Page 213 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

She didn’t know what to do. Perhaps try to talk to Daniel da Silva’s wife; there certainly was palpable friction between the couple. And why, what possible secrets had caused it? Or should she focus back on the burner phone, consider breaking into the homes of those suspects that knew about the phone and searching for it there?

No.

She had come on this walk to forget Andie Bell and to clear her head. She reached into her pocket and unwound her headphones. Tucking them into her ears, she pressed play on her phone, resuming the true crime podcast episode she was on. She had to turn the volume right up, struggling to hear the episode over the crunch of her wellies on the path of fallen leaves.

Listening to the voice in her ears, to the story of another murdered girl, Pip tried to forget her own.

She took the short circuit through the woods, her eyes on the shadows from scraggy branches above, shadows that grew lighter as the world around was growing darker. When the twilight took a turn towards darkness Pip walked off the path, dipping into the trees to get to the road faster. She called Barney when the gate to the road was visible, thirty feet in front of her.

When she reached it she paused her podcast and spooled the headphones back round her phone.

‘Barney, come on,’ she called, slipping it into her pocket.

A car flew by on the road, the full beam of its headlights blinding Pip when she looked into them.

‘Doggo!’ she called, louder and higher this time. ‘Barney, come!’

The trees were dark and still.

Pip wet her lips and whistled.

‘Barney! Here, Barney!’

No sound of paws trampling through the fallen leaves. No golden flash among the trees. Nothing.

Cold fear began to creep up her toes and down her fingers.

‘Bar-ney!’ she shouted and her voice cracked.

She ran back the way she’d come. Back into the dark engulfing trees.

‘Barney,’ she screamed, crashing along the path, the dog lead swinging in wide empty arcs from her hand.

Thirty-Four

‘Mum, Dad!’ She shoved open the front door, tripping on the doormat and falling to her knees. The tears stung, pooling at the crack between her lips. ‘Dad!’

Victor appeared at the kitchen door.

‘Pickle?’ he said. And then he saw her. ‘Pippa, what is it? What happened?’

He hurried forward as she picked herself up from the floor.

‘Barney’s gone,’ she said. ‘He didn’t come when I called. I went around the whole woods, calling him. He’s gone. I don’t know what to do. I’ve lost him, Dad.’

Her mum and Josh were in the hallway now too, watching her silently.

Victor squeezed her arm. ‘It’s OK, pickle,’ he said in his bright and warm voice. ‘We’ll find him; don’t you worry.’

Her dad grabbed his thick padded coat from the understairs cupboard and two torches. He made Pip put on a pair of gloves before he handed one of them to her.

The night was dark and heavy by the time they were back in the woods. Pip walked her dad round the path she’d taken. The two white torch beams cut through the darkness.

‘Barney!’ her dad called in his booming voice, thrown forward and sideways as echoes through the trees.

It was two hours later and two hours colder that Victor said it was time to go home.

‘We can’t go home until we find him!’ she sniffed.