by Adam Croft
Despite Derek’s alibi and the CCTV footage showing that I can’t have done it myself, I’m starting to panic that McKenna might trace Tasha’s attack back to me. What if they find the person who did it? What if he caves in and confesses? What if he comes to some sort of plea bargain with the police and McKenna comes knocking?
They can’t prove a thing. I know they can’t. Okay, so I spoke to Mark. I met up with an old school friend. What of it? And yeah, I was in the Talbot Arms and I spoke to Warren. That doesn’t mean a thing. There’s no way they can link the attack to Warren. At that point they’ll probably work out what went on, but they can’t prove a thing.
All of these thoughts whizz around my head, barely registering before they disappear again and make way for another.
I go to pour myself another glass of water but opt for something stronger.
After a second glass of whisky, I decide to head upstairs. When I get there, Tasha’s sitting up in bed with the laptop on her knees, replying to an email.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘Working.’
‘Come on, Tash,’ I say, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. ‘I think you can take a few days off work seeing as you’ve just been mugged and your daughter has gone missing. They might just give you that much.’
‘I can’t afford the time off,’ she replies, not even bothering to take her eyes off the screen.
‘They can’t begrudge you the time off. You’ve got a legal right to it,’ I tell her.
‘It’s not like that. That’s not how it works. I’ve already missed important meetings.’
‘So what? They can have someone else do your work while you’re away,’ I say, trying to convince her.
Finally, she looks at me. There’s anger in her eyes.
‘Do you have any idea the sacrifices I’ve made for my career?’ she says. I feel like telling her yes, she’s sacrificed everything for it, including a decent family life and a moral compass. ‘I’ve worked so hard to get as far as I have, and now it’s all going to go to waste because I’m stuck here at home and other people are picking up my work and my clients. Is that really what you want?’
I snap. ‘How the hell can you only be thinking about work when your daughter is missing? What’s wrong with you?’ She sits and stares blankly at me so I let loose, giving her both barrels. ‘You’ve never cared about Ellie, have you? Or me. It’s always been your career. Your perfect image. Your own needs. You leave me at home to look after our daughter while you go off following your career.’
‘Nick, just because I’ve got a proper job and you haven’t, I don’t think—’
I don’t hear any more as I slam the bedroom door and head back downstairs for another night on the sofa.
53
Nick
This sofa’s starting to feel more familiar than my own bed. That can only be a bad sign, but it’s a hell of a lot better than sleeping upstairs with the dragon.
I’ve switched off push notifications for email on my phone. Every time the thing buzzed it nearly gave me a heart attack. Of course, it was always spam or a newsletter from a company I once bought a pen from eight years ago.
I need to regain some control, so now I only check my emails manually. I’m being extra cautious, but by now I’m pretty sure my emails aren’t being monitored. Plus, it’s probably illegal. I’m not naïve enough to think that these things don’t go on, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere or the paranoia will finish me.
I open the Mail app on my phone and five messages ping through. That’s just from the last couple of hours. Funnily enough, the concerned messages from family and friends seem to have stopped and there are just four newsletters and another email from Jen Hood.
To keep myself calm and focused, I methodically delete each of the other four emails first. I’ve got to keep a level head. Then, fingers shaking, I open Jen Hood’s email. The subject line is Ellie and the email has just the words The password is Natasha, followed by a Vimeo link.
I click the link and it takes me straight to a Vimeo page. The text on the screen says This is a password-protected video. Do you have the password to watch this private video? It sounds weird, but I’m really fucked off by the picture of a hand being held palm out like some sort of jumped-up nightclub bouncer. I try to remain calm and type Natasha’s name in the password field. I hit ‘Submit’.
The next page loads everything instantly except the video itself, which seems to be taking an age, hidden behind a plain white box. I’m on the verge of throwing the phone out of the window, but then my screen changes and the video loads. It’s now a black box. I press the ‘Play’ button and turn my phone sideways to get the full-screen view.
After a couple of seconds, the black screen fades to a blurred shot of what could be any young girl. It’s the whimpering I recognise first, which is bizarre, because it’s not a whimpering I’ve heard before. It certainly isn’t the usual whimpering, like on that morning when she forgot the picture of Miss Williams. It’s pained, desperate, real.
‘Daddy, I want to come home,’ she says as the picture begins to clear and the tears start to cloud my eyes. ‘Please can you do what you have to do so I can come home.’ She begins to cry. They say love’s just a chemical reaction in the brain, but I can feel the pain in my chest as I hear her pained desperation. Just as quickly as it started, the video ends.
I’m lost, completely lost. One part of me wants to watch it over and over again, but another part knows I can’t bear to. I close the Vimeo page and my email inbox reappears, this time with another new email. It doesn’t even register at first – I’m still in pieces – but before long I realise it’s another email from Jen Hood. I open it and read the text.
I’m glad to see you’ve finally seen what it is you have to do, but it’s just not good enough. I want her dead, not just injured. You’ll need to try harder. She has to die or you will never see Ellie again. Don’t even bother trying to track us down. I can see everything you’re doing. One false move and you will never see her again. You know what to do.
My hands shaking, I close the email app and lock my phone.
I need another drink.
54
Nick
I’m in a quandary. My initial instinct is to take the video to the police. After all, they’ll be able to trace it, won’t they? All of this talk of killing Tasha to free Ellie seems completely irrelevant when I can see my baby girl crying on a video screen, begging to come home. This needs to end now.
But if I show the police, the first thing they’ll want to know is why I didn’t tell them earlier about Jen Hood’s emails. What possible reason have I got for not wanting to tell the police that a stranger offered me the chance to get my daughter back by killing my wife? Apart from the obvious, that is.
Besides which, it’d completely remove that option for me. The only avenue it would leave is putting my complete faith in the police to find whoever’s taken Ellie and save her before it’s too late. I quickly realise that’s a level of faith I just don’t have. I need to keep my options open, and coming clean to the police about the Jen Hood thing would take those options away from me, not to mention leaving me under a huge amount of suspicion.
I wonder if I could get away with showing them the video but not the emails. Problem is, they’d want to know where the video came from. They’d have their forensics people all over it and just deleting the other emails wouldn’t be enough to get past them. And how suspicious would that look?
I think about putting the video on a memory stick and claiming it was pushed through my door or sent in the post or something. Would they be able to tell? I don’t understand enough about computers to know if they’d be able to see that the video originally came from an email. Can they track things like that? I could look online and research it to find out, but what if they discovered that, too?
I’m quickly coming to realise that every tiny potential move could have huge ramifications. Even the quickest Go
ogle search could unravel the whole thing. Funny thing is, I’ve not even done anything illegal. I haven’t kidnapped Ellie. I haven’t threatened to murder a child. I’ve done nothing wrong. All I did was leave her in the car for a minute. Two, tops. Does that really warrant this level of paranoia? Yeah, at a push the attack on Tasha could be considered my fault, but hell, I didn’t actually do it myself.
What’s wrong with me? I’m now trying to justify organising a hit on my wife. The worst fucking hit of all time, too, it seems. What if Tasha saw her attacker? What if she identifies him later? What if the guy is caught and crumbles and the whole thing leads back to me? He’s obviously not the most calm and collected bloke in the world if he couldn’t finish the job properly.
All of these thoughts fly through my head at once. I can hear them screaming as they rattle around inside my skull, all vying for attention as I struggle to keep it together. That’s how most first-time killers are caught, they say. Their brain just can’t comprehend what’s happened or keep up with all of the different thoughts and emotions. The whole ‘carry on as normal’ thing just doesn’t happen.
I’ve seen countless parents of missing or murdered children on TV over the years, all talking about how their world stopped turning the day their child disappeared from their life. It certainly becomes a different sort of world. A world of different colours, of different moods. It’s as if all of the colour has just fallen out of the world, drained away to somewhere else; a parallel world where everything carried on as normal, where nothing ever happened. But, weirdly, that parallel world is still there, still visible. It’s the one that everyone around me is still living in. They still see the colour. Their world is still turning.
For me, the world stopped turning that morning Ellie disappeared. And I’m the only one who can start it moving again.
55
Nick
The bottle of scotch is looking desperately empty, but I’m starting to feel a whole lot better. I’m starting to think clearly for the first time in days, and I’ve got the bottle to thank for that.
It’s been a long time since I drank this amount. I’ve always been afraid, scared that I might turn into the sort of monster I turned into that night with Angela. Now, though, I don’t feel like I’m turning into a monster at all. In fact, I’m thinking far more clearly, far more lucidly. I’m not stupid enough to think that the thoughts I’m having now are the ones I’d have sober, but at least I’m thinking them clearly. Whatever I do, I’ve got to do something. Sitting around and doing nothing isn’t an option. Not since getting that video of Ellie.
So I’ve had to make a decision. It’s not now about simply getting Ellie back. It’s about saving her life. The kidnapper has already told me he’ll kill Ellie if I don’t do what he wants me to do, and I can’t take that risk. I’m well aware that in my current mental state killing Tasha means I’ll likely be caught. That’s a risk I’m willing to take. I’d rather spend a lifetime in prison and know that Ellie is safe than have a life of freedom should something happen to her. What sort of freedom would that be? That would be the worst sort of prison, one from which there would be no hope of ever escaping.
Again, I run through the ideas I’ve had as to how I can do it. It’s going to take some forethought and planning, but I also need to do it quickly. There was definite malice in that email, and I really believe that whoever’s got Ellie intends to do exactly as they said. I want – need – Ellie safe, and I need her safe now.
I stand to go upstairs and get my laptop, but stop myself. I want to look up ways of doing it. I’m no longer worried about the police monitoring the laptop and seeing what I’m looking at. Ellie is what matters. The only reason I don’t want to go into the bedroom is because I know I’ll end up doing it there and then, and that won’t end well for anybody.
I just want to escape this madness. I’m starting to think that I really might not ever see Ellie again. If that’s the case, there’s no point carrying on. If I can’t bring myself to do what needs doing, I might as well just end it all now. The end result will be the same, but much quicker and far less painful.
Tasha’s been taking Tramadol to help with the pain since the attack. I wonder how many of those I’d need to finish myself off. Or I could finish her off. I could crush a few up and put them in her food to get that job done, but McKenna would spot that a mile off. No, I can’t do that. I’ve got to do myself in. And it sounds weird, but I wouldn’t want to kill myself with Tasha’s painkillers. Not the ones she’s on because of me. No, her sleeping tablets would work far better. Far less guilt involved there. Could’ve just been accidental, right? I think about how many temazepam I’d need to sleep forever. Maybe I should google it. Probably not a great idea; I imagine they’d have cars swooping down the road in seconds, dragging me away before I’d even got the packet open.
I can feel myself beginning to crash, but I need to stay awake. I’m not thinking straight, but at least I’m thinking.
I go back to my inbox and open the last email from Jen Hood again. I figure that if I desensitise myself to it, I’ll be able to think more clearly. I need to get past the reactionary stuff and start to look at the situation with a fresh mind. I swallow hard as I click the link for the video again.
Ellie’s voice catches my heart, and I realise I’m going to have to watch this a fair few times if I’m even going to come close to being desensitised to it. I’m soon no longer aware of any sound, though, as my eyes are drawn to something over Ellie’s left shoulder, half hanging out of a cardboard box. I pause the video.
I can’t quite make out what it is, but it looks very familiar. I squint at the screen, my nose barely inches away from it. Then I realise.
It’s a jumper. One I’ve seen before. Many times. In fact, I’ve seen it on many people. But in this instant, I know exactly whose that jumper is.
56
The smoke fills the room with a steady haze as the music fills our ears. It’s a pure sensory experience: the sweet smell of the smoke, the softness of the bed under our legs, the warmth of her body pressed against mine. Even the yellowy gold of the university logo seems to gleam brightly on the breast of the jumper that’s slung over the chair at the end of the bed. I’m starting to tune most of it out, though. I’ve got other things on my mind.
They say your university days are the best of your life. Mine have been pretty good to me, and I didn’t even go to uni. I still got to enjoy all the best bits, though. The drinks, the parties, the girls. One of the joys of having friends studying locally. All the fun without any of the hassle. Deadlines and debt. An eternal life of learning. Nope, not for me.
She rests her head on my shoulder, her long hair flowing down my chest. I know I’ve got to tell her sometime – I’ve been meaning to for a while – but she’s not the sort of girl who can be let down gently. I don’t know that for sure as I’ve never dared to try, but a few things have made me wonder whether she might not react in the best way to what I have to tell her.
She’s a quiet sort, never one to seem as though she’d blow up in your face, but they always say it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for. I never really knew what that meant until I met her. Until then, quiet girls had always been just that: quiet. But with her it seems as though there’s something else bubbling away under the surface. It’s not something I can really put my finger on, but it’s there. I know it is.
I decide I need to cut to the chase. Regardless of anything else, it’s not fair on me or her to carry on as if there’s nothing wrong. I need to tell her, and I need to tell her now before it gets any worse for both of us.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asks, as if she can read my mind. That’s exactly the sort of thing that makes me wonder about her. Nothing I can explain, but weird and kind of creepy at the same time. As if she already knows.
‘Not much,’ I say, immediately chiding myself for chickening out. ‘Just stuff.’
‘What sort of stuff?’ she asks.
‘L
ife. Just stuff in general.’ I don’t know why I can’t just come out with it. All of a sudden the words seem to have left me. It’s not a problem I’ve ever had before – I usually have far too much to say – but this time she seems to have caught me on the back foot.
‘Us?’ she asks, stroking my chest. As quiet and meek as she seems, I can tell that she really gets off on being coquettish when she wants to be.
‘Yeah, I guess so,’ I reply, pausing as I think of what to say. ‘I just wonder whether this is something that can carry on.’
I feel her stiffen slightly before she speaks, but she doesn’t lift her head from my shoulder. She just lies there, not moving, as if she’s trying to process the thought over and over again. I can tell that I’ve upset her.
‘How do you mean?’ she says, calmly and innocently.
‘Well, I mean, you’ll be finished here in a few weeks. Back off home, probably, or away on new adventures, finding a job.’
She speaks without emotion. ‘But you live here, Nick. You’re not going anywhere. You said as much yourself. And I love the place. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to find a job here and stay. We could even find jobs together.’
This is what I was worried about. ‘I dunno. I just wonder if it’d be the same after uni. Life’s different once you get out into the real world. I wouldn’t want that to spoil what we’ve got. I know so many people who’ve said that.’
‘Like who?’ she asks, this time accusingly.
‘Just friends,’ I say.
There’s a deathly silence for a good minute or so, neither of us speaking. I can almost tell what she’s thinking, following her thought processes in my head as she lies there breathing, more deeply with every breath.
Eventually, she speaks.