Romer Close.

Her heart reacted, now getting in six beats between her feet. Romer Close, the very road where Andie Bell’s car was found abandoned after her disappearance.

Pip saw Howie swerving up ahead and she darted to hide behind a tree, watching as he headed towards a small bungalow, pulled out his keys and let himself in. As the door clicked shut, Pip emerged from her hiding place and approached Howie’s house. Number twenty-nine Romer Close.

It was a squat semi-detached house, with tan bricks and a mossy slate roof. Both windows at the front were covered by thick blinds, the left one now cracking with streaks of yellow as Howie turned on the lights inside. There was a small gravel plot just outside the front door where a faded maroon car sat.

Pip stared at it. There was no delay in her recognition this time. Her mouth fell open and her stomach jumped to her throat, filling her mouth with the regurgitated taste of the sandwich she’d eaten in the car.

‘Oh my god,’ she whispered.

She stepped back from the house, pulling out her phone. She skipped through her recent calls and dialled Ravi’s number.

‘Please tell me you’re off shift,’ she said when he picked up.

‘I just got home. Why?’

‘I need you to come to Romer Close right now.’

Twenty

Pip knew from her murder map that it would take Ravi about eighteen minutes to walk from his house to Romer Close. He was four minutes faster, running when he spotted her.

‘What is it?’ he said, slightly out of breath and brushing the hair back off his face.

‘It is a lot of things,’ Pip said quietly. ‘I’m not quite sure where to start so I just will.’

‘You’re freaking me out.’ His eyes flicked over her face, searching.

‘I’m freaking me out too.’ She paused to take a large breath, and hopefully force her figurative stomach back down her windpipe. ‘OK, you know I was looking for the drug dealer, from my lead at the calamity party. He was there tonight, dealing in the car park and I followed him home. He lives here, Ravi. The road where Andie’s car was found.’

Ravi’s eyes wandered up to trace the outline of the dark street. ‘But how do you even know he’s the guy that supplied Andie?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t for sure,’ she said. ‘I do now. But wait there’s another thing I have to tell you first and I don’t want you to be mad.’

‘Why would I be mad?’ He looked down at her, his soft face hardening around the eyes.

‘Um, because I lied to you,’ she said, her gaze down on her own feet instead of Ravi’s face. ‘I told you that Sal’s police interview hadn’t arrived yet. It did, over two weeks ago.’

‘What?’ he said quietly. A look of unconcealed hurt clouded his face, wrinkling his nose and forehead.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pip said. ‘But when it arrived and I read through it, I thought you’d be better off not seeing it.’

‘Why?’

She swallowed. ‘Because it looked really bad for Sal. He was evasive with the police and outright told them he didn’t want to say why he and Andie were arguing on that Thursday and Friday. It looked like he was trying to hide his own motive. And I was scared that maybe he’d actually killed her and I didn’t want to upset you.’ She chanced to look up at his eyes. They were drawn and sad.

‘You think Sal is guilty after all this?’

‘No, I don’t. I just doubted it for a while, and I was scared what it would do to you. I was wrong to do that, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my place. But I was also wrong to ever doubt Sal.’

Ravi paused and looked at her, scratching the back of his head. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK, I get why you did it. So what’s going on?’

‘I just found out exactly why Sal was so weird and evasive in his police interview, and why he and Andie were arguing. Come on.’

She beckoned him to follow and walked back over to Howie’s bungalow. She pointed.

‘This is the drug dealer’s house,’ she said. ‘Look at his car, Ravi.’

She watched Ravi’s face as his eyes flicked up and down over the car. From windscreen to bonnet and headlight to headlight. Until they dropped to the number plate and there they stayed. Backwards and forwards and back.

‘Oh,’ he said.

Pip nodded. ‘Oh indeed.’

‘Actually, I think this is a “holy pepperoni” moment.’

And both their eyes fell back on the number plate: R009 KKJ.

‘Sal wrote that number plate in the notes on his phone,’ Pip said. ‘On Wednesday the eighteenth of April at about seven forty-five p.m. He must have been suspicious, maybe he’d heard rumours at school or something. So he followed Andie that evening and must have seen her with Howie and this car. And what she was doing.’

‘That’s why they were arguing in the days before she went missing,’ Ravi added. ‘Sal hated drugs. Hated them.’

‘And when the police asked him about their arguing,’ Pip continued, ‘he wasn’t being evasive to hide his own motive. He was protecting Andie. He didn’t think she was dead. He thought she was alive and coming back and he didn’t want to get her in trouble with the police by telling them she was dealing drugs. And the final text he sent her on that Friday night?’