A Good Girl's Guide to Murder(95)

Pip exhaled, cupping her hands around her mouth to catch it.

‘You think that’s how the person found out?’ Naomi shook her head. ‘No, it’s not possible. I always lock my diaries and keep them hidden in my room.’

‘I have to go,’ Pip said. ‘Sorry.’

She turned and charged back to her car, ignoring when Naomi shouted, ‘Pip! Pippa!’

Her mum’s car was parked at home when Pip pulled into the drive. But the house was quiet and Leanne didn’t call out when the front door opened. Walking down the hallway, Pip heard another sound over her throbbing pulse: the sound of her mother crying.

At the entrance to the living room Pip stopped and watched the back of her mum’s head over the rim of the sofa. She was holding her phone up in both hands and small recorded voices were playing from it.

‘Mum?’

‘Oh, sweetie, you scared me,’ she said, pausing her phone and wiping her eyes quickly. ‘You’re home early. So, the exam went well?’ She patted the cushion beside her eagerly, trying to rearrange her tear-stained face. ‘What was your essay about? Come and tell me.’

‘Mum,’ Pip said, ‘why are you upset?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing, really nothing.’ She gave Pip a teary smile. ‘I was just looking through old pictures of Barney. And I found the video from that Christmas two years ago, when Barney went round the table giving everyone a shoe. I can’t stop watching it.’

Pip walked over and hugged her from behind. ‘I’m sorry you’re sad,’ she whispered into her mum’s hair.

‘I’m not,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m happy-sad. He was such a good dog.’

Pip sat with her, swiping through their old photos and videos of Barney, laughing as he jumped in the air and tried to eat the snow, as he barked at the vacuum cleaner, as he splayed on the floor with his paws up, little Josh rubbing his belly while Pip stroked his ears. They stayed like that until her mum had to go and pick up Josh.

‘OK,’ Pip said. ‘I think I’m going to nap upstairs for a bit.’

It was another lie. She went to her room to watch the time, pacing from bed to door. Waiting. Fear burned to rage and if she didn’t pace, she would scream. It was Thursday, a tutoring day, and she wanted him to be there.

When Little Kilton was the other side of five o’clock, Pip tugged the charger out of her phone and pulled on her khaki coat.

‘I’m going to Lauren’s for a few hours,’ she called to her mum who was in the kitchen helping Josh with his maths homework. ‘See you later.’

Outside, she unlocked the car, climbed in and tied her dark hair on top of her head. She looked down at her phone, at the lines and lines of messages from Ravi. She replied: It went OK, thanks. I’ll come to yours after dinner and we’ll phone the police then. Yet another lie, but Pip was fluent in them now. He would only stop her.

She opened the map app on her phone, typed in the search bar and pressed Go on the directions.

The harsh mechanical voice chanted up at her: Starting route to 42 Mill End Road, Wendover.





Forty-Five



Mill End Road was narrow and overgrown, a tunnel of dark trees pushing in on all sides. She pulled off on to the grass verge just after number forty and flicked off her headlights.

Her heart was a hand-sized stampede, and every hair, every layer of skin was alive and electric.

She reached down for her phone, propped up in the cupholder, and dialled 999 .

Two rings and then: ‘Hello, emergency operator, which service do you require?’

‘Police,’ Pip said.

‘I’ll just connect you now.’

‘Hello?’ A different voice came through the line. ‘Police emergency, can I help?’

‘My name is Pippa Fitz-Amobi,’ she said shakily, ‘and I’m from Little Kilton. Please listen carefully. You need to send officers to forty-two Mill End Road in Wendover. Inside is a man named Elliot Ward. Five years ago, Elliot kidnapped a girl called Andie Bell from Kilton and he’s been keeping her in this house. He murdered a boy called Sal Singh. You need to contact DI Richard Hawkins, who led the Andie Bell case, and let him know. I believe Andie is alive and she’s being kept inside. I’m going in now to confront Elliot Ward and I might be in danger. Please send officers quickly.’

‘Hold on, Pippa,’ the voice said. ‘Where are you phoning from now?’

‘I’m outside the house and I’m about to go in.’

‘OK, stay outside. I’m dispatching officers to your location. Pippa, can you –’

‘I’m going in now,’ Pip said. ‘Please hurry.’

‘Pippa, do not go inside the house.’

‘I’m sorry, I have to,’ she said.

Pip lowered the phone, the operator’s voice still calling her name, and hung up.

She got out of the car. Crossing from the grass verge on to the driveway down to number forty-two, she saw Elliot’s car parked in front of the small red-brick house. The two downstairs windows glowed, pushing away the thickening darkness.

As she started towards the house a motion sensor flood light picked her up and filled the drive with a garish and blinding white light. She covered her eyes and pushed through, a tree-giant shadow stitched to her feet behind her as she walked towards the front door.