A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder #1) - Holly Jackson Page 0,95

webbed across it.

The first tear dropped to her chin as she kicked again, at the keyboard this time. Several letters came away with her boot, scattering into the mud. She stamped and her boots cracked right through the glass on the screen, pushing out into the metal casing.

She jumped and jumped again, tears chasing each other as they snaked down her cheeks.

The metal around the keyboard was cracked now, showing the motherboard and the cooling fan below. The green circuit board snapped into pieces beneath her heel, and the little fan severed and flew away. She jumped again and stumbled on the mangled machine, falling on her back in the soft and crackling leaves.

She let herself cry there for a few short moments. Then she sat upright and picked up the laptop, its broken screen hanging limply from one hinge, and hurled it against the trunk of the nearest tree. With another thud, it came to rest on the ground in pieces, lying dead among the tree roots.

Pip sat there, coughing, waiting for the air to return to her chest. Her face stinging from the salt.

And she waited.

She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now. She’d done everything they asked; was Barney about to be released to her here? She should wait and see. Wait for another message. She called his name and she waited.

More than half an hour passed. And nothing. No message. No Barney. No sound of anyone but the faint screams of the kids on the tennis court.

Pip pushed on to her feet, her soles sore and lumpy against the boots. She picked up her empty rucksack and wandered away, one last lingering look back at the destroyed machine.

‘Where did you go?’ Dad said when she let herself back into the house.

Pip had sat in the car for a while in the tennis car park. To let her rubbed-red eyes settle before she returned home.

‘I couldn’t concentrate here,’ she said quietly, ‘so I went to do my revision in the cafe.’

‘I see,’ he said with a kind smile. ‘Sometimes a change of scenery is good for concentration.’

‘But, Dad . . .’ She hated the lie that was about to come out of her mouth. ‘Something happened. I don’t know how. I went to the toilet for just a minute and when I came back my laptop was gone. No one there saw anything. I think it was stolen.’ She looked down at her scuffed boots. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left it.’

Victor shushed her and folded her into a hug. One she really, really needed. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, ‘things are not important. They are replaceable. I only care if you’re OK.’

‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘Any sign this morning?’

‘None yet, but Josh and Mum are going back out this afternoon and I’m going to ring round the local shelters. We will get him back, pickle.’

She nodded and stepped back from him. They were going to get Barney back; she’d done everything she had been told to do. That was the deal. She wished she could say something to her family, to take some of the worry out of their faces. But it wasn’t possible. It was another of those Andie Bell secrets Pip had found herself trapped inside.

As for giving up on Andie now, could she really do that? Could she walk away, knowing that Sal Singh wasn’t guilty? Knowing a killer walked the same Kilton streets as her? She had to, didn’t she? For the dog she’d loved for ten years, the dog who loved her back even harder. For her family’s safety. For Ravi too. How would she convince him to give up on this? He had to, or his could be the next body in the woods. This couldn’t go on; it wasn’t safe any more. There was no choice. The decision felt like a shard from the shattered laptop screen had stuck through her chest. It stabbed and cracked every time she breathed.

Pip was upstairs at her desk, looking through past papers for the ELAT exam. The day had grown dark and Pip had just flicked on her mushroom-shaped desk lamp. She was working to the Gladiator soundtrack playing through her phone speakers, flicking her pen in time with the strings. She paused the music when someone knocked on the door.

‘Yep,’ she said, spinning in her desk chair.

Victor came in and closed the door behind him. ‘You working hard, pickle?’

She nodded.

He walked over and propped his back against her desk,