The shock didn’t last long, not before the panic set in. Curdling in her stomach, rising up her spine, quick as insect legs or dead man’s fingers.
Pip stared at her headphones in the evidence bag and she didn’t understand. No, that couldn’t be right. She’d seen them in the last week, hadn’t she? When she was working on the audio of Jackie’s interview. No, no, she hadn’t been able to find them; she thought Josh had borrowed them again.
No, the last time she’d had them was… that day. She’d taken them off, put them in her rucksack before knocking on Nat’s door. But then Jason grabbed her.
‘Are these yours?’ Hawkins asked, his gaze a physical sensation on her face, an itch she couldn’t ignore, watching her for any giveaway. She couldn’t give him one.
‘They look similar,’ Pip said, speaking slowly, assuredly over the panic and her hummingbird heart. ‘Can I see them closer?’
Hawkins slid the evidence bag across the table, and Pip stared down at the headphones, pretending to study them while she bought herself time to think.
Jason had had her rucksack in his car. She’d checked before she and Ravi left the scene and she thought she had everything she’d packed that afternoon. She did, except the headphones. She hadn’t been thinking about them because they’d gone in after. But where, when…
No. That sick fuck.
Jason must have taken them out. When he left her there, wrapped up in tape, he went home. He looked through her bag. He found the headphones and he took them. Because they were his trophy. The symbol for his sixth victim. The thing he would clutch close to relive the thrill of killing her. Her headphones were his trophy. That’s why he took them.
That sick fuck.
Hawkins cleared his throat.
Pip glanced up at him. How should she play this? How could she play this? Was there any play left to make? He’d caught her in a lie, a direct link to the victim.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Those are mine, of course. The sticker.’
Hawkins nodded, and now Pip understood that look in his eyes and she hated him for it. He’d trapped her. He’d caught her. Spun a web she couldn’t see until it was wrapped around her, cutting off her air. Not free, not safe, not free.
‘And why did a forensic team find your headphones inside Jason Bell’s house?’
‘I-I,’ Pip stuttered. ‘I honestly cannot tell you. I don’t know. Where were they?’
‘In his bedroom,’ Hawkins said. ‘Top drawer of his bedside table.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Pip said, and that wasn’t true because she knew exactly why they were there, how they got there. But she couldn’t find any other words because her mind was busy, the plan shattering into a million pieces, cascading behind her eyes.
‘You said you use your headphones daily? All the time,’ he quoted her. ‘Yet you haven’t had contact with Jason Bell since April. So how did your headphones get there?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, shuffling in her seat. No, don’t shuffle, that makes you look guilty. Stay still, stare back. ‘I use them all the time, but I haven’t seen them lately –’
‘Define lately?’
‘I don’t know, maybe a week or more,’ she said. ‘Maybe I left them somewhere… I can’t really remember.’
‘No?’ Hawkins said lightly.
‘No.’ Pip stared him down, but her eyes were weaker than his. Blood on her hands, gun in her heart, bile at the back of her throat and a cage tightening around her, squeezing the skin on her arms. Biting, like the duct tape had. ‘I’m as confused as you are.’
‘You have no explanation?’ Hawkins said.
‘No, none,’ Pip said. ‘I didn’t realize they were missing.’
‘So, they can’t have been gone long?’ he asked. ‘Maybe nine or ten days? Could you have lost them on the same day you lost your phone?’
Pip knew then. He didn’t believe her. He wouldn’t follow the path she’d created for him. She wasn’t a peripheral outsider to the case any more, there was a direct line between her and Jason. Hawkins had found her, the real her, not the one she’d planted for him to find. He’d won.
‘I really don’t know,’ Pip said, and the terror was back, that cliff-edge inside her own head, breaths coming faster, throat narrowing. ‘I guess I can ask my family, see if they remember when they last saw me with the headphones. But I can’t think how this happened.’
‘Right,’ Hawkins said.
She needed to leave, get out before the panic took over her face and she couldn’t hide it any more. She had to leave – and she could, this interview was voluntary. They couldn’t arrest her. Not yet. The headphones were only circumstantial; they’d need more.
‘In fact, I probably need to get going. My mum’s taking me shopping for university supplies in a bit. I’m going this weekend and I’m not organized yet. Leaving everything to the last minute as she’d say. I’ll ask my family if they remember when I last had those headphones, and I’ll get back to you on that.’
She stood up.
‘Interview terminated 11:57.’ Hawkins clicked stop on the tape and stood as well, picking up the evidence bag. ‘I’ll walk you out,’ he said.
‘No,’ Pip said from the door. ‘No, don’t worry. Been here enough times, I know the way.’
Back out into that corridor, in the bad, bad place, blood on her hands, blood on her hands, blood on her face and everywhere, marking her out in red as she stumbled outside.
Flipped her laptop over. Panicked fingers, almost dropped it. A screwdriver from her dad’s toolkit. Pip could remove the hard drive, she knew exactly how, put it in the microwave and watch it explode. If they got a warrant and took her computer, they couldn’t see that she’d been looking into Green Scene before Jason died, or Andie’s second email account, or any connection to Jason or the DT Killer. The time of death was nine thirty to midnight and she had an alibi, she had an alibi, the headphones were just circumstantial and she had an alibi.
She got one screw out before she realized the truth, before it crashed into her, solid and indisputable, stuck through the middle of her chest. She was in denial but the voice at the back of her mind knew, guided her out, slowly, slowly.
It was over.
Pip dropped everything and cried into her hands. But her alibi; the plan had worked, one last part of her protested. No, no. She couldn’t think like that any more, she couldn’t fight, she couldn’t see this through to the end. She could have, if it were just her, but she wasn’t the only one at risk here. Ravi, and Cara and Naomi, and Jamie and Connor and Nat. They’d helped her because she’d asked, because they loved her and she loved them.
And there it was. She loved them, a simple and powerful truth. Pip loved them all and she couldn’t let them fall when she did.
That was the promise.
And if this was it, the beginning of the end, there was only one way Pip knew to protect them all now. She had to make sure they were removed from the narrative before it was uncovered. She had to create a new one, a new story, a new plan.
It hurt to even think of it, to know what it meant for her and the life that she’d never live.
She had to confess.
