A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

The door was different now. It had been brown the last time she was here, over six weeks ago. Now it was covered in a streaky layer of white paint, the dark undercoat still peering through.

Pip knocked again, harder this time, hoping it would be heard over the droning murmur of a vacuum cleaner running inside.

The drone clicked off abruptly, leaving a slightly buzzy silence in its wake. Then sharp footsteps on a hard floor.

The door opened and a well-dressed woman with cherry-red lipstick stood before her.

‘Hi,’ Pip said. ‘I’m a friend of Max’s, is he in?’

‘Oh, hi,’ the woman smiled, revealing a smear of red on one of her top teeth. She stood back to let Pip through. ‘He certainly is, come in . . .’

‘Pippa,’ she smiled, stepping inside.

‘Pippa. Yes, he’s in the living room. Shouting at me for vacuuming while he’s playing some death match. Can’t pause it, apparently.’

Max’s mum walked Pip down the hall and through the open archway into the living room.

Max was spread out on the sofa, in tartan pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt, his hands gripped round a controller as he furiously thumbed the X button.

His mum cleared her throat.

Max looked up.

‘Oh, hi, Pippa Funny-Surname,’ he said in his deep, refined voice, his eyes returning to his game. ‘What are you doing here?’

Pip almost grimaced in reflex, but she fought it with a fake smile. ‘Oh, nothing much.’ She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Just here to ask you how well you really knew Andie Bell.’

The game was paused.

Max sat up, stared at Pip, then his mum, then back to Pip.

‘Um,’ his mum said, ‘would anyone like a cup of tea?’

‘No, we don’t.’ Max stood. ‘Upstairs, Pippa.’

He strode past them and up the grand stairs in the hallway, his bare feet thundering on the steps. Pip followed, flashing a polite wave back at his mother. At the top, Max held open his bedroom door and gestured her inside.

Pip hesitated, one foot suspended above the vacuum-tracked carpet. Should she really be alone with him?

Max jerked his head impatiently.

His mum was just downstairs; she should be safe. She planted the foot and strode into his room.

‘Thank you for that,’ he said, closing the door. ‘My mum didn’t need to know I’ve been talking about Andie and Sal again. The woman is a bloodhound, never lets anything go.’

‘Pit bull,’ Pip said. ‘It’s pit bulls that don’t let things go.’

Max sat back on his maroon bedspread. ‘Whatever. What do you want?’

‘I said. I want to know how well you really knew Andie.’

‘I already told you,’ he said, leaning back on his elbows and shooting a glance up past Pip’s shoulder. ‘I didn’t know her that well.’

‘Mmm.’ Pip leaned back against his door. ‘Just acquaintances, right? That’s what you said?’

‘Yeah, I did.’ He scratched his nose. ‘I’ll be honest, I’m starting to find your tone a tad annoying ’

‘Good,’ she said, following Max’s eyes as they looked over again to a noticeboard on the far wall, littered with posters and pinned-up notes and photographs. ‘And I’m starting to find your lies a tad intriguing.’

‘What lies?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know her well.’

‘Interesting,’ Pip said. ‘I’ve spoken to a witness who went to a calamity party that you and Andie attended in March 2012. Interesting because she said she saw you two alone several times that night, looking pretty comfortable with each other.’

‘Who said that?’ Another micro-glance over to the noticeboard.

‘I can’t reveal my sources.’

‘Oh my god.’ He laughed a deep throaty laugh. ‘You’re deluded. You know you’re not actually a police officer, right?’

‘You’re avoiding the question,’ she said. ‘Were you and Andie secretly seeing each other behind Sal’s back?’

Max laughed again. ‘He was my best friend.’

‘That’s not an answer.’ Pip folded her arms.

‘No. No, I wasn’t seeing Andie Bell. Like I said, I didn’t know her that well.’

‘So why did this source see you together? In a manner that made her think you were actually Andie’s boyfriend?’

While Max rolled his eyes at the question, Pip stole her own glance at the noticeboard. The scribbled notes and bits of paper were several layers deep in places, with hidden corners and curled edges. Glossy photos of Max skiing and surfing were pinned on top. A Reservoir Dogs poster took up most of the board.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Whoever it was, they were mistaken. Probably drunk. An unreliable source, you might say.’

‘OK.’ Pip shuffled away from the door. She took a few steps to the right, then paced back a couple, so Max wouldn’t realize as she moved herself incrementally towards the noticeboard. ‘So let’s get this straight.’ She paced again, positioning herself nearer and nearer. ‘You’re saying you never spoke one-on-one with Andie at a calamity party?’

‘I don’t know if never,’ Max said, ‘but it’s not like you’re implying.’

‘OK, OK.’ Pip looked up from the floor, just a couple of feet from the board now. ‘And why do you keep looking over here?’ She twisted on her heels and started flipping through the papers pinned to the board.

‘Hey, stop.’

She heard the bed groan as Max got to his feet.

Pip’s eyes and fingers scanned over to-do lists, scribbled names of companies and grad schemes, leaflets and old photos of a young Max in a hospital bed.

Heavy bare-footed steps behind her.

‘That’s my private stuff!’

And then she saw a small white corner of paper, tucked underneath Reservoir Dogs . She pulled and ripped the paper out just as Max grabbed her arm. Pip spun towards him, his fingers digging into her wrist. And they both looked down at the piece of paper in her hand.

Pip’s mouth fell open.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ Max let her arm go and ran his fingers through his untamed hair.

‘Just acquaintances?’ she said shakily.

‘Who do you think you are?’ Max said. ‘Going through my stuff.’

‘Just acquaintances?’ Pip said again, holding the printed photo up to Max’s face.

It was Andie.

A photo she’d taken of herself in a mirror. Standing on a red and white tiled floor, her right hand raised and clutched round the phone. Her mouth was pushed out in a pout and her eyes looked straight out of the page; she was wearing nothing but a pair of black pants.

‘Care to explain?’ Pip said.

‘No.’

‘Oh, so you want to explain it to the police first? I get it.’ Pip glared at him and feigned walking towards the door.

‘Don’t be dramatic,’ Max said, returning her glare with his glassy blue eyes. ‘It has nothing to do with what happened to her.’

‘I’ll let them decide that.’

‘No, Pippa.’ He blocked her way to the door. ‘Look, this is really not how it looks. Andie didn’t give me that picture. I found it.’

‘You found it? Where?’

‘It was just lying around at school. I found it and I kept it. Andie never knew about it.’ There was a hint of pleading in his voice.

‘You found a nude picture of Andie just lying around at school?’ She didn’t even try to hide her disbelief.

‘Yes. It was just hidden in the back of a classroom. I swear.’

‘And you didn’t tell Andie or anyone that you’d found it?’ said Pip.

‘No, I just kept it.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ his voice scrambled higher. ‘Because she’s hot and I wanted to. And then it seemed wrong to throw it away after . . . What? Don’t judge me. She took the photo; she clearly wanted it to be seen.’

‘You expect me to believe that you just found this naked picture of Andie, a girl you were seen getting close to at parties –’

Max cut her off. ‘Those are completely unrelated. I wasn’t talking to Andie because we were together and neither do I have that picture because we were together. We weren’t together. We never had been.’

‘So you were alone talking to Andie at that calamity party?’ Pip said triumphantly.

Max held his face in his hands for a moment, his fingertips pressing into his eyes.

‘Fine,’ he said quietly, ‘if I tell you, will you please just leave me alone? And no police.’

‘That depends.’

‘OK, fine. I knew Andie better than I said I did. A lot better. Since before she started with Sal. But I wasn’t seeing her. I was buying from her.’

Pip looked at him in confusion, her mind ticking back over his last words.

‘Buying . . . drugs?’ she asked softly.

Max nodded. ‘Nothing super hard, though. Just weed and a few pills.’

‘H-holy pepperoni. Hold on.’ Pip held up her finger to push the world back, give her brain space to think. ‘Andie Bell was dealing drugs?’

‘Well, yeah, but only at calamities and when we went out to clubs and stuff. Just to a few people. A handful at most. She wasn’t like a proper dealer.’ Max paused. ‘She was working with an actual dealer in town, got him an inside into the school crowd. It worked out for both of them.’

‘That’s why she always had so much cash,’ Pip said, the puzzle piece slotting in with an almost audible click in her head. ‘Did she use?’

‘Not really. Think she only did it for the money. Money and the power it gave her. I could tell she enjoyed that.’

‘And did Sal know she was selling drugs?’

Max laughed. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘no, no, no. Sal always hated drugs, that wouldn’t have gone down well. Andie hid it from him; she was good at secrets. I think the only people who knew were those who bought from her. But I always thought Sal was a little naive. I’m surprised he never found out.’

‘How long had she been doing this?’ Pip said, feeling a crackle of sinister excitement spark through her.

‘A while.’ Max looked up at the ceiling, his eyes circling as though he were turning over his own memories. ‘Think the first time I bought weed off her was early 2011, when she was still sixteen. That was probably around when it started.’

‘And who was Andie’s dealer? Who did she get the drugs from?’

Max shrugged. ‘I dunno, I never knew the guy. I only ever bought through Andie and she never told me.’

Pip deflated. ‘You don’t know anything? You never bought drugs in Kilton after Andie was killed?’

‘Nope.’ He shrugged again. ‘I don’t know anything more.’

‘But were other people at calamities still using drugs? Where did they get them?’

‘I don’t know, Pippa,’ Max over-enunciated. ‘I told you what you wanted to hear. Now I want you to leave.’

He stepped forward and whipped the photo out of Pip’s hands. His thumb closed over Andie’s face, the picture crumpling in his tight and shaking grip. A crease split down the middle of Andie’s body as he folded her away.