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could I send? I couldn’t say ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not Guilty.’ Or anything much of anything. I could just stare at it.
    So I did.
    For a while. Then I went and looked at pictures of cats. Not on Flickr this time. All over the place. And videos. Videos of cats falling over. Or riding on robot hoovers. Or skateboards. Or hiding in boxes. Or just videos of cats sleeping. Untroubled.
    Or just pictures of cats sleeping. Untroubled. Hunting dreams.
    Then I’d look again at the email.
    Then I’d look at some more cats.
     
     
    I LOOKED AGAIN at my inbox. Another email had arrived from the same sender.This time a link to an eCard.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ the caption said. ‘We want to know what you’ll do next.’
    The eCard was a picture of a cat.
     
     
    I STARED AT the notebook screen calmly and quietly. Which is how it ended up at the other end of the room, sliding down the wall.
    I got up off the sofa, breathing heavily, my legs shaking. I made my way over to the notebook. My flat’s not a large one, but it took a long time. I flopped down onto the ground by the computer, praying it wasn’t damaged. After all, if it was damaged... well, if I threw it away, wouldn’t someone look at it? And, if I took it in for repair... wouldn’t someone wonder why? I mean, there was no guarantee that that email would be sat open on the desktop. But then, I’m fairly sure that no celebrity keeps their kiddie porn open on their hard drives either, and yet that never seems to go well for them.
    My head whirled. Hard drives aren’t unlike record players, really—just a big disc of data spinning round and round being read by a needle. And, inside my head, my disc was spinning but the needle just wasn’t connecting.
    I lay on the floor. The floor was dirty. I could see dust bunnies gathered under the DVD shelves. I could see grit. I could even see, horridly, peanut shells. That must have been from... when had I last eaten monkey nuts? Last Christmas? Would I ever earn enough to afford a cleaner? If I went to an internet café, could I log on to my Gmail and delete the email? Were there such things as internet cafés any more, or would I have to travel back to 2002?
    I eased the notebook open. It flickered back into life, suggested restarting in Safe Mode and then announced that Windows would be installing 128 important updates. Its way of punishing me.
    The needle bounced along the disc and connected. My phone! Of course. There was Gmail on my phone. I picked my phone up. As I did so, a text arrived.
    ‘THAT WAS STUPID’
    I stared at the number. Unrecognised.
     
     
    I ’D NEVER EVER felt sick with panic before. But now, everything... everything was empty. It wasn’t just my brain that was spinning. Everything was out of control. Nothing made sense.
    I pecked at the phone. I started a reply.
    ‘Who are’
    Then stopped. Deleted it.
    ‘What do you want?’
    No. I started a third time.
    ‘Fuck off.’
    I nearly sent it. Instead I put the phone down and scrabbled under the cabinet, fishing out the empty monkey nut shells, one by one, and stared at them.
    Rational thought just didn’t come.
    The police weren’t this good. No one was this good. No one could know.
    Unless Danielle wasn’t dead.
    That was the only explanation. But it didn’t work. I could imagine her sitting in a cab, smiling as she sent a text. But not this... Why would she do this? It just didn’t make sense.
    Her phone. There was a picture of us on her phone. What had happened to her phone?
    I stared at my mobile, and my horrified reflection stared back.
    And then my phone started to ring.
    Unknown number.
    I held it in my hand, feeling it jump each time it rang.
    I waited for it to stop. But it didn’t stop.
     
     
    I ANSWERED THE phone.
    “What do you want?” I yelled. My voice sounded strangled. Panicked. Guilty.
    “David, David, sorry it’s so late. It’s me, oh, God, it’s me...” cried a voice at the other end. More panicked and alarmed than me.