Her Last Tomorrow (7 page)

‘I know I fucked up, Tasha. Christ.’ How many ways does she want me to say this?

‘Do you? Do you, Nick? Because I don’t think you do.’ Her nose is now just inches from my chin and she’s looking up at me, sneering, her eyes bloodshot as the spittle flies from her mouth. ‘I don’t think you get it at all, do you?’ One corner of her mouth lifts as she snorts and leaves the room.

Moments later, I hear the bedroom door slam and I close my eyes. I realise pretty quickly that sitting here on my own in the quiet isn’t going to do me any good, so I look for distractions.

I head into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of orange juice. The temptation to throw a slug of vodka in the glass is overwhelming, but I resist. Taking two large gulps of juice, I wipe my mouth and head into my study. My laptop’s still on, so I lift the lid and log back in. Before long, I wish I’d gone for the vodka.

There’s an email. Another one. It’s from Jen Hood.

Half of me is screaming to open the email as quickly as possible, but the other half is holding back, worried about what I might find. Eventually, I take a deep breath and click the email.

There’s no text; just a photo of Ellie. I know instantly what it is. I know every single photo we’ve ever taken of her, and this isn’t one of them. This is a photo that her abductor — Jen Hood — has taken.

My vision starts to blur as the tears well up inside my eyes. The picture fades until it’s barely recognisable. I blink and the tears roll down my cheeks, making the picture clear again. She’s clutching a toy that I don’t recognise — a traditional style teddy bear. She’s sitting in what looks like a loft or attic. What hits me the hardest is that she looks happy. She’s smiling.

My head’s pounding and I really don’t know how much more of this I can take. My mind is a swirling smorgasbord of confusion and every extra thought just adds to the effervescent pot. It’s dim and cloudy and I can’t see anything clearly. In my confused state I feel oddly angry at Ellie. If she hadn’t gone missing, if she’d only come home, then we wouldn’t be in this mess. We’d be happy again.

I guess the stress and anger I’m feeling isn’t really directed at Ellie. I’m angry at myself, and I’m angry at Tasha. What I need right now is her support, not this constant hassle. I remember from reading about families who’ve had incidents like this that the vast majority of married couples end up divorced after the death or disappearance of a child. Already, I’m beginning to see why. This growing culture of guilt and blame is pure poison.

If I could swap Tasha — and all the aggravation she brings — for Ellie, I’d do so in a heartbeat.

I think back to the first email I received from Jen Hood, and in that instant I know what I must do.

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.

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 discount yourself from suspicion. The husband is always the first one under suspicion, though, so that’s something I’ll need to think about very carefully.

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 is if my traces are 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 random person’s car?

It needs to either be a seemingly completely random killing — a mugging gone wrong, perhaps — or made to look as though it could have been done by the same person who’s taken Ellie. Whoever this Jen Hood person is, that’s a pretty strong suspect for wanting to kill Tasha. They’ve already kidnapped her daughter, after all. The only problem there is that the police don’t know Jen Hood exists. As soon as they do, they’ll know about the ransom note and I’ll be rumbled.
 

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’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. The perfect alibi. All I’d need is some sort of hit man.

I almost laugh out loud at the thought. Listen to me, thinking of hiring a hit man to kill my wife, like some sort of Home Counties Al Capone. Would I look in the Yellow Pages under H for ‘hit man’ or G for ‘gun for hire’?

This is going to need some thought. The beauty of my job is that I can Google stuff and make notes and enquiries into almost anything and put it down as research. Who’s going to question a writer researching methods of killing people? For the first time in my life, my job might just come in useful.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty good at it, too, so 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.

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. I’ve got a way out of this.

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 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 and 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 hits 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 Tasha has alluded to her breakdown in years. 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 behind 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 thought enters my mind, but I quash it very quickly.

‘You heard anything this morning?’ I ask, before I rinse cold water around my mouth.

‘Not yet. They said they’d call if they had anything. All we can do is sit tight. Could you do me a favour? Plug the bedside radio into the extension lead and bring it in here, will you? I could do with some musical accompaniment.’

‘Will you hear the phone if it goes though?’

She looks at me as if I’ve just landed from another planet. ‘I can’t answer the phone from the bath anyway, can I? I was hoping you might be able to manage that.’ Her look is playful, but I doubt her intentions are.

Having untangled the wires from behind the bedside table, I bring the radio in and rest it on the edge of the sink unit. I freeze momentarily as I see the opportunity in front of me.

One of the many things Tasha has been nagging me about is getting the house rewired. Over a year ago we had an electrician in to fit a new double socket in the kitchen. He happened to mention that the house uses an old wiring system and isn’t properly earthed, nor is the fusebox fitted with an RCD, which would trip the circuit and stop you getting a serious electric shock if there was an electrical accident. Not a major problem in itself, but something that needs doing — granted. As far as Tasha was concerned, though, the house could catch fire and burn down at any minute and she’d spent the next couple of months going on about how we should get the whole house rewired as if it was some small, insignificant job I could do in a Saturday morning. I don’t know much about electrics, but I know it’s not a small job.

I try to use my minimal knowledge of electrics to work out how much voltage runs through a digital radio. A hairdryer in the bath? Sure. A portable heater, even. Would a digital radio do the job? A large part of me doubts it, but I’m still faced with the opportunity to find out once and for all.

Does this fit my plan of the perfect murder? Perhaps. I wouldn’t necessarily be suspected, would I? After all, it’s difficult to run someone a bath, force them into it and lob an electrical appliance in without them putting up some sort of a fight. It’s not foolproof, but it’d take a hell of a lot of doing to try and convict me of anything. Could they somehow find out when the radio was unplugged from the wall and then plugged into the extension lead? The clock sets itself from a digital receiver, so there’s bound to be some sort of trace somewhere along the line. Could they cross-reference that with the temperature of the bathwater or the amount of wrinkles on her skin and work out that she couldn’t possibly have brought the radio in for herself? It seems a little far-fetched.

The most likely outcome is that very little would happen other than the radio dying and Tasha at best getting a zap no stronger than she would from licking a battery. Then how do I explain lobbing a radio into the bath with her? It would need to look like I’d done it accidentally. Perhaps nudge it with my elbow or hip as I walk past. Or lean over to give her a kiss and... Whoops! No. Too risky. I wouldn’t want to be in contact with her or the water if I’ve got even the slightest suspicion that there’s going to be 240 volts knocking about. Physics was never my strongest subject at school, and right now I wish that I’d listened more carefully.
 

There’s only so many times I can pad at my face with the flannel before she’s going to wonder why I’m still stood here, staring at the radio and at the water. If I’m going to do this, I need to do it now.
 

I take a deep breath and place my flannel back on the sink unit, just inches from the radio. I fold the flannel carefully in half, then into quarters and pad it down with the palm of my hand. I’m stalling for time here, I know it.

I turn and look at Tasha’s naked body lying in the bath, her eyes closed, her hair pooling around her neck and breasts, swaying in the water. She opens her eyes and smiles at me.

‘I’m sorry. I do love you, you know, Nick?’ she says.

I swallow. Hard. ‘I love you too.’

I force a smile and leave the room.

I know what’s going on now. I’ve written and read enough books to know what media appeals are all about in missing persons cases. Especially when they concern missing children. McKenna told me it would help to publicise Ellie’s disappearance and ensure that people kept an eye out in case they saw her or had any information as to where she was. That’s all bullshit, though. Most people couldn’t tell one five-year-old from another.

There’s only one real reason why they do national media appeals when children go missing: it’s because they’ve got a suspect. And not only do they have a suspect, but they have a suspect sitting behind the desk doing the media appeal.

That’s why there’ll always be the random uncle, grandparent or family friend doing the media appeal with the parents. They want to see how their suspect reacts in front of a camera. Whether the crocodile tears come out. The police psychologists will be watching with their notepads at the ready, analysing every last twitch of an eyelid, every casual scratch of the nose.