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 MURDER’.