A Good Girl's Guide to Murder(89)

The hum split into a ringing sound, shrieking and shrieking and stuffing her head. She felt sick, the back of her throat filling with a metallic taste.

Elliot’s SIM card.

Elliot’s old phone number scribbled out in Andie’s planner.

Andie calling Mr Ward an arsehole to her friends the week she disappeared.

Elliot.

‘You OK, Pip?’ Cara asked as she dropped the lit candle into her pumpkin and it glowed into life.

‘Yeah.’ Pip nodded too hard. ‘I’m just, um . . . just hungry.’

‘Well, I would offer you a biscuit, but they seem to have disappeared, as always. Toast?’

‘Err . . . no thanks.’

‘I feed you because I love you,’ Cara said.

Pip’s mouth filled, all tacky and sickly. No, it might not mean what she was thinking. Maybe Elliot was just offering to tutor Andie and that’s why she wrote his number down. Maybe. It couldn’t be him. She needed to calm down, try to breathe. This wasn’t proof of anything.

But she had a way to find proof.

‘I think we should have spooky Halloween music on while we do this,’ Pip said. ‘Cara, can I go get your laptop?’

‘Yeah, it’s on my bed.’

Pip closed the kitchen door behind her.

She raced up the stairs and into Cara’s room. With the laptop tucked under her arm she crept back downstairs, her heart thudding, fighting to be louder than the ringing in her ears.

She slipped into Elliot’s study and gently closed the door, staring for a moment at the printer on Elliot’s desk. The rainbow-coloured people from Isobel Ward’s paintings watched her as she put Cara’s laptop down on the oxblood leather chair and pulled open the lid, kneeling on the floor before it.

When it awoke she clicked on to the control panel and into Devices and Printers. Hovering the mouse over Freddie Prints Jr, she right-clicked and, holding her breath, clicked the top item in the drop-down menu: See what’s printing.

A small blue-bordered box popped up. Inside was a table with six columns: Document Name, Status, Owner, Pages, Size and Date Submitted.

It was filled with entries. One yesterday from Cara called Personal Statement second draft. One a few days ago from Elliot Comp: Gluten free cookies recipe. Several in a row from Naomi: CV 2017, Charity Job application, Cover letter, Cover letter 2.

The note was put in Pip’s locker on Friday the 20th October. With her eyes on the Date Submitted column, she scrolled down.

Her fingers drew up. On the 19th October at twenty to midnight, Elliot Comp had printed Microsoft Word – Document 1.

An unnamed, unsaved document.

Her fingers left sweaty tracks on the mousepad as she right-clicked on the document. Another small drop-down menu appeared. Her heart in her throat, she bit down on her tongue and clicked the Restart option.

The printer clacked behind her and she flinched.

Pivoting on the balls of her feet, she turned as it hissed, sucking in the top piece of paper.

She straightened up as it started to sputt-sputt-sputt the page through.

She moved towards it, a step between each sputt.

The paper started to push through, a glimpse of fresh black ink, upside down.

The printer finished and spat it out.

Pip reached for it.

She turned it round.

This is your final warning, Pippa. Walk away.





Forty



Words left her.

She stared down at the paper and shook her head.

It was something primal and wordless, the feeling that took her. Numb rage blackened with terror. And a betrayal that gored through every part of her.

She staggered back and looked away, out of the darkening window.

Elliot Ward was Unknown.

Elliot was the killer. Andie’s killer. Sal’s. Barney’s.

She watched the half-deadened trees beckoning in the wind. And in her reflection in the glass she recreated the scene. Her bumping into Mr Ward in the history classroom, the note gliding to the floor. This note, the one he’d left for her. His deceitful kind face as he asked whether she was being bullied. Cara dropping round cookies she and Elliot had baked to cheer up the Amobis about their dead dog.

Lies. All lies. Elliot, the man she’d grown up looking to as another father figure. The man who’d made elaborate scavenger hunts for them in the garden. The man who bought Pip matching bear-claw slippers to wear at their house. The man who told knock-knock jokes with an easy high laugh. And he was the murderer. A wolf in the pastel shirts and thick-rimmed glasses of a sheep.

She heard Cara call her name.

She folded the page and slipped it in her blazer pocket.

‘You’ve been ages,’ Cara said as Pip pushed open the door to the kitchen.

‘Toilet,’ she said, placing the laptop down in front of Cara. ‘Listen, I’m not feeling so great. And I should really be studying for my exam; it’s in two days. I think I’m going to head off.’

‘Oh,’ Cara frowned. ‘But Lauren’s gonna be here soon and I wanted us all to watch Blair Witch. Dad even agreed and we can all laugh at him ’cause he’s such a wimp with scary films.’

‘Where is your dad?’ Pip said. ‘Tutoring?’

‘How often are you here? You know tutoring is Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Think he just had to stay late at school.’