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

by Robert Bryndza

  She’d nervously watched Stan eat a large plateful, and then, when he’d finished, go to the sofa with a beer, put his head back. He was out cold in minutes.

  Simone’s exhilaration that it had worked had quickly been replaced by fear, and the realisation that she had been stupid. She hadn’t thought beyond knocking him out. What if he stayed on the sofa all night? What if he woke up in the morning still on the sofa? He would be suspicious.

  It had taken a superhuman effort to rouse Stan and get him upstairs, supporting him like a drunk. She was convinced she had blown it, and was sick with fear, watching him all night. Wild thoughts went through her mind: of running away, of taking her own life. And then the sun had come up, and he’d woken. Irritable, unpleasant – but he had gone to work with nothing more than a comment that he must have been tired.

  Is it that easy? she’d thought.

  A month passed, and the abuse escalated. On one harrowing evening they were watching TV, and for no reason Stan had snapped, telling her how much he hated her, how she had ruined his life. He’d started to beat her, and she’d managed to get away and lock herself in the bathroom.

  She’d sat, cowering in the bath, listening to him rant and crash in the kitchen. Then he’d charged the door and burst in with a saucepan. He’d stripped off her clothes and held her down in the bath whilst he poured boiling water over her naked body.

  She’d been badly burnt across her chest and abdomen. The burns became so infected, and she was in so much pain, that Stan had no choice but take her to the doctor. She’d seen this as an opportunity to tell someone about the abuse she was suffering. But Dr Gregory Munro had thought this was a symptom of the paranoia and psychosis linked to her insomnia. He thought she was lying! Stan had played the part well, acting like the concerned husband.

  Yes, she’d lost grip on reality in the past, she’d hallucinated, and previously told Dr Munro about things she saw and heard, but now, faced with her burns and her tears, Dr Munro didn’t believe her. She’d trusted him, but he threw it back in her face. He took Stan’s side, almost pitying him for having such a crazy wife, and had her admitted to hospital.

  She was discharged after a week, and for a while afterwards the violence had subsided. But she’d still been too afraid to leave him and had become desperate, feeling there was no way out of her situation.

  She’d drugged him again, this time placing two of the pills in the beer he drank in bed. Within minutes, he was out cold. She’d even tried to wake him – prodding at him, shaking him – but nothing. He woke again none the wiser, complaining, as ever, that he felt groggy.

  Around this time, Duke stopped sleeping completely. He started to talk about how he wanted to end his life, detailing how he would do it.

  DUKE: I’d use a suicide bag.

  NIGHT OWL: What’s a suicide bag?

  DUKE: They also call them exit bags…

  NIGHT OWL: ???

  DUKE: It’s a large plastic bag with a draw cord. You can use them to commit suicide.

  NIGHT OWL: Sounds painful.

  DUKE: Not if u use it with gas, like helium or nitrogen. Helium is easier. You can buy canisters of helium for kids’ birthday parties. Put the bag over your head and start to fill it with gas… It prevents u panicking, you just drift off to sleep. Endless sleep. Bliss.

  NIGHT OWL: Is it that easy?

  DUKE: Yeah, with one of these suicide bags it is. I’ve been visiting this online forum, about suicide. Did you know that if the bag is removed, provided there isn’t struggle, it’s difficult to determine how a person suffocated, or even died?

  NIGHT OWL: Please don’t do it.

  DUKE: Why?

  NIGHT OWL: I need you.

  DUKE: You do?

  NIGHT OWL: Yes… I was reading about Eastern mythology…

  DUKE: Yes! Keep talking! I’m finally dropping off to sleep!

  NIGHT OWL: Ha ha. I’m serious. I was reading all about Yin and Yang. Two opposites fitting together. What if we were in bed together?

  DUKE: I’m listening. Do we get to be naked?

  NIGHT OWL: Maybe… But I’m talking about sleeping. What if we could go far away from here, and sleep together in the same bed?

  DUKE: Where?

  NIGHT OWL: I don’t know. Somewhere far away. We would hold each other and just fall asleep.

  DUKE: I’d love that. Imagine, waking up refreshed.

  It was then that Simone had experienced a revelation. She decided that she didn’t want to die. What she wanted was not to be a victim. She talked to Duke more about the suicide bag, then cleared her history from the computer. He ordered one for her, and had it sent to the hospital where she worked.

  The suicide bag wasn’t for her, of course. It was for Stan. Simone had realised she wouldn’t need helium gas: she had an endless supply of sleeping pills.

  The last time Stan raped her, it was particularly violent. As if, somehow, he knew it was the last. It steeled her resolve.

  The next morning, when Stan was in the shower, Simone decided that she’d do it that night, when he came home from work. She was downstairs making tea, and eyeing the box of pills sitting on top of the microwave, when there was a loud thud from upstairs. She rushed up to find Stan sprawled in a heap in the shower, under the running water. He was white.

  She called for an ambulance, almost as a reflex. He was pronounced dead on arrival. He’d had a heart attack at the age of thirty-seven.

  Life changed, and Simone had become the grieving widow. And in death, her husband had become the tragic hero. He never paid for what he’d done to her. She should have felt release, but as the weeks passed, she’d only felt anger. A growing knot of anger at the fact that a man had taken so many years from her. She’d become obsessed. She’d stopped sleeping all together; all power had been taken from her. She liked to pretend Stan was still alive. That way, he couldn’t get any sympathy.

  Simone realised she had drifted away. The blur of the computer screen came back into focus. Duke had been writing repeatedly, asking where she had gone.

  DUKE: Night Owl?

  DUKE: U there????

  DUKE: ???????

  NIGHT OWL: Sorry, Duke, I was daydreaming.

  DUKE: So? What happens next? Do I get to finally meet you? Do I get to lie with you in bed? Far far away?

  NIGHT OWL: Soon. Very soon. I just have to deal with the next name on my list.

  Simone thought of the list. It existed nowhere except in her head. But it was still very real. When she’d killed Dr Gregory Munro – the doctor who had believed Stan over her – she’d drawn a thick black line through his name. She’d done the same, too, with Jack Hart. Hart had been harder to track down. Back when he’d written the piece about her cruel neglectful mother, he’d been an ambitious journalist; her story had been a nice piece of tabloid sensationalism for him. It had helped him on his way up the career ladder… But Simone had ended up in care, all alone, with a new set of horrors to face. Jack Hart had taken her mother from her.

  Simone thought about her next victim and smiled to herself. It was going to be the best yet.

  40

  Erika arrived at Lewisham Row station at seven-thirty the next morning. She’d been summoned to another strategy meeting. A meeting that had been hastily arranged when she’d reported back to Marsh the previous day that she was still working on the case – and that they now had a female serial killer.

  She parked and came out into the morning heat. The cranes whirred around the half-finished high-rise buildings, and the sky was heavy and humid. Low cloud was forming and glinting like steel in the sunshine. Erika locked her car and made for the main entrance. A storm was brewing, both outside and in her work life.

  ‘Morning, boss,’ said Woolf when she stepped into reception. He was hunched over the morning’s newspaper and had a half-demolished Danish pastry in his left hand. An article about Jack Hart in the Daily Star was strewn with flakes of pastry. The headline read: ‘SERIAL KILLER SHOCK IN JACK HART M
URDER’.

  ‘Shit,’ Erika said, leaning over the desk to peer at the article.

  ‘Look, they’ve even done a supplement,’ Woolf said, pulling out a glossy black magazine with a giant picture of Jack Hart staring into the camera. ‘RIP’ was written above his head ‘You can’t touch it without getting your hands dirty,’ moaned Woolf, showing where the black ink had left a murky residue on his hand.

  ‘Maybe that’s a metaphor,’ said Erika, as she swiped her card on the door.

  ‘Do you really think a woman killed him?’ asked Woolf, his brow furrowing.

  ‘Yes,’ Erika said, pulling open the door and moving through into the station.

  The air conditioning had been fixed in the conference room, which only added to the chilly atmosphere. Around the long table sat Erika, Chief Superintendent Marsh, Colleen Scanlan, Tim Aiken, the criminal psychologist and Assistant Commissioner Oakley.

  Oakley cut straight to the chase. ‘DCI Foster, it greatly troubles me that you have reached the conclusion that these murders were committed by a woman.’

  ‘Sir, there are female serial killers,’ replied Erika.

  ‘I know that! It’s just that the evidence in this case is paper-thin. We have DNA from an ear print on the back door of Jack Hart’s house…’

  ‘Sir, we also managed to glean skin cells from the bag placed over Jack Hart’s head. It took him several minutes to asphyxiate, and we believe he thrashed around, striking the killer in the face.’

  Oakley cocked his head to one side and was silent. Erika knew this to be a technique of his, to remain silent. It often caused the person he was questioning to babble, or to blurt something out which Oakley could later use to strengthen his argument. Erika remained silent.

  ‘I’d be keen to hear what Tim can bring to the table,’ said Oakley, turning his gaze on the criminal psychologist. Tim looked up from where he was writing on his pad. His hair jutted upwards from his head, and he had several days’ stubble.

  ‘The only compelling evidence that this is a woman comes from two sources. The ear print on the back door, and the plastic bag. This could be explained in many ways. The door had recently been repainted, six weeks before the murder: the print could have been left by one of the workers. There was a case a few years back of an ear print being used in a court case for a home invasion which led to the murder of a man and his wife. The ear print was used to prosecute a man who, it later turned out, had been working legitimately at the property as a plumber.’

  ‘And how do you explain the plastic bag?’ asked Erika.

  ‘The utility room is where Jack Hart kept his DIY and garden supplies. In the crime scene report, it states that there were two drawers containing bin liners, plastic freezer bags and old newspapers. It’s feasible that the same painter-decorator could have opened these drawers and contaminated the plastic bag with her DNA.’

  ‘The murder weapon wasn’t just an ordinary plastic bag. It was a suicide bag, or exit bag. A specialist item which has to be ordered online.’

  ‘Yes, and this suicide bag is much like the industrial plastic and zip lock bags used around the home, in DIY. Leaving the physical evidence to one side for a moment, the profile is more aligned to a male murderer. We shouldn’t forget that with the first victim, Gregory Munro, there was a homosexual element to the killing… And both victims were found naked in bed. I don’t wish to revert to stereotypes, but female serial killers are incredibly rare, and we need more concrete evidence before we abandon the theory that this is a single white male.’

  ‘So you’re saying we should ignore forensic evidence and concentrate on statistics?’ asked Erika.

  ‘The coverage in the media is extensive,’ interrupted Colleen, who had a stack of the day’s newspapers in front of her. ‘We need to make a statement, and this is what they call silly season in the press. There isn’t a lot else going on, besides coverage of this heatwave. A serial killer story is going to run and run.’

  ‘I believe that a woman is responsible for these killings,’ said Erika. ‘If the ear print on the outside of the back door were the only DNA evidence, then I would propose we were cautious. But the female DNA is on the bag used to kill Jack Hart, and very shortly we will have more details about the supplier of this bag – a website which has agreed to hand over the details of purchasers. We have more of a chance of catching the killer if we make the focus of our enquiries a woman. I am suggesting that we do a reconstruction. I’d like Colleen to contact the BBC Crimewatch programme. They are due to broadcast their monthly show in a few days. We can reconstruct Gregory Munro and Jack Hart’s last movements in the lead-up to their murders.’

  There was silence. Colleen looked between Marsh and Oakley.

  ‘You’ve been very quiet, Paul,’ said Oakley to Marsh.

  ‘I support DCI Foster’s position,’ said Marsh. ‘I feel that this is a unique case, and with the DNA evidence it would be prudent to concentrate on finding this woman. As a caveat, I would suggest to Erika that we also pursue the line of enquiry that this woman could have been working in tandem with a man. We could ask for members of the public to consider that also.’

  ‘But this is almost unprecedented. In all my years of police work, we’ve never put in place a hunt for a female serial killer,’ said Oakley.

  ‘Perhaps you should get out a bit more, sir,’ said Erika. Marsh shot her a look.

  ‘Very well, it’s your call, Erika. Although I will be monitoring this very closely,’ said Oakley.

  Erika left the meeting and walked down the stairs to the incident room, buoyed by her victory. She heard the door open on the floor above. Looking up, she saw Marsh, and stopped to let him catch up with her. They met on the landing, where a huge glass window looked out over the vast sprawl of Greater London. Dark clouds were forming on the horizon.

  ‘Thank you for your support, sir,’ said Erika. ‘We’ll get to work on the Crimewatch reconstruction.’

  ‘It’s a big opportunity, a television reconstruction. Don’t blow it.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Erika. I’m fifty–fifty about whether this is a female killer, but, as I say, it’s your call.’

  ‘I have a good track record, sir. You know I’m rarely wrong about these things. I always deliver.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So, speaking of my track record, any more news on the promotion?’

  ‘Catch this crazy bitch, and then we’ll talk promotions,’ said Marsh. ‘Now, I have to go. Keep me in the loop.’

  He left Erika standing on the stairs, looking out over the city through the tall glass window.

  It’s funny how much we have in common, the killer and me, thought Erika. We’re both being doubted for our abilities as women.

  41

  A few days later, Erika and Moss were in Laurel Road, watching as the Crimewatch television reconstruction was being filmed. The heatwave had broken that morning, and the rain was torrential, hammering with a roar on top of two large BBC Television vans, which were parked at the top of the street.

  Erika and Moss sheltered in front of one of the vans under a giant umbrella, and watched as an actor who had been cast to play Gregory Munro rehearsed walking along the street and going into 14 Laurel Road. A cameraman followed behind him, swathed in a vast rain poncho of clear plastic, a Steadicam strapped to his body with a black metal harness. The rest of the television crew were bunched together under umbrellas on a wall opposite, and the neighbours who weren’t at work watched curiously from under their porches, sheltered from the rain.

  At the bottom of the street, a row of crash barriers had been erected, lined with journalists and members of the public watching the proceedings.

  They had been told by the producer and director that it takes a lot for rain to show up on camera, but as Moss and Erika watched the rehearsal, rainwater was surging down the road, spraying over the kerb and making the drains gurgle thirstily.

  ‘This isn’t exactly going to jog people’s mem
ories of a hot summer night,’ said Erika, taking a drag of her cigarette. A runner, wearing another of the huge, clear rain ponchos, approached them holding a clipboard. With him was a small, dark-haired girl wearing black tracksuit bottoms and a black jumper. They were both huddled under a large umbrella.

  ‘Hello, which one of you is DCI Foster?’ asked the young guy.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Erika, adding, ‘This is Detective Inspector Moss.’

  They all shook hands.

  ‘I’m Tom, and this is Lottie Marie Harper, she’s been cast as the murderer.’

  The young girl was petite, with compact features and poker-straight hair. She had a small mouth which, when she smiled, showed a row of bottom teeth.

  ‘This is rather odd,’ said Lottie, speaking with a refined accent. She reached up and checked that her dark hair was still fixed in the topknot. ‘I’ve never played a real killer before. What else can you tell me? My agent really wasn’t all that specific…’

  Erika looked over at the young runner.

  ‘It’s okay, we’ve had her sign the release and the confidentiality agreement,’ he said.