A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

‘Did you get all dressed up to come and see me, Sarge?’ Ravi said, leaning against his front door frame in a green plaid flannel shirt and jeans.

‘Nope, I came straight from school,’ said Pip. ‘And I need your help. Put some shoes on –’ she clapped her hands – ‘you’re coming with me.’

‘Are we going on a mission?’ he said, staggering back to slip on some old trainers discarded in the hallway. ‘Do I need to bring my night-vision goggles and utility belt?’

‘Not this time,’ she smiled, starting down the garden path as Ravi closed the front door, following behind her.

‘Where we going?’

‘To a house where two potential Andie-killer suspects grew up,’ Pip said. ‘One of them just out of prison for committing an “assault occasioning actual bodily harm” ,’ she used quotation fingers around her words. ‘You’re my back-up as we’re going to speak to a potentially violent person of interest.’

‘Back-up?’ he said, catching up to walk alongside her.

‘You know,’ Pip said, ‘so there’s someone there to hear my screams of help if they’re required.’

‘Wait, Pip.’ He closed his fingers round her arm and pulled them both to a stop. ‘I don’t want you doing something that’s actually dangerous. Sal wouldn’t have wanted that either.’

‘Oh, come on.’ She shrugged him off. ‘Nothing gets in between me and my homework, not even a little danger. And I’m just going to, very calmly, ask her a few questions.’

‘Oh, it’s a her?’ Ravi said. ‘OK then.’

Pip swung her rucksack to whack him on the arm.

‘Don’t think I didn’t notice that,’ she said. ‘Women can be just as dangerous as men.’

‘Ouch, tell me about it,’ he said, rubbing his arm. ‘What have you got in there, bricks?’

When Ravi stopped laughing at Pip’s squat and bug-faced car, he clicked his seat belt into place and Pip keyed the address into her phone. She started the car and told Ravi everything she’d learned since they last spoke. Everything except the dark figure in the forest and the note in her sleeping bag. This investigation meant everything to him, and yet, she knew he would tell her to stop if he thought she was putting herself in danger. She couldn’t put him in that position.

‘Andie sounds like a piece of work,’ he said when Pip was done. ‘And yet it was so easy for everyone to believe that Sal was the monster. Wow, that was deep.’ He turned to her. ‘You can quote me on that in your project if you want.’

‘Certainly, footnote and everything,’ she said.

‘Ravi Singh,’ he said, drawing his words with his fingers, ‘deep unfiltered thoughts, Pip’s bug-faced car, 2017.’

‘We had an hour-long EPQ session on footnotes today,’ Pip said, eyes back on the road. ‘As if they think I don’t already know. I came out of the womb knowing how to do academic references.’

‘Such an interesting superpower; you should call up Marvel.’

The mechanical and snobby voice on Pip’s phone interrupted, telling them that in 500 yards they would reach their destination.

‘Must be this one,’ Pip said. ‘Naomi told me it was the one with the bright blue door.’ She indicated and pulled up on to the kerb. ‘I rang Natalie twice yesterday. The first time she hung up after I said the words “school project”. The second time she wouldn’t pick up at all. Let’s hope she’ll actually open the door. You coming?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, pointing at his own face, ‘there’s that whole murderer’s brother thing. You might get more answers if I’m not there.’

‘Oh.’

‘How about I stand on the path there?’ He gestured to the slabs of concrete that divided the front garden up to the house, at the point where they turned sharply left to lead to the front door. ‘She won’t see me, but I’ll be right there, ready for action.’

They stepped out of the car and Ravi handed over her rucksack, making exaggerated grunting sounds as he lifted it.

She nodded at him when he was in position and then strolled up to the front door. She prodded the bell in two short bursts, fiddling nervously with the collar of her blazer as a dark, shadowy figure appeared in the frosted glass.

The door opened slowly and a face appeared in the crack. A young woman with white-blonde hair cropped closely to her head and eyeliner raccoon-dripped around her eyes. The face beneath it all looked eerily Andie-like: similar big blue eyes and plump pale lips.

‘Hi,’ Pip said, ‘are you Nat da Silva?’

‘Y-yes,’ she said hesitantly.

‘My name’s Pip,’ she swallowed. ‘I was the one who called you yesterday. I’m friends with Naomi Ward; you knew her at school, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah, Naomi was a friend. Why? Is she OK?’ Nat looked concerned.

‘Oh, she’s fine,’ Pip smiled. ‘She’s back home at the moment.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Nat opened the door a little wider. ‘Yeah, I should catch up with her sometime. So . . .’

‘Sorry,’ Pip said. She looked down at full-length Natalie, noticing the electronic tag buckled round her ankle. ‘So, as I said when I called, I’m doing a school project and I was wondering if I could ask you some questions?’ She looked quickly back up into Nat’s face.

‘What about?’ Nat shifted the tagged foot back behind the door.

‘Um, it’s about Andie Bell.’

‘No thanks.’ Nat stood back and tried to shut the door but Pip stepped forward to block it with her foot.

‘Please. I know the awful things she did to you,’ she said. ‘I can understand why you wouldn’t want to but –’

‘That bitch ruined my life.’ Nat spat, ‘I’m not wasting one more breath on her. Move!’

That’s when they both heard the sound of a rubber sole skidding over concrete and a whispered, ‘Oh crap.’

Nat glanced up and her eyes widened. ‘You,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re Sal’s brother.’

It wasn’t a question.

Pip turned now, her eyes falling on Ravi behind her, standing sheepishly next to the uneven slab that must have tripped him up.

‘Hi,’ he said, ducking his head and raising his hand, ‘I’m Ravi.’

He came to stand beside Pip and as he did Nat’s grip on the door loosened and she let it swing back open.

‘Sal was always nice to me,’ she said, ‘even when he didn’t have to be. The last time I spoke to him, he was offering to give up his lunch breaks to tutor me in politics because I was struggling. I’m sorry you don’t have your brother any more.’

‘Thank you,’ Ravi said.

‘It must be hard for you too,’ Nat carried on, her eyes still lost in another world, ‘how much this town worships Andie Bell. Kilton’s saint and sweetheart. And that bench dedication she has: Taken too soon. Not soon enough, it should say.’

‘She wasn’t a saint,’ Pip said gently, trying to coax Nat out from behind the door. But Nat wasn’t looking at her, only at Ravi.

He stepped up. ‘She bullied you?’

‘Sure did,’ Nat laughed bitterly, ‘and she’s still ruining my life, even from the grave. You’ve checked out my hardware.’ She pointed to her ankle tag. ‘Got this because I punched one of my housemates at university. We were deciding on bedrooms and this girl started pulling a stunt, exactly like Andie would’ve, and I just lost it.’

‘We know about the video she put up of you,’ Pip said. ‘She should have faced charges over it; you were still a minor at the time.’

Nat shrugged. ‘At least she was punished in some way that week. Some divine providence. Thanks to Sal.’

‘Did you want her dead, after what she’d done to you?’ Ravi asked.

‘Of course I did,’ Nat said darkly. ‘Of course I wanted her gone. I skipped two days of school because I was so upset. And when I went back on the Wednesday, everyone was looking at me, laughing at me. I was crying in the corridor and Andie walked by and called me a slut. I was so angry that I left her a nice little note in her locker. I was too scared to ever say anything to her face.’

Pip glanced sideways at Ravi, at his tensed jaw and furrowed brows, and she knew he’d picked up on it too.

‘A note?’ he said. ‘Was it a . . . was it a threatening note?’

‘Of course it was a threatening note,’ Nat laughed. ‘You stupid bitch, I’m going to kill you , something like that. Sal got there first, though.’

‘Maybe he didn’t,’ Pip said.

Nat turned and looked Pip in the face. Then she burst into loud and forced laughter, a mist of spit landing on Pip’s cheek.

‘Oh, this is too good,’ she hooted. ‘Are you asking me whether I killed Andie Bell? I had the motive, right, that’s what you’re thinking? You want my fucking alibi?’ She laughed cruelly.

Pip didn’t say anything. Her mouth was filling uncomfortably with saliva but she didn’t swallow. She didn’t want to move at all. She felt Ravi brushing against her shoulder, his hand skimming just past hers, disturbing the air around it.

Nat leaned towards them. ‘I didn’t have any friends left because of Andie Bell. I had no place to be on that Friday night. I was in playing Scrabble with my parents and my sister-in-law, tucked in by eleven. Sorry to disappoint you.’

Pip didn’t have time to swallow. ‘And where was your brother? If his wife was home with you?’

‘He’s a suspect too, is he?’ Her voice darkened with a growl. ‘Naomi must have been talking then. He was out at the pub drinking with his cop friends that night.’

‘He’s a police officer?’ Ravi said.

‘Just finished his training that year. So yeah, no murderers in this house, I’m afraid. Now fuck off, and tell Naomi to fuck off too.’

Nat stepped back and kicked the door shut in their faces.

Pip watched the door vibrating in its frame, her eyes so transfixed that it looked for a moment like the very particles of air were rippling from the slam. She shook her head and turned to Ravi.

‘Let’s go,’ he said gently.

Back in the car, Pip allowed herself to just breathe for a few slow seconds, to arrange the haze of her thoughts into actual words.

Ravi found his first: ‘Am I in trouble for, well, literally tripping into the interrogation. I heard raised voices and –’

‘No.’ Pip looked at him and couldn’t help but smile. ‘We’re lucky you did. She only talked because you were there.’

He sat up a little straighter in his seat, his hair crushed against the roof of the car. ‘So the death threat that journalist told you about,’ he said.

‘Came from Nat,’ Pip finished, turning the key in the ignition.

She pulled the car off the kerb and drove about twenty feet up the road, out of sight of the Da Silva house, before stopping again and reaching for her phone.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nat said her brother is a police officer.’ She thumbed on to the browser app and started typing her search. ‘Let’s look him up.’

It came up as the first item when she searched: Thames Valley Police Daniel da Silva. A page on the national police website, telling her that PC Daniel da Silva was a constable on the local policing team covering Little Kilton. A quick check to his LinkedIn profile said he had been so since the end of 2011.

‘Hey, I know him,’ Ravi said, leaning over her shoulder, jabbing his finger at the picture of Daniel.

‘You do?’

‘Yeah. Back when I started asking questions about Sal, he was the officer who told me to give it up, that my brother was guilty beyond doubt. He does not like me.’ Ravi’s hand crept up to the back of his head, losing his fingers in his dark hair. ‘Last summer, I was sitting on the tables outside the cafe. This guy –’ he gestured to the photo of Daniel – ‘made me move along, said I was “loitering”. Funny that he didn’t think all the other people outside were loitering, just the brown kid with the murderer for a brother.’

‘What a contemptible arsehole,’ she said. ‘And he shut down all your questions about Sal?’

Ravi nodded.

‘He’s been a police officer in Kilton since just before Andie disappeared.’ Pip stared down at her phone into Daniel’s forever-smiling snapshot face. ‘Ravi, if someone did frame Sal and make his death look like suicide, wouldn’t it be easier for someone with knowledge of police procedure?’

‘That it would, Sarge,’ he said. ‘And there’s the rumour that Andie slept with him when she was fifteen, which is what she used to blackmail Nat out of the play.’

‘Yes, and what if they started up again later, after Daniel was married and Andie was in her final year? He could be the secret older guy.’

‘What about Nat?’ he said. ‘I sort of want to believe her when she says she was home with her parents that night because she’d lost all her friends. But . . . she’s also proven to be violent.’ He weighed up his hands in a conceptual see-saw. ‘And there’s certainly motive. Maybe a brother-and-sister killer tag team?’

‘Or a Nat-and-Naomi killer tag team,’ Pip groaned.

‘She did seem pretty angry that Naomi had talked to you,’ Ravi agreed. ‘What’s the word count on this project, Pip?’

‘Not enough, Ravi. Not nearly enough.’

‘Should we just go and get ice cream and give our brains a rest?’ He turned to her with that smile of his.

‘Yes, we probably should.’

‘As long as you’re a cookie dough kinda gal. Quote, Ravi Singh,’ he said dramatically into an invisible microphone, ‘a thesis on the best ice-cream flavour, Pip’s car, Septemb–’

‘Shut up.’

‘OK.’

Pippa Fitz-Amobi

EPQ 16/09/2017

Production Log – Entry 17

I can’t find anything on Daniel da Silva. Nothing that gives me any further leads. There’s hardly anything to learn from his Facebook profile, other than he got married in September 2011.

But if he was the secret older guy, Andie could have ruined him in two different ways : she could have told his new wife he was cheating and destroyed his marriage, OR she could have filed a police report about statutory rape from two years before. Both circumstances are just rumour at this point but, if true, they certainly would give Daniel a motive for wanting her dead. Andie could have blackmailed him; it’s definitely not out of character for her to have been blackmailing a Da Silva.

There’s nothing about his professional life online either, other than an article written by Stanley Forbes three years ago about a car collision on Hogg Hill that Daniel responded to.

But if Daniel is our killer, I’m thinking he might have disturbed the investigation somehow in his capacity as a police officer. A man on the inside. Perhaps when searching the Bell residence he could have stolen or tampered with any evidence that would lead back to him. Or his sister?

It’s also worth noting the way he reacted to Ravi asking questions about Sal. Did he shut Ravi down to protect himself?

I’ve looked through all the newspaper reports on Andie’s disappearance again. I’ve stared at pictures of the police searches until it feels like my eyes are growing scratchy little legs to climb out of their sockets and splat against the laptop screen, like grotesque little moths. I don’t recognize Da Silva as any of the investigating officers.

Although there is one picture I’m not sure about. It was taken on the Sunday morning. There are some police officers in high-vis standing round the front of Andie’s house. One of them is walking through the front door, his back to the camera. His hair colour and length matches Da Silva’s when I cross-reference social media pictures of him from around that time.

It could be him.

It could be.

On to the list he goes.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi

EPQ 18/09/2017

Production Log – Entry 18

It’s here!

I can’t believe it’s really here.

The Thames Valley Police have responded to my Freedom of Information request. Their email:

*****************************

Dear Miss Fitz-Amobi,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 3142/17

I write in connection with your request for information dated 19/08/17, received by the Thames Valley Police for the following information:

I’m doing a project at school about the Andrea Bell investigation and I would like to request the following:

1. A transcript of the interview conducted with Salil Singh on 21/04/2012

2. A transcript of any interviews conducted with Jason Bell

3. Records of the findings from the searches of the Bell residence on 21/04/2012 and 22/04/2012

I would be very grateful if you could help with any of these requests.

Result

Requests 2 and 3 have been refused citing exemptions Section 30 (1) (a) (Investigations) and Section 40 (2) (Personal Information) of the FOIA. This email serves as a partial Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act (2000).

Request 1 has been upheld, but the document contains redactions as per Section 30 (1) (a) (b) and Section 40 (2). The transcript is attached below.

Reasons for decision

Section 40 (2) provides an exemption for information that is the personal data of an individual other than the requester and where the disclosure of that personal data would be in breach of any of the principles of the Data Protection Act 1988 (DPA).

Section 30 (1) provides an exemption from the duty to disclose information that a public authority has held at any time for certain investigations or proceedings.

If you are not satisfied with this response, you have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner. I should draw your attention to the attached sheet which details your right of complaint.

Yours sincerely,

Gregory Pannett

*****************************

I have Sal’s interview! Everything else was refused. But in their refusal they still confirmed that Jason Bell was at least interviewed in the investigation; maybe the police had their suspicions too?

The attached transcript:

*****************************

Salil Singh Recorded Interview

Date: 21/04/2012

Duration: 11 minutes

Location: Interviewee’s residence

Conducted by officers from the Thames Valley Police

OK, deep breath. I’ve read it over six times, even out loud. And now I have this horrible, sinking feeling in my gut, like being both unbearably hungry and unbearably full.

This does not look great for Sal.

I know it’s sometimes hard to read nuances from a transcript, but Sal was very evasive with the police about what he and Andie were arguing about. I don’t think anything is too private that you wouldn’t tell the police if it could help find your missing girlfriend.

If it was potentially about Andie seeing another man, why didn’t Sal just tell the police? It could have led them to the possible real killer right at the start.

But what if Sal was covering up something worse? Something that would have given him real motive to kill Andie. We know he’s lying elsewhere in this interview; when he tells the police what time he left Max’s.

It would crush me to have come all this way just to find out that Sal really is guilty. Ravi would be devastated. Maybe I should never have started this project, should never have spoken to him. I’m going to have to show him the transcript, I told him just yesterday that I was expecting a reply any day now. But I don’t know how he’s going to take it. Or . . . maybe I could lie and say it hasn’t arrived yet?

Could Sal really have been guilty all along? Sal as the killer has always been the path of least resistance, but was it so easy for everyone to believe because it’s also true?

But no: The note.

Somebody warned me to stop digging.

Yes, the note could have been someone’s idea of a prank, and if the note was a joke, then Sal could be the real killer. But it doesn’t feel right. Someone in this town has something to hide and they’re scared because I’m on the right path to chasing them down.

I just have to keep chasing, even when the path is resisting me.

Persons of Interest

Jason Bell

Naomi Ward

Secret Older Guy

Nat da Silva

Daniel da Silva