Page 180 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

A look of badly performed confusion stretched into Howie’s face.

‘You know, the girl you supplied with drugs to sell on to schoolkids. The same girl who was murdered five years ago. Remember her?’ Pip said. ‘Well, if you don’t, I’m sure the police will remember.’

‘Fine,’ Howie said, stepping back over a pile of plastic bags, holding the door open. ‘You can come in.’

‘Excellent,’ Pip said with a look back to Ravi over her shoulder. She mouthed, ‘Leverage,’ to him and he rolled his eyes. But as she went to enter the house Ravi pulled her back behind him, crossing the threshold first. He stared Howie down until the man drew back from the door and moved down the tiny corridor.

Pip followed Ravi inside, closing the door behind her.

‘This way,’ Howie said gruffly, disappearing into the living room.

Howie fell back into a tattered armchair, an open can of beer waiting for him on the armrest. Ravi stepped over to the sofa and, pushing away a pile of clothes, took the seat opposite Howie, straight-backed and as close to the edge of the sofa cushion as it was possible to be. Pip sat beside him, crossing her arms.

Howie pointed his beer can at Ravi. ‘You’re the brother of the guy that murdered her.’

‘Allegedly,’ both Pip and Ravi said at the same time.

The tension in the room flailed between the three of them, like invisible sticky tendrils that licked from one person to the other as eye contact shifted.

‘You understand that we’ll go to the police with these pictures if you don’t answer our questions about Andie?’ Pip said, eyeing the beer that probably wasn’t Howie’s first since returning home.

‘Yes, darling,’ Howie laughed a teeth-whistle laugh. ‘You’ve made that clear enough.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep my questions nice and clear too. When did Andie first start working with you and how did it come about?’

‘I don’t remember.’ He took a large glug of beer. ‘Maybe early 2011. And she was the one who came to me. All I know is I had this ballsy teenager strolling up to me in the car park, telling me she could get me more business if I gave her a cut. Said she wanted to make money and I told her that I had similar interests. Don’t know how she found out where I sold.’

‘So you agreed when she offered to help you sell?’

‘Yeah, obviously. She was promising an in with the younger crowd, kids I couldn’t really get to. It was win-win.’

‘And then what happened?’ Ravi said.

Howie’s cold eyes alighted on Ravi, and Pip could feel him tensing where their arms almost touched.

‘We met up and I set her some ground rules, like about keeping the stash and money hidden, about using codes rather than names. Asked what kind of stuff she thought kids at her school would be into. I gave her a phone to use for business stuff and that was it really. I sent her out into the big wide world.’ Howie smiled, his face and stubble unnervingly symmetrical.

‘Andie had a second phone?’ Pip asked.

‘Yeah, obviously. Couldn’t be arranging deals on a phone her parents pay for, could she? I bought her a burner phone, pre-paid in cash. Two actually. I got the second one when the credit on the first ran out. Gave it to her only a few months before she got killed.’

‘Where did Andie keep the drugs before she sold them on?’ said Ravi.

‘That was part of the ground rules.’ Howie sat back, speaking into his can. ‘I told her this little business venture of hers would go nowhere if she didn’t have somewhere to hide the stash and her second phone without her parents finding it. She assured me she had just the place and no one else knew about it.’

‘Where was it?’ Ravi pressed.

He scratched his chin, ‘Um, think it was some kind of loose floorboard in her wardrobe. She said her parents had no idea it existed and she was always hiding shit there.’

‘So, the phone is probably still hidden in Andie’s bedroom?’ Pip said.

‘I don’t know. Unless she had it on her when she . . .’ Howie made a gurgling sound as he crossed his finger sharply across his throat.

Pip looked over at Ravi before her next question, a muscle tensing in his jaw as he ground his teeth, concentrating so hard on not dropping his eyes from Howie. Like he thought he could hold him in place with his stare.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘so which drugs was Andie selling at house parties?’

Howie crushed the empty can and threw it on the floor. ‘Started just weed,’ he said. ‘By the end she was selling a load of different things.’