‘Pip?’ Hawkins’ voice brought her back to now, back into this even heavier body. He had stopped walking, was holding the door open to Interview Room 3.

‘Thank you,’ she said flatly, ducking under the archway of his outstretched arm and into the room. She wouldn’t sit in here either, just in case, but she slid the straps of her rucksack from her shoulders and placed it down on the table.

Hawkins crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

‘You know I will call you when it happens, right?’ he said.

‘What?’ Pip narrowed her eyes.

‘Charlie Green,’ Hawkins said. ‘We have no more information on his whereabouts. But when we do catch him, I will call you. You don’t have to come here to ask.’

‘It’s not... That’s not why I’m here.’

‘Oh?’ he said, the sound from his throat rising, turning it into a question.

‘It’s something else, really, that I thought I should tell you... report to you.’ Pip shifted awkwardly, pulled her sleeves down to cover her naked wrists. Leave nothing bare or exposed, not in this place.

‘Report something? What is it? What happened?’ Hawkins face rearranged; all sharp lines from his raised eyebrow to his tightened lips.

‘It’s... well, it’s possible I have a stalker,’ Pip said, the final syllable clicking in her throat. She was only imagining it, but it felt like she could hear that click bounding around the room, ricocheting off the plain walls and the dull metal table.

‘A stalker?’ Hawkins said, and the click had got into his throat too somehow. His face shifted again; new lines and a new curve to his mouth.

‘A stalker,’ Pip repeated, reclaiming the click as her own. ‘I think.’

‘OK.’ Hawkins sounded unsure too, scratching his greying hair to buy him some time. ‘Well, in order for us to look into this, there needs to have been –’

‘A pattern of two or more behaviours,’ Pip interrupted him. ‘Yes, I know. I’ve done my research. And there have been. More than that, in fact. Both online and... in real life.’

Hawkins coughed into his hand. He pushed off the wall and crossed the room, his shoes sliding across the floor, hissing like they had a secret message just for Pip. He perched against the metal table and crossed his legs.

‘OK. What were these incidents?’ he asked.

‘Here,’ Pip said, reaching for her bag. Hawkins watched her as she opened it and dug inside. She shifted her bulky headphones out of the way and pulled out the folded sheets of paper. ‘I made a spreadsheet of all the potential incidents. And a graph. A-and there’s a photo,’ she added, opening out the pages and handing them to Hawkins.

Now it was her turn to watch him, studying his downturned eyes as they flicked across the spreadsheet, up and down and up again.

‘There’s quite a lot here,’ he said, more to himself than her.

‘Yeah.’

‘Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?’ Hawkins read out the burning question, and the hairs rose up the back of Pip’s neck, hearing it out loud in his voice. ‘So, it started online, did it?’

‘Yes,’ she said, pointing at the top half of the page. ‘It started with just that question online, and quite infrequently. And then, as you can see, the incidents have become more regular, and then things started happening offline. And if they are connected then it is escalating: first the flowers on my car, and it has progressed to the –’

‘Dead pigeons,’ Hawkins finished for her, running his finger across the graph.

‘Yes. Two of them,’ Pip said.

‘What’s this severity scale here?’ He glanced up from the column.

‘It’s a rating, of how severe each possible incident is,’ she said plainly.

‘Yes, I understand that. Where did you get it from?’

‘I made it up,’ Pip said, her feet heavy through the bottoms of her shoes, sinking into the floor. ‘I’ve researched and there isn’t a lot of official information about stalking, probably as it isn’t seen as a policing priority despite it often being a gateway to more violent crimes. I wanted a method of cataloguing the potential incidents to see if there’s a progression of threat and implied violence. So, I made one up. I can explain to you how I did it; there’s a three-point difference between online and offline behaviour and –’

Hawkins waved his hand to cut her off, the pages fluttering in his grip. ‘But how do you know these are all connected?’ he asked. ‘The person online asking you that question and these... other incidents?’

‘Well, of course I don’t know for sure. But the thing that made me consider it was the kill two birds with one stone message, the day the second pigeon was left on my drive. Without a head,’ she added.

Hawkins’ throat made a sound, a new and different click. ‘It’s a very common expression,’ he said.

‘But the two dead pigeons?’ Pip said, straightening up. She knew, she already knew where this was going, where it was always destined to go. The look in Hawkins’ eyes against the look in hers. He wasn’t sure and she wasn’t either, but Pip could feel something shifting inside her, changing, heat sliding around under her skin, starting by her neck, claiming her one vertebra at a time.

Hawkins sighed, attempted a smile. ‘You know, I have a cat, and sometimes I come home to two dead things in one day. Often without heads. One left in my bed just last week.’

Pip felt defensive, tightening a fist behind her back.

‘We don’t have a cat.’ She hardened her voice, sharpened it at the edges, readying to cut him with it.

‘No, but one of your neighbours probably does. I can’t really open an investigation because of two dead pigeons.’

Was he wrong? That’s exactly what she’d told herself too.

‘What about the chalk figures? Twice now, getting closer to the house.’

Hawkins flicked through the pages.

‘Do you have a photograph of them?’ He looked up at her.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘They disappeared before I could.’

‘Disappeared?’ His eyes narrowed.

And the worst thing was, she knew exactly how this all sounded. How unhinged she must seem. But that’s what she had wanted too, preferred to think of herself as broken, seeing danger where there wasn’t. And yet a fire was starting in her head, lighting up behind her eyes.

‘Washed away before I had a chance,’ she said. ‘But I do have a photo of something that might be a direct threat.’ Pip controlled her voice. ‘Written on the pavement on my running route. Dead Girl Walking.’

‘Well, yes, I understand your concern.’ Hawkins shuffled the pages. ‘But that message wasn’t left at your house, it was on a public street. You can’t know that you were its intended target.’

That’s exactly what Pip had first told herself. But that’s not what she said now.

‘But I do know. I know it was left for me.’ She didn’t before, but standing across from Hawkins now, listening to him say the same things she’d said to herself, it pushed her the other way, splintering off to the same side as instinct. She knew now, with bone-deep certainty, that all these things were connected. That she had a stalker and more than that, this person meant her harm. This was personal. This was someone who hated her, someone close by.