A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Pippa Fitz-Amobi

EPQ 16/10/2017

Production Log – Entry 31

He’s innocent.

All day at school those two words have ticker-taped around my head. This project is no longer the hopeful conjecture it started life as. It’s no longer me indulging my gut instinct because Sal was kind to me when I was small and hurting. It’s no longer Ravi hoping against hope that he really knew the brother he loved. It’s real, no shred of maybe/possibly/allegedly left. Sal Singh did not kill Andie Bell. And he did not kill himself.

An innocent life was taken and everyone in this town turned it ugly in their mouths, turned him into a villain. But if a villain can be made, then they can be unmade. Two teenagers were murdered in Little Kilton five and a half years ago. And we hold the clues to finding the killer: me and Ravi and this ever-expanding Word document.

I went to meet Ravi after school – I’ve only just got home. We went to the park and talked for over three hours, well into darkness. He was angry when I told him why Sal’s alibi had been taken away. A quiet kind of angry. He said it wasn’t fair that Naomi and Max Hastings got to walk away from everything without punishment when Sal, who never hurt anyone, was killed and framed as a murderer. Of course it’s not fair; nothing about any of this is fair. But Naomi never meant to hurt Sal, it’s clear from her face, clear from the way she’s tiptoed through life since. She acted out of fear and I can understand that. Ravi does too, though he’s not sure he can forgive her.

His face fell when I said I didn’t know whether the photo was enough for the police to reopen the case; I’d bluffed to get Max and Naomi to talk. The police might think I doctored the image and refuse to apply for a warrant to check Max’s profile. He’s deleted the photo already, of course. Ravi thinks I’d have more credibility with the police than him, but I’m not so sure; a teenage girl rabbiting on about photo angles and tiny white numbers on a phone screen, especially when the evidence against Sal is so solid. Not to mention Daniel da Silva on the force, shutting me down.

And the other thing: it took Ravi a long time to understand why I wanted to protect Naomi. I explained that they are family, that Cara and Naomi are both sisters to me and though Naomi may have played her part in what happened, Cara is innocent. It would kill me to do this to her, to make her lose her sister after her mum too. I promised Ravi that this wouldn’t be a setback, that we don’t need Sal to have an alibi to prove his innocence; we just have to find the real killer. So we came to a deal: we are giving ourselves three more weeks. Three weeks to find the killer or solid evidence against a suspect. And if we have nothing after that deadline, Ravi and I will take the photo to the police, see if they’ll even take it seriously.

So that’s it. I have just three weeks now to find the killer or Naomi’s and Cara’s lives get blown apart. Was it wrong of me to ask Ravi to do this, to wait when he’s waited so long already? I’m torn, between the Wards and the Singhs and what’s right. I don’t even know what’s right any more – everything is so muddied. I’m not sure I’m the good girl I once thought I was. I’ve lost her along the way.

But there’s no time to waste thinking about it. So from the persons of interest list, we now have five suspects. I’ve taken Naomi off the list. My reasons for suspecting her have now been explained away: the M.I.A. thing and her being so awkward when answering questions about Sal.

A spider diagram recap on all the suspects:

Along with the note and text I received, I now have another lead straight to the killer: the fact that they knew about the hit-and-run. First up and most obviously, Max knew about it because he was the one who did it. He could have pretended to threaten himself along with his other friends so he could pin Andie’s murder on Sal.

But, as Naomi said, Max has always partied a lot. Drinking and taking drugs. He could have let slip about the hit-and-run to someone while in that state. Someone he knew, like Nat da Silva or Howie Bowers. Or maybe even Andie Bell who then, in turn, could have told any of the names above. Daniel da Silva was a working policeman who responded to traffic accidents; maybe he put two and two together? Or could one of them have been on the same road that night and watched it all happen? It’s feasible then that any of the five could have learned about the accident and used it to their advantage. But Max remains the strongest option in that respect.

I know Max technically has an alibi for the majority of the Andie disappearance window but I do not trust him . He could have left when Naomi and Millie went to bed. As long as he intercepted Andie before 12:45, when she was expected to pick her parents up, it’s still possible. Or maybe he went to help finish something that Howie started? He said he didn’t leave his house but I don’t trust his answers. I think he called my bluff. I think he knew it was so unlikely I would turn Naomi in to the police, so he didn’t have to be honest with me. I’m in a bit of a Catch 22 here: I can’t protect Naomi without simultaneously protecting Max too.

The other lead this new information gives me is that the killer somehow had access to the phone numbers of Max, Naomi, Millie and Jake (as well as mine). But again, this doesn’t really narrow it down. Max obviously had them and Howie could have had access that way. Nat da Silva probably had all their numbers, especially as she was good friends with Naomi; Daniel could have got them through her. Jason Bell may seem like the black sheep in this matter, BUT if he did kill Andie and had her phone, she probably had each of their numbers saved on it.

Agh. I haven’t narrowed anything down and I’m running out of time. I need to pursue every open lead, find the loose threads that, when pulled, can unravel this writhing and confusing ball of string. AND finish my bloody Margaret Atwood essay!!!

Pip unlocked the front door and shunted it open. Barney bounded down the hall and escorted her back as she moved towards the familiar voices.

‘Hello, pickle,’ Victor said as Pip popped her head into the living room. ‘We only just beat you home. I’m about to sort some dinner for Mum and me; Joshua ate at Sam’s house. Did you eat at Cara’s?’

‘Yeah, I did,’ she said. They’d eaten but they hadn’t talked much. Cara had been quiet all week at school. Pip understood; this project had sent the foundations of her family spinning, her life as it was was dependent on Pip finding the truth. She and Naomi had asked on Sunday, after Max left, who Pip thought had done it. She didn’t tell them anything, only warned Naomi to stay away from Max. She couldn’t risk sharing Andie’s secrets with them in case they came hand in hand with threats from the killer. That was her burden to bear.

‘So how was parents’ evening?’ Pip asked.

‘Yeah, good,’ Leanne said, patting Josh’s head. ‘Getting better in science and maths, aren’t you, Josh?’

Josh nodded, fumbling Lego bricks together on the coffee table.

‘Although Miss Speller did say you have a proclivity for being the class clown.’ Victor threw a mock-serious face in Josh’s direction.

‘I wonder where he gets that from,’ Pip said, throwing the same face right back at her dad.

He hooted and slapped his knees. ‘Don’t sass me, girl.’

‘I don’t have time to,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to get a few hours’ work done before bed.’ She stepped back into the hallway and towards the stairs.

‘Oh, sweetie,’ Mum sighed, ‘you work too hard.’

‘There’s no such thing,’ Pip said, waving from the stairs.

On the landing, she stopped just outside her bedroom and stared. The door was open slightly and the sight jarred with Pip’s memory of this morning before school. Joshua had taken two bottles of Victor’s aftershave and – wearing a cowboy hat – held one in each hand, squirting as he sashayed along the upstairs hallway, saying: ‘I’m rooty-tooty-perfume-booty and this house ain’t big enough for the both of us, Pippo.’ Pip had escaped, closing her door behind her, so that her room wouldn’t later smell of a sickly amalgamation of Brave and Pour Homme. Or maybe that had been yesterday morning? She hadn’t slept well this week and the days were sticking to each other.

‘Has someone been in my room?’ she called downstairs.

‘No, we just got in,’ her mum replied.

Pip went inside and dumped her rucksack on the bed. She walked over to her desk and knew with only half a glance that something wasn’t right. Her laptop was open, the screen tilted right back. Pip always, always closed the lid when she left it for the day. She clicked the on button and as it burred back into life she noticed that the neat stack of printouts beside her computer had been fanned out. One had been picked up and placed at the top of the pile.

It was the photograph. The evidence of Sal’s alibi. And it wasn’t where she’d left it.

Her laptop sang two welcome notes and loaded her home screen up. It was just as she’d left it; the Word document of her most recent production log in the task bar beside a minimized Chrome tab. She clicked into her log. It opened on the page below her spider diagram.

Pip gasped.

Below her final words, someone had typed: YOU NEED TO STOP THIS, PIPPA.

Over and over again. Hundreds of times. So many that it filled four entire A4 pages.

Pip’s heart became a thousand drumming beetles scattering under her skin. She drew her hands away from the keyboard and stared down at it. The killer had been here, in her room. Touching her things. Looking through her research. Pressing the keys on her laptop.

Inside her home.

She pushed away from the desk and bounded downstairs.

‘Um, Mum,’ she said, trying to speak normally over the breathless terror in her voice, ‘did anyone come over to the house today?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve been at work all day and went straight to Josh’s parents’ evening. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Pip said, improvising. ‘I ordered a book and thought it would turn up. Um . . . actually, one more thing. There was a story going round school today. A couple of people’s houses have been broken into; they think they’re using people’s spare keys to get in. Maybe we shouldn’t keep ours out until they’re caught?’

‘Oh, really?’ Leanne said, looking up at Pip. ‘No, I suppose we shouldn’t then.’

‘I’ll get it,’ Pip said, trying not to skid as she hurried for the front door.

She pulled it open and a blast of cool October night air prickled her burning face. She bent to her knees and pulled over one corner of the outside doormat. The key winked the hallway light back at her. It was sitting not in, but just next to its own imprint in the dirt. Pip reached forward and grabbed it and the cold metal stung her fingers.

She laid under her duvet, arrow-straight and shivering. She closed her eyes and focused her ears. There was a scraping sound somewhere in the house. Was someone trying to get inside? Or was it just the willow tree that sometimes scuffed against her parents’ window?

A thud from the front. Pip jumped. A neighbour’s car door slamming or someone trying to break in?

She got out of bed for the sixteenth time and went to the window. She moved a corner of the curtain and peeked through. It was dark. The cars on the front drive were dusted with pale silver moon-streaks but the navy blush of night hid everything else. Was someone out there, in the darkness? Watching her? She watched back, waiting for a sign of movement, for a ripple of darkness to shift and become a person.

Pip let the curtain fall again and got back into bed. The duvet had betrayed her and lost all the body heat she’d filled it with. She shivered under it again, watching the clock on her phone tick through 3:00 a.m. and onwards.

When the wind howled and rattled her window and Pip’s heart jumped to her throat she threw the duvet off and climbed out again. But this time she tiptoed across the landing and pushed open the door into Josh’s room. He was sound asleep, his peaceful face lit up by his cool blue star nightlight.

Pip crept over to the foot of his bed. She climbed up and crawled over to the pillow end, avoiding the sleeping lump of her brother. He didn’t wake but moaned a little when she flicked his duvet over herself. It was so warm inside. And Josh would be safe, if she was here to watch him.

She lay there, listening to his deep breaths, letting her brother’s sleep-heat thaw her. Her eyes crossed and tripped over each other as she stared ahead, transfixed by the soft blue light of spinning stars.