Page 221 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

‘Actually, yeah, yes please,’ Pip said. ‘That would help. I’m a bit behind on my revision.’ She looked pointedly at Ravi hunched over the murder board.

‘OK, cool, I’ll ask her to contact him. The exam’s on Thursday, right?’

‘Yep.’

‘Well, if I don’t see you before, good luck. You’ll smash it.’

‘Right, so,’ Ravi said when Pip had hung up the phone, ‘our open leads right now are the Ivy House Hotel, the phone number scribbled out of Andie’s planner –’ he pointed to its page – ‘and the burner phone. As well as knowledge of the hit-and-run, access to Sal’s friends’ phone numbers and yours. Pip, maybe we are over-complicating this.’ He stared up at her. ‘As I see it, these are all pointing to one person.’

‘Max?’

‘Let’s just focus on the definites here,’ he said. ‘No ifs or maybes. He’s the only one with direct knowledge of the hit-and-run.’

‘True.’

‘He’s the only one here who had access to Naomi, Millie and Jake’s phone numbers. And his own.’

‘Nat and Howie could have.’

‘Yeah, “could” have. We’re looking at definites.’ He shuffled over to the Max side of the board. ‘He says he just found it, but he has a naked picture of Andie from the Ivy House. So he was probably the one meeting her there. He bought Rohypnol from Andie and girls were getting spiked at calamities; he probably assaulted them. He’s clearly messed up, Pip.’

Ravi was going through the very same thoughts she’d struggled with and Pip knew he was about to run into a wall.

‘Also,’ he carried on, ‘he’s the only one here we know definitely has your phone number.’

‘Actually, no,’ she said. ‘Nat has it from when I tried to phone-interview her. Howie has it too: I rang him when trying to identify him, and forgot to withhold my number. I got Unknown’s first text soon after.’

‘Oh.’

‘And we know that Max was at school giving a statement to the police at the time when Sal disappeared.’

Ravi slumped back. ‘We must be missing something.’

‘Let’s go back to the connections.’ Pip shook the pot of pins at him. He took them and cut off a measure of red string.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘The two Da Silvas are obviously connected. And Daniel da Silva with Andie’s dad. And Daniel also with Max, because he filed the report on Max’s crashed car and might have known about the hit-and-run.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and maybe covered up drink spiking.’

‘OK,’ Ravi said, wrapping the string round a pin and pressing it in. He hissed when he stabbed himself in the thumb, a tiny bubble of blood bursting through.

‘Can you stop bleeding all over the murder board, please?’ Pip said.

Ravi pretended to throw a pin at her. ‘So Max also knows Howie and they were both involved in Andie’s drug dealing,’ he said, circling his finger round their three faces.

‘Yep. And Max knew Nat from school,’ Pip said, pointing, ‘and there’s a rumour she had her drink spiked as well.’

Lines of red fraying string covered the board now, webbing and criss-crossing each other.

‘So, basically –’ Ravi looked up at her – ‘they are all indirectly connected with each other, starting with Howie at one end and Jason Bell at the other. Maybe they all did it together, all five of them.’

‘Next you’ll be saying someone has an evil twin.’

Thirty-Eight

All day at school her friends handled her like she would shatter, never once mentioning Barney, talking around it in wide circles. Lauren let Pip have her last Jaffa Cake. Connor gave up his middle seat at the cafeteria table so Pip didn’t have to sit ignored at the end. Cara stayed by her side, knowing just when to talk to her and when to stay quiet. And none of them laughed too hard, checking her way whenever they did.

She spent most of the day working silently through past papers for the ELAT exam, trying to push everything else out of her head. She practised, creating brain-scribed essays in her head while pretending to listen to Mr Ward in history and Miss Welsh in politics. Mrs Morgan cornered her in the corridor, her pudgy face stern as she listed the reasons why it wasn’t really possible to change an EPQ title this late. Pip just mumbled, ‘OK,’ and drifted away, hearing Mrs Morgan tut, ‘Teenagers,’ under her breath.