The Night Stalker (Detective Erika Foster 2)

The landing was in darkness, and a shaft of light from the bathroom fell across the carpet. Night Owl moved close to the door, just a pair of eyes gleaming through the slit in the hood.

Jack was well-built with a strong, lithe body. Night Owl watched him in the shower as he lathered up, the shampoo foaming white against his wet hair. A stream of soapy water coursed down his muscular back and between his buttocks. As he showered, Jack began to hum lightly, tunelessly.

‘You disgust me,’ whispered Night Owl. The singing stopped as Jack ducked his head under the water, his wet hair now sleek as a seal.

It was intoxicating to stand and watch, undetected. To think that everyone in the country was talking about this man… this arrogant, selfish, bastard. The water was extinguished with a metallic squeak, and Night Owl ducked swiftly back into the shadows.

Jack came out of the shower, passing his son and daughter’s bedrooms. He kept the doors closed on their empty rooms. With the doors closed, he could pass them each night without feeling a twang of regret and longing. He padded through to the elegant master bedroom, his bottle of Bud in one hand, towel in the other, drying his hair. He sat naked on the edge of the bed, dropping the towel on the carpet. The Bud was quickly getting warm and flat, so he chugged back the last of it and placed the empty on the spare bedside table, on the unoccupied side.

He thought of his wife’s warm, comfortable body. How she’d often be sitting up, pretending to be reading a book when he came home late. The book was always a prop, an excuse for her to be awake so that she could play out her disappointment.

He went to get up and go downstairs for another drink, but his head was suddenly heavy. So were his limbs, and he felt exhausted. He eased himself into a lying position, shuffling round so his head was on the pillow. He reached for the remote control on the side table and flicked on the TV. Footage of him leaving the club on Charlotte Street an hour earlier was running on Sky with a red ‘BREAKING NEWS’ banner across the bottom of the screen: ‘OFCOM TO INVESTIGATE JACK HART CONTROVERSY’.

As he looked around the room, the colour seemed to bloom out of the television news in streaks. Jack lifted his head and the room spun violently. He flopped back on the pillow. He was shivering too, despite the heat. He managed to pull the duvet cover out from underneath him and burrowed under, relishing the warmth.

‘Hang on, hang on,’ he murmured, vaguely aware of the words moving across the screen. The sound from the television rolled over him; the room spun. He jerked his head, as a smear of black seemed to move beside the bed. A flash by the door and it was gone. From somewhere deep in his mind, Jack realised that something wasn’t right. Maybe he had some kind of twenty-four-hour flu thing. Hang on, I should call someone, if I’m being investigated by OFCOM, he thought.

Night Owl worked quickly, moving downstairs and dead-bolting the front door, and then taking a small, neat pair of secateurs and clipping the Internet modem and phone cable next to the landline. The lights on the modem blinked off. Night Owl moved to the thin jacket that Jack had hung up in the hall, pulled out a Blackberry phone from the pocket, swiftly removed the SIM card and dropped the phone on the floor, pressing a heel against it as the screen buckled and cracked.

The final task was flicking off the mains electricity. The security panel beeped, and Night Owl keyed in the PIN, then absorbed the silence. The faint sound of a groan floated down from above. Night Owl placed a hand on the bannister and slowly began to climb back up the stairs.

The room now spun violently for Jack, as he lay in bed. It took him a few moments to realise that the television was now dark and silent, and so was his bedroom. Panic seemed to be just beyond his reach, a fuzzy, far-off emotion. His mind went back to his wife, Marie. He reached out to touch her side of the bed in the darkness and was confused. Where was she?

He felt the mattress move and flatten beside him; someone had climbed into bed. He reached his arm out and felt a warm body.

‘Marie?’ he croaked into the silence. He groped around and felt flesh under thin clothing. ‘Marie? When did you come home?’ Despite the drugs in his blood, he remembered she was gone. She’d left him. Moved out with the kids. He stiffened and tried to pull away.

‘Shhhhhh… Just relax,’ said a voice. It wasn’t Marie’s voice. It was sharp and had a strange high tone to it.

Jack tried to get away, the bed tipping and lurching underneath him. His limbs had no strength or coordination. He grabbed at the landline on his bedside table, knocking it to the floor. He then felt the person climb onto his back, and he was turned over onto his front. His limbs flopped helplessly as he tried to fight, but swift, strong hands fastened his wrists together and then flipped him back over.