pull up the floorboard, sliding it behind them. With her phone held up, Pip and Ravi leaned over to look inside the dark space below.
‘No.’
She moved the torch down inside the small space to be absolutely sure, pivoting the light into each corner. It illuminated only layers of dust, gusting out in whirlwinds now because of their picked-up breath.
It was empty. No phone. No cash. No drug stash. Nothing.
‘It’s not here,’ Ravi said.
The disappointment was a physical sensation gouging through Pip’s gut, leaving a space for the fear to fill in.
‘I really thought it would be here,’ he said.
Pip had too. She thought the phone screen would light up the killer’s name for them and the police would do the rest. She thought she’d be safe from Unknown. It was supposed to be over, she thought, her throat constricting the way it did before she cried.
She slid the floorboard back in place and inched backwards out of the wardrobe after Ravi, her hair getting briefly tangled in the zip of a long dress. She stood, closed the doors and turned to him.
‘Where could the burner phone be then?’ he said.
‘Maybe Andie had it on her when she died,’ Pip said, ‘and now it’s buried with her or otherwise destroyed by the killer.’
‘Or,’ Ravi said, studying the items on Andie’s desk. ‘Or someone knew where it was hidden and they took it after her disappearance, knowing that it would lead the police to them if it was found.’
‘Or that,’ Pip agreed. ‘But that doesn’t help us now.’
She joined Ravi at the desk. On top of the make-up case was a paddle hairbrush with long blonde hairs still wound round the bristles. Beside it, Pip spotted a Kilton Grammar academic planner for the year 2011/2012, almost identical to the one she owned for this year. Andie had decorated the title page of her planner under the plastic with doodled hearts and stars and small printouts of supermodels.
She flipped through some of the pages. The days were filled with scribbled homework and coursework assignments. November and December had various university open days listed. The week before Christmas there was a note to herself to maybe get Sal a Christmas present. Dates and locations of calamity parties, school deadlines, people’s birthdays. And, strangely, random letters with times scribbled in next to them.
‘Hey.’ She held it up to show Ravi. ‘Look at these weird initials. What do you think they mean?’
Ravi stared for a moment, resting his jaw in his gardening-gloved hand. Then his eyes darkened as he tensed his brows. He said, ‘Do you remember that thing Howie Bowers said to us? That he’d told Andie to use codes instead of names.’
‘Maybe these are her codes,’ Pip finished his sentence for him, tracing her rubber finger over the random letters. ‘We should document these.’
She laid the planner down and pulled out her phone again. Ravi helped her tug one of her gloves off and she thumbed on to the camera. Ravi skipped the pages back to February 2012 and Pip took pictures of each double page, as they flicked right through to that week in April just after the Easter holidays, where the last thing Andie had written on the Friday was: Start French revision notes soon. Eleven photos in all.
‘OK,’ Pip said, pocketing her phone and slipping back into the glove. ‘We –’
The front door slammed below them.
Ravi’s head snapped round, terror pooling in the pupils of his eyes.
Pip dropped the planner in its place. She nodded her head towards the wardrobe. ‘Get back in,’ she whispered.
She opened the doors and crawled inside, looking for Ravi. He was on his knees now just outside the cupboard. Pip shuffled aside to give him space to crawl back in. But Ravi wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving?
Pip reached forward and grabbed him, pulling him into her against the back wall. Ravi snapped back into life then. He grasped the wardrobe doors and quietly swung them closed, shutting them inside.
They heard sharp-heeled steps in the hallway. Was it Dawn Bell, back from work already?
‘Hello, Monty.’ A voice carried through the house. It was Becca.
Pip felt Ravi shaking beside her, right through into her own bones. She took his hand, the rubber gloves squeaking as she held it.
They heard Becca on the stairs then, louder with each step, the jingling collar of the cat behind her.
‘Ah, that’s where I left them,’ she said, footsteps pausing on the landing.
Pip squeezed Ravi’s hand, hoping he could feel how sorry