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