Tudor Lane. One of those roads in Little Kilton Pip couldn’t extricate from herself, from who she’d become, mapped inside her in place of an artery. Back here once more, like it was something inevitable, this very journey inscribed within her too.
Pip glanced up, the Hastings house coming into view ahead on the right. Here it had all started, a branch of beginnings all those years ago. Five teenagers one night: Sal Singh, Naomi Ward and Max Hastings among them. An alibi Sal always had, snatched away from him by his friends, because of Elliot Ward. And here Pip would end it all.
She checked back over her shoulder, at the three of them, sitting inside Jamie’s car parked further down the street. Her car was nestled behind it. She saw Nat nodding to her from the darkness of the passenger seat, and that gave her the courage to carry on.
Pip held on to the straps of her rucksack and crossed the street. She stopped at the outer fence around Max’s front drive, peeking through the branches of a tree. Max’s car was the only one in the drive, as she’d known it would be. His parents were at their second house in Italy, because of the emotional distress Pip had caused them. And – if she was right – Max should have returned from his evening run at around eight, if he’d been on one. Turned out all those months of running into each other wasn’t for nothing at all.
Max was alone inside, and he had no idea she was coming for him. But she’d told him. She’d warned him all those months ago. Rapist. I will get you.
Pip focused her eyes on the front door, picking out the security cameras mounted on the walls either side. They were small, pointed diagonally down to face the garden path up to the front door. They might not be real cameras, might just be for show, but Pip had to assume they were. And that was OK, because they had a clear blind side: up against the house approaching from the other end. A blind side she would disappear right into.
Pip patted her pocket, checked the duct tape was there, as well as the burner phone, the bag of powder, and one set of latex gloves. Then she placed her hands over the rail of the outer fence, waist-high, and swung her legs over the top. She landed silently in the grass on the other side, just another shadow among the branches. Keeping to the right-hand perimeter of the garden, up against a hedgerow, she skirted over to the house. Towards the corner, and one of the windows she’d smashed open months ago.
The room beyond was dark, some kind of office, but she could see through an open door, into the hallway where the lights were on.
Keeping herself flat against the wall of the house, Pip sidled up behind the unsuspecting camera. She glanced up, positioned almost underneath it. Reaching into her pocket, she removed the duct tape and found its ragged end. She pulled a length of tape from the roll and ripped it free. Pip stretched to full height, on her toes, arm snaking up beneath the camera, the tape ready and poised against her fingers. She pressed it over and around the glass, fully covering the lens. Another piece of tape to be sure it was all blocked.
One down, one to go. But she couldn’t walk over to it, right into its view. She left the same way she’d come, back along the house and the hedgerow, vaulting the fence where it hid beneath the tree. Walked along the pavement with her head down, hood up, to the other side of the house. An opening in the fence between two shrubs. Pip climbed over and in, creeping up the outer edge of the other side of the house. Sidled in across the front. Ripped more tape free, leaned up and covered the camera.
She exhaled. OK, the cameras were disabled, and they wouldn’t have caught a trace of the one disabling them. Because it was Max, not her. Max was the one who covered the cameras.
Pip returned to the outer corner of the house, and carried on around its side, walking carefully up to a glowing window near the back. She ducked and peered inside.
The room was bright, lit up by yellow spotlights on the ceiling. But there was another light, flickering blue, clashing against the yellow. Pip’s eyes found the source: the huge TV mounted against the back wall. And in front of the TV, his messy blonde hair visible over the arm of the sofa, was Max Hastings. A controller in his raised hands as he thumbed one button over and over, a gun firing on-screen. Feet up on the oak coffee table, beside the obnoxious blue water bottle he took with him everywhere.
Max shuffled and Pip dropped to the grass, her head below the window. She took two deep breaths, leaning against the bricks, crushing her bag between them. This was the part Ravi had been most worried about, that any number of small factors could send the plan spinning off course, out of her control, that he should be there to help.
But Max was here, and so was his blue water bottle. And if Pip could get inside, that’s all she needed. He’d never even know.
Pip wouldn’t have long to work out how to break in. Minutes, if that. She’d told Nat to buy her as much time as she could, but even two minutes was optimistic. Jamie had volunteered for the distraction at first, said he’d be able to keep Max at the door long enough. They’d been at school together, Jamie could find something to say, but Nat had shaken her head at them both, stepped forward.
‘Put him away forever, you said?’ Nat had asked her.
‘Thirty-to-life,’ Pip replied.
‘Well, then, this is my last chance to say goodbye. I’ll do the distraction,’ she’d said, teeth gritted and determined.
The same look was on Pip’s face now, as she reached into her pocket, fingers closing around the slippery latex gloves. She pulled them out and pulled them on, stretching her fingers down to the very ends. The burner phone next, with a new number saved. The number of the other burner phone she’d just given to Jamie and Connor.
Ready, she typed, slowly, the gloves tripping up her fingers. It was only a few seconds until she heard the sound of a car door slamming in the distance.
Nat was on her way.
Any second that doorbell would ring. And everything, the entire plan, Pip’s life, depended on the next ninety seconds.
The shrill sound of a doorbell, a scream by the time it reached Pip’s ears.
Go.
