Page 130 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘No.’ Pip looked at him and couldn’t help but smile. ‘We’re lucky you did. She only talked because you were there.’

He sat up a little straighter in his seat, his hair crushed against the roof of the car. ‘So the death threat that journalist told you about,’ he said.

‘Came from Nat,’ Pip finished, turning the key in the ignition.

She pulled the car off the kerb and drove about twenty feet up the road, out of sight of the Da Silva house, before stopping again and reaching for her phone.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nat said her brother is a police officer.’ She thumbed on to the browser app and started typing her search. ‘Let’s look him up.’

It came up as the first item when she searched:Thames Valley Police Daniel da Silva.A page on the national police website, telling her that PC Daniel da Silva was a constable on the local policing team covering Little Kilton. A quick check to his LinkedIn profile said he had been so since the end of 2011.

‘Hey, I know him,’ Ravi said, leaning over her shoulder, jabbing his finger at the picture of Daniel.

‘You do?’

‘Yeah. Back when I started asking questions about Sal, he was the officer who told me to give it up, that my brother was guilty beyond doubt. He doesnotlike me.’ Ravi’s hand crept up to the back of his head, losing his fingers in his dark hair. ‘Last summer, I was sitting on the tables outside the cafe. This guy –’ he gestured to the photo of Daniel – ‘made me move along, said I was “loitering”. Funny that he didn’t think all the other people outside were loitering, just the brown kid with the murderer for a brother.’

‘What a contemptible arsehole,’ she said. ‘And he shut down all your questions about Sal?’

Ravi nodded.

‘He’s been a police officer in Kilton since just before Andie disappeared.’ Pip stared down at her phone into Daniel’s forever-smiling snapshot face. ‘Ravi, if someonedidframe Sal and make his death look like suicide, wouldn’t it be easier for someone with knowledge of police procedure?’

‘That it would, Sarge,’ he said. ‘And there’s the rumour that Andie slept with him when she was fifteen, which is what she used to blackmail Nat out of the play.’

‘Yes, and what if they started up again later, after Daniel was married and Andie was in her final year? He could be the secret older guy.’

‘What about Nat?’ he said. ‘I sort of want to believe her when she says she was home with her parents that night because she’d lost all her friends. But . . . she’s also proven to be violent.’ He weighed up his hands in a conceptual see-saw. ‘And there’s certainly motive. Maybe a brother-and-sister killer tag team?’

‘Or a Nat-and-Naomi killer tag team,’ Pip groaned.

‘She did seem pretty angry that Naomi had talked to you,’ Ravi agreed. ‘What’s the word count on this project, Pip?’

‘Not enough, Ravi. Not nearly enough.’

‘Should we just go and get ice cream and give our brains a rest?’ He turned to her with that smile of his.

‘Yes, we probably should.’

‘As long as you’re a cookie dough kinda gal. Quote, Ravi Singh,’ he said dramatically into an invisible microphone, ‘a thesis on the best ice-cream flavour, Pip’s car, Septemb–’

‘Shut up.’

‘OK.’

Pippa Fitz-Amobi

EPQ 16/09/2017

Production Log – Entry 17

I can’t find anything on Daniel da Silva. Nothing that gives me any further leads. There’s hardly anything to learn from his Facebook profile, other than he got married in September 2011.

But if he was the secret older guy, Andie could haveruinedhim intwo different ways: she could have told his new wife he was cheating and destroyed his marriage, OR she could have filed a police report about statutory rape from two years before. Both circumstances are just rumour at this point but, if true, they certainly would give Daniel a motive for wanting her dead. Andie could have blackmailed him; it’s definitely not out of character for her to have been blackmailing a Da Silva.

There’s nothing about his professional life online either, other than an article written by Stanley Forbes three years ago about a car collision on Hogg Hill that Daniel responded to.