Pip waited.
The raw skin started to heal on her face and around her wrists, and she waited.
It didn’t come on Monday; Pip sitting on the sofa while the ten o’clock news played out, her mum shouting over it to remind her dad to take the bins out.
It didn’t come Tuesday either. Pip had BBC News on in the background all day while she set up her replacement phone. Nothing. No bodies found. Kept it on even when Ravi came round in the evening, talking with the haunted looks in their eyes, and the brief touches of their hands, because they couldn’t use words. Not until they were behind the closed door of her bedroom.
Had they not found him? That was impossible: the fire, the blood. Surely employees at Green Scene must know, they must have been told something was wrong, why they couldn’t go into work: the fire, the crime scene. Pip could just look them up –
No. She couldn’t look anything up. That would leave a trace, a trail.
She just had to wait, fight that impulse to know. It would get her caught.
Sleep was difficult; what had she expected? She had nothing to take, and maybe she needed it even more now, because every time she closed her eyes she was scared they’d never re-open again, that they were taped down, and so was her mouth when she tried to breathe. Gunshot heartbeats. It was only the exhaustion that ever settled her.
‘Hello, sleepy,’ Pip’s mum said to her, Wednesday morning, as she made her way unsteadily downstairs, skipping the third one down out of habit now. ‘Couple of my showings cancelled this morning so I’ve made us coffee and breakfast.’
Pancakes.
Pip sat at the kitchen island and took a deep sip of her coffee, too hot in her still-ragged throat.
‘I’m going to miss you when you go off to uni, you know,’ her mum said, sitting across from her.
‘You’ll still see me all the time,’ Pip said, around a mouthful, not hungry, but she wanted to make her mum happy.
‘I know, but it’s not quite the same, is it? So grown up now, time goes like that.’ She snapped her fingers, glancing down at her phone as it pinged from its place on the counter. ‘That’s weird,’ she said, picking it up. ‘Siobhan from work has just texted me, telling me to put on the news.’
Pip’s chest closed around her heart, filling her head with the sound of cracking ribs. Her neck too cold, her face too warm. This was it, wasn’t it? What else could Siobhan mean? She kept her face neutral, digging her fork through the pancakes to have something to do with her hands. ‘Why?’ she said casually, watching her mum’s downturned face.
‘She just said put it on, I don’t know. Maybe something’s happened at the school.’ Her mum dropped from the chair and hurried out into the living room.
Pip waited for one moment, then two, trying to breathe down the panic rising up inside. This was it, the moment it all became real, and not real; she had to put on a show and do it right, performing for her life. She put down her fork and followed her mum.
The remote was already in her hands, the TV ticking on. Straight on to BBC News where Pip had left it last night.
A newsreader, cut in half by the scrolling text at the bottom.
Breaking news.
A crease in her brow as she spoke into the camera.
‘… in Buckinghamshire, a town that has had more than its fair share of tragedy. Six years ago, two teenagers – Andie Bell and Sal Singh – died in what has since become one of the most talked about true crime cases in the country. And earlier this year, a man confirmed to have been Child Brunswick, who had been living in Little Kilton under the name Stanley Forbes, was shot and killed. The suspect, Charlie Green, was only arrested and charged last week. And here we are now, this same small town in the news again with confirmation today from local police that resident Jason Bell, the father of Andie Bell, has been found dead.’
A gasp, from her mum, mouth open in horror. Pip mirrored the look on her face, shared it with her.
‘Police are treating his death as suspicious and gave a statement outside Amersham Police Station a short while ago.’
The shot cut away from the newsroom to a bright outside scene with a grey sky and a greying building that Pip knew too well. The bad, bad place.
A podium had been set up in the car park, a microphone reaching out the top, swaying slightly in the wind.
He was standing behind it, clean shirt, crisp suit jacket, his green padded one clearly deemed inappropriate for press conferences.
DI Hawkins cleared his throat. ‘Today we sadly confirm that Jason Bell, aged forty-eight, a resident of Little Kilton, was found dead early Sunday morning. His body was found at his place of work, at a company he owned, based in Knotty Green. We are investigating Jason’s death as a homicide, and I cannot comment any further on the details of the case as this investigation is still in the early stages. We are appealing for any witnesses who were in the area of Knotty Green late Saturday evening, particularly in the vicinity of Witheridge Lane, who may have seen anything suspicious.’
No witnesses, Pip thought, telling him with her eyes through the glass of the TV screen. No one near to hear her screams. And that other thing: late Saturday evening, that’s what he’d said, wasn’t it? But what time did that mean? That could mean anything, really, from seven, or maybe even earlier, depending on who you asked. The term was too loose, too vague; she still couldn’t know if they’d pulled it off.
‘Any questions?’ Hawkins paused, looked past the camera. ‘Yes,’ he pointed at someone.
A voice off-screen: ‘How was he killed?’
Hawkins stretched out his face. ‘You know I cannot tell you that, it’s an active investigation.’
Hammer to the head, Pip answered in her mind. Hit at least nine times. Overkill. An angry, angry death.
‘This is awful,’ her mum said, hands clasped around her face.
Pip nodded.
A different voice behind the camera: ‘Has this got any connection with the death of his daughter, Andie?’
Hawkins studied the man for a second. ‘Andie Bell died tragically more than six years ago, and her case was brought to resolution last year. I was personally in charge of the investigation when she went missing. I have a connection with the Bell family, and I promise I will find out what happened to Jason – who killed him. Thank you.’
Hawkins stepped back from the podium with a curt wave of his hand, the shot cutting back to the newsroom.
‘Terrible, terrible,’ Pip’s mum said, shaking her head. ‘I can’t believe it. That poor family. Jason Bell dead. Murdered.’ She turned to look at Pip, hardening her face. ‘No,’ she said firmly, raising one finger.
Pip didn’t know what she’d done wrong with her face. Jason Bell deserved to be dead, but her mum couldn’t tell that from her face, right? ‘What?’ she asked her.
‘I can tell exactly what that glint in your eye is, Pip. You are not getting obsessed with this. You are not going to start looking into this.’
Pip looked back at the TV and shrugged.
Except, that’s exactly what she was going to do.
It’s what she would do, if this really were the first time she was hearing about it. This is what she did: investigate. Drawn to dead people, missing people, chasing the why and how. It was expected, normal. And Pip had to act normal, in the way people expected.
The final part of the plan was kicking in, rehashed over and over in tense whispers with Ravi last night. Interfere but don’t interfere too much. Guide, don’t lead.
The police had their killer. They just had to know where to look for him.
Pip could give them a nudge in the right direction, to find the person behind all that evidence she’d left for them. She had the perfect, expected, normal way to do it. Her podcast.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder Season 3: Who Killed Jason Bell?
And she knew exactly who to interview first.
