Page 197 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

Pip slid quickly out of bed. The cold room stung her exposed skin, turning her breath into ghosts. She grabbed her laptop from the desk and took it back to bed, wrapping the duvet round her for warmth. Opening the computer, she was blinded again by the silvery backlight. Squinting through it, she opened up Facebook, still signed in as Naomi, and navigated her way back to Nancy Tangotits and the photos fromthatnight.

She looked through them all once and then back again a little slower. She stopped on the second-to-last picture. All four of the friends were captured within it. Naomi was sitting with her back to the camera, looking down. Though she was in the background, you could see her phone in her hands lighting up its lock screen with small white numbers, her eyes down on it. The main focus of the photo was on Max, Millie and Jake, the three of them standing by the near side of the sofa, smiling as Millie rested her arms over both the boys’ shoulders. Max was still holding a controller in his outside hand and Jake’s disappeared out of shot on the right.

Pip shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold.

The camera must have been at least five feet in front of the grinning friends to get that much in the frame.

And in the dead silence of the night Pip whispered, ‘Who’s taking the picture?’

Twenty-Six

It was Sal.

It had to be.

Despite the cold, Pip’s body was a flume of racing blood, warm and fast, hammering through her heart.

She moved mechanically, her mind adrift in waves of thoughts shouting unintelligibly over each other. But her hands somehow knew what to do. A few minutes later, she’d downloaded the trial version of Photoshop to her computer. She saved Max’s photo and opened the file up in the programme. Following an online tutorial by a man with a silky Irish accent, she enlarged the photo and then sharpened it.

Her skin flashed cold to hot. She sat back and gasped.

There was no doubt about it. The little numbers projected on Naomi’s phone read 00:09.

They said Sal left at half ten but there they were, all four of the friends at nine minutes past midnight, encased in the frame, and not one of them could have taken the photo themselves.

Max’s parents were away that night and no one else had been there, that’s what they’d always said. It was just the five of them until Sal left at ten thirty to go and kill his girlfriend.

And here, right in front of Pip’s eyes, was proof that that was a lie. There was a fifth person there after midnight. And who could it have been but Sal?

Pip scrolled up to the topmost strip of the enlarged photo. Behind the sofa on the far wall was a window. And in its very centre pane was the flash of the phone camera. You couldn’t distinguish the figure holding the phone from the darkness of outside. But, just beyond the streaks of bright white, there was a faint halo of reflected blue, only just visible against the surrounding black. The very same blue as the corded shirt Sal was wearing that night, the one Ravi still wore sometimes. Her stomach flipped as she thought his name, as she imagined the look in his eyes when he saw this photo.

She extracted the enlarged image to a document and cropped it to show only Naomi with her phone on one page and the flash in the window on another. Along with the original saved photo, she sent each page over to the wireless printer on her desk. She watched from her bed as the printer sputt-sputtered each page, making that gentle steam train rattle as it did. Pip closed her eyes for just a moment, listening to the soft chugging sound.

‘Pips, can I come in and vacuum?’

Pip’s eyes snapped open. She pulled herself up from her slumped position, the whole right side of her body aching from hip to neck.

‘You’re still in bed?’ her mum said, opening the door. ‘It’s half one, lazy. I thought you were already up.’

‘No . . . I,’ Pip said, her throat dry and scratchy, ‘was just tired, not feeling so well. Could you do Josh’s room first?’

Her mum paused and looked at her, her warm eyes staining with worry.

‘You’re not overworking yourself, are you, Pip?’ she said. ‘We’ve talked about this.’

‘No, I promise.’

Her mum closed the door and Pip climbed out of bed, almost knocking her laptop off. She got ready, pulling her dungarees on over a dark green jumper, fighting to get the brush through her hair. She picked up the three photo printouts, placed them in a plastic folder and slid them inside her rucksack. Then she scrolled to the recent calls list in her phone and dialled.

‘Ravi!’

‘What’s up, Sarge?’

‘Meet me outside your house in ten minutes. I’ll be in the car.’

‘OK. What’s on the menu today, more blackmailing? Side order of breaking and enteri–’

‘It’s serious. Be there in ten.’