Her Last Tomorrow (10 page)

Warren gives Richard a look and the landlord heads back inside, leaving the two of us together. Warren looks at me and waits for me to speak.

‘I need someone taking care of,’ I say, trying my hardest not to sound like a stock character from a gangster film. ‘My wife.’

There’s a few moments’ silence before he speaks. ‘Richard told me who you were. I’m going to level with you. Honour and trust means a lot to me, you understand? I have my business model but I’ve also got my ethics. I don’t go in for any of this shit that women are faultless. They’re worse than men, usually. What’s gone on between you and your missus is your problem. Not for me to judge. But I draw the line at who I help for different reasons, alright? Now. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t know what happened to your kid.’

He makes it sound so threatening and difficult, but it’s the easiest thing I’ve had to do for a long time. I look him in the eye. ‘I swear I have no idea. I just want my daughter back. It’s the only way to get her back.’

He nods.

‘What do you do?’ I ask. ‘I mean, how long does it take? Is it violent? I need to know.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he replies with a neutral look in his face, although I can see in his eyes that what he’s really saying is
We don’t talk about this
. I understand he’s being cautious but there’s no way he can think I’m possibly an undercover police officer or anything. I’m asking too many direct questions, for a start. It’d be the worst case of entrapment ever.

‘How much do you charge for your... services?’ I ask.

‘Fifteen grand,’ he says, without blinking an eye.

I try not to look shocked. ‘Right,’ I say.

‘Cash, up front.’

‘What, all of it?’ I ask.

‘That’s what up front means. Despite what Richard says, I don’t know you from Adam.’

‘Yeah. No problem,’ I say. I quickly try to do a few sums in my mind. We’ve got some money in a savings account, but not much. The overdraft would probably get me an extra five grand, and I could probably withdraw some cash on credit cards. ‘When do you need it by?’

‘Depends how urgent the job is,’ he says.

‘Pretty urgent,’ I reply. ‘Thing is, it’s got to be totally away from me. An accident or something.’

Warren nods. ‘What sort of women is she, your wife?’ he asks. ‘Does she work? Go to any evening classes? Hobbies?’

‘Uh, not much,’ I say. ‘She works but doesn’t do much in the evenings. It’s usually late by the time she gets home. Why?’

Warren raises an eyebrow at me.

‘Oh,’ I say. I try to rack my brains to think of something. ‘How soon can it be done?’

Warren shifts his weight to his left leg. ’How soon can you have the money?’

‘As soon as you want it,’ I lie. ‘She’s off work at the moment. I think I’ve got an idea. I’ll get her to visit one of her friends. She lives in Newhaven Road. She’d have to walk through Jubilee Park to get there. If we do it in an evening...' I trail off, hoping Warren will pick up and take control of the situation. Every word I say feels like poison.

‘Samson Street,’ Warren says. ‘Outside the Post Office there’s a noticeboard. There’s an old poster up for a theatre show from months back. Cross out the time and write down the time she’ll be going through Jubilee Park. Nothing else. Then go to the Crazy Chicken takeaway on Northway. It’s one of my businesses. Buy something and ask them to pass on a letter to me. Give them a sealed envelope with a picture of your missus in it. Tell them your name is George and you’ll call back in to see me on whichever day you want it done. Got that?’

‘I think so,’ I say, trying to take it all in.

‘Make damn sure you have,’ he says. ‘Do all that as soon as you can. Leave the money in the purple bin in the alley down the back of Crazy Chicken. Put it in a bag or something, for Christ’s sake. I’m not fishing through there with my bare hands. Then immediately ring this number,’ he says, passing me a plain business card with just a number and the word
John
printed on it, ‘from a payphone. When you get an answer, ask for John. They’ll say you have the wrong number. You hang up.’

‘Right,’ I say. It seems like a muddled mess in my mind 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.

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 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 occasionally. I’m not going to lie; 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 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.

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 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.

Of course, there’s always the other option. If you can’t hide the money entering the system, you need to mask it leaving. 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 ever since she’s been convinced 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 knew what they were 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.

Alan’s back bedroom looked more like the Starship Enterprise than a place anyone would ever sleep. A tattered old dining room chair was the only incongruity in this place of flashing lights and high technology. He had four flatscreen 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 emerged 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 mad house 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.’