Read Her Last Tomorrow for Free Online Page A

That’s both a worry and a comfort, in that it means she’s probably not in the area and that she’s probably with someone. Again, it’s the not knowing who that’s the problem.
    Tasha’s downstairs on the phone to her parents and the police are out doing their door-to-door enquiries. There are huge great posters of Ellie being put up around the neighbourhood. It’s both comforting and oddly disconcerting.
    My phone vibrates on the bedside table and my heart stops as I see the words on the notification.

    Jen Hood
    Re: Ellie

    I unlock my phone and jab the email icon. It seems to take an age to load, but I finally open the email and read the message.

    Hope young copper stood outside your house isn’t there for ‘protection’.  
    You know what happens if I find out you told them.
    Only one way you can get her back.

    The staccato sentences worry me. They sound like someone panicked. If this person has Ellie, the last thing I want them to do is panic. I fire off a reply as quickly as I can.

    I told no-one. I understand.

    I hope this says it all while remaining deliberately ambiguous. As I hit the send button, I jump up and dart over to the bedroom window with the sudden realisation that the person who sent the email must be able to see the house. If they know there’s a young policeman stood outside the house, they must be nearby.
    My heart’s racing at nineteen to the dozen as I try to get my head round this. That policeman’s been there since they called off the search last night, so there’s nothing to say that this Jen Hood is outside right now. In fact, it’d be pretty stupid for them to be outside right now. But how did they manage to get close enough to the house to see the policeman without him seeing them?
    In my mind, there’s only one answer to that. They didn’t have to go anywhere. They live on the street.
    I try to gauge the lines of sight from where the policeman is stood to the other houses on the street. To the right the line of sight would be broken by the huge hedge that separates our house from next door. To the left, they’d be hidden by the bend in the road on one side and their own walls and hedges on the other. I guess it’s feasible that a few houses could have decent sight lines from their upstairs windows, but there’s only one which has a perfect view. The house that’s sitting there looking at me right now, gloating. Number 39.
    Before I can even reason with myself, I’m bounding down the stairs and out the front door. The policeman turns and looks at me.
    ‘Ah, I was hoping you’d be up soon,’ he says. ‘Mind if I use your loo?’
    ‘Be my guest,’ I say as I walk quickly past him and cross the road.
    Within seconds I’m hammering on Derek’s door. He can’t have seen me coming, because he opens it shortly after and seems genuinely shocked to see me. I don’t wait to be invited in and I make my way through into his kitchen.
    He closes the door behind him and shuffles through after me, looking more scared than angry that I’ve just barged my way into his house.
    ‘Where is it?’ I ask, staring him down.
    ‘Where’s what?’
    ‘Come on, don’t play stupid. Where’s your computer?’
    ‘I don’t own a computer,’ he says, looking confused. ‘What the hell would I want with one of those?’
    I realise this is the most I’ve ever heard him say in twenty-odd years of walking past his house twice a day and then living opposite.
    ‘This Jen Hood thing. The emails. What’s it all about?’ A small part of me appears to be floating above my body, watching ashamedly as my rage and emotion all boils to the surface. The rest of me is completely consumed by it, feeling the blood pulsing in my temples as I stand face to face with the man I think has kidnapped my daughter.
    It all makes sense. The way he managed to see her, grab her and get her out of sight within the space of a minute and without me hearing a car. The way he knew there was a policeman standing