The Night Stalker (8 page)

I
saac had been talking
to Erika on the phone beside his bed. When she’d gone, he sat back and stared at the receiver for a moment.

‘She just, sort of, hung up on me. Well, maybe she didn’t hang up, but she ended the call abruptly,’ he said.

Stephen lay beside him, working on his laptop. ‘I told you. She’s a cold fish,’ he replied as he typed.

Isaac watched the words for a moment as they streaked across the glowing screen. ‘That’s not fair, Stevie. She’s damaged. She’s still grieving for her husband, and on top of that she carries the guilt of his death around with her. She doesn’t exactly work in the kind of environment that encourages you to show your feelings.’

‘How predictable. What a cliché. The damaged female DCI, too busy for anyone but her work,’ said Stephen, still typing.

‘That’s very harsh, Stevie.’

‘
Life
is harsh.’

‘What about the books you write? Your DCI Bartholomew character is damaged.’

Stephen looked up from his laptop.

‘Yes, but DCI Bartholomew is far from a cliché. He’s far more multi-layered than whatshername…’

‘Erika.’

‘He’s an anti-hero. I’ve been praised for his originality, his flawed genius. I was nominated for a bloody Dagger Award!’

‘Okay, I wasn’t criticising, Stevie.’

‘Well, don’t lump my work in with your tragic copper friend.’

There was an awkward silence. Isaac began to collect up the empty chocolate bar wrappers which had pooled around Stephen on the duvet.

‘I’d like you to get to know her,’ Isaac said. ‘She’s not like that outside work. I’d like it if you could be friends. You heard me invite her for dinner.’

‘Isaac, I’ve got a deadline. When that’s passed, sure, I suppose I could have coffee with her,’ said Stephen, still typing. ‘She wasn’t exactly nice to me when she came over. She should be the one making the effort, not me.’

Isaac nodded and regarded Stephen’s beautiful face and naked torso. His skin was so smooth and perfect. It shimmered in the soft glow cast by the laptop. Deep down, Isaac knew that he was obsessed with Stephen, and that obsessions were destructive and dangerous, but he couldn’t bear not to be with him. He couldn’t bear to wake up and have the side of the bed next to him empty.

Stephen’s brow furrowed as he typed.

‘What are you doing, Stevie?’

‘Just a bit of research. I’m in an Internet chat room, discussing suicide methods.’ He looked up at Isaac. ‘It’s research for the new book, in case you get worried.’

‘People go online and discuss suicide methods?’ asked Isaac, crumpling the chocolate bar wrappers into a ball and peering over at the screen.

‘Yeah. There are chat rooms for every kind of quirk and fetish – not that suicide is necessarily a fetish. These people are all seriously discussing the best methods to end it all – the most successful ways you can do it, without being disturbed. Listen to this…’

‘I don’t want to hear,’ said Isaac. ‘I’ve seen too many suicide cases: overdoses, hangings, slashed wrists, gruesome poisoning. The worst are the people who jump. Last week, I had to try and work out what was what on a teenage girl who had leapt off the Hammersmith flyover. She hit the pavement with such force that her jawbone was forced up into her brain.’

‘Jesus,’ said Stephen, looking up at him again. ‘Can I use that?’

‘What?’

‘That’s really good. I could use that in my book.’

‘No!’ Isaac felt stung.

Stephen went back to his typing. ‘Oh, and don’t look at my Google search history. It’s full of questions like,
how long does it take the skin to putrefy when a dead body is buried in a lead-lined coffin?
’

‘I could tell you that.’

‘You just said you don’t want to talk about work!’

‘I can help you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. I just don’t want to talk about it
right now.
’

Stephen sighed and put his laptop on the bedside table. ‘I’m going for a fag.’ He picked up the packet of cigarettes and got up off the bed, moving over to the balcony doors.

‘If you’re going to go outside, put some clothes on,’ said Isaac, eyeing the pair of small black briefs Stephen was wearing.

‘Why? It’s late. It’s dark.’

‘Because…This is Blackheath. My neighbours are respectable.’ This wasn’t exactly true. A handsome young man had moved in next door, who Isaac suspected was gay. He was terrified that the neighbour and Stephen might meet. After all, Stephen had left him once before.

‘On the outside they might be respectable. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors?’ teased Stephen.

‘Please…’ said Isaac leaning over to embrace him. Stephen rolled his eyes and ducked away, pulling on a T-shirt. He put a cigarette in his mouth and moved to the door. Isaac watched him as he went out onto the balcony: his tall athletic frame, the cigarette dangling from his pouty lips, how his underwear clung to his muscular buttocks.

In his work life, Isaac was peerless: a brilliant forensic pathologist with a distinguished career. He was in control of every aspect of his profession and he deferred to no one. In his private life, however, he was clueless. Stephen Linley turned his world upside down. Stephen was in control of their relationship and he was in control of Isaac’s emotions. Isaac found that this both thrilled and unnerved him.

He reached over, grabbed Stephen’s laptop. He saw the chat room text appearing in chunks and moving up the screen. He minimised the window, and it was replaced by the text of the new novel Stephen was writing. Stephen’s novels were dark and violent. Isaac found reading them unpleasant, but he was drawn to them, and was ashamed to admit that he got a thrill from the dark violence, and from the way that Stephen could inhabit the minds of sadistic, brutal serial killers.

He was about to start reading when he realised he’d promised he wouldn’t read anything until it was finished. He replaced Stephen’s laptop and went out on the balcony, like an eager dog missing its owner.

L
aurel Road was
quiet and still when Erika inserted the key in the lock of Gregory Munro’s house and pulled the crime scene seal away from the door. She turned the key and gave the door a shove, separating the remains of the sticky seal. She stepped into the hallway. There was an urgent beeping noise, and she saw, glowing in the darkness, the panel for the alarm system.

‘Shit,’ she muttered. She hadn’t anticipated that after forensics had completed their work the house would be left alarmed. She stared at the screen, knowing she had only a few seconds before uniformed officers would be summoned, followed by the distraction of paperwork, where she would have to justify her presence. She keyed in the combination 4291 and the alarm deactivated. It was the fail-safe number often used to reset the alarms at crime scenes. It might not be the most secure way of doing things, but it saved a fortune in call-out fees.

It was stiflingly hot, and the rancid meaty smell of Gregory Munro’s dead body still hung faintly in the darkness. Erika flicked on a switch and the hallway lit up, the light petering out as the stairs rose into darkness. She wondered how the house would feel to someone who didn’t know it was a crime scene. To her, it still seemed to reverberate with violence.

She moved past the stairs and through to the kitchen, turning on the lights. She found what she had seen in the photo: a corkboard beside the fridge. Pinned to it were several takeaway menus, a handwritten shopping list, and a flyer for a security company: GUARDHOUSE ALARMS.

Erika unpinned the leaflet from the corkboard. The design looked professional, but it was printed on ordinary inkjet printer paper. The background was black with ‘GuardHouse Alarms’ written on it in red. The ‘H’ of ‘House’ morphed upwards into an image of a ferocious German shepherd. Underneath this was a phone number and email address. Erika turned the flyer over. Written in blue biro near the bottom was: ‘MIKE, 21ST JUNE 6.30PM’.

Erika pulled out her mobile and dialled the number. There was silence, and then a high-pitched tone and an automated voice told her the number was no longer in service. Erika went to the large glass sliding door at the back of the house and, after fiddling with the handle, it yielded with a whoosh. She stepped out onto the terrace. On the back wall of the house above the glass was a white security alarm box with ‘HOMESTEAD SECURITY’ stamped on it in red letters, the same as the box on the wall of her flat.

She came back inside and called Crane. When he answered, she could hear the sound of a television blaring in the background.

‘Sorry to call so late. It’s DCI Foster. Can you talk?’ she asked.

‘Hang on,’ he said. There was a rustle and then the noise of the television receded.

‘Sorry. Is this a bad time, Crane?’

‘No, it’s okay. You just saved me from
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
. Karen, my girlfriend, is mad on it, but I have aggro all day at work. I don’t enjoy watching crazy housewife aggro when I get home. Anyway, what can I do you for, boss?’

‘Gregory Munro. I’ve read through his phone records. It says he made a call to a security firm – GuardHouse Alarms Limited – on the 19th of June.’

‘Hang on, I’ll just wake up my laptop. Yes, GuardHouse Alarms. It was one of the numbers I chased up this morning.’

‘And what?’

‘I left a message on their answerphone, then a guy called me back to confirm that someone called Mike had made a home visit. He’d checked and all the alarm systems and security lights were sound and working.’

‘What did the guy sound like?’

‘I don’t know, normal. Whatever that is these days. He did have a twang to his voice, a sort of posh know-it-all type. Why?’

‘I’ve just called the number and it doesn’t exist. It’s been disconnected,’ said Erika.

‘What?’ There was a pause and she heard Crane’s keyboard tapping. Then a tinny ping.

‘I just sent an email to the address on the flyer and it bounced back. Mail delivery subsystem error, could not be delivered,’ said Crane.

Erika stepped back out into the dark garden and stared up into the gloom to the ‘HOMESTEAD SECURITY’ box fixed to the wall.

‘Jesus, boss. You think this was the killer?’

‘Yeah. This leaflet must have been hand-delivered, and presumably Gregory Munro contacted the number and organised for this Mike to come over…’

‘Mike was invited in and got to case the joint, gaining access to the layout, the alarm systems, security lights, everything,’ finished Crane.

‘And it’s likely you spoke to Mike today. He called you back on the GuardHouse Alarms phone number.’

‘Shit. What do you want me to do, boss?’

‘We need a trace on that phone and the email address, asap.’

‘I can bet you it’s a pre-paid, but I can have a crack at tracking it.’

‘We’ll need to re-interview the residents on Laurel Road and get details of all delivery people who’ve been seen here, in particular if they saw this Mike arriving on the 21st June.’

‘Okay, boss. I can run some stuff through the computer now. I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Thanks,’ said Erika. There was a click on the line as Crane hung up. She walked to the back fence, the dry grass crisp under her feet. It was still and silent. There was a faint sound of a car in the distance, and the hum of crickets. She jumped as a train blared out of the silence, clattering past on the track at the bottom of the garden.

She moved closer to the fence and crouched down under the tree, examining where the fence had been neatly clipped. Pulling the wire to one side, Erika crawled through the gap. She came up through some long, dry grass onto a path. She stood for a moment in the warmth of the evening, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. She crossed the narrow dirt path, moved through a gap in the tall trees and came out onto the railway line. She could see where the track stretched away into the distance. She came back to the path and pulled out her phone, activating her torch app and training the light left and right. The path was illuminated for a few feet and then vanished amongst trees and darkness. Erika crouched down under the tree at the end of the garden and looked at the house. It seemed to stare back at her: the two dark upstairs windows were like eyes.

‘Did you watch from here?’ Erika said softly to herself. ‘How long were you here? How much did you see? You’re not going to get away with this. I’m coming for you.’

I
t was barely mid-morning
, but already the sun was beating down relentlessly. The front lawns along a row of red-brick terraced houses were burnt in varying shades of yellow. The rush hour was over, and apart from a plane scratching its way across the clear blue sky the road was quiet.

Simone had stopped at the supermarket on her way back from her night shift at the hospital, and now she was walking along the pavement weighed down by several carrier bags. The plastic was digging almost unbearably into her palms, and she was pouring with sweat under her thick jacket. The scar tissue across her stomach was sore and inflamed from the sweat and from her uniform rubbing. She reached the crumbling terraced house at the end of the row and pushed against the gate. It caught on the concrete path, and she threw her weight angrily against it, once, twice, before it yielded unexpectedly and she lurched through, almost losing her balance.

She hurried to the front door, muttering curses, before dropping the bags on the front step with a clunk. She held up her hands, criss-crossed with deep red grooves. A neighbour emerged from the house next door. She was an elderly lady wearing a smart dress. As she locked her front door, she eyed Simone, searching in her coat pockets for her keys. The neighbour’s eyes flicked to the crumbling fence between their gardens, and over Simone’s burnt front lawn, which was littered with an old washing machine, empty paint cans and a heap of rotting brambles. Her eyes came back to Simone, who was now standing still, facing her.

‘Ah, good morning, Mrs Matthews,’ said the neighbour. Simone didn’t answer; she just stared with large, cold blue eyes. The neighbour found that the gaze made her uneasy. The eyes were dead, without emotion, and set a little too far apart. ‘Lovely day…’

Simone glared at the neighbour until she hurried away.

‘Nosy bitch,’ muttered Simone, before turning and pushing the key into the lock. The hallway was dingy and piled with old newspapers. Simone dragged in the shopping bags and threw her keys on the old, wooden hall table. She turned and closed the front door. It had once been beautiful, that door, with coloured glass in a diamond pattern. On sunny days it would cast a mosaic of soft colours on the pale hall carpet. It was now boarded up, with just a few of the blue diamonds visible at the top, above the piece of wood that was nailed to the door frame.

Simone turned from locking the door and her throat closed in fear. A man stood in the middle of the hall. His mouth hung open and his eyes were clouded over with white. He was naked and water dripped off his pale doughy skin.

She staggered back, feeling the door handle press into her back. She closed her eyes and opened them again. He was still there. Water now poured off him in thin rivulets, over the swell of his huge hairy belly, and the small pale stub of his genitals. The carpet below him was now a darkened circle as the water began to run off him faster. Simone closed her eyes tight, and opened them again. He was coming towards her, staggering along the carpet, his long yellow toenails catching on the carpet. She could smell his breath. Rancid onion mixed with stale booze.

‘NO!’ she cried, closing her eyes and slamming her fists against her face. ‘YOU CAN’T HURT ME, STAN! YOU’RE DEAD!’

She opened her eyes.

The hall was back as it was before: grubby and gloomy, but empty. Another plane scratched its way across the sky, the sound muffled, and she could hear her own laboured breathing.

He’d gone.

For now.