A Good Girl's Guide to Murder(97)

‘That was the last time. It only happened twice and then it was the Easter holidays. The girls and I spent a week at Isobel’s parents’ house and, with time away from Kilton, I came to my senses. I messaged Andie and I said it was over and I didn’t care if she turned me in. She texted back, saying that when school started again she was going to ruin me if I didn’t do what she wanted. I didn’t know what she wanted. And then, by complete chance, I had an opportunity to stop her. I found out about Andie cyber-bullying that girl and so I called her dad, as I told you, and said that if her behaviour didn’t improve, I would have to report her and she’d be expelled. Of course Andie knew what it really meant: mutually assured destruction. She could have me arrested and jailed for our relationship, but I could have her expelled and ruin her future. We were at a stalemate and I thought it was over.’

‘So why did you kidnap her on Friday the twentieth of April?’ Pip said.

‘That’s not . . .’ he said. ‘It didn’t happen like that at all. I was home alone and Andie turned up, I think around ten-ish. She was irate, just so angry. She screamed at me, telling me I was sad and disgusting, that she’d only touched me because she needed me to get her a place at Oxford, like I’d helped Sal. She didn’t want him to leave without her. Screaming that she had to get away from home, away from Kilton because it was killing her. I tried to calm her down but she wouldn’t. And she knew exactly how to hurt me.’

Elliot blinked slowly.

‘Andie ran to my study and started tearing those paintings Isobel made when she was dying, my rainbow ones. She smashed up two of them and I was shouting for her to stop and then she went for my favourite one. And I . . . I just pushed her to get her to stop, I wasn’t trying to hurt her. But she fell back and hit her head on my desk. Hard. And,’ he sniffed, ‘she was on the floor and her head was bleeding. She was conscious but confused. I rushed off to get the first-aid kit and when I came back Andie had gone and the front door was open. She hadn’t driven to mine, there was no car in the drive and no sound of one. She walked out and vanished. Her phone was on the floor in the study, she must have dropped it in the scuffle.

‘The next day,’ he continued, ‘I heard from Naomi that Andie was missing. Andie was bleeding and left my house with a head injury and now she was missing. And as the weekend passed I started to panic: I thought I’d killed her. I thought she must have wandered out of my house and then, confused and hurt, got lost somewhere and died from her injuries. That she was lying in a ditch somewhere and it would only be a matter of time until they found her. And when they did there might be evidence on her body that would lead back to me: fibres, fingerprints. I knew the only thing I could do was to give them a stronger suspect to protect myself. To protect my girls. If I got taken away for Andie’s murder, I didn’t think Naomi would survive it. And Cara was only twelve at the time. I was the only parent they had left.’

‘There’s no time for your excuses,’ Pip said. ‘So then you framed Sal Singh. You knew about the hit-and-run because you’d been reading Naomi’s therapy diaries.’

‘Of course I’d read them,’ he said. ‘I had to make sure my little girl wasn’t thinking of hurting herself.’

‘You made her and her friends take Sal’s alibi away. And then, on the Tuesday?’

‘I called in sick to work and dropped the girls at school. I waited outside and when I saw Sal alone in the car park, I went up to talk to him. He wasn’t coping well with her disappearance. So I suggested that we go back to his house and have a chat about it. I’d planned to do it with a knife from the Singhs’ house. But then I found some sleeping pills in the bathroom, and I decided to take him to the woods; I thought it would be kinder. I didn’t want his family to find him. We had tea and I gave him the first three pills; said they were for his headache. I convinced him that we should go out in the woods and look for Andie ourselves; that it would help his feeling of helplessness. He trusted me. He didn’t wonder why I was wearing leather gloves inside. I took a plastic bag from their kitchen and we walked out into the woods. I had a penknife, and when we were far enough in I held it up to his neck. Made him swallow more pills.’

Elliot’s voice broke. His eyes filled and a lone tear snaked down his cheek. ‘I said I was helping him, that he wouldn’t be a suspect if it looked like he’d been attacked too. He swallowed a few more and then he started to struggle. I pinned him down and forced him to take more. When he started to get sleepy, I held him and I talked to him about Oxford, about the amazing libraries, the formal hall dinners, how beautiful the city looked in spring. Just so he would fall asleep thinking about something good. When he was unconscious, I put the bag around his head and held his hand as he died.’

Pip had no pity for this man before her. Eleven years of memories dissolved from him, leaving a stranger standing in the room with her.

‘Then you sent the confession text from Sal’s phone to his dad.’

Elliot nodded, staunching his eyes with the heels of his hands.

‘And Andie’s blood?’

‘It had dried under my desk,’ he said. ‘I’d missed some when I first cleaned, so I placed some of it under his nails with tweezers. And the last thing, I put Andie’s phone in his pocket and I left him there. I didn’t want to kill him. I was trying to save my girls; they’d already been through so much pain. He didn’t deserve to die, but neither did my girls. It was an impossible choice.’