The Night Stalker (Detective Erika Foster 2)

73

Erika booked two rooms in the aptly named Sea Breeze Hotel, which was cheap and cheerful and a few doors down from Keith’s flat. The rooms were next to each other, rather small and poky, and overlooked the dustbin-filled courtyard behind. They grabbed some food from the restaurant downstairs, then came back up to Erika’s room and prepared to wait.

To kill time until darkness fell, they started to look through the colossal amount of chat logs that Lee had downloaded from Keith’s computer. There were four years’ worth in total, and reading through the pages and pages of data would have been impossible. After dividing the chat logs into years, they imported each year into a Word document. They then spent time searching through a list of keywords which could take them directly to specific exchanges.

‘This chat is disturbing,’ said Peterson, who was sitting in a chair by the small window. ‘I just put in the keyword “suicide” and I’ve got pages and pages where Keith is talking about killing himself, and exactly how he would do it. Listen to this: “I’d turn off the lights in my flat. It would be the one time I would let the darkness envelop me. I’d take a hit on the gas canister and pull the bag over my head, filling it with gas to stop me from panicking. I would then draw it tight and breathe, taking in great gulps until I passed out. I’d just slip away, painlessly, easily… like a dream which never ends.”’

‘When was this dated?’ asked Erika.

‘This was three years ago, early on in their correspondence,’ said Peterson.

‘I’ve put in a search for the words “wheelchair” and “disabled”,’ said Erika, working at her laptop. ‘There are only fleeting mentions from Night Owl, one talking about seeing a disabled man in the street and how sorry she felt for him, and another minor mention. He’s never told her.’

‘She talks here about being scalded by her husband,’ said Peterson, after a silence. ‘It’s dated around the same time. He tried to rape her and she ran and locked herself in the bathroom. He came after her with a pan of boiling water, punched her in the face and then put her in the bath, half-unconscious, stripped her and slowly poured the scalding water over her naked body. She says she was badly scarred, but didn’t go to the doctor until a week later and only because the sores became infected.’

‘Did she say who he was? Does she name the doctor?’ asked Erika.

‘No, but she says that the doctor didn’t believe her when she said her husband had burned her.’

Erika looked up at Peterson in horror.

‘She says the doctor thought that the medication she was taking, coupled with chronic lack of sleep, was making her hallucinate… She’d previously come to him with similar burns when she had accidentally filled a bath with scalding water and stepped into it. Her husband had, in the past, confided in the doctor about her psychotic episodes and she had previously been sectioned.’

‘Jesus,’ said Erika. ‘He believed the husband over her…’

It was now dark outside and they could hear, through the open window, the faint sound of the waves dragging at the shingle.

‘In the press they always describe people as monsters, and we use that term too,’ said Erika. ‘But surely monsters aren’t born? A tiny baby is never a monster. Doesn’t everyone come into this world good? Isn’t it their lives and their circumstances which turn them bad?’

A beep came from the laptop Peterson was using.

‘It’s Keith,’ he said. ‘He’s started talking online with Night Owl.’

74

Keith sat at his computer stand in his tiny living room. The lights seemed to beat down on him and he was drenched in sweat. It dripped down from his wispy hair onto the black PVC of his seat. Erika and Peterson sat on the folding chairs behind him.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, turning to face them.

‘You need to just talk normally for a bit. We don’t want her to get suspicious,’ said Erika.

He nodded, turned back and started to type.

DUKE: Hey, Night Owl. What’s up?

NIGHT OWL: Hi.

DUKE: What’s up?

A few moments passed. Erika opened another button of her blouse and fanned the material. She looked over at Peterson, who was sweltering too. ‘Can we turn off any of these lights?’ he asked, wiping his forehead with his shirtsleeve.

‘No! No, I don’t like the dark. The shadows,’ said Keith. ‘You can open a window, if you like.’

Peterson went to the small kitchen and opened the window above the sink. The smell of blocked drains floated across the garish carpet but at least it was cooler.