As Good as Dead: Part 1: Chapter 17

Her blood didn’t feel right. It was too fast, foaming uncomfortably as it crashed in and out of her chest. Maybe those two coffees in a row at the café had been a mistake. But Cara had offered, said Pip looked tired at this ungodly hour of the morning. Now Pip’s hands were shaking, and her blood was fizzing as she walked from the café towards Church Street.
She was running on empty, no sleep at all last night, none. Even though she’d taken a full pill, a double dose. It was wasted on her after reading through Billy Karras’ interview transcript. More times than she could count, sounding out the voices in her head like a play, the pauses filled with static from the recorder. And the voice she’d imagined for Billy… it didn’t sound like a killer at all. He sounded scared, confused. He sounded like her.
Every shadow in her room had taken on the shape of a man, watching her wrapped up in her duvet. Every blinking electronic light was a pair of eyes in the dark: the LEDs on her printer and the Bluetooth speaker on her desk. It was even worse after the new message came through at two thirty, the world shrinking to just her and those prowling shadows.
Pip had lain there, eyes growing scratchy and dry as she stared up at the black ceiling. If she was being honest with herself, truly honest, she could hardly even call that a confession at all. Yes, the words had come out of Billy’s mouth. Yes, he’d said, I was the one who hurt those women, but the context changed everything. The lead-up and the aftermath. It stripped the meaning right out of those words.
Maria hadn’t been exaggerating, hadn’t been twisting the truth because she’d read the transcript through a mother’s eyes. She was right: the confession did seem coerced. The detective had trapped Billy into a corner by talking in circles, catching him in lies he never meant to tell. No one had seen Billy with Tara Yates the night before, that wasn’t true. And yet Billy had believed it of himself, believed a made-up person over his own memory. DCI Nolan had fed him everything, all the details of the murders. Billy didn’t even know how he’d killed his own victims before being told.
There was a chance it was all an act. A clever ploy by a manipulative killer. She’d tried to comfort herself with that thought. But that was overshadowed when placed beside the other possibility: that Billy Karras was an innocent man. Now she’d read his confession, it was no longer just possible, no longer a weak maybe. In her gut she could feel it tilting, abandoning maybe to reach for other words. Likely. Plausible.
And there must be something wrong with her, because part of her had felt relieved. No, that wasn’t the right word, it was more like… excited. Her skin prickling, the world shifting into half-speed around her. This was it, her other drug. A twisted and writhing knot for her to untie. But she couldn’t believe that part without accepting the other, the one that came with it, hand in hand.
Two halves of the same truth: if Billy Karras was innocent, then the DT Killer was still out there. Out here. He was back. And Pip had one week left before he made her disappear.
So, she would just have to find him first. Find whoever was doing this to her, whether it was the DT Killer or someone pretending to be.
The key was Green Scene Ltd, so that’s where she would begin. Had already begun. Last night as the clock on her dashboard ticked past 4 a.m. and on, Pip had scrolled through her old documents. Searching through files and folders until she found the document she needed. The one that had snuck up on her brain like an itch, reminding her of its existence, of its importance, as she’d tried to think through everything she knew about Jason Bell’s company.
Back into My documents and the folder labelled Schoolwork. Into Year 13, and the folder sat halfway between her A-Level subjects.
EPQ.
Pip clicked into it, revealing the rows and rows of Word documents and sound files she’d made one year ago. Jpgs and photos: the pages of Andie Bell’s academic planner spread open on her desk and an annotated map of Little Kilton Pip had drawn herself, following Andie’s last known movements. She’d scrolled down through all the Production Log documents until she found the one. The itch. Production Log – Entry 20 (Interview with Jess Walker).
Yes, that was it. Pip had re-read it, her heart kicking up as she realized its relevance. How strange, that a throwaway detail back then could be so vital now. Almost like all of this had been inevitable, since the very beginning. A path Pip didn’t know she’d been following all along.
Next, she’d researched where Green Scene and Clean Scene Ltd were based: a yard and office complex in Knotty Green, a twenty-minute drive from Little Kilton. She’d even visited, through Street View on Google Maps while she sat on her bed, virtually driving up and down the road outside. The complex was off a small country road, surrounded by tall trees, captured here on some past cloudy day. She couldn’t see much from the road, apart from a couple of industriallooking buildings, parked cars and vans, all encased within a tall metal fence painted forest-green. There was a sign on the front gate with the colourful logos for both sister companies. Up and down she’d gone, haunting the pixelated place like a ghost out of time. She could stare at it all she wanted, but it wouldn’t give her the answers she needed. There was only one place she’d get those. Not in Knotty Green, but in Little Kilton.
Right here, in fact, as she glanced up and realized she’d almost arrived. And something else too. There was a woman walking towards her, a face she knew. Dawn Bell, Andie and Becca’s mum. She must have just left the house, an empty Sainsburys bag swinging from her arm. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back from her face and her hands were lost in the arms of her oversized jumper. She looked tired too. Maybe that’s just what this town did to people.
They were about to pass each other. Pip smiled and dipped her head, not knowing whether to say hello or not, or to tell her she was just about to knock on her door to speak to her husband. Dawn’s mouth flickered, as did her eyes, but she didn’t stop, looking instead at the sky while she slid her fingers beneath the gold chain of her necklace, fiddling the round pendant back and forth so it caught the morning light. They passed each other and carried on. Pip checked over her shoulder as she went, and so did Dawn, their eyes meeting for one awkward moment.
But the moment went out of her head as she reached her destination, staring up at the house, her eyes following the crooked roofline to each of its three chimneys. Old, stippled bricks overwhelmed by shivering ivy, and a chrome wind chime mounted beside the front door.
The Bells’ house.
Pip held her breath as she crossed the road towards the house, glancing at the green SUV parked on the drive, beside a smaller red car. Good, Jason must be here then, not already on his way to work. There was a strange feeling at the base of her spine, uncanny and otherworldly, like she wasn’t really here, but in the body of herself from one year ago. Displaced, out of her own time, as everything came back full circle. Here, at the Bell house once more, because there was only one person who had the answers she needed.
She wrapped her knuckles against the glass on the front door.
A shape emerged in the frosted glass, a blurred head, as a chain scraped beside the front door and it was pulled open. Jason Bell stood in the threshold, buttoning up the top of his shirt, smoothing down its creases.
‘Hi, Jason,’ Pip said brightly, her smile feeling tight and rubbery. ‘Sorry to disturb your morning. H-how are you?’
Jason blinked at her, registering who it was standing on his doorstep.
‘What, er, what do you want?’ he asked, dropping his gaze to do up the buttons on his cuffs too, leaning against the door frame.
‘I know you’re heading off to work,’ Pip said, her voice jolting nervously. She fiddled her hands together, but that was a bad idea because they were sweating, and now she had to look down to check it wasn’t blood. ‘I, um, well, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions. About your company, Green Scene.’
Jason ran his tongue over his teeth; Pip could see the bulge of it through the skin of his top lip. ‘What about it?’ he said, eyes narrowing now.
‘About a couple of your ex-employees.’ She swallowed. ‘One of those being Billy Karras.’
Jason looked taken aback, his neck receding into his shirt. His mouth formed around his next words before he finally spoke them. ‘You mean the DT Killer?’ he said. ‘Is that your next thing, is it? Your next cry for attention.’
‘Something like that,’ she said with a fake smile.
‘I obviously have no comment on Billy Karras,’ Jason said, something stirring at the corners of his mouth. ‘I’ve done everything I can to try and distance the company from the things he did.’
‘But they are intrinsically connected,’ Pip countered. ‘The official narrative is that Billy got the duct tape and the blue rope from work.’
‘Listen to me,’ Jason said, raising his hand, but Pip spoke over him before he could derail the conversation. She needed answers, whether he liked it or not.
‘Last year, I spoke to one of Becca’s friends from high school, Jess Walker, and she told me that on the 20th of April 2012 – the night Andie went missing – you and Dawn were at a dinner party. But you had to leave at some point because the security alarm was going off at Green Scene; you had an alert on your phone, I assume.’
Jason stared blankly at her.
‘That was the very same night the DT Killer murdered his fifth and final victim, Tara Yates.’ Pip didn’t stop to breathe. ‘So, I was wondering whether that was it: DT breaking into your offices to take the supplies and accidentally setting off the burglar alarm. Did you ever find out who it was? Did you see anyone there when you went to check it out and turn off the alarm? Do you have CCTV cameras?’
‘I didn’t see…’ Jason trailed off. He glanced up at the sky behind her for a moment, and when he looked back at her, his face had changed – angry lines arranging themselves around his eyes. He shook his head. ‘Listen to me,’ he spat. ‘That is enough. Enough. I don’t know who you think you are, but this is unacceptable. You need to learn… Don’t you think you’ve interfered enough in people’s lives, in our lives?’ he said, slapping one hand into his chest, wrinkling his shirt. ‘Both of my daughters are gone now. Reporters are back, lurking around my house, trying to get quotes for their stories. My second wife left me. I’m back in this town, in this house. You’ve done enough. More than enough, believe me.’
‘But, Jason, I –’
‘Never try to contact me again,’ he said, gripping the edge of the door, his skin overstretched across the whites of his knuckles. ‘Or anyone in my family. That’s enough.’
‘But –’
Jason closed the door on her. Not a slam, he did it slowly, his eyes holding Pip’s until the door broke them apart. Detached them. The click of the lock. But he was still there, standing at the door; Pip could see the shape of him through the frosted glass. She imagined she could feel the heat of his eyes on hers, though she couldn’t see them any more. And still his outline hadn’t moved.
He wanted her to leave first, to watch her walk away, she realized. And so she did, hoicking up the straps on her bronze rucksack, her trainers scraping on the front path.
It might have been wishful thinking to have brought her microphones, her laptop, and her headphones. She should have expected that reaction, really, given what Hawkins had told her. She didn’t blame Jason; she wouldn’t be welcome on a lot of doorsteps in this town. But she really needed those answers. Who had set off the alarm at Green Scene Ltd that night? Was it Billy, or was it someone else? Her heart was still going too fast, much too fast, and now the beat sounded to her like a timer, ticking down to its own end.
Halfway down the road, Pip checked over her shoulder, looking back at the Bells’ house. Jason’s silhouette was still there in the doorway. Did he really need to watch until she was out of sight? She got the message; she would never go back there. It had been a mistake.
She rounded the corner on to the high street and her phone started vibrating in her front pocket. Was it Ravi? He should be on the train at this time. She slid her hand into her jeans and pulled out the buzzing phone.
No Caller ID.
Pip stopped walking, stared at the screen. Another one. A second one. It might just be a call about PPI, but it wasn’t, she knew. But what should she do? Well, she had only two options here: red button or green.
She pressed green and held the phone up to her ear.
The line was silent.
‘Hello?’ she said, her voice coming out too strong, crackling at the edges. ‘Who is this?’
Nothing.
‘DT?’ she said, eyeing some children squabbling across the street, in the same navy uniform Josh wore. ‘Are you the DT Killer?’
A sound. It might have been the car driving past her, or it might have been a breath in her ear.
‘Will you tell me who you are?’ she said, scared she would drop the phone because her hands were suddenly slick with Stanley’s blood. ‘What do you want from me?’
Pip stepped out into the road, on the crossing, holding her breath so that she could hear his instead.
‘Do you know me?’ she said. ‘Do I know you?’
The line crackled and then it cut out. Three loud beeps in her ear, her heart spiking at each one. He was gone.
Pip lowered the phone and stared down at it, two steps from the kerb. The outside world blurred, disappeared for her as she stared at her empty lock screen, where he had just been moments ago. There was no mistaking who the calls were from now.
Her against him.
Save yourself to save yourself.
Pip heard the crackling of the engine too late.
The screaming wheels behind her.
She didn’t need to see to know what was happening. But in that half-second, instinct grabbed hold of her, launched her legs forward, reaching for the pavement.
A screeching sound filled her ears and filled her bones and her teeth as the car swerved away from her. One foot landed and skidded out under her.
She crashed to her knee, catching herself with one elbow, the phone skittering out of her hand across the concrete.
The screeching broke into a growl, fading as the car turned right and sped away, before she’d even had a chance to look up.
‘Oh my god, Pip!’ called a bodiless, high-pitched voice somewhere in front of her.
Pip blinked.
Blood on her hands.
Actual blood, from a scrape across her palm.
She pushed herself up, one leg still jutted out on to the road, as a set of footsteps hurried towards her.
‘Oh my god.’
A hand came out of nowhere, held out in front of her.
She looked up.
Layla Mead. No, she blinked, not Layla, Layla hadn’t been real. It was Stella Chapman standing over her, Stella-from-school, her almond eyes downturned with concern. ‘Fuck, are you OK?’ she said as Pip took her offered hand and let Stella pull her to her feet.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ Pip said, wiping the blood off on to her jeans. This time it left a mark.
‘That dickhead wasn’t even looking,’ Stella said, her voice still high and panicked as she bent down to scoop up Pip’s phone. ‘You were at the crossing, for fuck sake.’
She placed the phone into Pip’s hand, remarkably unscratched.
‘Must have been going at least sixty.’ Stella was still talking, too quickly for Pip to keep up. ‘On the bloody high street. Sports cars think they own the damn road.’ She ran her hand nervously through her long brown hair. ‘So close to running you over.’
Pip could still hear the screeching of the wheels, left behind as a ringing in her ears. Had she hit her head?
‘… going so fast I couldn’t even attempt to read the number plate. It was a white car though, I could see that. Pip? Are you OK? Are you hurt? Should I call someone for you? Ravi?’
Pip shook her head and the ringing in her ears faded. Turned out it was just in her head after all. ‘No, it’s OK. I’m fine. Really,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Stella.’
But as she looked at Stella, at her kind eyes and her tanned skin and the lines of her cheekbones, she became someone else again. A new person but the same person. Layla Mead. The same as Stella in every way, except her brown hair was now a dusty, ashy blonde. And when she spoke next, it was in Charlie Green’s voice.
‘How’ve you been, anyway? I haven’t seen you in months.’
And Pip wanted to scream at Charlie and tell him about the gun he had left behind in her heart. Show him the blood on her hands. But she didn’t want to scream, actually. She wanted to cry and ask him to help her, help her understand everything, understand herself. Beg him to come back and show her how to be OK with who she was again. Tell her, in his calm, soothing voice, that maybe she was losing this fight because she was already lost.
The person in front of her was now asking her when she was off to university. Pip asked the same question back, and they stood there on the street, talking carelessly about a future Pip wasn’t sure she’d have any more. It wasn’t Charlie standing in front of her, talking about leaving home. And it wasn’t Layla Mead. It was Stella. Only Stella. But, even so, it was hard to look at Only Stella.