Tedious.

In a dark corner, opposite the old hospital, he shuts down his smartphone and slips it into his backpack. He looks across at the large brown-brick Victorian block, which seems more of a workhouse than a maternity hospital. Chau’s room is next to the large green memorial clock on the first floor. All the lights are out except for hers.

He loosens the nylon chest harness to make it more comfortable, pulls up his hood and covers the bottom half of his face with a black bandana.

She appears at the window and looks out, but doesn’t see him.

He circles to the rear of the building, crosses the old car park and descends a set of worn concrete steps to the basement. Removing his backpack, he peers through the grubby glass of a lead sash window.

It’s too dark to see anything.

From the backpack he removes a torch and shines the beam inside. The room is wide and desolate with peeling green paint on the walls, an ancient ward bed with a stained mattress and a battered steel gurney tipped over onto its side. Hanging from the damp, infested ceiling are the remains of a broken light bulb, a mouth of shard-like transparent teeth open wide and howling a silent scream.

Here is a derelict beauty that only he can appreciate.

The window lock is old and rusty and breaks easily with the screwdriver he retrieves from his bag.

He slides the window up, climbs inside and closes it quietly behind him.

From the backpack he removes the GoPro camera, attaches it to the shoulder mount on his chest harness and switches on the device.

He climbs the stairwell to the ground floor and walks across the reception area, wrapping wire around the handles of the adjoining doors.

He hears the sound of music blast from a speaker. A crashing guitar riff and tapping drum beat echoes throughout the building, shattering the silence.

He shakes the doors, ensuring they are secure, and then follows the sound of the loud gothic punk music coming from Chau’s room on the first floor. His soft black shoes step in line to the funeral-pace bass which begins to gather as a sliding guitar echoes like the scratching of undead fingernails on glass throughout the vast bleak corridor.

He glides down the hallway, melding into the shadows, and through a crack in the door sees Chau’s slender back. She is folding clothes and placing them into an old suitcase.

His heart beats fast in time to the rhythm and guitar riff.

Her neck is pale and soft.

He swallows.

He stands at the entrance and pushes the door gently. It creaks but she seems not to hear.

Chau sings along to the music.

She stiffens suddenly.

He looks across at the dark night outside the window and smiles at his reflection in the glass. He is perfectly framed in the doorway like a twenty-first-century Grim Reaper.