Pip saw Ravi stiffen, looking down at the jagged hilltop knuckles on his fists. But then he caught her eyes and shook the hardness out of his face, tucking his hands into his pockets.

‘OK, we’re done here,’ Pip said, laying her hand on Ravi’s arm. ‘Let’s go.’

‘No, no, I don’t think so.’ In two giant leaps Howie darted over to the door, blocking their way out.

‘Excuse me, Howard,’ Pip said, her nervousness cooling into fear.

‘No, no, no,’ he laughed, shaking his head. ‘I can’t let you leave.’

Ravi stepped up to him. ‘Move.’

‘I did what you asked,’ Howie said, turning to Pip. ‘Now you have to delete those pictures of me.’

Pip relaxed a little. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s fair.’ She held up her phone and showed Howie as she deleted every single picture from the car park, until she swiped right on to a photo of Barney and Josh both asleep in the dog bed. ‘Done.’

Howie moved aside and let them pass.

Pip pulled open the front door and as she and Ravi stepped outside into the brisk night air Howie spoke one last time.

‘You go around asking dangerous questions, girl, you’re going to find some dangerous answers.’

Ravi yanked the door shut behind them. He waited until the house was at least twenty paces behind them before saying, ‘Well that was fun, thanks for the invite to my first blackmailing.’

‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘My first time too. But it was effective; we found out that Andie had a second phone, Howie had complicated feelings for her and Max Hastings had a taste for Rohypnol.’ She raised her phone and clicked on to the photo app. ‘Just recovering those photos in case we need future Howie leverage.’

‘Oh, fantastic,’ he said. ‘Can’t wait. Maybe then I can add blackmail as a special skill to my CV.’

‘You know you use humour as a defence mechanism when you’re rattled?’ Pip smiled at him, letting him through the hedge gap ahead of her.

‘Yeah, and you get bossy and posh.’

He looked back at her for a long moment and she broke first. They started laughing and then they just couldn’t stop. The adrenaline comedown descended into hysterics. Pip fell into him, wiping away tears, snatching staccato breaths between cackles. Ravi stumbled, his face creased, laughing so hard he had to bend over and hold his gut.

They laughed until Pip’s cheeks ached and her stomach felt tight and sore.

But the after-laugh sighs just set them off again.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi EPQ 06/10/2017

Production Log – Entry 23

I should really be concentrating on my university applications; I have about a week to finish off my personal statement before the deadline for Cambridge. Just a small break right now from tooting my horn and shaking my tail feathers at admissions officers.

So Howie Bowers doesn’t have an alibi for the night Andie disappeared. By his own admission he was ‘passed out drunk’ at his house. Without corroboration, this could be a total fabrication. He is an older guy and Andie could have ruined him by turning him in to the police for dealing. His relationship with Andie had criminal foundations and, judging by his defensive reaction, possibly some sexual undertones. And her car – the car that police believe was driven with her body in the boot – was found on his street.

I know Max has an alibi for the night Andie disappeared, the same alibi Sal asked his friends to give him. But let me think out loud here. Andie’s abduction window was between 10:40 p.m. and 12:45 a.m. There is a possibility that Max could have worked with the upper limit of that time frame. His parents were away, Jake and Sal had left his house and Millie and Naomi went to sleep in the spare room ‘a bit before half twelve’. Max could have left the house at that time without anyone knowing. Maybe Naomi could have too. Or together?

Max has a naked picture of a murder victim he claims he was never romantically involved with. He is technically an older guy. He was involved in Andie’s drug dealing and regularly bought roofies from her. Posh ol’ Max Hastings isn’t looking so wholesome any more. Maybe I need to follow this Rohypnol line of intel, see if there is any other evidence of what I’m starting to suspect. (How could I not? He was buying roofies for crying out loud).

Though they are both looking simultaneously suspicious, there’s no Max/Howie tag team going on here. Max only bought drugs in Kilton through Andie, and Howie only knew vaguely of Max and his buying habits via Andie.

But I think the most important lead we got from Howie is Andie’s second burner phone. That is priority number one . That second phone most likely has all the details of the people she was selling drugs to. Maybe confirmation of the nature of her relationship with Howie. And if Howie wasn’t the Secret Older Guy, maybe Andie was using her burner phone to contact this man, to keep it secret. The police had Andie’s actual phone after they found Sal’s body; if there were any evidence of a secret relationship on it, the police would have followed it up.

If we find that phone, maybe we find her secret older guy, maybe we find her killer and this will all be over. As it stands, there are three possible candidates for Secret Older Guy: Max, Howie or Daniel da Silva (italicized on POI list). If the burner phone confirms any one of them, I think we’d have enough to go to the police.