Nononononononono.
Breaths rattled in and out of her nose, hissing against the edges of the tape.
Pip swiped with her legs, feeling out the unknown, this way and that. There was nothing around her but concrete. The screw was gone, out of reach. And she was dead again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told the Ravi in her head. ‘I tried. I really did. I wanted to see you again.’
‘It’s OK, Sarge,’ he told her. ‘I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. Plans change all the time. Think.’
Think what? That had been her last chance, the last sliver of hope, and now the terror was feeding itself on that too.
Ravi sat with her, back to back, but he was actually the heavy vat of weedkiller leaning against her, pushing down on the loose corner of the shelf. The metal groaned, bending out of shape.
Pip tried to take Ravi’s hand behind her and felt the drooping corner of the shelf instead. Felt the tiniest gap between the lopsided shelf and the pole it was supposed to be attached to. Tiny. But enough to slide her fingernail through. And if it was big enough for that, then it was big enough for the width of the duct tape wrapped around her wrists.
Pip held her breath as she tried. Lowering her hands, forcing that empty side of tape through the gap. It caught on the shelf, so she shifted and jerked, and it came free. She slipped her binds below the shelf, and now she was attached only to the lowest part of the shelving unit. Just this small length of pole and the ground it rested on, that was all that was keeping her here now. If she could somehow raise the leg of the pole, she could slip her restraints down over the end and off.
She shuffled her bound feet, feeling around the area, careful to keep blocking the vat so it didn’t fall. Her legs dipped down, into the lowered channel running through the concrete floor. That was an idea. If she could drag the shelf forward to that gutter, there would be space beneath the pole leg for her to slip out. But how was she going to drag it? She was attached to it by the wrists, arms locked behind her. If she hadn’t been able to fight off Jason Bell with her arms, there was no way she could lift this heavy shelving unit with them. She wasn’t that strong, and if she was going to survive, she had to understand her limits. That wasn’t her way out of here.
‘So, what is?’ Ravi prompted.
One idea: the duct tape had snagged against the uneven shelf as she’d lowered her hands. If she kept passing the tape through that small gap, kept snagging, maybe it would start to tear small holes in her binds. But that would take a while, a while she’d already spent loosening the nut and removing the screw. DT could be on his way back at any time. Pip must have been alone for over an hour now, maybe more. Alone, even though Ravi was right here. Her thoughts in his voice. Her lifeline. Her cornerstone.
Time was a limitation. The strength of her arms another. What was left?
Her legs. Her legs were free. And unlike her arms, they were strong. She’d been running from monsters for months. If she was too weak to drag or lift the shelves, maybe she was strong enough to push them.
Pip explored the unknown with her legs again, stretching out to the back pole of the shelving unit. Through the fabric of her trainers, she could feel that the back side of the shelves wasn’t against the wall. It stood a few inches in front of it, at least the width of her foot. Not a lot of room, but it was enough. If she could push the shelves back, they would over-tip, landing against the wall. And the front legs would stick up, like an insect on its back. That was the plan. A good plan. And maybe she really would live to see everyone again.
Pip swung her legs forward and dug in her heels, using the lip of the gutter to push against. She propped up her shoulders against the front of the shelf, still blocking the nearest vat from sliding off.
She pushed down, into her heels, and raised herself from the floor.
Come on, she told herself, and she didn’t need to hear it in Ravi’s voice any more. Hers was enough. Come on.
Pip screeched with the effort of it, the muffled sound filling up her death mask.
She threw her head back against the pole and pushed with it too.
Movement. She felt movement, or hope was only tricking her.
She shuffled one foot closer, and the other, and she drove them into the gutter, shoulders ramming against the shelves. The muscles up the back of her legs shuddered, and it felt like her stomach was tearing open. But she knew it was this or death and she pushed and she pushed.
The shelves gave way.
They tipped back. The sound of metal meeting brick. A crash as the vat of weedkiller finally slid free, cracking open against the concrete. Others sliding, thumping against the back wall. A sharp chemical smell, and something soaking into her leggings.
But none of that mattered.
Pip lowered her binds down the metal pole. And there, at its end, was freedom. It stood up only about an inch from the concrete, that’s what it felt like, and that was more than enough. She slipped the tape over the end and she was free.
Free. But not all the way.
Pip shuffled away from the shelves, from the liquid pooling around her. She lay on her side, tucked her knees into her chest, and slipped her bound hands over her feet, arms now in front of her.
The tape came off easily, one hand slipping out of the space left by the pole, then freeing the other.
Her face. Her face next.
Blindly, she felt around her duct tape mask, searching for the end DT had left. There it was, by her temple. She pulled it, the tape undoing with a loud rip. It pulled at her skin, pulled out eyelashes and eyebrows, but Pip tore it off, hard and quick, and she opened her eyes. Blinked in the cold storeroom and the destruction of the shelves behind her. She kept going, pulling and tearing, and the pain was agonizing, her skin raw, but it was a good pain, because she was going to live. She held on to her hair to try to stop it pulling out from the root, but small clumps of it came away with the tape.
Unwinding and unwinding.
Up her head, and down her nose. Her mouth came free and she breathed through it and breathed hard. Her chin. One ear. Then the other.
Pip dropped her unravelled mask to the floor. The duct tape long and meandering, scattered with hair and small spots of blood it had claimed from her.
DT had taken her face, but she had taken it back.
Pip leaned over and unravelled the tape still binding her ankles, then she stood up, her legs shaking, almost buckling under her weight.
Now the room. Now she just had to get out of the room and she would be alive, as good as. She skittered over to the door, treading on something on the way. She glanced down; it was the screw she’d dropped. It had rolled almost all the way to the door through the unknown. Pip rammed the door handle down, knowing it was useless. She’d heard Jason lock her in. But there was a door at the other end of the storeroom. It wouldn’t lead outside, but it would lead somewhere.
Pip sprinted to it. She lost control as her trainers scuffed on the concrete, skidding into a workbench beside the door. The workbench jumped, with a sound of colliding metal from a large toolbox on top. Pip righted herself and tried the door handle. It was also locked. Fuck. OK.
She returned to the other side, to her vat of weedkiller, the dark liquid draining into the gutter like a cursed river. A bright line was reflected in the liquid, but it wasn’t from the overhead lights. It was from the window, high up in front of her, letting in the last of the evening light. Or the first of it. Pip didn’t know the time. And her tipped-back shelves, they reached right up to the window, almost like a ladder.
The window was small, and it didn’t look like it opened. But Pip could fit through it, she was sure she could. And if she couldn’t, she would make herself fit. Climb through and drop down on the outside. She just needed something to break it with.
She checked around. Jason had left the roll of duct tape on the floor by the door. Beside it was a coiled length of blue rope. The blue rope, she realized with a shiver. The rope DT was going to use to kill her. Was. But would still, if he came back right now.
What else was in the room? Just her and lots of weedkiller and fertilizer. Oh wait, her mind jumped back to the other side of the storeroom. There was a toolbox down there.
She ran to the other side again, an ache in her ribs and a pain in her chest. There was a Post-it note stuck to the top of the toolbox. In slanting scribbles, it said, J – Red team keep taking tools assigned to Blue team. So I’m leaving this in here for Rob to find. – L
Pip undid the clips and pulled open the lid. Inside was a jumble of screwdrivers and screws, a tape measure, pliers, a small drill, some kind of wrench. Pip dug her hand inside. And underneath it all, was a hammer. A large one.
‘Sorry, Blue team,’ she muttered, tightening her grip around the hammer, pulling it out.
Pip stood before the tipped-over shelves, her shelves, and looked back once more at the room where she’d known she would die. Where the others had died, all five of them. And then she climbed, balancing her feet on the lowest shelf like a rung, pulling herself up to the next level. There was still strength left in her legs, moving adrenaline-fast.
Feet planted on the top shelf, she crouched, balancing herself in front of the window. A hammer in her hand, and an unbroken window in front of her; Pip had been here before. Her arm knew what to do, it remembered, arching back to pick up momentum. Pip swung at the window and it cracked, a spiderweb splintering through the reinforced glass. She swung again, and the hammer went through, glass shattering around it. Shards still clung to the frame, but she knocked them out one by one, so she wouldn’t cut herself open. How far was it to the ground? Pip dropped the hammer through and watched it tumble to the gravel below. Not far. She should be fine if she bent her legs.
And now it was just her and a hole in the wall, and something was waiting on the other side. Not something. Everything. Life, normal life, and Team Ravi and Pip and her parents and Josh and Cara and everyone. They might even be looking for her now, though she hadn’t disappeared for long. Some parts of her might be gone, parts she might never get back, but she was still here. And she was coming home.
Pip gripped the window frame and pulled herself forward, sliding her legs out ahead of her. She held on as she dipped her shoulders and head and manoeuvred them out too. She stared down at the gravel, at the hammer, and she let go.
Landed. Hard on her feet, the force ricocheting up her legs. A pain in her left knee. But she was free, she was alive. A breath came out too hard that it was almost a laugh. She’d done it. She’d survived.
Pip listened. The only sound was the wind in the trees, some of it finding the new holes in her too, blowing through her ribcage. Pip bent down and picked up her hammer, holding it at her side, just in case. But as she rounded the corner of the building, she could see that the complex was empty. Jason’s car wasn’t here and the gate was locked again. The metal fence at the front was high, too high, she’d never be able to climb it. But the back of the yard was bordered by woods, and the fence was unlikely to encircle those too.
New plan: she just had to follow the trees. Follow the trees, find a road, find a house, find someone, call the police. That was all. The easy parts left, just one foot in front of the other.
One foot in front of the other, the crunch of gravel. She walked past the parked vans, and large bins and machines, trailers with ride-on mowers, and a small fork-lift over there. One foot in front of the other. Gravel became dirt became the crunch of leaves. The last of the daylight was gone, but the moon was out early, watching over Pip. She was surviving: one foot in front of the other, that’s all it took. Her trainers and the leaves crunching beneath them. She dropped the hammer and carried on through the trees.
A new sound stopped her in her tracks.
The distant drone of a car engine. The slam of a car door far behind her. The shrieking of a gate.
Pip darted behind a tree and stared back into the complex.
Two yellow headlights, winking at her through the branches, as they pulled forward. Wheels on gravel.
It was DT. Jason Bell. He’d returned. He was back to kill her.
But he wouldn’t find her there, only the parts she’d left behind. Pip was out, she’d escaped. All she had to do was find a house, find a person, call the police. The easy parts. She could do that. She turned, leaving the headlights in the unknown behind her. Moving on, picking up her pace. She just had to call the police and tell them everything; that DT had just tried to kill her and she knew who he was. She could even call DI Hawkins directly, he’d understand.
She faltered, one foot hovering above the ground.
Wait.
Would he understand?
He never understood. Not any of it. And it wasn’t even a question of understanding, it was a question of believing. He’d come right out and said it to her face, said gently but said all the same: that she was imagining it. She didn’t have a stalker, she was just seeing things, seeing danger around every corner because of the trauma she’d lived through. Even though he’d been part of that trauma, because he hadn’t believed her when she went to him about Jamie.
It was a repeating pattern. No, not a pattern, it was a circle. That’s what this all was, everything winding up, coming full circle. The end was the beginning. Hawkins hadn’t believed her before, twice, so why did she think he’d believe her now?
And the voice in her head wasn’t Ravi any more, it was Hawkins. Said gently, but said all the same. ‘The DT Killer is already in prison. He’s been there for years. He confessed.’ That’s what he’d say.
‘Billy Karras isn’t the DT Killer,’ Pip would counter. ‘It’s Jason Bell.’
Hawkins shook his head inside hers. ‘Jason Bell is a respectable man. A husband, a father. He’s already been through so much, because of Andie. I’ve known him for years, we play tennis sometimes. He’s a friend. Don’t you think I’d know? He’s not the DT Killer and he’s not a danger to you, Pip. Are you still talking to someone? Are you getting help?’
‘I’m asking you for help.’
Asking him again and again, and when would she finally learn? Break the circle?
And if her worst fears were right, if the police didn’t believe her, didn’t arrest Jason, then what? DT would still be out there. Jason might take her again, or someone else. Take someone she cared about to punish her, because she was too loud and had to be silenced some way. He’d get away with it. They always got away with it. Him. Max Hastings. Above the law because the law was wrong. A legion of dead girls and dead-eyed girls left behind them.
‘They won’t believe me,’ Pip told herself, in her own voice now. ‘They never believe us.’ Out loud so she would truly listen this time, understand. She was on her own. Charlie Green wasn’t the one with all the answers; she was. She didn’t need to hear it from him to know what to do this time.
Break the circle. It was hers to break, here and now. And there was only one way to do that.
Pip turned, leaves bunching, clinging to the white soles of her shoes.
And she walked back.
Returned through the darkening trees. A glint of young moonlight across the surface of the dropped hammer, showing her the way. She bent to pick it up, testing out her grip.
Dried-out leaves to grass, to dirt, to gravel, easing her steps, pressing her feet down with no sound. Maybe she was too loud for him, but he’d never hear her coming now.
Ahead, Jason was out of his car, walking up to the metal door he’d dragged her through, his steps disguising hers. Closer and closer. He stopped and she did too, waiting. Waiting.
Jason slid his hand down into his pocket, returning with the ring of keys. A rustle of tinkling metal and Pip took a few slow steps, hiding beneath the sound.
Jason found the right key, long and jagged. He pushed it into the lock, metal scraping metal, and Pip moved closer.
Break the circle. The end was the beginning and this was both, the origin. Finish it where it had all begun.
He twisted the key, and the door unlocked with a dark click, the sound echoing in Pip’s chest.
Jason pushed open the door into the yellow-lit storeroom. He took one step over the threshold, looked up, then took one back, staring ahead. Taking in the scene: tipped-over shelves, smashed-open window, a river of spilled weedkiller, lengths of unwound duct tape.
Pip was right behind him.
‘What the –’ he said.
Her arm knew what to do.
Pip pulled it back and swung the hammer.
It found the base of his skull.
A sickening crunch of metal on bone.
He staggered. He even dared to gasp.
Pip swung again.
A crack.
Jason dropped, falling forward on to the concrete, catching himself with one hand.
‘Please –’ he began.
Pip pulled her elbow back, a spray of blood hitting her in the face.
She leaned over him and swung again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Until nothing moved. Not a twitch in his fingers, or a jerk in his legs. Only a new river, a red one, slowly leaking out of his undone head.
