‘How are you going to do that?’ Ravi asked, a harder edge in his voice. Was that doubt? No, he couldn’t lose faith in her too. He was the last one left. ‘Does your dad know about this?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘He knows about the dead birds; we found the first one together. Mum told him it was the Williamses’ cat, though; that’s the logical solution. I told him about the chalk marks but he never saw them. They were gone by the time he got home; think him driving over them was why they disappeared, even.’

‘Let’s go show him now,’ Ravi said, the edge in his voice more slippery now, more urgent. ‘Come on.’

‘Ravi,’ she sighed. ‘What’s he going to do about it?’

‘He’s your dad,’ he said, with an exaggerated shrug like it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘And he’s six foot six. I’d definitely want him on my team in any fight.’

‘He’s a corporate lawyer,’ she said, turning, catching sight of her far-off eyes in the sleeping face of her laptop. ‘If this were a problem about mergers and acquisitions, yeah, he’d be the guy. But it’s not.’ She took a deep breath, watched the dark-mirrored version of herself do the same. ‘This is for me. This is what I’m good at. I can do this.’

‘This isn’t a test for you,’ Ravi said, scratching the phantom itch at the back of his head. He was wrong; that’s exactly what it was. A trial. A final judgement. ‘This isn’t a school project, or a season of the podcast. This isn’t something you can win or lose.’

‘I don’t want to argue,’ she said quietly.

‘No, hey, no.’ He bent down until his eyes were level with hers. ‘We’re not arguing. I’m just worried about you, OK? I want to keep you safe. I love you, always will. No matter how many times you almost give me a heart attack or a nervous breakdown. It’s just...’ he drew off, his voice guttering out. ‘It’s scary, to know that someone might want to hurt you, or make you scared. You’re my person. My little one. My Sarge. And I’m supposed to protect you.’

‘You do protect me,’ she said, holding his eyes. ‘Even when you’re not here.’ He was her life raft, her cornerstone for what good truly meant. Didn’t he know that?

‘Yeah OK and that’s great,’ he said, clicking finger guns at her. ‘But it’s not like I’m a muscle man with biceps the size of tree trunks and a secret Olympic-standard knife-throwing habit.’

A smile stretched into her mouth, fully formed without her say-so. ‘Oh, Ravi,’ she clipped her finger under his chin, the same way he always did to her. Pressed a kiss into his cheek, brushing the side of his mouth. ‘You know brains always beat brawn, any day of the week.’

He straightened up. ‘Well, I just squatted for too long, so I probably have glutes of steel now anyway.’

‘That’ll show the stalker.’ She laughed, but it became a hollow, raspy sound as her mind wandered away from her.

‘What?’ Ravi asked, noticing the shift.

‘It’s just... it’s clever, isn’t it?’ She laughed again, shaking her head. ‘So clever.’

‘What?’

‘All of it. The faint, almost-not-there chalk figures that fade as soon as it rains, or someone drives over them. The first two times, I didn’t take photos before they were gone, so when I told Hawkins about them, he thought I was insane or seeing things that aren’t there. Discrediting me right from the get-go. I even wondered whether I was seeing things. And the dead birds.’ She clapped her hands against her thigh. ‘So clever. If it were a dead cat, or a dead dog,’ she flinched at her own words, Barney flashing into her mind, ‘it would be a different story. People would pay attention. But it’s not, it’s pigeons. No one cares about pigeons. Almost as common to us dead as they are alive. And of course, the police would never do anything about a dead pigeon or two, because it’s normal. No one else can see it but me, and you. They know all this, they designed it that way. Things that look normal and explainable to everyone else. An empty envelope; just an accident. And the Dead Girl Walking down the road, not at my house. I know it was for me, but I’d never be able to convince anyone else, because if it really was for me, it would have been at my house. So subtle. So clever. The police think I’m crazy and my mum thinks it’s nothing: just a cat and some dirty tyres. Cutting me off, isolating me from help. Especially because everyone already thinks I’m fucked up. Very clever.’

‘Kinda sounds like you admire them,’ Ravi said, sitting back on Pip’s bed, arm out for balance. His face looked uneasy.

‘No, I’m just saying it’s clever. Thought out. Like they know exactly what they are doing.’

Her next thought was only natural, only logical, and she could see from Ravi’s eyes that he had arrived at the same idea, chewing on it, the muscles tensing in his cheek.

‘Almost like they’ve done this before,’ she said, completing the thought, the slightest nod of agreement from Ravi.

‘Do you think they have done this before?’ He sat up.

‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘Likely, even. The statistics certainly indicate that serial stalking is common, particularly if the stalker is a stranger or an acquaintance, rather than a current or former partner.’

She’d read through pages and pages of information on stalkers last night, hour after hour instead of sleep, scrolling through numbers and percentages and nameless, countless cases.

‘A stranger?’ Ravi doubled down on the word.

‘It’s unlikely to be a stranger,’ Pip replied. ‘Nearly three out of four stalking victims know their stalker in some capacity. This is someone who knows me, someone I know, I can feel it.’ She knew more statistics too, could reel them off the top of her head, burned into the backs of her eyes from the white light of her laptop screen. But there were some she couldn’t tell Ravi, especially not the one that said more than half of female homicide victims reported stalking to the police before they were killed by their stalkers. She didn’t want Ravi to know that one.

‘So, it’s someone you know, and they are pretty likely to have done this to someone else before?’ Ravi asked.

‘I mean, yes, if we go along with the statistics.’ Why hadn’t she thought of this herself? She was too inside her own head, too fixated on the idea of her against them that she hadn’t considered the involvement of anyone else. Not all about you, said the voice that lived in her head, beside the gun. It’s not always about you.

‘And you always favour a science-based approach, Sarge.’ He doffed an imaginary cap at her.

‘Yes, I do.’ Pip chewed her lip, thinking. Her mind guided her hands to the laptop, checking in with her only after she’d already awoken the computer and brought up Google. ‘And the first stage in a science-based approach is... research.’

‘The most glamorous part of crime-solving,’ Ravi said, pushing up from the bed to come and stand behind her, hands resting on her shoulders. ‘And, also, my cue to go get snacks. So... like, how are you going to research this?’

‘Yeah, not really sure, actually.’ She hesitated, fingers hovering above the keys while the cursor blinked at her. ‘Maybe just...’ She typed in chalk lines chalk figure dead pigeon stalker stalk Little Kilton Buckinghamshire. ‘It’s a stab in the dark,’ she said, thumbing the enter button, and the page of results filled her screen.