by Adam Croft
I don’t want money. I want Tasha dead. And I want you to do it. It MUST be you. There is no other option.
I look at it for a few moments, my eyes still glazed. What guarantee do I have that this person will return Ellie if I do what they say? They’re clearly unhinged enough to kidnap a five-year-old girl and demand that her father murder her mother. What’s to say that they’re not crazy enough to kill Ellie, too? Is anyone crazy enough to murder an innocent five-year-old girl? All I know is that if I don’t do it, Ellie certainly isn’t safe. Not in the hands of this person.
I click the ‘Reply’ button. Much more slowly than before, but still as quickly as I can, I type out a response, knowing Jen Hood is sat in front of their inbox.
What about someone else doing it. I’ll arrange it. If I try it myself I’ll fuck it up and they’ll find both of us.
My breath catches slightly in my throat as I realise what I’m typing, but it’s from an anonymous email address and I need to know what my options are. I click the ‘Send’ button.
I wait another minute or so, looking at the countdown clock in the corner of my screen that tells me how much time I’ve got left. It’s now less than three minutes. Seconds later, a response lands in my inbox with another ping.
Do what you have to do. I don’t give a shit about your child. You don’t deserve her. If Tasha doesn’t die, Ellie does. Believe that.
At the bottom of the email, I can see a horizontal band of colour. It takes me a few moments to realise it’s the top of a photo. I scroll down, the image revealing itself before me, slowly but surely. The background is a dusty brick wall, cobwebs softening the red brick colour. And there, at the bottom of the picture, looking down at something on the floor, is Ellie.
24
Nick
I’ve always wondered what would be the perfect murder. I guess many people have. The number of things that need to be taken into consideration is just extraordinary. But I reckon if anyone could do it, I could. I’ve spent years killing fictional people. Why not a real one? The fact of the matter is something that I’ve not wanted to admit, but which has been nagging away at me ever since I started receiving messages from Jen Hood. Most people would put their children above their partner or spouse. That goes without saying. But Tasha and I haven’t been happy in a long time. She’s selfish and career-driven, and she doesn’t spend any time with either me or Ellie any more. How can she call herself a mother? Would Ellie even realise Tasha was gone?
But this can’t be about emotion. If I’m going to get out of this, one way or another, it needs to be through clear, logical thinking. That’s how so many people get caught: they let their emotions get the better of them and they do something stupid. That’s how mistakes are made. And if I’m going to even consider Jen Hood’s request, I know that I need to think logically and work out exactly what the possibilities and options are.
First of all, there’s the method. Poisoning is generally out of the question in most instances, and anything quick and violent will be spotted as a murder straight away. Of course, that’s not necessarily a problem if you have a convincing alibi and can remove yourself from suspicion. The husband is always at the top of the list of suspects, though, so that’s something I’ll need to think about very carefully.
In my confusion I’m finding it difficult to know what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s a problem I’ve had a few times before, anyway, but it’s never been more apparent than now. A large part of me is screaming to go to the police. But I know I can’t. The threat from Jen Hood was pretty clear. If I go to the police, Ellie will die. I have to take that threat seriously: this person is deranged enough to kidnap someone’s daughter in broad daylight. What’s to say they have any sort of moral limits at all? Whoever it is, they’re watching me. They’ve been looking at the house. They’ll know if I speak to the police. They’ll see the police coming from wherever they are, wherever they’ve held Ellie, and at the first sign of a flashing blue light or a suspicious-looking car, that’ll be it. I can’t risk that.
What’s more, I have absolutely no faith in the police. I’ve been burned before, and I’m growing ever more disillusioned with the way McKenna and Brennan are handling this. I mean, I can see why they think they’re doing the right thing, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m fuming that they’ve not even got the slightest lead on where Ellie is. Would me showing them Jen Hood’s emails help find her? Possibly, yes. But it’d almost certainly mean the kidnapper would kill Ellie, and I can’t imagine for one second they would have sent those emails in a manner that’s in any way traceable. The police would be able to do nothing, and Ellie would be put in greater danger.
But there’s one big thing that I absolutely cannot ignore. It’s something that’s been niggling at the back of my mind. Do I want Tasha gone? Would I be happier without her in my life? Would I be able to be me again? Do I even want to be me again? The me from before I met Tasha? Purely selfishly, yes I do. Tasha’s not a nice person, but do I really want her dead? Between her and Ellie, there’s no choice to be had.
I guess one thing on my side is the fact that my DNA will be all over the house and all over Tasha. We’re married, after all. My fingerprints will be everywhere, as will my skin cells and strands of hair. The problem there would be if my traces were the only ones. That would just look unnatural.
Staging a break-in is too risky, especially with neighbours like Derek Francis. Something happening away from home opens up an unlimited amount of risk. What are the options? Cut the brake cables on the car? Not a great idea for so many reasons. The last thing I need is other people getting killed. And who’d cut the brake cables on a stranger’s car?
It needs to either be a seemingly completely random killing – a mugging gone wrong, perhaps – or be made to look as though it could have been done by the same person who’s taken Ellie. If I’m going to go through with this, the police must never know about the Jen Hood emails. I’ve deleted every email, which means they wouldn’t find them if they were to go through my phone or laptop again, so now I just need to make sure they have no reason to look any deeper. I need to keep myself in the clear.
The mugging gone wrong is looking like a good idea right now. The only problem is, it can’t be me who does it. I can’t have the police sniffing around me any more than they have done. But if they do, and even if they later found the emails from Jen Hood, I need to make sure they can’t prove a causal link. I’d need an alibi, and a rock-solid one at that. But who? We don’t really have many friends – not ones who’d only see me and not Tasha, anyway – and it’s not as if I go out to work.
A thought comes to me. Every evening at eight o’clock, Derek puts his rubbish out. He’s a creature of habit. Every night he’ll waddle down his path from the front door and pop a half-full black bin bag in the wheelie bin by the wall at the end of his front garden. If I could somehow make sure I was in full view of him at that point, there’s no way he’d miss the chance to have a little nose at what I was doing. It would be wrong to say that Derek would be the perfect alibi, but he’s all I have. There are no other options.
I think about this further. He failed to provide me with an alibi when I really needed one, but seems to be there watching when I don’t want him to. All I need to do is make sure that he sees something he thinks I don’t want him to see. Make him think he’s got the power and the upper hand. I can’t make it look like I want or need him to be my alibi – I have to make it look like him saying he saw me would incriminate me somehow. I can turn this all back on itself and use Derek to my advantage, but I have to think carefully about this. I need to be smart. If I could make Derek see something he thinks I didn’t want him to see, then as long as I could prove I wasn’t in the vicinity when Tasha was attacked, I’d be in the clear. And Derek would be my perfect alibi without even knowing or intending it. All I’d need then is some sort of hitman.
I almost laugh out loud at the thought. Listen to me, thinking of hiring a
hitman to kill my wife, like some sort of Home Counties Al Capone. Would I look in the Yellow Pages under H for ‘hitman’ or G for ‘gun for hire’?
This is going to need some thought. I know just how difficult it is to murder someone in the first place, never mind having to actually get away with it. The fact that I’ll immediately be the prime suspect doesn’t help, either.
But I can’t help thinking back to that night with Angela. That moment of madness, which came completely out of nowhere. To have gone from being a perfectly normal, reasonable person to that absolute monster in no time at all. And as much as I try to justify it by saying it was a one-off, I know that in that moment I was capable of anything. I was capable of killing.
We all have that side to us. That point at which something snaps, whether reasonably or unreasonably. The cause doesn’t matter. It’s the result that matters. And I know that a person in that position is capable of doing some very dark, vile things. If I was capable of killing, Jen Hood will be capable of killing. Capable of killing Ellie. That’s what worries me – the fact that I am acutely aware of what human beings are capable of when they think they’ve got justification for their actions. In this instance I don’t know what Jen Hood’s supposed justifications are, but they could prove to be the key. The fact is that Ellie’s kidnapper will feel they had just cause for taking her. Whatever their rationalisation is, there’ll be one. And if it’s strong enough, there’s no telling how far they might go, which is why I need to do all I can to find her.
The sun’s starting to go down and my brain’s getting tired. I reckon I’ve got a pretty decent chance of sleep tonight. That might sound odd, but somewhere deep inside my brain I realise I’ve come to a resolution. And there’s no going back.
25
Tasha
The best thing about the medication is that it allows me to sleep, if only for a couple of hours. Last night, though, I don’t think I even got that. I lay awake for most of the night, thinking about what Nick told me and the police about his former girlfriend. I know he doesn’t drink or get involved in anything like that these days because he claims to have done his fair share when he was younger, but even I had no clue about his criminal conviction.
It scares me to think that Nick could have been capable of something like that. To think that it could just happen without warning and then never be spoken of again. What’s to say it couldn’t recur? What’s to say it didn’t happen again recently?
The worst thing is that he never told me. I thought we told each other everything. When I think back, I realise there are probably things I haven’t told him, but nothing like that. And to make me sit there and listen to him telling me for the first time in front of the police, humiliating me and making me look stupid. What the hell was he thinking? If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s lies, and I’m starting to wonder about what else he hasn’t told me. If he can keep something like that from me for so long, what’s to say he isn’t hiding something else?
The problem with Nick is that he always keeps everything bottled up. He never comes to terms with his own issues and problems, and projects them onto other people instead. Add to that the fact that he’s clearly capable of hiding huge secrets from his past, and I’m not sure that I even know my own husband any more.
For every waking minute since it happened, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think who could have taken Ellie. At the start, I hoped she’d just wandered off somewhere, perhaps tried to make her own way to school. By now, though, someone would have found her, taken her in and reported it to the police. Once it gets past a day or so, the police said we’re looking at two possibilities: either someone’s taken her and is holding her somewhere, or something horrific has happened and she’s yet to be found. Every fibre of my being hopes it’s the first option, but that means that someone has deliberately taken her, which leads everything back to why.
It’s a question I know I can’t answer. My brain won’t even let me formulate any real possibilities right now. I’m struggling to put together any actual coherent thoughts. The lack of sleep isn’t helping, and my head pounds with frustration and desperation. I feel like a fraud for even trying to sleep, knowing that I should be out there walking the streets, looking for my little girl. The police advised against it, telling us we needed to leave it to the experts, but that’s easier said than done.
My brain almost defaults back to organisational and logical mode, and I decide I’m going to do what I usually do when I have to try and relax. The police have told us to try and retain some normality if we can, to keep us from going out of our minds, and when I need to relax and calm down I have a bath. Again, I feel like a fraud for even thinking about it, but there really is nothing else I can do at this time of the morning. The TV, radio and newspapers will be either full of reminders of people going about their normal everyday lives or carrying stories of Ellie’s disappearance. The police have passed on some information to the local press so people will keep an eye out, but I’m not sure what good it’s going to do. If someone finds a five-year-old girl walking the streets on her own, they call the police regardless of whether or not the local fucking radio station tells them to.
I need to hold on to my last thread of rationality. I slide my legs out of the bed and make my way into the en-suite. I close the door quietly behind me and lean over the bath, turning on the taps and letting the steam rise as I inhale it. If I can shut all of this out for just a few minutes, pretend somehow that it isn’t happening, I know I might just be able to keep a grip on reality. Because if I fall off now, I don’t think I’ll ever get back on.
26
Nick
The bright shaft of sunlight streaming through the curtains and hitting my eyelids like a laser beam is what finally wakes me up. I’ve slept right through. Amazing how the mind settles when you’ve made a decision.
I hear the sound of splashing water come from the bathroom at about the same time that I realise it’s coming from above me. I go to sit up and feel the stiffness in my neck and shoulders. I’m on the sofa. I slowly get up and shuffle groggily up the stairs before heading into the bedroom, putting my ear against the door of the en-suite and knocking lightly with my knuckle.
‘You in there, Tash?’
‘Yes,’ she calls, her voice echoing off the tiles.
There’s a silence. ‘Are you having a bath?’ I call.
‘Thought it might relax me.’
‘Right. Good idea. Mind if I brush my teeth?’ I ask, my mind only on the decision I came to last night.
‘Door’s unlocked,’ she replies.
The handle squeaks slightly as I pull it down and open the door. The steam and smell of bubble bath hit me square in the face.
I look at her. Her eyes are closed and she looks as if she might be genuinely relaxing for the first time in a long time. I know her, though, and she’s not a woman to forgive easily. The best way around her is to gradually reintroduce normality.
‘You going to be in there long?’ I say, grabbing my toothbrush and squeezing a large slug of toothpaste onto it.
‘I need it. I can’t just sit around thinking about what’s happened to Ellie and worrying about you. All I’m going to do is make myself ill again.’
It’s the first time in years Tasha has alluded to her breakdown. The last time we even spoke about it was when she’d gone up for the job in London and I’d worried that the increased stress would spark something off again. She’d assured me that it wouldn’t, and said that if it did she’d jack the job in straight away. Up until now, she’d been right.
I mean, she’d been under more stress than usual just recently – before Ellie disappeared – what with the merger going on at work, but she’d seemed absolutely fine to me. Still, you never quite know what goes on inside a human mind. Since her breakdown, I’m not sure I really know Tasha at all. To see someone collapse so spectacularly, seemingly out of nowhere, can really make you question your own judgement.
A thou
ght enters my mind, but I quash it very quickly.
It all started around the time we were told the IVF had failed and that our chances of ever having children were very slim. Tasha had been trying to put on a brave face, but I could see that she was collapsing inside. She tried to cover it over by burying herself in her work – her usual way of shutting out the outside world – but even Tasha, the woman with a heart of stone, couldn’t pretend that nothing was wrong.
It was a Thursday. I remember it well. I was upstairs in the study, writing. I get my best writing done first thing in the morning while my mind is fresh. It’s about the only thing I can get done in the morning, albeit at a time that I consider to be morning. Tasha’s definition is what I would call still the middle of the night. I heard the familiar sound of Tasha opening the front door, then the sound of the door closing again. The same as every morning. A few minutes later, I went downstairs to grab another cup of coffee and found Tasha curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor. She’d opened the door to go to work, but had been unable to face the world. Everything had finally caught up with her, and she’d realised that she couldn’t bottle it all up.
I’ve never seen her like that before or since. She’s usually such a strong person that she crosses the line into riding roughshod over everyone else’s feelings. It hit me hard to see her like that. One of her friends recommended that she see a doctor, which she did. Personally, I would have suggested she see someone sooner than that. I could see the signs much earlier but presumed she would just deal with it in her own way, like she always does. If I’d suggested it to her she would have bitten my head off. I think it was good for her that she finally realised she needed help.
