seek out. It’s the go-to poem for funerals. It’s like books: we all scan the bestseller lists, we see what reviewers are telling us to read and we buy them to make ourselves feel clever. I was one of the many millions who read half of The Goldfinch.’

  ‘That’s what the Night Stalker said on the phone.’

  ‘That she only read half of The Goldfinch?’

  Erika shot Moss a glare.

  ‘Sorry, boss, just trying to lighten the mood…’

  ‘She said on the phone that she wasn’t clever,’ said Erika.

  ‘But she is clever. Or bloody lucky. Three bodies so far and virtually no evidence. She slips in and out unseen,’ replied Moss, taking a bite of pizza.

  Erika shook her head. ‘Why go to all the effort of finding my flat, breaking in and leaving a card? And she signed it “The Night Stalker”.’

  ‘Maybe she thinks she has a new friend or ally in you, boss.’

  ‘Then why not sign it with her real name, if she’s that confident? Serial killers often hate the names they’re given in the press. They think it erodes how they are seen by people. They think what they’re doing is serious: a noble deed, or series of deeds; a service to society.’

  ‘Maybe she just wants to screw with your head,’ said Moss.

  ‘I’ve also gone back over the victims, trying to see if they had anything in common, but they’re vastly different people. The only thing they have in common is that they are male, and that they were killed in exactly the same way – except that Stephen had his head smashed in as well. I also looked back over the names of people who bought these suicide bags online.’

  ‘I’ve been through the names, too. So many of the London-based women who bought them are now dead,’ said Moss.

  ‘There’s something that Isaac said when I saw him this morning. When he discovered Stephen’s body, he’d let himself into the flat with a key. The door was closed and locked. No forced entry. The flat is on the second floor, with no balcony or other doors.’

  ‘So the Night Stalker had a key?’ asked Moss.

  ‘Yes. I got the report from the crime scene. The lock had been bumped. It was damaged inside from someone using a bump key.’

  ‘They’re pretty common in burglaries, and you can buy them online for nothing these days,’ said Moss.

  ‘Exactly. And there’s one person on the list of people who bought suicide bags online who also bought a bump key online,’ said Erika.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, when we followed up on the names, we went as far as accessing bank accounts and financial transactions. This person bought a suicide bag three years ago, and then in the last three months has bought five more. Who needs five? They also bought the bump key online three months ago.’

  ‘Bloody hell! Why didn’t we follow it up?’ asked Moss.

  ‘It must have been overlooked – we weren’t looking for a bump key, and we were focusing on women. This person is a thirty-five-year-old male. He’s been wheelchair-bound since childhood. He lives in Worthing, on the south coast, not far from London.’

  ‘Have you told Marsh?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘So what are you going to do? Have a day out by the sea?’ asked Moss.

  ‘Would you be interested, in a day out by the sea?’ replied Erika.

  Moss paused. ‘Sorry, I’m due at a CCTV steering group tomorrow. I can’t… No, I can’t risk it.’

  ‘No worries,’ grinned Erika.

  ‘But I have your back. Anything I can do on the sly, to help.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Just be careful, boss, yeah? You’ve pissed off enough people already.’

  ‘Often you have to piss people off to get to the truth, but I’m not doing this for my ego,’ said Erika. ‘You should have seen Isaac yesterday. He didn’t do it. And I’m going to prove it.’

  66

  Simone had lain low since fleeing the scene of Stephen Linley’s murder. Where the ashtray had struck her, she’d been left with a huge swollen lip and a nasty bruise on the side of her head. She’d also lost a tooth: her left incisor was broken off, close to the gum. She didn’t know if she had swallowed it, or if it had skittered off into a dark corner of Stephen Linley’s flat. The exposed nerves had left her in terrible pain, but she was too scared to go to see her dentist. He might X-ray her teeth and then her dental records would be on file.

  She’d tried to remember if she’d had her teeth X-rayed in the past. She had a vague memory of being left alone in a large room with insulated walls, of being told to lie very still whilst her mother waited outside. Had that been an X-ray? She didn’t know. She knew she had never been fingerprinted, nor had her DNA been taken.

  At first, she had been convinced that it was all over. She’d screwed up; it hadn’t gone to plan. She had cancelled going into work at the hospital, telling them she was sick. As the days and nights had passed, sleep had evaded her completely. No amount of medication helped.

  On the third sleepless night, she was lying in bed just after midnight when she heard a soft pat, pat, pat sound coming from outside her bedroom door. Like water running onto the carpet. It was coupled with the sound of laboured breathing, as if through a blocked nose.

  Simone jumped up off the bed and wedged the chair from her dressing table under the door. The noise had continued: pat, pat, pat, pat, pat… Inhale, exhale.

  She put her hands to her aching, throbbing temples. It wasn’t real. But still, the noise continued.

  Pat, pat. Inhale, exhale. A loose, phlegmy cough.

  ‘You’re not real!’ she called out. ‘Stan, leave this place!’


  Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat… Inhale, exhale.

  She lifted the chair away and turned the door handle, opening the door. Her throat constricted when she saw it wasn’t Stan standing there, dripping with water. It was Stephen Linley.

  He was dressed in trainers, blue jeans, a white T-shirt and a thin black jacket. The plastic bag was tied tight around his neck and half-filled with gunk and blood, which was dripping from under the cord around his neck, down his clothes and onto the pale carpet.

  Pat, pat, pat…

  His forehead was caved in, where Simone had hit him with the ashtray, and his face was almost unrecognisable. Inside, against the plastic, the mouth was moving. The ruined face was trying to breathe.

  ‘NO!’ screamed Simone. ‘YOU. ARE. DEAD!’ With each word, she advanced on the gruesome corpse, prodding it. It took faltering steps backwards, towards the top of the stairs, arms flailing.

  ‘YOU DESERVED TO DIE!’ she cried. They reached the top of the stairs. Simone gave the body a shove and it fell backwards, rolling down the stairs with bumps and crashes, landing in a limp heap at the bottom.

  She closed her eyes and counted to ten and then opened them. It was gone. Everything was back to normal. She was alone. Shakily, she went down the stairs and checked the living room and kitchen. There was nothing. She went to her computer and switched it on. When it had booted up, she started to type.

  NIGHT OWL: You there?

  For a while, nothing happened. She was about to go and make herself a drink when Duke came online.

  DUKE: Hey Night Owl, what’s cooking?

  NIGHT OWL: I’ve missed you.

  DUKE: I’ve missed you too.

  NIGHT OWL: I’m scared. I’m seeing things again.

  DUKE: You got new meds?

  NIGHT OWL: No, I’ve stopped taking them.

  DUKE: I was worried something had happened to you.