A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Pip knew from her murder map that it would take Ravi about eighteen minutes to walk from his house to Romer Close. He was four minutes faster, running when he spotted her.

‘What is it?’ he said, slightly out of breath and brushing the hair back off his face.

‘It is a lot of things,’ Pip said quietly. ‘I’m not quite sure where to start so I just will.’

‘You’re freaking me out.’ His eyes flicked over her face, searching.

‘I’m freaking me out too.’ She paused to take a large breath, and hopefully force her figurative stomach back down her windpipe. ‘OK, you know I was looking for the drug dealer, from my lead at the calamity party. He was there tonight, dealing in the car park and I followed him home. He lives here, Ravi. The road where Andie’s car was found.’

Ravi’s eyes wandered up to trace the outline of the dark street. ‘But how do you even know he’s the guy that supplied Andie?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t for sure,’ she said. ‘I do now. But wait there’s another thing I have to tell you first and I don’t want you to be mad.’

‘Why would I be mad?’ He looked down at her, his soft face hardening around the eyes.

‘Um, because I lied to you,’ she said, her gaze down on her own feet instead of Ravi’s face. ‘I told you that Sal’s police interview hadn’t arrived yet. It did, over two weeks ago.’

‘What?’ he said quietly. A look of unconcealed hurt clouded his face, wrinkling his nose and forehead.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pip said. ‘But when it arrived and I read through it, I thought you’d be better off not seeing it.’

‘Why?’

She swallowed. ‘Because it looked really bad for Sal. He was evasive with the police and outright told them he didn’t want to say why he and Andie were arguing on that Thursday and Friday. It looked like he was trying to hide his own motive. And I was scared that maybe he’d actually killed her and I didn’t want to upset you.’ She chanced to look up at his eyes. They were drawn and sad.

‘You think Sal is guilty after all this?’

‘No, I don’t. I just doubted it for a while, and I was scared what it would do to you. I was wrong to do that, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my place. But I was also wrong to ever doubt Sal.’

Ravi paused and looked at her, scratching the back of his head. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK, I get why you did it. So what’s going on?’

‘I just found out exactly why Sal was so weird and evasive in his police interview, and why he and Andie were arguing. Come on.’

She beckoned him to follow and walked back over to Howie’s bungalow. She pointed.

‘This is the drug dealer’s house,’ she said. ‘Look at his car, Ravi.’

She watched Ravi’s face as his eyes flicked up and down over the car. From windscreen to bonnet and headlight to headlight. Until they dropped to the number plate and there they stayed. Backwards and forwards and back.

‘Oh,’ he said.

Pip nodded. ‘Oh indeed.’

‘Actually, I think this is a “holy pepperoni” moment.’

And both their eyes fell back on the number plate: R009 KKJ.

‘Sal wrote that number plate in the notes on his phone,’ Pip said. ‘On Wednesday the eighteenth of April at about seven forty-five p.m. He must have been suspicious, maybe he’d heard rumours at school or something. So he followed Andie that evening and must have seen her with Howie and this car. And what she was doing.’

‘That’s why they were arguing in the days before she went missing,’ Ravi added. ‘Sal hated drugs. Hated them.’

‘And when the police asked him about their arguing,’ Pip continued, ‘he wasn’t being evasive to hide his own motive. He was protecting Andie. He didn’t think she was dead. He thought she was alive and coming back and he didn’t want to get her in trouble with the police by telling them she was dealing drugs. And the final text he sent her on that Friday night?’

‘I’m not talking to you until you’ve stopped ,’ Ravi quoted.

‘You know something?’ Pip smiled. ‘Your brother has never looked more innocent than right now.’

‘Thanks.’ He returned the smile. ‘You know, I’ve never said this to a girl before, but . . . I’m glad you came knocking on my door out of the blue.’

‘I distinctly remember you telling me to go away,’ she said.

‘Well, it appears you’re hard to get rid of.’

‘That I am.’ She bowed her head. ‘Ready to do some knocking with me?’

‘Wait. No. What?’ He looked at her, appalled.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said, striding towards Howie’s front door, ‘you’re finally going to get some action.’

‘Gah, so hard not to point out all the innuendoes. Wait, Pip,’ Ravi said, bounding after her. ‘What are you doing? He’s not going to talk to us.’

‘He will,’ Pip said, waving her phone above her head. ‘I have leverage.’

‘What leverage?’ Ravi caught up with her just before the front door.

She turned and flashed him a scrunched-up, crinkly-eyed smile. And then she took his hand. Before Ravi could take it away, she knocked it three times against the door.

He widened his eyes and raised his finger in a silent telling-off.

They heard shuffling and coughing from inside. A few seconds later, the door was roughly pulled open.

Howie stood there, blinking at them. He’d taken his coat off now and was wearing a stained blue T-shirt, his feet bare. He appeared with a smell of stale smoke and damp, mouldering clothes.

‘Hello, Howie Bowers,’ Pip said. ‘Please may we buy some drugs?’

‘Who the hell are you?’ Howie spat.

‘I’m the hell person who took these lovely photos earlier tonight,’ Pip said, scrolling on to the pictures of Howie and holding the phone up to face him. She swiped with her thumb so he saw the whole range. ‘Interestingly I know this boy you sold drugs to. His name’s Robin. I wonder what would happen if I called his parents right now and told them to search his rucksack. I wonder if they’d find a small paper bag of treats. And then I wonder how long it would take for the police to come knocking round here, especially once I give them a call to help them along.’

She let Howie digest it all, his eyes darting between the phone, Ravi and Pip’s eyes.

He grunted. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to invite us in and answer some of our questions,’ Pip said. ‘That’s all, and we won’t go to the police.’

‘What about?’ he said, picking something from his teeth with his fingernails.

‘About Andie Bell.’

A look of badly performed confusion stretched into Howie’s face.

‘You know, the girl you supplied with drugs to sell on to schoolkids. The same girl who was murdered five years ago. Remember her?’ Pip said. ‘Well, if you don’t, I’m sure the police will remember.’

‘Fine,’ Howie said, stepping back over a pile of plastic bags, holding the door open. ‘You can come in.’

‘Excellent,’ Pip said with a look back to Ravi over her shoulder. She mouthed, ‘Leverage,’ to him and he rolled his eyes. But as she went to enter the house Ravi pulled her back behind him, crossing the threshold first. He stared Howie down until the man drew back from the door and moved down the tiny corridor.

Pip followed Ravi inside, closing the door behind her.

‘This way,’ Howie said gruffly, disappearing into the living room.

Howie fell back into a tattered armchair, an open can of beer waiting for him on the armrest. Ravi stepped over to the sofa and, pushing away a pile of clothes, took the seat opposite Howie, straight-backed and as close to the edge of the sofa cushion as it was possible to be. Pip sat beside him, crossing her arms.

Howie pointed his beer can at Ravi. ‘You’re the brother of the guy that murdered her.’

‘Allegedly,’ both Pip and Ravi said at the same time.

The tension in the room flailed between the three of them, like invisible sticky tendrils that licked from one person to the other as eye contact shifted.

‘You understand that we’ll go to the police with these pictures if you don’t answer our questions about Andie?’ Pip said, eyeing the beer that probably wasn’t Howie’s first since returning home.

‘Yes, darling,’ Howie laughed a teeth-whistle laugh. ‘You’ve made that clear enough.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep my questions nice and clear too. When did Andie first start working with you and how did it come about?’

‘I don’t remember.’ He took a large glug of beer. ‘Maybe early 2011. And she was the one who came to me. All I know is I had this ballsy teenager strolling up to me in the car park, telling me she could get me more business if I gave her a cut. Said she wanted to make money and I told her that I had similar interests. Don’t know how she found out where I sold.’

‘So you agreed when she offered to help you sell?’

‘Yeah, obviously. She was promising an in with the younger crowd, kids I couldn’t really get to. It was win-win.’

‘And then what happened?’ Ravi said.

Howie’s cold eyes alighted on Ravi, and Pip could feel him tensing where their arms almost touched.

‘We met up and I set her some ground rules, like about keeping the stash and money hidden, about using codes rather than names. Asked what kind of stuff she thought kids at her school would be into. I gave her a phone to use for business stuff and that was it really. I sent her out into the big wide world.’ Howie smiled, his face and stubble unnervingly symmetrical.

‘Andie had a second phone?’ Pip asked.

‘Yeah, obviously. Couldn’t be arranging deals on a phone her parents pay for, could she? I bought her a burner phone, pre-paid in cash. Two actually. I got the second one when the credit on the first ran out. Gave it to her only a few months before she got killed.’

‘Where did Andie keep the drugs before she sold them on?’ said Ravi.

‘That was part of the ground rules.’ Howie sat back, speaking into his can. ‘I told her this little business venture of hers would go nowhere if she didn’t have somewhere to hide the stash and her second phone without her parents finding it. She assured me she had just the place and no one else knew about it.’

‘Where was it?’ Ravi pressed.

He scratched his chin, ‘Um, think it was some kind of loose floorboard in her wardrobe. She said her parents had no idea it existed and she was always hiding shit there.’

‘So, the phone is probably still hidden in Andie’s bedroom?’ Pip said.

‘I don’t know. Unless she had it on her when she . . .’ Howie made a gurgling sound as he crossed his finger sharply across his throat.

Pip looked over at Ravi before her next question, a muscle tensing in his jaw as he ground his teeth, concentrating so hard on not dropping his eyes from Howie. Like he thought he could hold him in place with his stare.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘so which drugs was Andie selling at house parties?’

Howie crushed the empty can and threw it on the floor. ‘Started just weed,’ he said. ‘By the end she was selling a load of different things.’

‘She asked which drugs Andie sold,’ said Ravi. ‘List them.’

‘Yeah, OK.’ Howie looked irked, sitting up taller and picking at a textured brown stain on his T-shirt. ‘She sold weed, sometimes MDMA, mephedrone, ketamine. She had a couple of regular buyers of Rohypnol.’

‘Rohypnol?’ Pip repeated, unable to hide her shock. ‘You mean roofies? Andie was dealing roofies at school parties?’

‘Yeah. They’re for, like, chilling out, though, too, not just what most people think.’

‘Did you know who was buying Rohypnol from Andie?’ she said.

‘Um, there was this posh kid, I think she said. Dunno.’ Howie shook his head.

‘A posh kid?’ Pip’s mind immediately drew a picture of him: his angular face and sneering smile, his floppy yellow hair. ‘Was this posh kid a blonde guy?’

Howie looked blankly at her and shrugged.

‘Answer or we go to the police,’ Ravi said.

‘Yeah, it could have been that blonde guy.’

Pip cleared her throat to give herself some thinking time.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘How often would you and Andie meet?’

‘We met whenever we needed to, whenever she had orders to collect or cash to give me. I’d say it was probably about once a week, sometimes more, sometimes less.’

‘Where did you meet?’ Ravi said.

‘Either at the station, or she sometimes came over here.’

‘Were you . . .’ Pip paused. ‘Were you and Andie involved romantically?’

Howie snorted. He sat up suddenly, swatting something near his ear. ‘Fuck no, we weren’t,’ he said, his laughter not wholly covering the annoyance creeping up his neck in red patches.

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’ The cover of amusement was cast aside now.

‘Why are you getting defensive then?’ Pip said.

‘Course I’m defensive, there’s two kids in my house berating me about stuff that happened years ago and threatening cops.’ He kicked out at the crumpled beer can on the floor and it sailed across the room, clattering into the blinds just behind Pip’s head.

Ravi jumped up from the sofa, stepping in front of her.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Howie leered at him, staggering to his feet. ‘You’re a fucking joke, man.’

‘All right, everyone, calm down,’ Pip said, standing up too. ‘We’re almost finished here; you just have to answer honestly. Did you have a sexual relationship with –’

‘No, I already said no, didn’t I?’ The flush reached his face, peeking out above the line of his beard.

‘Did you want to have a sexual relationship with her?’

‘No.’ He was shouting now. ‘She was just business to me and me to her, OK? It wasn’t more complicated than that.’

‘Where were you the night she was killed?’ Ravi demanded.

‘I was passed out drunk on that sofa.’

‘Do you know who killed her?’ said Pip.

‘Yeah, his brother.’ Howie pointed aggressively at Ravi. ‘Is that what this is, you want to prove your murdering scum brother was innocent?’

Pip saw Ravi stiffen, looking down at the jagged hilltop knuckles on his fists. But then he caught her eyes and shook the hardness out of his face, tucking his hands into his pockets.

‘OK, we’re done here,’ Pip said, laying her hand on Ravi’s arm. ‘Let’s go.’

‘No, no, I don’t think so.’ In two giant leaps Howie darted over to the door, blocking their way out.

‘Excuse me, Howard,’ Pip said, her nervousness cooling into fear.

‘No, no, no,’ he laughed, shaking his head. ‘I can’t let you leave.’

Ravi stepped up to him. ‘Move.’

‘I did what you asked,’ Howie said, turning to Pip. ‘Now you have to delete those pictures of me.’

Pip relaxed a little. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s fair.’ She held up her phone and showed Howie as she deleted every single picture from the car park, until she swiped right on to a photo of Barney and Josh both asleep in the dog bed. ‘Done.’

Howie moved aside and let them pass.

Pip pulled open the front door and as she and Ravi stepped outside into the brisk night air Howie spoke one last time.

‘You go around asking dangerous questions, girl, you’re going to find some dangerous answers.’

Ravi yanked the door shut behind them. He waited until the house was at least twenty paces behind them before saying, ‘Well that was fun, thanks for the invite to my first blackmailing.’

‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘My first time too. But it was effective; we found out that Andie had a second phone, Howie had complicated feelings for her and Max Hastings had a taste for Rohypnol.’ She raised her phone and clicked on to the photo app. ‘Just recovering those photos in case we need future Howie leverage.’

‘Oh, fantastic,’ he said. ‘Can’t wait. Maybe then I can add blackmail as a special skill to my CV.’

‘You know you use humour as a defence mechanism when you’re rattled?’ Pip smiled at him, letting him through the hedge gap ahead of her.

‘Yeah, and you get bossy and posh.’

He looked back at her for a long moment and she broke first. They started laughing and then they just couldn’t stop. The adrenaline comedown descended into hysterics. Pip fell into him, wiping away tears, snatching staccato breaths between cackles. Ravi stumbled, his face creased, laughing so hard he had to bend over and hold his gut.

They laughed until Pip’s cheeks ached and her stomach felt tight and sore.

But the after-laugh sighs just set them off again.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi

EPQ 06/10/2017

Production Log – Entry 23

I should really be concentrating on my university applications; I have about a week to finish off my personal statement before the deadline for Cambridge. Just a small break right now from tooting my horn and shaking my tail feathers at admissions officers.

So Howie Bowers doesn’t have an alibi for the night Andie disappeared. By his own admission he was ‘passed out drunk’ at his house. Without corroboration, this could be a total fabrication. He is an older guy and Andie could have ruined him by turning him in to the police for dealing. His relationship with Andie had criminal foundations and, judging by his defensive reaction, possibly some sexual undertones. And her car – the car that police believe was driven with her body in the boot – was found on his street.

I know Max has an alibi for the night Andie disappeared, the same alibi Sal asked his friends to give him. But let me think out loud here. Andie’s abduction window was between 10:40 p.m. and 12:45 a.m. There is a possibility that Max could have worked with the upper limit of that time frame. His parents were away, Jake and Sal had left his house and Millie and Naomi went to sleep in the spare room ‘a bit before half twelve’. Max could have left the house at that time without anyone knowing. Maybe Naomi could have too. Or together?

Max has a naked picture of a murder victim he claims he was never romantically involved with. He is technically an older guy. He was involved in Andie’s drug dealing and regularly bought roofies from her. Posh ol’ Max Hastings isn’t looking so wholesome any more. Maybe I need to follow this Rohypnol line of intel, see if there is any other evidence of what I’m starting to suspect. (How could I not? He was buying roofies for crying out loud).

Though they are both looking simultaneously suspicious, there’s no Max/Howie tag team going on here. Max only bought drugs in Kilton through Andie, and Howie only knew vaguely of Max and his buying habits via Andie.

But I think the most important lead we got from Howie is Andie’s second burner phone. That is priority number one . That second phone most likely has all the details of the people she was selling drugs to. Maybe confirmation of the nature of her relationship with Howie. And if Howie wasn’t the Secret Older Guy, maybe Andie was using her burner phone to contact this man, to keep it secret. The police had Andie’s actual phone after they found Sal’s body; if there were any evidence of a secret relationship on it, the police would have followed it up.

If we find that phone, maybe we find her secret older guy, maybe we find her killer and this will all be over. As it stands, there are three possible candidates for Secret Older Guy: Max, Howie or Daniel da Silva (italicized on POI list). If the burner phone confirms any one of them, I think we’d have enough to go to the police.

Or it could be someone we haven’t found yet, someone waiting in the wings, preparing for their starring role in this project. Someone like Stanley Forbes, maybe? I know there’s no direct link between him and Andie so he doesn’t make the POI list. But doesn’t it seem a little fluky that he’s the journalist who wrote scathing articles about Andie’s ‘killer boyfriend’ and now he’s dating her little sister and I saw him giving money to the same drug dealer who had supplied Andie? Or are these coincidences? I don’t trust coincidences.

Persons of Interest

Jason Bell

Naomi Ward

Secret Older Guy

Nat da Silva

Daniel da Silva

Max Hastings

Howie Bowers