The next text didn’t come until eleven in the morning.
Victor was working from home. He came into Pip’s bedroom at around
eight and told her that they were going off on another search and would be back at lunchtime.
‘You should stay here and get on with your revision,’ he said. ‘This exam is very important. Leave Barney to us.’
Pip nodded. She was relieved in a way. She didn’t think she could walk alongside her family, calling out his name, knowing that he wasn’t there to be found. Because he wasn’t lost, he was taken. By Andie Bell’s killer.
But there was no time to waste hating herself, asking why she hadn’t listened to the threats. Why she’d been stupid enough to think herself invincible. She just had to get Barney back. That was all that mattered.
Her family had been gone for a couple of hours when her phone screeched, making her flinch and slosh coffee over her duvet. She grabbed the phone and read the text over several times.
Take your computer and any USBs or hard drives that your project is saved on. Bring them to the tennis club car park with you and walk 100
paces into the trees on the right side. Do not tell anyone and come alone. If you follow these instructions, you will get your dog back.
Pip jumped up, spattering more coffee on her bed. She moved fast, before the fear could congeal and paralyse her. She stepped out of her pyjamas and into a jumper and jeans. She grabbed her rucksack, undid the zips and upturned it, spilling her schoolbooks and academic planner on to the floor. She unplugged her laptop and piled both it and the charger into the bag. The two memory sticks she’d saved her project on were in the middle drawer of her desk. She scooped them out and shoved them in on top of the computer.
She ran down the stairs, almost stumbling as she swung the heavy bag up on to her back. She slipped on her walking boots and coat and grabbed her car keys from the side table in the hall. There was no time to think this through. If she stopped to think, she’d falter and lose him forever.
Outside, the wind was cold against her neck and fingers. She ran to the car and climbed in. Her grip was sticky and shaky on the steering wheel as she pulled out of the drive.
It took her five minutes to get there. She would have been quicker if she hadn’t got stuck behind a slow driver, tailgating and flashing them to hurry up out of the way.
She turned into the car park beyond the tennis courts and pulled into the nearest bay. Grabbing her rucksack from the passenger seat, she left her car and headed straight for the trees that bordered the car park.
Before stepping from concrete on to mud, Pip paused for just a moment to look over her shoulder. There was some kids’ club on the tennis courts, shrieking and whacking balls into the fence. A couple of mums with young and squawking toddlers standing beside a car, chatting away. There was no one there with their eyes fixed on her. No car she recognized. No person. If she was being watched, she couldn’t tell.
She turned back to the trees and started to walk. She counted in her head each step she took, panicking that her strides were either too long or too short and she wouldn’t end up where they wanted her to.
At thirty paces her heart throbbed so hard that it jolted her breath.
At sixty-seven the skin on her chest and under her arms prickled as sweat broke the surface.
At ninety-four she started muttering, ‘Please, please, please,’ under her breath.
And then she stopped one hundred steps into the trees. And she waited.
There was nothing around her, nothing but the stippled shade from half-bare trees and leaves from red to pale yellow padding the mud.
A long, high whistling sounded above her, trailing into four short bursts.
She looked up to see a red kite flying over her, just a sharp wide-winged outline against the grey sun. The bird flew out of sight and she was alone again.
It was almost a whole minute later that her phone shrieked from her pocket. Fumbling, she pulled it out and looked down at the text.
Destroy everything and leave it there. Do not tell anyone what you know. No more questions about Andie. This is finished now.
Pip’s eyes flicked over the words, forward and back. She forced a deep breath down her throat and put away the phone. Her skin seared under the gaze of the killer’s eyes, watching her from somewhere unseen.
On her knees, she slid her rucksack to the ground, took out the laptop, its charger and the two memory sticks. She laid them out on the autumn leaves and pulled open the laptop lid.
She got to her feet and, as her eyes filled and the world blurred, she stamped down on the first memory stick with her boot heel. One side of the plastic casing cracked and sprang away. The metal connector part dented.
She stamped again and then turned her left boot on to the other stick, jumping on them both as their parts cracked and splintered off.
Then she turned to her laptop, the screen looking at her with a line of dim sunlight glinting back. She watched her dark silhouette reflected in the glass as she drew up her leg and kicked out at it. The screen flattened over its hinge, lying in the leaves prone with its keyboard, a large crack webbed across it.
The first tear dropped to her chin as she kicked again, at the keyboard this time. Several letters came away with her boot, scattering into the mud.
She stamped and her boots cracked right through the glass on the screen, pushing out into the metal casing.
She jumped and jumped again, tears chasing each other as they snaked down her cheeks.
The metal around the keyboard was cracked now, showing the
motherboard and the cooling fan below. The green circuit board snapped into pieces beneath her heel, and the little fan severed and flew away. She jumped again and stumbled on the mangled machine, falling on her back in the soft and crackling leaves.
She let herself cry there for a few short moments. Then she sat upright and picked up the laptop, its broken screen hanging limply from one hinge, and hurled it against the trunk of the nearest tree. With another thud, it came to rest on the ground in pieces, lying dead among the tree roots.
Pip sat there, coughing, waiting for the air to return to her chest. Her face stinging from the salt.
And she waited.
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now. She’d done everything they asked; was Barney about to be released to her here? She should wait and see. Wait for another message. She called his name and she waited.
More than half an hour passed. And nothing. No message. No Barney. No sound of anyone but the faint screams of the kids on the tennis court.
Pip pushed on to her feet, her soles sore and lumpy against the boots. She picked up her empty rucksack and wandered away, one last lingering look back at the destroyed machine.
‘Where did you go?’ Dad said when she let herself back into the house.
Pip had sat in the car for a while in the tennis car park. To let her rubbed-red eyes settle before she returned home.
‘I couldn’t concentrate here,’ she said quietly, ‘so I went to do my revision in the cafe.’
‘I see,’ he said with a kind smile. ‘Sometimes a change of scenery is good for concentration.’
‘But, Dad . . .’ She hated the lie that was about to come out of her mouth.
‘Something happened. I don’t know how. I went to the toilet for just a minute and when I came back my laptop was gone. No one there saw anything. I think it was stolen.’ She looked down at her scuffed boots. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left it.’
Victor shushed her and folded her into a hug. One she really, really needed. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, ‘things are not important. They are replaceable. I only care if you’re OK.’
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘Any sign this morning?’
‘None yet, but Josh and Mum are going back out this afternoon and I’m going to ring round the local shelters. We will get him back, pickle.’
She nodded and stepped back from him. They were going to get Barney
back; she’d done everything she had been told to do. That was the deal. She wished she could say something to her family, to take some of the worry out
of their faces. But it wasn’t possible. It was another of those Andie Bell secrets Pip had found herself trapped inside.
As for giving up on Andie now, could she really do that? Could she walk away, knowing that Sal Singh wasn’t guilty? Knowing a killer walked the same Kilton streets as her? She had to, didn’t she? For the dog she’d loved for ten years, the dog who loved her back even harder. For her family’s safety. For Ravi too. How would she convince him to give up on this? He
had to, or his could be the next body in the woods. This couldn’t go on; it wasn’t safe any more. There was no choice. The decision felt like a shard from the shattered laptop screen had stuck through her chest. It stabbed and cracked every time she breathed.
Pip was upstairs at her desk, looking through past papers for the ELAT
exam. The day had grown dark and Pip had just flicked on her mushroom- shaped desk lamp. She was working to the Gladiator soundtrack playing through her phone speakers, flicking her pen in time with the strings. She paused the music when someone knocked on the door.
‘Yep,’ she said, spinning in her desk chair.
Victor came in and closed the door behind him. ‘You working hard, pickle?’ She nodded.
He walked over and propped his back against her desk, his legs crossed out in front of him.
‘Listen, Pip,’ he said gently. ‘Someone just found Barney.’
Pip’s breath stuck halfway down her throat. ‘Wh-why don’t you look happy?’
‘He must have fallen in somehow. They found him in the river.’ Her dad reached down and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry, darling. He drowned.’
Pip wheeled away from her dad, shaking her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He can’t have done. That’s not what . . . No, he can’t be .
. .’
‘I’m sorry, pickle,’ he said, his bottom lip trembling. ‘Barney died. We’re going to bury him tomorrow, in the garden.’
‘No, he can’t be!’ Pip jumped to her feet now, pushing Victor away as he stepped forward to hug her. ‘No, he isn’t dead. That’s not fair,’ she cried, the tears hot and fast down to the dimple in her chin. ‘He can’t be dead. It’s not fair. It’s not . . . it’s not . . .’
She dropped to her knees and sat back on the floor, hugging her legs into her chest. A chasm of unspeakable pain opened inside, glowing black.
‘This is all my fault.’ Her mouth pressed into her knee, stifling her words. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
Her dad sat down beside her and tucked her into his arms. ‘Pip, I don’t want you to blame yourself, not even for a second. It’s not your fault he wandered away from you.’
‘It’s not fair, Dad,’ she cried into his chest. ‘Why is this happening? I just want him back. I just want Barney back.’
‘Me too,’ he whispered.
They sat that way for a long time on her bedroom floor, crying together.
Pip didn’t even hear when her mum and Josh came into the room. She didn’t know they were there until they slotted themselves in, Josh sitting on Pip’s lap, his head on her shoulder.
‘It’s not fair.’
