She had meant to throw it out.
That’s what she’d told herself. The murder board needed to be thrown out because she was finished here. It was time to dismantle the Andie Bell scaffolding and see what remained of the Pip beneath. She’d made a good start, unpinning some of the pages and putting them in piles by a bin bag she’d brought up.
And then, without realizing what she was doing or how it happened, she’d found herself looking through it all again: rereading log entries, tracing her finger across the red string lines, staring into the suspects’ photos, searching for the face of a killer.
She’d been so sure she was out. She hadn’t let herself think about it all day as she’d played board games with Josh, as she’d watched back-to-back episodes of American sitcoms, as she’d baked brownies with Mum, sneaking dollops of raw batter into her mouth when unwatched. But with half a second and an unplanned glance Andie had found a way to suck her in again.
She was supposed to be getting dressed for the fireworks but now she was on her knees hunched over the murder board. Some of it really did go in the bin bag: all the clues that had pointed to Elliot Ward. Everything about the Ivy House Hotel, the phone number in the planner, the hit-and-run, Sal’s stolen alibi, Andie’s nude photo that Max found at the back of a classroom and the printed notes and texts from Unknown .
But the board also needed adding to, because she now knew more about
Andie’s whereabouts on the night she disappeared. She grabbed a printout of a map of Kilton and started scribbling in a blue marker pen.
Andie went to the Wards’ house and left not long after with a potentially serious head injury. Pip circled the Wards’ house on Hogg Hill. Elliot had said it was around ten-ish, but he must have been slightly off with that guess.
His and Becca Bell’s statements of time did not match, yet Becca’s was backed up by CCTV: Andie had driven up the high street at 10:40 p.m.
That’s when she must have headed to the Wards’ house. Pip drew a dotted line and scribbled in the time. Yes, Elliot had to be mistaken, she realized, otherwise it meant that Andie had returned home with an injured head before leaving again. And if that had been the case, Becca would have told the police those details. So Becca was no longer the last person to see Andie alive, Elliot was.
But then . . . Pip chewed the end of the pen, thinking. Elliot said that Andie hadn’t driven to his house; he thought she’d walked. And, looking at the map, Pip saw why that made sense. The Bells’ and the Wards’ houses were very close; on foot you just had to cut through the church and over the pedestrian bridge. It was probably a quicker walk than a drive. Pip scratched her head. But that didn’t fit: Andie’s car was picked up by CCTV so she must have driven. Maybe she’d parked somewhere near Elliot’s but not near enough for him to notice.
So how did Andie go from that point into non-existence? From Hogg Hill to her blood in the boot of her car ditched near Howie’s house?
Pip tapped the end of the pen against the map, her eyes flitting from Howie to Max to Nat to Daniel to Jason. There had been two different killers in Little Kilton: one who thought he’d killed Andie and then murdered Sal to cover it up, and another who’d actually killed Andie Bell. And which of these faces staring up at her could it be?
Two killers, and yet only one of them had tried to get Pip to stop which meant that . . .
Wait.
Pip held her face as she closed her eyes to think, thoughts firing off and then coming back altered and new and smoking. And one image: Elliot’s face, just as the police stepped in. His face when Pip said she’d never forgive him for killing Barney. It had crumpled, his brows tensed. But, picturing it now, it hadn’t been remorse on his face. No, it was confusion.
And the words he’d spoken, Pip finished them off for him now: Pip, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t – kill Barney.
Pip swore under her breath, scrabbling over to the slumped bin bag. She pulled out the discarded pages and hunted through them, scattering paper all around her. And then they were in her hands; the notes from the camping trip and her locker in one hand, the printed texts from Unknown in the other.
They were from two different people. It was so obvious now, looking at them.
The differences weren’t only in form, it was in their tone. In the printed notes, Elliot had referred to her as Pippa and the threats were subtle, implied.
Even the one typed into her EPQ log. But Unknown had called her a ‘Stupid bitch,’ and the threats weren’t just implied: they’d made her smash her laptop up and then they’d killed her dog.
She sat back and let out her too-full breath. Two different people. Elliot wasn’t Unknown and he hadn’t killed Barney. No, that had been Andie’s real killer.
‘Pip, come on! They’ll have already lit the bonfire,’ her dad called upstairs.
She bounded over to her door and opened it a crack. ‘Um, you guys go on ahead. I’ll find you there.’
‘What? No. Get down here, Pipsy.’
‘I’m just . . . I just want to try to call Cara a few more times, Dad. I really need to speak to her. I won’t be long. Please. I’ll find you there.’
‘OK, pickle,’ he called.
‘I’ll leave in twenty minutes, I promise,’ she said. ‘OK, call me if you can’t find us.’
As the front door crashed shut Pip sat back beside the murder board, the texts from Unknown shaking in her hands. She scanned through her log entries, trying to work out when in her investigation she had received them.
The first had come just after she found Howie Bowers, after she and Ravi had spoken to him and learned about Andie’s dealing, about Max buying Rohypnol. And then Barney had been taken in half-term week. A lot had happened just before that: she’d bumped into Stanley Forbes twice, she’d gone to see Becca, and she’d spoken to Daniel at the police meeting.
She scrunched up the pieces of paper and threw them across the room with a growl she’d never heard from herself. There were just too many suspects still. And now that Elliot’s secrets were out and Sal was to be exonerated, would the killer be looking for revenge? Would they make good on their threats? Should Pip really be in the house on her own?
She scowled down at all their photos. And with the blue marker she drew a big cross through Jason Bell’s face. It couldn’t be him. She’d seen the look on his face in the car, once the detective must have called them. Both he and Dawn: crying, angry, confused. But there’d been something else in both of
their eyes too, the smallest glimmer of hope alongside their tears. Maybe, even though they’d been told she wasn’t, some small part of them had hoped it would still be their daughter. Jason couldn’t have faked that reaction. The truth was in his face.
The truth was in the face . . .
Pip picked up the photo of Andie with her parents and Becca, and she stared at it. Into those eyes.
It didn’t come all at once.
It came in little blips, lighting up across her memory. The pieces dropped and fell in a line.
From the murder board she grabbed all the relevant pages. Log entry 3: the interview with Stanley Forbes. Entry 10: the first interview with Emma Hutton. Entry 20: the interview with Jess Walker about the Bells. 21 about Max buying drugs from Andie. 23 about Howie and what he supplied her with. Entry 28 and 29 about drink spiking at calamities. The paper on which Ravi had written: who could have taken the burner phone??? in large, capital letters. And the time Elliot said Andie left his house.
She looked them over and she knew who it was. The killer had a face and a name.
The last person to see Andie alive.
But there was just one last thing to confirm. Pip pulled out her phone, scrolled down her contacts and dialled the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Max?’ she said. ‘I’m going to ask you a question.’
‘I’m not interested. See, you were wrong about me. I’ve heard what happened, that it was Mr Ward.’
‘Good,’ Pip said, ‘then you know that right now I have a lot of credibility with the police. I told Mr Ward to cover up the hit-and-run, but if you don’t answer my question, I will ring the police now and tell them everything.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I will. Naomi’s life is already destroyed; don’t think that will stop me any more,’ she bluffed.
‘What do you want?’ he spat.
Pip paused. She put the phone on speaker and scrolled to her recording app. She pressed the red record button and sniffed loudly to hide the beep.
‘Max, at a calamity party in March 2012,’ she said, ‘did you drug and rape Becca Bell?’
‘What? No, I fucking didn’t.’
‘MAX,’ Pip roared down the phone, ‘do not lie to me or I swear to god I will ruin you! Did you put Rohypnol in Becca’s drink and have sex with her?’
He coughed.
‘Yes, but, like . . . it wasn’t rape. She didn’t say no.’
‘Because you drugged her, you vile rapist gargoyle,’ Pip shouted. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done.’
She hung up, stopped the recording and pressed the lock button. Her sharp eyes encased in the darkened screen stared right back into her.
The last person to see Andie alive? It had been Becca. It had always been Becca.
Pip’s eyes blinked back at her and the decision was made.
