The Night Stalker (Detective Erika Foster 2)

‘Duhu…kah,’ came a sound from Stan’s mouth. It wasn’t exactly a voice, more of a sigh. An exhale. ‘Duhu…kah, Duhu…kah.’ His arm flopped down by his side and his mouth pulled up at both sides into a grin. It was the grin she remembered: hungry, looming close to her face, coupled with pain. He started to walk towards her, the water pouring off him and soaking the carpet. Now she felt fear.

‘NO!’ she screamed. ‘NO!’ She hurled the heavy wooden scrubbing brush at him. He vanished, and there was a crash as the brush hit the mirror in the hall. It burst into shards and they scattered down onto the floor.

Stan was gone. The carpet was dry, and she realised what he’d said.

Duke. He’d said Duke.

She hurried to her computer in the hallway under the stairs and logged on.

NIGHT OWL: Duke?

Moments later, Duke logged on.

DUKE: Night Owl, hi! Rough night?

NIGHT OWL: Why do you say that?

DUKE: I know u. Better than you know yourself.

Simone paused with her hands above the keyboard.

NIGHT OWL: Do you, though? Do you really KNOW me?

This time there was a long pause. Simone stared at the cursor, as it blinked. She wondered if Duke was sitting there with his fingers poised, trying to think what to type. Had he put things together?

For the first time, she wondered where Duke lived. She was used to thinking of him living here in her computer. She’d talked to him for the past few years about her plans, what she fantasised about, the pain she would inflict on her doctor, on the TV man, the others to come. Duke had always been the one to encourage her. And he’d spoken about his own fears – his fear of the dark, his failed suicide attempts. She remembered the harrowing description of how he’d attempted suffocation with a suicide bag without gas. He had placed it on his head, tightened the string around his neck and then, as he’d begun to asphyxiate, he’d panicked and clawed at the bag, eventually ripping it off his head – but the cord had caught his left eye, ripping the eyelid and tearing open his eyeball.

He’d said he would die without her, and she believed him.

Simone blinked. The cursor was moving again across the screen.

DUKE: Of course I know you, Night Owl. I know you better than all the rest of them. And I promise, your secrets will die with me.

47

Erika was with Crane in one of the cramped technical suites leading off from the incident room.

‘Okay, so here’s your new phone,’ said Crane. ‘Keep the old one on you, charge it regularly, but only use it if she calls again. The number is now being monitored. If she calls, the trace equipment will kick in automatically. No delay. Just don’t forget that – I’ve known officers who’ve been caught out accidentally making private calls, which have been recorded.’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t forget. Although my private life is very boring,’ said Erika, taking the phones. ‘Hang on, this is a touch screen,’ she added, seeing the new handset he’d given her. ‘Is there nothing with buttons?’

‘Well, technically it’s an upgrade from that old handset, boss,’ replied Crane.

There was a knock at the door and Moss stuck her head around. ‘Boss, you got a moment?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll see if I can rustle you up an old Nokia,’ said Crane.

‘Thanks,’ Erika said. She followed Moss out into the busy incident room, over to the huge map of Greater London pinned up on the wall. It was six-foot square and a maze of streets. Blotches of green indicated the many parks around the capital, but most prominent was the River Thames, a curving line of blue, carving through the centre.

‘She used a payphone to call you,’ said Moss. ‘We traced it to Ritherdon Road, a residential street in Balham. It’s about four miles from your flat in Forest Hill. The phone box in question gets no action. It was the first call made from there in three months. Because of this, British Telecom is planning to remove it at the end of the month.’

‘Why a payphone? Are we thinking she hasn’t got a phone?’ asked Peterson, pushing a red pin into Ritherdon Road towards the bottom of the map.

‘No, I think she’s clever,’ said Erika. ‘She knows we can trace a mobile phone. Even if she were using a prepaid phone, we’d be able to trace the call to the nearest mobile phone mast and get her IMEI number and all the handset info. This way she remains anonymous. Dare I ask about CCTV?’

‘Okay, so this is the phone box,’ said Moss, pointing to the red pin in the map, ‘and the first CCTV cameras are a quarter of a mile away.’ She ran her finger further down to where Ritherdon Road met Balham High Road. ‘There’s a Tesco Metro on the corner of Balham High Road, also known as the A24, and there are CCTV cameras at intervals in both directions. We’ve got DC Warren over there on the blower, working on getting the footage from the Tesco car park security cameras, and the cameras along the A24 in both directions…’