‘Another one?’ Ravi didn’t move, the expression on his face held there, like he was suspended in time, on that one patch of carpet. As though to move either way, forward or back, would confirm the thing he didn’t want to hear. If he didn’t move, it might not be real.
He’d only just walked through her bedroom door; it was the first thing Pip had said to him. Don’t freak out but I got another blocked call today. She hadn’t wanted to text him earlier, distract him while he was working, but the waiting had been hard, the secret burrowing around under her skin, looking for its own way out.
‘Yeah, this morning,’ she said, watching his face as it finally shifted, eyebrows climbing up his forehead, away from his glasses that he’d remembered again. ‘Didn’t say anything. Just breathing.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. ‘And what happened to your hand?’
‘I’m telling you now,’ she said, running a finger down his wrist. ‘And nothing really. Car nearly hit me as I was crossing the road. It’s fine, it’s just a scrape. But, look, this call is a good thing because –’
‘Oh, it’s good, is it? Getting calls from a potential serial killer. Good. Well, that’s a relief,’ Ravi said, hand raised to theatrically mop his brow.
‘Can you listen?’ she said, rolling her eyes. Such a drama queen when he wanted to be. ‘It’s good because I’ve spent all afternoon looking this up. And look, see? I’ve downloaded this app.’ Pip held up her home screen to show him. ‘It’s called CallTrapper. And what it does is, once you’ve activated it – which I now have – and paid the bloody four pound fifty subscription fee, when you get a call from a blocked number, it will unmask it. So you know the number that’s calling you.’ She smiled up at him, hooked her finger on to his belt loop, like he always did to her. ‘I should have installed it after the first call, really, but I wasn’t sure what it was at the time. Thought it might have been a random butt dial. Never mind, I have it now. And next time he calls me, I’ll have his phone number.’ She was being too cheery, she could tell, overcompensating.
Ravi nodded, and his eyebrows climbed back down just a little. ‘There’s an app for everything these days,’ he said. ‘Great, now I sound like my dad.’
‘Look, I’ll show you how it works. Call me with 141 at the front to block your number.’
‘OK.’ She watched Ravi pull out his phone and tap away at the screen. It was sudden and unexpected, the feeling that stirred in her chest, watching him. A feeling that dawdled there, took its sweet time. A slow burn. It was just an unexpected nice thing, to know that he knew her number by heart. That some parts of her lived inside him too. Team Ravi and Pip.
He would look for her if she disappeared, wouldn’t he? He might even find her.
The feeling was interrupted by her phone buzzing in her hands. No Caller ID. She held it up to show Ravi.
‘So what I do is I press this button twice to decline the call,’ she said, demonstrating. Her phone returned to its lock screen, but only for half a second before it lit up with another call. And this time, Ravi’s phone number scrolled along the top. ‘See, it diverts it to CallTrapper, where the number is unmasked and then they redirect the call back to me. And the caller has no idea on their end,’ she said, pressing the red button.
‘Can’t believe you just hung up on me.’
She put down her phone. ‘See, I have technology on my side now.’
Her first victory in the game, but not one to linger over: she was already way behind.
‘OK, I’m not going to go as far as to say that that’s good,’ Ravi said. ‘Not referring to anything as good after reading Billy’s police interview and realizing that a serial killer the whole world thinks has been locked up for six years might actually be hanging around, threatening to brutally murder my girlfriend, but it’s something.’ He wandered over to her bed, sat down inelegantly on the duvet. ‘What I don’t get, really, is how this person has your phone number.’
‘Everyone has my phone number.’
‘I should hope not,’ he replied quickly, appalled.
‘No, I mean, from the posters.’ She couldn’t help but laugh at his face. ‘We put up missing posters for Jamie all over town with my phone number on them. Anyone in Kilton could have my phone number. Anyone.’
‘Oh right,’ he said, chewing his lip. ‘We weren’t thinking about future-stalkers-slash-serial-killers at the time, were we?’
‘Hadn’t crossed our minds.’
Ravi sighed, dropped his face into his cupped hands.
‘What?’ she asked him, swivelling in her chair.
‘Just, don’t you think you should go back to Hawkins? Show him that DT article with the pigeons, and Billy’s interview. This is too big for us.’
It was Pip’s turn to sigh now. ‘Ravi, I’m not going back there,’ she said. ‘I love you, and you are perfect in all of the ways you aren’t like me, and I would do anything to make you happy, but I can’t go back there.’ She slotted one hand through the other, tightened them into a knot of criss-crossing fingers. ‘Hawkins basically called me crazy to my face last time, told me I was imagining it all. What’s he going to do if I go back and tell him that, actually, my stalker – who he doesn’t think is real in the first place – is an infamous serial killer who has been in prison for six years, who both confessed and pleaded guilty, except he might not actually have done it. He’d probably put me in a straitjacket right then and there.’ She paused. ‘They won’t believe me. They never believe me.’
Ravi peeled his fingers away, uncovered his face to look at her. ‘You know, I’ve always thought you were the bravest person I’ve ever met. Fearless. I don’t know how you do it sometimes. And whenever I’m feeling nervous about anything, I always think to myself, what would Pip do in this situation? But,’ he exhaled, ‘I don’t know if this is the time to be brave, to do what Pip would do. The risk is too high. I think… I think, maybe, you’re being reckless and…’ He trailed off into a wordless shrug.
‘OK, look,’ she said, opening up her hands. ‘At the moment, the only evidence we have is a bad feeling. When I get a name, some concrete evidence, a phone number even,’ she said, picking up her phone to wave it at him, ‘then I will go back to Hawkins, I promise. And if he doesn’t believe me, then I’ll go public with the information. I don’t care about any more lawsuits. I’ll put it out all over social media, on the podcast, and then they will listen. No one’s going to try to hurt me if I’ve told hundreds of thousands of people who they are and what they’re planning to do. That’s our defence.’
There was another reason she had to do this and do this alone, of course. But she couldn’t tell Ravi; he wouldn’t understand because it didn’t make sense, it was beyond that. It couldn’t fit into words, even if she tried. Pip had asked for this, wished for it, begged for it. One last case, the right one, to fix all of the cracks inside herself. And if Billy Karras was innocent, and if the man who wanted her to disappear was DT, then she couldn’t have wished for something more perfect. There was no grey area here, none at all, not even a trace. The DT Killer was the closest thing to evil the world could offer her. There was no good in him at all: no mistakes, no good intentions twisted, no redemption, nothing like that. And if Pip were the one to finally catch him, to free an innocent man, that would be an objectively good thing. No ambiguity. No guilt. Good and bad set right inside her again. No gun in her heart or blood on her hands. This would fix everything so it could go back to normal. To Team Ravi and Pip living their normal lives. Save herself to save herself. That’s why she had to do this her way.
‘Is that… is that better?’ she asked him.
‘Yes.’ He gave her a weak smile. ‘That’s better. So, concrete evidence.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘I’m guessing Jason Bell didn’t tell you anything useful?’
‘Ah, that,’ she said, clicking her pen again, and all she could hear was DT DT DT. ‘Yeah, no, he didn’t give me anything and basically told me to never darken their doorway again.’
‘I thought it might go that way,’ Ravi said. ‘I think they like their privacy, the Bells. Andie never even invited Sal over when they were together. And, of course, you are chief doorway darkener, Sarge.’
‘But,’ she said, ‘I do think the security alarm at Green Scene that night is key. That it was DT breaking in to get the duct tape and the rope he needed, for Tara. And he must have left before Jason Bell got there to check it out. Whether it was Billy or… someone else.’
‘Someone else,’ Ravi said absently, chewing on the phrase. ‘So that FBI profiler from that article, before Billy was caught, said that the DT Killer was a white man who could be anywhere from their early twenties to mid-forties.’
Pip nodded.
‘I guess that rules Max Hastings out,’ he sniffed.
‘Yeah,’ she said grudgingly. ‘He would have been just seventeen at the time of the first murder. And the night Tara died, and Andie Bell too, Max had Sal and Naomi Ward and the others round his house. He could have left when the others were asleep, but I don’t think it fits. And he has no connection to Green Scene. So, yeah, not him, as much as I want to put Max Hastings away for life.’
‘But Daniel da Silva used to work at Green Scene, right?’ Ravi asked.
‘Yes, he did,’ she said, her teeth gritted. ‘I just worked out the timeline this afternoon.’ She flipped through the scribbles in her notebook. She knew Daniel da Silva’s exact age, because he’d been one of the men in town who’d matched Charlie Green’s age profile for Child Brunswick. ‘Had to scroll back really far on his Facebook. He worked as the caretaker at school from 2008 to 2009, when he was around twenty years old. Then he started working at Green Scene at the end of 2009, and he stayed there until October-ish 2011, I think, when he started his police training. So, he was twenty-one when he started at Green Scene, and twenty-three when he left.’
‘And he was still working there when the first two DT murders happened?’ Ravi said, pressing his lips into a thin line.
‘The first three, actually. Bethany Ingham was killed August 2011. I think she used to be Dan’s supervisor, as well as Billy’s. The name redacted in the police transcript – I think that’s Daniel Billy’s talking about. Then Jason Bell gave Dan a job in the office – rather than out in the field, as it were – and that was at the start of 2011, as far as I can tell. Oh, and he married his wife, Kim, in September 2011. They’d been together for years before that.’
‘Interesting,’ Ravi said, running his hand over Pip’s curtains, checking they were fully closed.
She grunted in agreement, a dark sound at the back of her throat, as she flipped back to her to-do list in the notebook. Most of the crudely drawn boxes beside were now filled with ticks. ‘So, if Jason won’t talk to me, I’ve had a look to see if there are any ex-employees of Green Scene or Clean Scene – people who worked in the office who might know more about that security alarm on the 20th April 2012. I found a couple on LinkedIn and I’ve sent them a message.’
‘Good thinking.’
‘I think I should see if I can talk to DCI Nolan too; he’s retired now. Oh, I also tried to get in contact with some family members of the victims,’ she said, running her pen down those items in the list. ‘I thought I found an email address for Bethany Ingham’s dad, but the email bounced. I did find an Instagram profile for Julia Hunter’s sister, Harriet – you know, the one who mentioned the pigeons. It looks like she hasn’t posted in months,’ she said, opening up Instagram on her phone to show him. ‘Maybe she doesn’t go on it any more. But I sent her a dm just in c—’
Pip’s eyes stalled, caught on the red notification that had just popped up above the messages tab.
‘Oh shit,’ she hissed, clicking on it, ‘she’s just replied. Harriet Hunter’s just replied!’
Ravi was already up on his feet, his hands finding their way to her shoulders. ‘What did she say?’ His breath tickled the back of her neck.
Pip scanned the message quickly, her eyes so tired, so dried out, she thought they might creak in their sockets. ‘She… she says she can meet with me. Tomorrow.’
Pip felt herself smiling before she could help it. Luckily Ravi was behind her and couldn’t see; he would frown at her, tell her this wasn’t a time for celebrating. But it felt like it, in a way. It was another win for her. Save herself to save herself.
Your move, DT.
