Page 126 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

5 DAYS MISSING

Hello everyone,

As you might have heard, Connor Reynolds’ older brother, Jamie, has been missing for 5 days now, and I am looking into his disappearance for my podcast.

But I need your help! I’ve recently uncovered some information that provides an approximate area for Jamie’s last known location. This area needs to be searched for any sign or clue as to where exactly Jamie was on Friday night and what happened to him. But the area is quite large, so I’m in desperate need of volunteers to help in the search.

If you would like to offer a hand, please meet after school today, 4:30 p.m., at the end of the car park for the briefing. If we have enough volunteers, we’ll be splitting into three search teams, led by me, Connor Reynolds and Cara Ward. Please come and find one of us to be assigned to a team.

Thank you, and please let me know if you’re intending to come.

X

Twenty-Five

Every step she took was considered, careful, staring down at the forest floor and the mud that bunched up around the outline of her shoes. A record of her having been there, a trail of imprints that stalked her through the woods. But she was looking for someone else’s prints: the jagged vertical lines on the soles of the Puma trainers Jamie had been wearing when he disappeared.

And so was everyone else, eyes down and circling, searching for any of the signs Pip had mentioned in the briefing. Eighty-eight volunteers had turned up after school, most from her year but a few year twelves too. Thirty people on Connor’s team, now searching the fields behind school, and knocking on doors down the far end of Martinsend Way, Acres End and the lower part of Tudor Lane, to ask residents if they’d seen Jamie between 12:02 and 12:28 a.m. Friday night. Twenty-nine people on Cara’s team, who were further north, combing through the fields and farmland up near Old Farm Road and Blackfield Lane. And twenty-nine people here with Pip, standing in a wide ant-line, staggered every two metres as they searched from one end of Lodge Wood to the other.

Well, thirty people, now that Ravi had joined them. Max’s trial had adjourned early today; it had been Max’s turn on the stand and – Ravi told her reluctantly with a glint in his eyes that looked like hate – Max and his lawyer had done an alright job. They’d prepared an answer to everything the prosecution threw at him in cross-examination. Closing remarks from both sides had followed and then the judge sent the jury off to deliberate.

‘I can’t wait to see his face tomorrow when he goes down. Wish I could record it for you,’ Ravi had said, using his foot to check inside a holly bush, reminding Pip of that time they were in these very woods, recreating Andie Bell’s murder to prove Sal didn’t have time to be the killer.

Pip glanced up to her other side, exchanging a small, strained smile with Stella Chapman. But the face of Layla Mead stared back at her, sending a cold shiver down her back. They’d been out here for over an hour already, and all the team had found was a tied baggie of dog shit and a crumpled prawn cocktail crisp packet.

‘Jamie!’ someone down the line called.

The shouting had been going on for a while. Pip didn’t know who’d started it, who’d first called out his name, but it had caught on, spreading sporadically up and down the line as they trudged on.

‘Jamie!’ she called in answer. It was probably pointless, a literal shout into the void. Jamie couldn’t still be here; and if he was, he’d no longer be able to hear his name. But at least it felt like they were actually doing something.

Pip stalled, breaking the line for a moment as she bent to check beneath a raised tree root. Nothing.

Her phone chimed, disturbing the crunching of their feet. It was a text from Connor:OK,we split into threes to do the door knocking, just finished Tudor Lane and moving on to the fields. Found anything?X

‘Jamie!’

Pip was relieved she didn’t have to cover Tudor Lane, the road where Max Hastings lived, even though his house was actually just outside the search zone. And no one was in anyway; he and his parents were staying in an expensive hotel near the Crown Court for the duration of the trial. But still, she was glad she didn’t have to go anywhere near that house.

Nothing yet, she texted back. ‘Jamie!’

But as she pressed send, her screen was overtaken by an incoming call from Cara.

‘Hey,’ Pip answered in an almost-whisper.

‘Hi, yeah,’ Cara said, the wind rattling against her microphone. ‘Um, someone on my team just found something. I’ve told everyone to stand back from it, set up a perimeter, as you’d say. But, um, you need to get here. Now.’

‘What is it?’ Pip said, the panic riding her voice, twisting it. ‘Where are you?’

‘We’re at the farmhouse. The abandoned farmhouse on Sycamore Road. You know the one.’

Pip did know the one.

‘On my way,’ she said.

*

They were running now, her and Ravi, turning the corner on to Sycamore Road, the farmhouse set back and growing out of the small hill. Its dull white painted bricks were cut through and sliced up by blackened timber, and the roof seemed to be curving inwards now, in a way that roofs shouldn’t do, like it could no longer quite hold up the sky. And the place just out of sight, behind the abandoned building, where Becca Bell had hidden her sister’s body for five and a half years. Andie had been right here all along, decomposing in the septic tank.