her own?
She scowled down at all their photos. And with the blue marker she drew a big cross through Jason Bell’s face. It couldn’t be him. She’d seen the look on his face in the car, once the detective must have called them. Both he and Dawn: crying, angry, confused. But there’d been something else in both of their eyes too, the smallest glimmer of hope alongside their tears. Maybe, even though they’d been told she wasn’t, some small part of them had hoped it would still be their daughter. Jason couldn’t have faked that reaction. The truth was in his face.
The truth was in the face . . .
Pip picked up the photo of Andie with her parents and Becca, and she stared at it. Into those eyes.
It didn’t come all at once.
It came in little blips, lighting up across her memory.
The pieces dropped and fell in a line.
From the murder board she grabbed all the relevant pages. Log entry 3: the interview with Stanley Forbes. Entry 10: the first interview with Emma Hutton. Entry 20: the interview with Jess Walker about the Bells. 21 about Max buying drugs from Andie. 23 about Howie and what he supplied her with. Entry 28 and 29 about drink spiking at calamities. The paper on which Ravi had written: who could have taken the burner phone??? in large, capital letters. And the time Elliot said Andie left his house.
She looked them over and she knew who it was.
The killer had a face and a name.
The last person to see Andie alive.
But there was just one last thing to confirm. Pip pulled out her phone, scrolled down her contacts and dialled the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Max?’ she said. ‘I’m going to ask you a question.’
‘I’m not interested. See, you were wrong about me. I’ve heard what happened, that it was Mr Ward.’
‘Good,’ Pip said, ‘then you know that right now I have a lot of credibility with the police. I told Mr Ward to cover up the hit-and-run, but if you don’t answer my question, I will ring the police now and tell them everything.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I will. Naomi’s life is already destroyed; don’t think that will stop me any more,’ she bluffed.
‘What do you want?’ he spat.
Pip paused. She put the phone on speaker and scrolled to her recording app. She pressed the red record button and sniffed loudly to hide the beep.
‘Max, at a calamity party in March 2012,’ she said, ‘did you drug and rape Becca Bell?’
‘What? No, I fucking didn’t.’
‘MAX,’ Pip roared down the phone, ‘do not lie to me or I swear to god I will ruin you! Did you put Rohypnol in Becca’s drink and have sex with her?’
He coughed.
‘Yes, but, like . . . it wasn’t rape. She didn’t say no.’
‘Because you drugged her, you vile rapist gargoyle,’ Pip shouted. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done.’
She hung up, stopped the recording and pressed the lock button. Her sharp eyes encased in the darkened screen stared right back into her.
The last person to see Andie alive? It had been Becca. It had always been Becca.
Pip’s eyes blinked back at her and the decision was made.
Forty-Nine
The car jerked as Pip pulled roughly on to the kerb. She stepped out into the darkened street and up to the front door.
She knocked.
The wind chimes beside it were swaying and singing in the evening breeze, high and insistent.
The front door opened and Becca’s face appeared in the crack. She looked at Pip and pulled it fully open.
‘Oh, hi, Pippa,’ she said.
‘Hi, Becca. I’m . . . I came to see if you were OK, after Thursday night. I saw you in the car and –’
‘Yeah,’ she nodded, ‘the detective told us it was you who found out about Mr Ward, what he’d done.’
‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘Do you want to come in?’ Becca said, stepping back to clear the threshold.
‘Thanks.’
Pip walked past her and into the hallway she and Ravi had broken into weeks ago. Becca smiled and gestured her through into the duck-egg blue kitchen.
‘Would you like a tea?’
‘Oh, no thanks.’
‘Sure? I was just making one for myself.’
‘OK then. Black please. Thanks.’
Pip took a seat at the kitchen table, her back straight, knees rigid, and watched as Becca grabbed two flowery mugs from a cupboard, dropped in the teabags and poured from the just-boiled kettle.
‘Excuse me,’ Becca said, ‘I just need to get a tissue.’
As she left the room the train whistle sounded from Pip’s pocket. It was a message from Ravi: Yo, Sarge, where are