As Good as Dead: Part 1: Chapter 10

But she’d promised Ravi, and her promises still meant something to her. Especially with him.

And so she was here, Amersham Police Station. The Thames Valley Police shield glaring down at her, covered in a thin layer of windswept grime. The automatic doors jumped open and swallowed her whole.

She passed the regimented lines of cold metal chairs facing the reception desk. A man and a woman were sat against the back wall, swaying slightly, as though the police station were at sea. Drunk, clearly, at 11 a.m. Though Pip had had to take a Xanax to work up the nerve to even come here, so who was she to judge them?

Pip approached the desk, hearing the drunk man whisper an almost affectionate, ‘Fuck you,’ immediately parroted by the slurred voice of the woman. To each other, not Pip, though it might as well have been: everything inside this building was hostile, a bad memory, a fuck you – from the garish flickering bulbs to the scream of the polished floor beneath her shoes. It had squealed just the same way when she was here, months ago, asking Hawkins to look for Jamie Reynolds so she didn’t have to. Begging him. How different things would be now if only he had said yes.

Just as she reached the desk, Eliza the detention officer strolled out of the attached office with a sharp, ‘Right, you two!’ She looked up and jumped at the sight of Pip. Pip didn’t blame her; she must look terrible. Eliza’s face softened, a pitying smile as she fiddled with her grey hair. ‘Pip, darling, didn’t see you there.’

‘Sorry,’ Pip said quietly. But Eliza had seen her, and now Pip saw her too. Not here and now, in the reception area with the drunk couple behind, but on that night, back inside the belly of the police station. That very same pitying expression on Eliza’s face as she helped Pip peel off her blood-drenched clothes. Gloved hands packing them away into clear evidence bags. Pip’s top. Her bra. The pinkish smears of dead Stanley all over Pip’s skin as she stood there, bare and shivering, in front of this woman. A moment that bound them forever, hanging like a ghost at the corners of Eliza’s smile.

‘Pip?’ Eliza’s eyes had narrowed. ‘I said, what can I do for you today?’

‘Oh.’ Pip cleared her throat. ‘I’m here to see him again. Is he here?’

Eliza exhaled, or had it been a sigh? ‘Yes he is,’ she said. ‘I’ll go tell him you’re here. Please, take a seat.’ She gestured at the front row of metal chairs before disappearing through the back office.

Pip wouldn’t take a seat; that would be a surrender. This was a bad, bad place and she couldn’t let it have her.

The sound came sooner than she was expecting; the harsh grating buzz as the door to the back half of the station opened and DI Hawkins stepped through, in jeans and a light shirt. ‘Pip,’ he called, though he didn’t need to, she was already following him, through the door and into the worse, worse part of the station.

The door closed and locked behind her.

Hawkins glanced back with a jerk of his head that might have been a nod. Down this very same corridor, past Interview Room 1, the same journey she had walked back then, in new bloodless clothes. She never found out whose they were. She’d followed Hawkins then too, into a small room off to the right, with a man who never said his name, or he had and Pip never heard. But she remembered Hawkins’ grip on her wrist, to help her as she pressed each finger into the ink pad and then on to the correct square on the paper grid, the patterns of her fingerprints like never-ending mazes, made only to trap you. ‘It’s just to rule you out. To eliminate you.’ That’s what Hawkins had said, back then. And all Pip remembered saying was: ‘I’m fine.’ No one could have thought she was fine.

‘Pip?’ Hawkins’ voice brought her back to now, back into this even heavier body. He had stopped walking, was holding the door open to Interview Room 3.

‘Thank you,’ she said flatly, ducking under the archway of his outstretched arm and into the room. She wouldn’t sit in here either, just in case, but she slid the straps of her rucksack from her shoulders and placed it down on the table.

Hawkins crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

‘You know I will call you when it happens, right?’ he said.

‘What?’ Pip narrowed her eyes.

‘Charlie Green,’ Hawkins said. ‘We have no more information on his whereabouts. But when we do catch him, I will call you. You don’t have to come here to ask.’

‘It’s not… That’s not why I’m here.’

‘Oh?’ he said, the sound from his throat rising, turning it into a question.

‘It’s something else, really, that I thought I should tell you… report to you.’ Pip shifted awkwardly, pulled her sleeves down to cover her naked wrists. Leave nothing bare or exposed, not in this place.

‘Report something? What is it? What happened?’ Hawkins face rearranged; all sharp lines from his raised eyebrow to his tightened lips.

‘It’s… well, it’s possible I have a stalker,’ Pip said, the final syllable clicking in her throat. She was only imagining it, but it felt like she could hear that click bounding around the room, ricocheting off the plain walls and the dull metal table.

‘A stalker?’ Hawkins said, and the click had got into his throat too somehow. His face shifted again; new lines and a new curve to his mouth.

‘A stalker,’ Pip repeated, reclaiming the click as her own. ‘I think.’

‘OK.’ Hawkins sounded unsure too, scratching his greying hair to buy him some time. ‘Well, in order for us to look into this, there needs to have been –’

‘A pattern of two or more behaviours,’ Pip interrupted him. ‘Yes, I know. I’ve done my research. And there have been. More than that, in fact. Both online and… in real life.’

Hawkins coughed into his hand. He pushed off the wall and crossed the room, his shoes sliding across the floor, hissing like they had a secret message just for Pip. He perched against the metal table and crossed his legs.

‘OK. What were these incidents?’ he asked.

‘Here,’ Pip said, reaching for her bag. Hawkins watched her as she opened it and dug inside. She shifted her bulky headphones out of the way and pulled out the folded sheets of paper. ‘I made a spreadsheet of all the potential incidents. And a graph. A-and there’s a photo,’ she added, opening out the pages and handing them to Hawkins.

Now it was her turn to watch him, studying his downturned eyes as they flicked across the spreadsheet, up and down and up again.

‘There’s quite a lot here,’ he said, more to himself than her.

‘Yeah.’

‘Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?’ Hawkins read out the burning question, and the hairs rose up the back of Pip’s neck, hearing it out loud in his voice. ‘So, it started online, did it?’

‘Yes,’ she said, pointing at the top half of the page. ‘It started with just that question online, and quite infrequently. And then, as you can see, the incidents have become more regular, and then things started happening offline. And if they are connected then it is escalating: first the flowers on my car, and it has progressed to the –’

‘Dead pigeons,’ Hawkins finished for her, running his finger across the graph.

‘Yes. Two of them,’ Pip said.

‘What’s this severity scale here?’ He glanced up from the column.

‘It’s a rating, of how severe each possible incident is,’ she said plainly.

‘Yes, I understand that. Where did you get it from?’

‘I made it up,’ Pip said, her feet heavy through the bottoms of her shoes, sinking into the floor. ‘I’ve researched and there isn’t a lot of official information about stalking, probably as it isn’t seen as a policing priority despite it often being a gateway to more violent crimes. I wanted a method of cataloguing the potential incidents to see if there’s a progression of threat and implied violence. So, I made one up. I can explain to you how I did it; there’s a three-point difference between online and offline behaviour and –’

Hawkins waved his hand to cut her off, the pages fluttering in his grip. ‘But how do you know these are all connected?’ he asked. ‘The person online asking you that question and these… other incidents?’

‘Well, of course I don’t know for sure. But the thing that made me consider it was the kill two birds with one stone message, the day the second pigeon was left on my drive. Without a head,’ she added.

Hawkins’ throat made a sound, a new and different click. ‘It’s a very common expression,’ he said.

‘But the two dead pigeons?’ Pip said, straightening up. She knew, she already knew where this was going, where it was always destined to go. The look in Hawkins’ eyes against the look in hers. He wasn’t sure and she wasn’t either, but Pip could feel something shifting inside her, changing, heat sliding around under her skin, starting by her neck, claiming her one vertebra at a time.

Hawkins sighed, attempted a smile. ‘You know, I have a cat, and sometimes I come home to two dead things in one day. Often without heads. One left in my bed just last week.’

Pip felt defensive, tightening a fist behind her back.

‘We don’t have a cat.’ She hardened her voice, sharpened it at the edges, readying to cut him with it.

‘No, but one of your neighbours probably does. I can’t really open an investigation because of two dead pigeons.’

Was he wrong? That’s exactly what she’d told herself too.

‘What about the chalk figures? Twice now, getting closer to the house.’

Hawkins flicked through the pages.

‘Do you have a photograph of them?’ He looked up at her.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘They disappeared before I could.’

‘Disappeared?’ His eyes narrowed.

And the worst thing was, she knew exactly how this all sounded. How unhinged she must seem. But that’s what she had wanted too, preferred to think of herself as broken, seeing danger where there wasn’t. And yet a fire was starting in her head, lighting up behind her eyes.

‘Washed away before I had a chance,’ she said. ‘But I do have a photo of something that might be a direct threat.’ Pip controlled her voice. ‘Written on the pavement on my running route. Dead Girl Walking.’

‘Well, yes, I understand your concern.’ Hawkins shuffled the pages. ‘But that message wasn’t left at your house, it was on a public street. You can’t know that you were its intended target.’

That’s exactly what Pip had first told herself. But that’s not what she said now.

‘But I do know. I know it was left for me.’ She didn’t before, but standing across from Hawkins now, listening to him say the same things she’d said to herself, it pushed her the other way, splintering off to the same side as instinct. She knew now, with bone-deep certainty, that all these things were connected. That she had a stalker and more than that, this person meant her harm. This was personal. This was someone who hated her, someone close by.

‘And, of course, these online messages from trolls are very unfortunate,’ Hawkins said. ‘But this is the kind of thing that happens when you make yourself a public figure.’

‘Make myself a public figure?’ Pip took a step back, to keep the fire away from Hawkins. ‘I didn’t make myself a public figure, Hawkins, that happened because I had to do your job for you. You would’ve been happy to let Sal Singh carry the guilt for killing Andie Bell forever. That’s why everything has happened the way it has. And this person clearly isn’t just someone who’s listened to the podcast, an online troll. They’re close by. They know where I live. This is more than that.’ It was. It was.

‘I understand that’s what you believe,’ Hawkins said, holding up his palms, trying to placate her. ‘And it must be very scary to be an online figure and have strangers think it’s their right to have access to you. To send you hurtful messages. But you must have expected that, on some level? And I know you aren’t the only one to have received hurtful messages from the public because of your podcast. I know Jason Bell has too, after you released season one. He told me in an unofficial capacity; we play tennis sometimes,’ he said in explanation. ‘But, anyway, I’m sorry, I’m just not seeing a clear connection between these online messages and these other incidents.’ He said that last word differently, leaned on it a little too hard so that it came out of his mouth sideways.

He didn’t believe her. Even after everything, Hawkins didn’t believe her. Pip had known this was how it would be, she’d warned Ravi, but faced with it now, in the moment, she couldn’t believe he didn’t believe her, now that she believed herself. And the heat under her skin became something else: the cold, heavy, downward pull of betrayal.

Hawkins lowered the papers to the table. ‘Pip,’ he said, his voice softer, gentler, like how he might talk to a lost child. ‘I think that, after everything you’ve been through and… I truly am sorry for my part in that, that you had to take all this on, alone. But I think you might be seeing a pattern that isn’t here, and it’s completely understandable after everything you’ve been through, that you might see danger around every corner, but…’

She’d thought the same thing about herself not so long ago, and yet his words still felt like a punch to the gut. Why had she allowed herself even a shred of hope that this would go another way? Stupid, stupid.

‘You think I’m making it up,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.

‘No, no, no,’ he said quickly. ‘I think that you are dealing with a lot, and still processing the trauma you went through, and maybe that’s affecting how you are looking at this. You know…’ he paused, pinched the skin on his knuckles, ‘when I first saw someone die in front of me, I wasn’t OK for a long, long time. It was a stabbing victim, young woman. That sort of thing, it stays with you.’ His eyes glistened as he glanced up finally and held Pip’s gaze. ‘Are you getting help? Talking to someone?’

‘I’m talking to you right now,’ Pip said, her voice rising. ‘I was asking you for help. My mistake, I should have known better. It wasn’t so long ago that we were stood in a room just like this and I asked you for help, to find Jamie Reynolds. You said no then too and look where we all are now.’

‘I’m not saying no,’ Hawkins said, a small cough into his balled-up fist. ‘And I am trying to help you, Pip, I really am. But a couple of dead pigeons and a message written on a public pavement… there’s not a lot I can do with that, you must be able to understand that. Of course, if you think you know who might be responsible, we can look into issuing them a PIN –’

‘I don’t know who it is, that’s why I’m here.’

‘OK, OK,’ he said, his words starting loud and ending quiet, as though he were trying to hook on to Pip’s voice and bring it back down too. ‘Well, perhaps you can go away and have a little think of anyone you know who might be responsible for something like this. Anyone who might have a grudge against you or –’

‘You mean a list of enemies?’ Pip gave an amused sniff.

‘No, not enemies. Again, I don’t see anything here that indicates these events are necessarily connected, or that someone is targeting you specifically, or that they wish you harm. But if you have any thoughts on someone you know who might pull something like this, to mess with you, I can certainly look into having a chat with them.’

‘Fantastic,’ Pip barked with an empty laugh. ‘I’m so glad that you’ll look into looking into it.’ She clapped her hands, once, making Hawkins flinch. ‘You know, this is exactly why more than fifty per cent of stalking crimes go unreported, this exact conversation we’ve had here. Congratulations on another episode of excellent police work.’ She darted forward to snatch her papers from the table beside him, the pages ripping at the air between them, cutting the room into his side against hers.

She did have a stalker. And now that she thought it through, maybe this could be it: exactly what she needed. Not Jane Doe, but this. One more case, the right one, and opportunity had handed it to her. The universe might have aligned, for once, in her favour. This stalker could be the one. A case without that suffocating grey area, one with a clear moral right and a clear moral wrong. Someone out there hated her, wanted to hurt her and that made them bad. On the other side was her, and maybe she wasn’t all good, but she couldn’t be all bad. Two opposing sides, as clean as she could hope for. And this time, she was the subject. If she got things wrong again, there would be no collateral, no blood on her hands. Only hers. But if she got it right, maybe this could be the thing to fix her.

It couldn’t hurt to try.

Pip felt a little more room inside her chest as it loosened around her heart, a feeling of resolve steel-cold in her stomach. She welcomed it back like an old friend.

‘Now, Pip, don’t be like that –’ Hawkins said, the words too careful and too soft.

‘I will be however I am,’ she spat, stuffing the papers back into her bag, the angry-wasp sound of her pulling up the zip. ‘And you,’ she stopped to wipe her nose across her sleeve, the breath heavy in her chest, ‘I have you to thank for that too.’ She shouldered her bag, pausing at the door out of Interview Room 3. ‘You know,’ she said, her hand stalling above the handle, ‘Charlie Green taught me one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned. He told me that, sometimes, justice must be found outside of the law. And he was right.’ She glanced back at Hawkins, his arms wrapping around his chest to protect it from her eyes. ‘But, actually, I think he didn’t go far enough. Maybe justice can only ever be found outside of the law, outside of police stations like this, of people like you who say you understand but you never do.’

Hawkins unwrapped his arms and opened his mouth to answer, but Pip didn’t let him.

‘He was right, Charlie Green,’ she said. ‘And I hope you never find him.’

‘Pip.’ There was a bite to Hawkins’ voice now, a hard edge that she’d goaded to the surface. ‘That’s not helpf—’

‘Oh, and,’ she cut him off, her fingers gripping the handle too hard, like she might just bend the metal, leave her prints in it forever, ‘do me a favour. If I disappear, don’t look for me. Don’t even bother.’

‘Pi—’

But the door slamming behind her cut off the end of her name, filling the corridor outside with the sound of old gunshots. Six of them, burrowing down past her skin and her ribs, rebounding around her chest, exactly where they belonged.

A new sound joined in, tapping in between the echoes of the gun. Footsteps. Someone walking up the hallway towards her, in a dark uniform, his long brown hair pushed back from his face, and his eyes widening as he spotted her.

‘Are you OK?’ Dan da Silva asked as she stormed past, the tunnels of their disturbed air colliding as she did. Pip barely caught the concerned look on his face before she was moving on. There wasn’t time to answer, to stop, or nod or to say she was fine when it was clear she wasn’t.

She just needed to get out of here. Out of the belly of this station where the gun first decided to follow her home. This very corridor where she’d walked the other way, wearing the blood of a dead man she couldn’t save. There was no help for her here and she was on her own, again. But she had herself now, and Ravi. She just needed to get out of this bad, bad place, and never ever come back.