Pip was thirteen chapters in, reading by the harsh silver light from the torch on her phone, when she noticed a lone figure crossing under a street lamp. She was in her car, parked down the far end of the station car park, every half-hour marked with the screech and growl of London or Aylesbury- bound trains.
The street lamps had flickered on about an hour ago, when the sun had retreated, staining Little Kilton a darkening blue. The lights were that buzzy orange-yellow colour, illuminating the area with an unsettling industrial glow.
Pip squinted against the window. As the figure passed under the light, she saw it was a man in a dark green jacket with a furred hood and bright orange lining. His hood was up over a mask made of shadows, with only a downward-lit triangle nose for a face.
She quickly switched off her phone torch and put Great Expectations down on the passenger seat. She shifted her own seat back so she could crouch on the car floor, hidden from sight by the door, the top of her head and her eyes pressed up against the window.
The man walked over to the very outer boundary of the car park and leaned against the fence there, in a gloomy space just between two orange-lit pools from the lamps. Pip watched him, holding her breath because it fogged the window and blocked her view.
With his head down, the man pulled a phone out of one of his pockets.
As he unlocked it and the screen lit up, Pip could see his face for the first time: a bony face full of sharp lines and edges and neatly kept dark stubble.
Pip wasn’t the best with ages but, at a guess, the man was in his late twenties or early thirties.
True, this wasn’t the first time tonight she thought she’d found Howie Bowers. There had been two other men she’d ducked and hid to watch. The
first got into a banged-up car straight away and drove off. The second stopped to smoke, long enough for Pip’s heart to pick up. But then he’d stubbed out the cigarette, blipped a car and also headed off.
But something hadn’t felt right about those last two sightings: the men had been dressed in work suits and smart coats, clearly dawdlers of a train-load
from the city. But this man was different. He was in jeans and a short parka, and there was no doubt that he was waiting for something. Or someone.
His thumbs were working away on his phone screen. Possibly texting a client to tell them he was waiting. Typical Pippism, getting ahead of herself.
But she had one sure way to confirm that this lurking parka-wearing man was Howie. She pulled out her phone, trying to hide its illumination by holding it low and turning it to face into her thigh. She scrolled down in her contacts to the entry for Howie Bowers and pressed the call button.
Her eyes back to the window, thumb hovering over the red hang-up button, she waited. Her nerves spiking with every half second.
Then she heard it.
Much louder than the outgoing call sound from her own phone.
A mechanical duck started quacking, the sound coming from the hands
of the man. She watched as he pressed something on his phone and raised it to his ear.
‘Hello?’ came a distant voice from outside, muffled by her window. Fractionally later the same voice spoke through the speakers of her phone. Howie’s voice, it was confirmed.
Pip pressed the hang-up button and watched as Howie Bowers lowered
his phone and stared at it, his thick but remarkably straight eyebrows lowering, eclipsing his eyes in shadows. He thumbed the phone and raised it to his ear again.
‘Crap,’ Pip whispered, snatching her phone up and clicking it on to silent. Less than a second later, the screen lit up with an incoming call from Howie
Bowers. Pip pressed the lock button and let the call silently ring out, her heart drumming painfully against her ribs. That was close, too close.
Stupid not to withhold her number, really.
Howie put his phone away then and stood, head down, hands back in pockets. Of course, even though she now knew this man was Howie Bowers, she didn’t have confirmation that he had been the man who’d supplied Andie with drugs. The only fact was that Howie Bowers was now currently dealing
to kids at school, the same crowd that Andie had introduced her dealer to. It could be coincidence. Howie Bowers might not be the man Andie had worked with all that time ago. But in a small town like Kilton you couldn’t put too much trust in coincidences.
Just then, Howie raised his head and nodded pointedly. Then Pip heard it, sharp clicking footsteps against the concrete drawing closer and louder.
She didn’t dare move to look for who was approaching, the clicks jolting through her with each step. And then the person crossed into view.
It was a tall man wearing a long beige coat and polished black shoes, their sheen and sharp clicking a sign of their newness. His hair was dark and cropped close to his head. As he arrived at Howie’s side, he spun to lean against the fence beside him. It took a few moments of straining her eyes to focus her gaze before Pip gasped.
She knew this man. Knew his face from the staff pictures on the Kilton Mail
website. It was Stanley Forbes.
Stanley Forbes, an outsider to Pip’s investigation who had now cropped up twice. Becca Bell said she was kind of seeing him and now here he was, meeting with the man who had possibly supplied Becca’s sister with drugs.
Neither of the men had spoken yet. Stanley scratched his nose and then pulled out a thick envelope from his pocket. He shoved the packet into Howie’s chest and only then did she notice that his face was flushed and his
hands shaking. Pip raised her phone and, checking the flash was off, took a few pictures of the meeting.
‘This is the last time, do you hear me?’ Stanley spat, making no effort to keep his voice down. Pip could just about hear the edges of his words through the glass of the car window. ‘You can’t keep asking for more; I don’t have it.’
Howie spoke far too quietly and Pip only heard the mumbled start and end of his sentence: ‘But . . . tell.’
Stanley rounded on him. ‘I don’t think you would dare.’
They stared into each other’s faces for a tense and lingering moment, then Stanley turned on his heels and walked quickly away, his coat flicking out behind him.
When he was gone Howie looked through the envelope in his hands before stuffing it in his coat. Pip took another few pictures of him with it in his hands. But Howie wasn’t going anywhere yet. He stood against the
fence, tapping away at his phone again. Like he was waiting for someone else.
A few minutes later, Pip saw someone approaching. Huddling back in her hiding spot, Pip watched as the boy strode over to Howie, raising his hand in a wave. She recognized him too: a boy in the year below her at school, a boy who played football with Ant. Called Robin something.
Their meeting was just as brief. Robin pulled out some cash and handed it over. Howie counted the money and then produced a rolled-up paper bag from his coat pocket. Pip took five quick pictures as Howie handed the bag to Robin and pocketed the cash.
Pip could see their mouths moving, but she couldn’t hear the secret words they exchanged. Howie smiled and clapped the boy on the back.
Robin, stuffing the bag into his rucksack, wandered back up the car park, calling a low ‘See you later’, as he passed behind Pip’s car, so close it made her jump.
Ducking below the door frame, Pip scrolled through the pictures she’d taken; Howie’s face was clear and visible in at least three of them. And Pip knew the name of the boy she’d caught him selling to. It was textbook leverage, if anyone had ever written a textbook on how to blackmail a drug dealer.
Pip froze. Someone was walking just behind her car, moving with shuffling footsteps, whistling. She waited twenty seconds and then looked up. Howie was gone, heading back towards the station.
And now came the moment of indecision. Howie was on foot; Pip couldn’t follow him in her car. But she really, really did not want to leave the bug- faced safety of her little car to follow a criminal without a reinforced Volkswagen shield.
Fear started to uncurl in her stomach, winding up around her brain with one thought: Andie Bell went out in the dark on her own, and she never came back. Pip stifled the thought, breathed back the fear and climbed out of the car, shutting the door as carefully as she could. She needed to learn as much as she could about this man. He could be the one who supplied Andie, the one who really killed her.
Howie was about forty paces ahead of her. His hood was down now and
its orange lining was easy to spot in the dark. Pip kept the distance between them, her heart getting in four beats between each of her steps.
She drew back and increased the gap as they passed through the well-lit roundabout outside the station. She wouldn’t get too close. She followed Howie as he turned right down the hill, past the town’s mini-supermarket.
He crossed the road and turned left along High Street, the other end from school and Ravi’s house.
She trailed behind him, all the way up Wyvil Road, over the bridge that crossed the rail tracks. Beyond the bridge, Howie turned off the road on to a small path that carved across a grass verge through a yellowing hedge.
Pip waited for Howie to get a little further ahead before she followed him down the path, emerging on to a small and dark residential road. She kept going, her eyes on the orange-furred hood fifty feet ahead of her.
Darkness was the easiest of disguises; it made the familiar unknown and strange. It was only when Pip passed a street sign that she realized what road they were on.
Romer Close.
Her heart reacted, now getting in six beats between her feet. Romer Close, the very road where Andie Bell’s car was found abandoned after her disappearance.
Pip saw Howie swerving up ahead and she darted to hide behind a tree, watching as he headed towards a small bungalow, pulled out his keys and let himself in. As the door clicked shut, Pip emerged from her hiding place and approached Howie’s house. Number twenty-nine Romer Close.
It was a squat semi-detached house, with tan bricks and a mossy slate roof. Both windows at the front were covered by thick blinds, the left one now cracking with streaks of yellow as Howie turned on the lights inside.
There was a small gravel plot just outside the front door where a faded maroon car sat.
Pip stared at it. There was no delay in her recognition this time. Her mouth fell open and her stomach jumped to her throat, filling her mouth with the regurgitated taste of the sandwich she’d eaten in the car.
‘Oh my god,’ she whispered.
She stepped back from the house, pulling out her phone. She skipped through her recent calls and dialled Ravi’s number.
‘Please tell me you’re off shift,’ she said when he picked up. ‘I just got home. Why?’
‘I need you to come to Romer Close right now.’
