A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

The next day, Pip was in the living room with Josh, teaching him how to play chess. They were finishing their first practice match and, despite her best efforts to let him win, Josh was down to just his king and two pawns. Or prawns, as he called them.

Someone knocked on the front door and the absence of Barney was an immediate punch to the gut. No skittering claws on the polished wood racing to stand and greet.

Her mum pattered down the hall and opened the door.

Leanne’s voice floated into the living room. ‘Oh, hello, Ravi.’

Pip’s stomach leaped into her throat.

Confused, she put her knight back down and wandered out of the room, her unease ramping into panic. Why would he come back after yesterday? How could he bear to look at her ever again? Unless he was desperate enough to come and ambush her parents, tell them everything they knew and try to force Pip to go to the police. She wouldn’t; who else would die if she did?

When the front door came into view she saw Ravi unzipping a large sports rucksack and dipping his hands inside.

‘My mum sends her condolences,’ he said, pulling out two large Tupperware boxes. ‘She made you a chicken curry, you know, in case you didn’t feel like cooking.’

‘Oh,’ Leanne said, taking the boxes from Ravi’s offered hands. ‘That’s very thoughtful. Thank you. Come in, come in. You must give me her number so I can thank her.’

‘Ravi?’ Pip said.

‘Hello, trouble,’ he said softly. ‘Can I talk to you?’

In her room, Ravi closed the door and dropped his bag on the carpet.

‘Um . . . I,’ Pip stuttered, looking for clues in his face. ‘I don’t understand why you’ve come back.’

He took a small step towards her. ‘I thought about it all night, literally all night; it was light outside when I finally slept. And there’s only one reason I can think of, only one thing that makes sense of this. Because I do know you; I wasn’t wrong about you.’

‘I don’t –’

‘Someone took Barney, didn’t they?’ he said. ‘Someone threatened you and they took your dog and killed him so you would stay quiet about Sal and Andie.’

The silence in the room was buzzy and thick.

She nodded and her face cracked with tears.

‘Don’t cry,’ Ravi said, closing the distance between them in one swift step. He pulled her into him, locking his arms round her. ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’

Pip leaned into him and everything – all the pain, all the secrets she’d caged inside – came free, radiating out of her like heat. She dug her nails into her palms, trying to hold back the tears.

‘Tell me what happened,’ he said when he finally let her go.

But the words got lost and tangled in Pip’s mouth. Instead she pulled out her phone and clicked on to the messages from Unknown, handing it to him. She watched Ravi’s flitting eyes as he read through.

‘Oh, Pip,’ he said, looking at her wide-eyed. ‘This is sick.’

‘They lied,’ she sniffed. ‘They said I’d get him back and then they killed him.’

‘That wasn’t the first time they contacted you,’ he said, scrolling up. ‘The first text here is from the eighth of October.’

‘That wasn’t the first,’ she said, pulling open the bottom drawer of her desk. She handed Ravi the two sheets of printer paper and pointed at the one on the left. ‘That one was left in my sleeping bag when I camped in the woods with my friends on the first of September. I saw someone watching us. That one –’ she pointed to the other – ‘was in my locker last Friday. I ignored it and I carried on. That’s why Barney’s dead. Because of my arrogance. Because I thought I was invincible and I’m not. We have to stop. Yesterday . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t know how else to get you to stop, other than to make you hate me so you stayed away, away from danger.’

‘I’m hard to get rid of,’ he said, looking up from the notes. ‘And this isn’t over.’

‘Yes, it is.’ She took them back and dropped them on the desk. ‘Barney’s dead, Ravi. And who will be next? You? Me? The killer’s been here, in my house, in my room. They read my research and typed a warning on my EPQ log. Here, Ravi, in the same house as my nine-year-old brother. We are putting too many people in danger if we carry on. Your parents could lose the only son they have left.’ She broke off, an image of Ravi dead in the autumn leaves behind her eyes, Josh beside him. ‘The killer knows everything we know. They’ve beaten us and we have too much to lose. I’m sorry that it means I have to abandon Sal. I’m so sorry.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about the threats?’ he said.

‘At first I thought it might just be a prank,’ she said, shrugging. ‘But I didn’t want you to know, in case you made me stop. And then I just got stuck, keeping it a secret. I thought they were just threats. I thought I could beat them. I was so stupid and now I’ve paid for my mistakes.’

‘You’re not stupid; you were right all along about Sal,’ he said. ‘He was innocent. We know that now but it’s not enough. He deserves everyone to know that he was good and kind until the end. My parents deserve that. And now we don’t even have the photo that proved it.’

‘I still have the photo,’ Pip said quietly, taking the printout from the bottom drawer and handing it to him. ‘Of course I’d never destroy it. But it can’t help us now.’

‘Why?’

‘The killer is watching me, Ravi. Watching us. If we take that photo to the police and they don’t believe us, if they think we Photoshopped it or something, then it’s too late. We would have played our final hand and it’s not strong enough. Then what happens? Josh gets taken? You do? People could die here.’ She sat on her bed, picking at the lumps on her socks. ‘We don’t have our smoking gun. The photo isn’t proof enough; it relies on massive interpretive leaps and it’s no longer online. Why would they believe us? Sal’s brother and a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl. I hardly believe us. All we have are tall stories about a murdered girl, and you know what the police here think of Sal, just like the rest of Kilton. We can’t risk our lives on that photo alone.’

‘No,’ Ravi said, laying the photo on the desk and nodding. ‘You’re right. And one of our main suspects is a policeman. It’s not the right move. Even if the police did somehow believe us and reopen the case, it would take them a long time to find the actual killer that way. Time we wouldn’t have.’ He wheeled the desk chair over to face her on the bed, straddling it. ‘So I guess our only option is to find them ourselves.’

‘We can’t –’ Pip started.

‘Do you seriously think walking away is the best move here? How would you ever feel safe again in Kilton, knowing the person that killed Andie and Sal and your dog is still out there? Knowing they’re watching you? How could you live like that?’

‘I have to.’

‘For such a clever person, you’re being a real plonker right now.’ He leaned his elbows on the back of the chair, chin against his knuckles.

‘They murdered my dog,’ she said.

‘They murdered my brother. And what are we going to do about it?’ he said, straightening up, a daring glint in his dark eyes. ‘Are we going to forget everything, curl up and hide? Live our lives knowing a killer is out there watching us? Or do we fight? Do we find them and punish them for what they’ve done to us? Put them behind bars so they can’t hurt anyone ever again?’

‘They’ll know we haven’t stopped,’ she said.

‘No they won’t, not if we’re careful. No more talking to the people on your list, no more talking to anyone. The answer must be somewhere in everything we’ve learned. You’ll say you’ve given up your project. Only you and I will know.’

Pip didn’t say anything.

‘If you need more persuasion,’ Ravi said, walking over to his rucksack, ‘I brought my laptop for you. It’s yours until this is done.’ He pulled it out and brandished it.

‘But –’

‘It’s yours,’ he said. ‘You can use it to revise for your exam and to type up what you remember of your log, your interviews. I took some notes myself on there. I know you’ve lost all your research but –’

‘I haven’t lost my research,’ she said.

‘Huh?’

‘I always email everything to myself, just in case,’ she said, watching Ravi’s face twitch into a smile. ‘Who do you think I am, some Reckless Ruth?’

‘Oh no, Sarge. I know you’re a Cautious Carol. So are you saying yes or should I have brought some bribery muffins too?’

Pip reached out for the laptop.

‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘We have a double homicide to solve.’

They printed everything: every entry from her production log, every page from Andie’s academic planner, a picture of each suspect, the car park leverage photos of Howie with Stanley Forbes, Jason Bell and his new wife, the Ivy House Hotel, Max Hastings’ house, the newspapers’ favourite photo of Andie, a picture of the Bell family dressed up in black tie, Sal winking and waving at the camera, Pip’s catfish texts to Emma Hutton, her emails as a BBC reporter about drink spiking, a printout of the effects of Rohypnol, Kilton Grammar school, the photo of Daniel da Silva and other police searching the Bell house, an online article about burner phones, Stanley Forbes’ articles about Sal, Nat da Silva next to information about Assault occasioning actual bodily harm, a picture of a black Peugeot 206 beside a map of Romer Close and Howie’s house, newspaper reports of a hit-and-run on New Year’s Eve 2011 on the A413, screen grabs of the texts from Unknown and scans of the threat notes with their dates and location.

They looked down, together, at the reams of paper on the carpet.

‘It’s not environmentally friendly,’ Ravi said, ‘but I’ve always wanted to make a murder board.’

‘Me too,’ Pip said. ‘And I’m well prepared, stationery wise.’ From the drawers in her desk she pulled out a pot of coloured drawing pins and a fresh bundle of red string.

‘And you just happen to have red string ready to go?’ Ravi said.

‘I have every colour of string.’

‘Of course you do.’

Pip took down the corkboard hanging over her desk. It was currently covered with pinned-up photos of her and her friends, Josh and Barney, her school timetable and quotes from Maya Angelou. She removed it all and they started sorting.

Working on the floor, they pinned the printed pages to the board with flat silver pins, organizing each page around the relevant person in huge colliding orbits. Andie and Sal’s faces in the middle of it all. They had just started making the connection lines with the string and multicoloured pins when Pip’s phone started ringing. A number not saved in her phone.

She pressed the green button. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Pip, it’s Naomi.’

‘Hi. That’s weird: you’re not saved in my phone.’

‘Oh, it’s ’cause I smashed mine,’ Naomi said. ‘I’m using a temp until it’s fixed.’

‘Oh yeah, Cara said. What’s up?’

‘I was at my friend’s house this weekend, so Cara only just told me about Barns. I’m really sorry, Pip. I hope you’re OK.’

‘Not yet,’ Pip said. ‘I’ll get there.’

‘And I know you may not want to think about this right now,’ she said, ‘but I found out my friend’s cousin studied English at Cambridge. I thought maybe I could see if he’d email you about the exam and interview and stuff, if you wanted.’

‘Actually, yeah, yes please,’ Pip said. ‘That would help. I’m a bit behind on my revision.’ She looked pointedly at Ravi hunched over the murder board.

‘OK, cool, I’ll ask her to contact him. The exam’s on Thursday, right?’

‘Yep.’

‘Well, if I don’t see you before, good luck. You’ll smash it.’

‘Right, so,’ Ravi said when Pip had hung up the phone, ‘our open leads right now are the Ivy House Hotel, the phone number scribbled out of Andie’s planner –’ he pointed to its page – ‘and the burner phone. As well as knowledge of the hit-and-run, access to Sal’s friends’ phone numbers and yours. Pip, maybe we are over-complicating this.’ He stared up at her. ‘As I see it, these are all pointing to one person.’

‘Max?’

‘Let’s just focus on the definites here,’ he said. ‘No ifs or maybes. He’s the only one with direct knowledge of the hit-and-run.’

‘True.’

‘He’s the only one here who had access to Naomi, Millie and Jake’s phone numbers. And his own.’

‘Nat and Howie could have.’

‘Yeah, “could” have. We’re looking at definites.’ He shuffled over to the Max side of the board. ‘He says he just found it, but he has a naked picture of Andie from the Ivy House. So he was probably the one meeting her there. He bought Rohypnol from Andie and girls were getting spiked at calamities; he probably assaulted them. He’s clearly messed up, Pip.’

Ravi was going through the very same thoughts she’d struggled with and Pip knew he was about to run into a wall.

‘Also,’ he carried on, ‘he’s the only one here we know definitely has your phone number.’

‘Actually, no,’ she said. ‘Nat has it from when I tried to phone-interview her. Howie has it too: I rang him when trying to identify him, and forgot to withhold my number. I got Unknown’s first text soon after.’

‘Oh.’

‘And we know that Max was at school giving a statement to the police at the time when Sal disappeared.’

Ravi slumped back. ‘We must be missing something.’

‘Let’s go back to the connections.’ Pip shook the pot of pins at him. He took them and cut off a measure of red string.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘The two Da Silvas are obviously connected. And Daniel da Silva with Andie’s dad. And Daniel also with Max, because he filed the report on Max’s crashed car and might have known about the hit-and-run.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and maybe covered up drink spiking.’

‘OK,’ Ravi said, wrapping the string round a pin and pressing it in. He hissed when he stabbed himself in the thumb, a tiny bubble of blood bursting through.

‘Can you stop bleeding all over the murder board, please?’ Pip said.

Ravi pretended to throw a pin at her. ‘So Max also knows Howie and they were both involved in Andie’s drug dealing,’ he said, circling his finger round their three faces.

‘Yep. And Max knew Nat from school,’ Pip said, pointing, ‘and there’s a rumour she had her drink spiked as well.’

Lines of red fraying string covered the board now, webbing and criss-crossing each other.

‘So, basically –’ Ravi looked up at her – ‘they are all indirectly connected with each other, starting with Howie at one end and Jason Bell at the other. Maybe they all did it together, all five of them.’

‘Next you’ll be saying someone has an evil twin.’