by Adam Croft
‘Right,’ I say. My mind seems like a muddled mess, but I know damn well that I’m highly unlikely to ever forget a single word of this conversation.
‘Whatever you do, only ring that number once. Never ring it again and never use my name. Got that?’
‘Got it,’ I say, swallowing hard. It seems incredibly daunting, yet ridiculously easy.
34
Nick
When I get home I secretly hope Tasha isn’t there. All I can think of is visions of what’s going to happen. But that’s always where human beings fall down, isn’t it? We don’t like our current situation and we see the very distinct possibility of a perfect outcome, but we’re never willing to endure what happens in between. If I were to offer you either a fiver or a punch in the face and then a tenner, which would you take? If you’d take the fiver, you’re the same as most people. If you’d take the tenner, you’re like me.
As soon as I walk in the door I can hear her voice. She’s on the phone, but I can’t make out who she’s speaking to. I force a smile and lift my hand in a pathetic wave as I pass the living room door and head into the kitchen. I lean on the work surface, my palms outstretched as I stare at the coffee machine and will it to make a cup for me. I know the Rosie Ragdoll is there on top of the clock, looking down at me. I don’t even need to look at it to know.
I can’t make out what Tasha’s saying from here, but I can hear the odd ‘Yeah’ or ‘Well, that’s the thing’ through the walls. I’ve got to be honest: I like my peace and quiet. But it’s going to seem strange not hearing Tasha’s voice again. It all sounds so final, but then I guess it is. Death does that.
I don’t know what’s going on in Tasha’s mind. I’ve always found it difficult to work that out, but now it’s even harder. I’ve not got any point of reference. I don’t think she’s given up and believes that Ellie is dead, but it’s her weird keep-calm-and-carry-on normality that’s worrying me. With Tasha, this is usually a coping mechanism. She was like it when my parents died, too. She suddenly becomes very British and moves into organisational mode as her emotions almost shut down. I’m not going to lie – that sort of stability is what’s keeping me grounded at the moment. Of course, that won’t last for long. Not once she’s dead.
My heart flutters, a surge of adrenaline hitting me as I realise everything is now almost out of my hands. Once I’ve done as Warren told me and I’ve got him the money, that’ll be it. No more input from me. Nothing to do. Just sit and wait. That’s both comforting and incredibly worrying.
Do I need to email Jen Hood to say everything’s in hand? I decide it’s best not to. Just in case. It’d be pretty stupid to send an email saying I’m going to have my wife killed. What I’ve sent so far wouldn’t necessarily incriminate me in anything. I don’t think so, anyway. But why hasn’t Jen Hood been in contact with me to see if I’m going to do it? Why isn’t there some sort of deadline? Is this a deliberate tactic to force my hand? Go quiet and hope I cave in?
The money. Fifteen grand. How am I going to get hold of fifteen grand in the days before my wife dies and not arouse suspicion? Drawing it out of the bank seems a stupid idea in retrospect, but I’m not exactly going to call Warren and ask if he takes payment in instalments.
To keep it untraceable and to fit the gambling story, I’d need to get cash, and ideally from a number of different sources. Only problem with that is there’ll be more leads and witnesses. I can’t sell the car because that’d look suspicious. Anyway, only recently it was considered a crime scene. I can just see the advert now: One careful owner. Forensically declared free of child’s blood. Getting hold of fifteen grand without it being traceable isn’t exactly something that can be easily done, though. Besides which, Tasha would probably notice fifteen grand missing from our account.
If you can’t hide the money entering the system, you need to mask it leaving. This whole gambling story seems a bit far-fetched to me. Perhaps I could just mask a bit of it, or even the majority. But the whole lot? To go from non-gambler to fifteen grand in debt with the local bookies in the space of a few days doesn’t quite seem right to me. It’s fairly reasonable that a guy whose daughter has just gone missing and become the object of national scrutiny would have a fair few costs to bear. That’s why people set up trust funds. As long as it was legal, how I got hold of the money wouldn’t really matter if I made it look as though it was going to a cause which would be helping get Ellie back home. Strictly speaking, of course, it is, but I’m not entirely sure the police will see it like that.
I start to get grandiose ideas about carrying off some sort of bank job or heist but very quickly quash them. Experienced gangs attempt this sort of thing and get caught, so what chance do I have? Besides, the sentences for armed robbery and murder aren’t all that dissimilar.
Fifteen grand. Christ. There’s some cash in the safe in our bedroom – about three grand – which was meant to be our ‘emergency fund’. Tasha had panicked a bit when the banking crisis hit and Northern Rock fell. We had some money in a savings account with them and managed to get it out, but she’s been convinced ever since that we should at least have some emergency savings kept in cash. We’re the only two who know it’s there, and if Tasha wasn’t around then it’d only be me. To anyone else, that cash doesn’t exist.
Three grand isn’t quite fifteen grand, though. It’s only a fifth of what I need to get Warren to carry out the hit. That’s when it hits me. I need fifteen grand to get Warren to carry out the hit. This town is full of desperate drug addicts and people who’d cut off their right arm for five hundred quid, so there’s got to be someone who’d kill a stranger for three grand.
But how the hell does someone go about getting that organised? You can’t exactly walk up to someone in the street, ask them if they’re a drug addict and offer them some cash to murder your wife. This is getting ridiculous. The risks would be far too high. At least someone like Warren knows what he’s doing. Like anything, you get what you pay for. At the end of the day, though, if you can’t afford the very best then you’re just going to have to make do with something that gets the job done within budget.
A whole host of ideas rattles around my mind as to how I can get this moving. I need to get it moving, because I need Ellie back. The problem is, my face and name are getting better known now, at least locally, thanks to the media attention Ellie’s disappearance has garnered. If a local lowlife is willing to kill a stranger for cash, he’d certainly be willing to cough up and sell his story about it. I can’t risk that. That leaves me only one option: doing it myself. Still not an idea I’m willing to entertain.
I think back to the risks of the killer opening up and telling all. That would only be a risk if it could be proven that it was me who ordered the hit. Sure, I’d probably be prime suspect, but if I had the perfect alibi for the time and had never actually come into direct contact with the killer . . .
Anonymity was what was needed, as well as a good way of covering my tracks. I remember doing some research a few months back into the ‘dark web’; a corner of the internet hidden from search engines and most browsers, accessible only anonymously, and then through a series of proxy servers. Sounds complicated, but it’s not.
If you or I connect to the internet on our computers, the computer connects straight to the internet service provider, which connects us to the website we’re browsing. Using the dark web, there are tens, if not hundreds, of connections in between, bouncing from China to Canada, France to the Philippines. At each stage, a layer of encryption is added to hide the true source of the connection. Long story short, by the time you’ve connected to a website, your traffic has bounced around the world numerous times in the space of a second or two and has been made completely anonymous. If I could find a killer on the dark web, I’d be in business.
Even with the anonymity of the dark web, I can’t risk using my own computer or internet connection. I’ve had my laptop returned to me, but it’s still not worth the risk. I think of my most
IT-savvy friend and give him a call.
35
Nick
Alan’s back bedroom looks more like the Starship Enterprise than a place anyone would ever sleep. A tattered old dining room chair is the only incongruity in this place of flashing lights and high technology. He has four flat-screen monitors, two side by side with another two on top, leaning forward slightly to provide a nice curved effect.
‘That’s bad that they’ve not given you your laptop back yet,’ Alan says, rummaging in a cupboard.
‘Yeah, tell me about it. I’m going stir-crazy not being able to write, too. It’s the only thing keeping me distracted at the moment.’
‘I can imagine, man,’ Alan replies. His upbringing had been very middle class, but he still had a bizarre manner of using colloquialisms and street talk which jarred with his voice. ‘We’ve all got to have our creative outlets, you know what I mean? Ah, here we are.’ Alan emerges from the cupboard with a black laptop, the power cable wrapped around it.
‘Used to be my baby, this one. Quad-core Sandy Bridge processor and Radeon HD graphics. What a beaut. Getting on a bit now, but still good. Don’t worry about rushing it back to me. I don’t use it any more.’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘Actually, do you reckon I could get some work done here for a bit? It’s like a madhouse back at mine,’ I lie. ‘Phone going every five minutes and journalists knocking on the door. Just be nice to get back in the zone, you know?’
‘Yeah, sure, no probs,’ he says, slapping me on the back. ‘Sit yourself downstairs at the dining room table if you like. Probably get some peace and quiet down there.’
‘Actually, you might be able to help me,’ I say, cradling the laptop under my armpit. ‘I’m trying to write a cyber thriller. I’ve got a character who’s meant to be one of these shady online arms and drugs traders on the dark web. I don’t want to do too much poking around for obvious reasons, but I’d like to at least get the technical side of things right. Reckon you could run me through the basics?’
‘Course. It’s actually pretty simple,’ he says, grabbing the laptop from me and flipping open the lid before switching it on. ‘This has already got Tor on it, if I remember rightly. It stands for “The Onion Router”. It’s basically a browser you can use to access the dark web. They called it that because it creates layers of different connections around your browsing, to mask who you actually are and where you’re connecting from.’
‘And people use this for trading illegal stuff, right?’ I ask.
‘They sure do. It’s all kept pretty untraceable, especially when they use bitcoin as their currency. It’s a digital currency so there aren’t any registered bank accounts or anything. Keeps it all anonymous and more or less untraceable.’
‘That’s mad,’ I say, smiling and pretending that I don’t already know this and am truly amazed.
‘Yeah, totally. There are these places like the Silk Road, which is basically like an illegal version of eBay, where people just sell drugs and guns and people’s credit card details and stuff.’
‘Wasn’t that shut down? I thought I saw something on the news.’
Alan laughs. ‘Nothing’s ever shut down on the dark web. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, man. They shut it down, someone opens it again in a different place. No problem.’
‘Crazy,’ I say. ‘What other stuff do people do with it? I mean, if they’re trading stolen credit cards and guns and stuff, surely the sky’s the limit for these sorts of people?’
‘Yeah, totally. There’s some really fucked-up shit. If you thought the internet was bad, the dark web is something else. If you think of the most fucked-up thing you can think of on the internet, that’s basically pre-watershed compared to this shit.’
‘How’s it policed?’ I ask casually.
‘It isn’t really. Well, I mean there’s obviously coppers on there, knocking about trying to get information on who some of these people are, but the ones who are really careful can’t be identified. That’s the beauty of the dark web – you can only ever really identify yourself. If you want to stay completely below the radar, it’s a piece of piss.’
The laptop has now booted, and Alan’s opened the Tor browser and is busily scrolling through a list of websites. ‘Here, try this one,’ he says, clicking a link. ‘It’s basically an underground dark web version of Craigslist. If you thought the original was bad, this is just mental.’
I’m vaguely familiar with Craigslist, which is basically a catalogue of online classified adverts. Everything from second-hand cars to coin collections, right through to escorts and prostitutes. I had an inkling there’d be far fewer coin collections on this version, though.
‘This is great, thanks,’ I say. ‘Should give me a few ideas and help keep it all realistic.’
‘Yeah, good thing. I’m totally sick of the way all these books and films do the computer stuff, y’know? “Oh, let me just zoom in on that grainy image and read the inscription on the guy’s ring.” “Let me just tap the keyboard a few times and hack into NASA.” It’s all bullshit, man.’
I chuckle. ‘Yeah, tell me about it. Mind if I go and have a browse? I’ll keep away from the weird shit,’ I say.
Alan laughs and sits back at his computer. ‘You’ll have a fucking job.’
36
Tasha
I’m going stir-crazy. Returning to work just isn’t an option right now. The police have advised us not to read newspapers or watch TV. Sitting around and waiting is the closest thing to hell I can imagine. I’m spending most of the day on the phone, speaking to friends and family and keeping in touch with work colleagues. Even though they’ve all told me they’re there if I need them and to call any time, I’m starting to sense that they’re getting a bit bored of hearing the same stuff over and over again. But my brain can’t handle anything else right now.
I’ve got to face that other people’s lives are still going on. They’re still coming back from work to their kids, still sitting down in front of the TV, still carrying on with their normal everyday lives. That seems perverse, and at the same time it makes me feel so angry and alone. How can people just go about their business, not caring? I know people mean well by trying to be nice, but how can they really understand what I’m going through? The fact is they can’t.
My growing realisation that friends are starting to become less patient and supportive is something that really scares me. After them, what next? The media frenzy will surely die down after a little while. It always does. And then what? Will people stop looking for Ellie? Will the searches start to scale down? Will the police close the file and move on to the next missing child? And what about me and Nick? What happens to us? How do we deal with the fact that our little girl isn’t coming home? Because, let’s face it, the more time that passes, the less likely it is to happen. People will stop looking. People will stop caring. And I don’t think I could handle that eventuality.
I’ve found myself punctuating the day with cups of tea. It helps a little to keep some routine, some reminders of how everyday life used to be. Not much, but slightly. And then I feel a deep sense of guilt and shame at even attempting to retain some sense of normality. But what is the right way to deal with this? There isn’t one.
The doorbell goes. I instinctively peer through the curtains and look outside, but I can’t see anything. I get up and walk over to the front door, using the spy hole to see who’s there. It’s Jane McKenna. I unlock the door and open it, letting her in without exposing myself to the outside air.
‘Warm in here,’ she says, before anything else. ‘How are you, Tasha?’
‘How do you think?’ I reply, trying to sound pleasant but failing. She ignores it.
‘I was just wondering if we could have a quick chat. There’s no news as such, but I wanted to get a few things straight. Can I come through?’ She gestures towards the living room.
I nod and she walks through, with me following closely behind. We sit down on separate sofas and she crosses one leg
over the other, putting a notepad down on her lap as she taps a pen against it.
‘How have things been between you and Nick?’ she asks. ‘In the last couple of days, I mean.’
I widen my eyes and sigh. ‘It’s hard. Obviously. What do you expect?’
‘Is he in?’
‘Uh, no, I think he went out. He came back briefly, but went out again.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, after a pause. I realise how odd this sounds. As if a wife wouldn’t know where her husband was while she’s waiting at home for news on their abducted daughter.
‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Jane asks, in much the same tone as a concerned friend might use.
‘Well, no,’ I reply. ‘Truth is, we’ve not exactly been talking much.’
She smiles benevolently. ‘Have you spoken to the family liaison officer? We can put you in touch with people who can help there.’
‘We don’t need help, thank you very much. We need you to find our daughter.’ I surprise myself with the tone that comes out. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘We’re doing all we can,’ she says. ‘I know it might not look like much from this angle, but we’ve got a whole team of people working behind the scenes to find Ellie. These people know what they’re doing.’
I nod.
‘What about his friends?’ she asks.
‘What about them?’
‘Is there anyone he sees regularly? Anyone he might have gone to see today? We just need to build up a bigger picture. You’d be surprised how it can help sometimes.’