Page 222 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

As soon as she got home from school, she went straight to her workstation and opened up Ravi’s laptop. She would revise more later, after dinner and into the night, even though her eyes were already set inside dark planetary rings. Her mum thought she wasn’t sleeping because of Barney. But she wasn’t sleeping because there wasn’t time to.

Pip opened the browser and pulled up the TripAdvisor page for the Ivy House Hotel. This was her designated lead; Ravi was working on the phone number scribble from the planner. Pip had already messaged some Ivy House reviewers who’d posted around March and April 2012, asking if they remembered seeing a blonde girl at the hotel. But no responses yet.

Next she navigated to the website that had actually processed the bookings for the hotel. On thecontact uspage, she found their phone number and the friendly adage:Call us anytime!Perhaps she could pretend to be a relative of the old woman who owned the hotel and see whether she could access their old booking information. Probably not, but she had to try. Secret Older Guy’s identity could be at the end of this line.

She unlocked her mobile and clicked on to the phone app. It opened on her recent calls list. She pressed over to the keypad and started to type in the company’s number. Then her thumbs slackened and stopped. She stared down at them, her head whirring as the thought overturned and became conscious.

‘Wait,’ she said aloud, thumbing back on to her recent calls list.

She gazed at the entry right at the top, from when Naomi called her yesterday. On her temporary number. Pip’s eyes traced the digits, a feeling both dreadful and strange curdling in her chest.

She jumped out of her chair so fast that it whirled and crashed into the desk. With her phone in hand she dropped to her knees and pulled the murder board out from its hiding place under her bed. Her eyes darted straight to the Andie section, and to the trajectory of printed pages around her smiling face.

She found it. The page from Andie’s school planner. The scribbled-out phone number and her log entry beside it. She held out her phone, looking from Naomi’s temporary number to the scribble.

07700900476

It wasn’t one of the twelve combinations she had written out. But it very nearly was. She’d thought that the third last digit had to be a 7 or a 9. But what if that was just a loopy scribble? What if it was really a 4?

She slumped back on the floor. There was no way to be absolutely certain, no way to unscribble the number and see it for what it was. But it would be one unbelievable pigs-flying hell-freezing-over coincidence if Naomi’s old SIM just happened to have a number that similar to the one Andie wrote in her planner. It had to be the same number, just had to.

And what did this mean, if anything? Wasn’t this now an irrelevant lead, just Andie copying down the phone number of her boyfriend’s best friend? The number was unrelated and could be discarded as a clue.

Then why did she have that sinking feeling in her gut?

Because if Max was a strong contender, then Naomi was even more so. Naomi knew about the hit-and-run. Naomi had access to the phone numbers of Max, Millie and Jake. Naomi had Pip’s number. Naomi could have left Max’s house while Millie slept and intercepted Andie before 12:45. Naomi had been the closest to Sal. Naomi knew where Pip and Cara were camping in the woods. Naomi knew which woods Pip walked Barney in, the same ones Sal died in.

Naomi already had a lot to lose because of the truths Pip had uncovered. But what if there was even more to it than that? What if she was involved in Andie and Sal’s deaths?

Pip was getting ahead of herself, her tired brain running off and tripping her up. It was just a phone number Andie wrote down; it didn’t tie Naomi to anything else. But there was something that could she realized when she caught up with her brain.

Since taking Naomi off the Persons of Interest list, she’d received another printed note from the killer: the one in her locker. At the start of term, Pip had set up Cara’s laptop to record everything that came through the Wards’ printer.

If Naomi was involved in this, Pip now had a sure way to find out.

Thirty-Nine

Naomi had a knife and Pip stepped back.

‘Be careful,’ she said.

‘Oh no!’ Naomi shook her head. ‘The eyes are uneven.’

She spun the pumpkin round so Pip and Cara could see its face.

‘Looks a bit like Trump,’ Cara cackled.

‘It’s supposed to be an evil cat.’ Naomi placed her knife down next to the bowl of pumpkin innards.

‘Don’t give up the day job,’ Cara said, wiping pumpkin goo from her hands and sauntering over to the cupboard.

‘I don’t have a day job.’

‘Oh, for god’s sake,’ Cara grumbled, on tiptoes looking through the cupboard. ‘Where have those two packets of biscuits gone? I was literally with Dad two days ago when we bought them.’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t eaten them.’ Naomi came over to admire Pip’s pumpkin. ‘What on earth is yours, Pip?’

‘Sauron’s eye,’ she said quietly.