If Pip had to admit it to herself, right here, right now, that there was even the faintest possibility Billy Karras was innocent – that there might be a wrong man and a right man – Green Scene Ltd was where she should look first. If this were a case with no other complications, no ties to her, no dead pigeons or stick figures on her doorway, that would be her first step. And yet, that step seemed so much harder this time, so much heavier.

‘Maria,’ Pip said, her voice rough and gravelly. ‘Just one last thing. After Billy was arrested, the killings stopped. How do you explain that?’

‘As I said, I’ve learned a lot about serial killers in the last few years,’ she said. ‘And one thing most people don’t realize is that sometimes serial killers just stop. Sometimes they age out, or they have life events going on that mean they don’t have the urge, or the time any more. Say a new relationship, or maybe the birth of a child. So, maybe that’s what happened here. Or maybe the killer saw an easy way out, after Billy’s arrest.’

Pip’s pen dragged to a stop, her mind too full. ‘Maria, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. This has all been very –’ don’t say helpful, don’t say terrifying - ‘interesting,’ she said.

‘Oh, darling, please, thank you for taking the time,’ Maria sniffed. ‘There’s no one I can talk to about this, no one who listens, so thank you for that. Even if it goes no further, I understand, darling. You know how hard it is to appeal a conviction once it is made? It is almost hopeless, we know this. But Billy will be so touched to even know you reached out. And I will get right on to scanning the transcript of Billy’s interview, so you can see for yourself.’

Pip wasn’t sure she wanted to see for herself. There was a part of her that wanted to clasp her hands over her eyes and wish this all away. Wish herself away. Disappear.

‘Tomorrow,’ Maria said firmly. ‘I promise. Shall I send it to your podcast email address?’

‘Y-yes, that would be perfect, thank you,’ Pip said. ‘And I’ll be in contact soon.’

‘Goodbye darling,’ Maria said, and Pip thought she heard it in her voice then, the smallest stirrings of hope.

She thumbed the red button on her phone, and the silence grated in her ears.

It was a maybe.

It was possible.

And that possibility, it began with Green Scene Ltd.

And it ended – the voice in her head interrupted – with her dead.

The sixth victim of the DT Killer.

Pip tried to speak over that voice in her head, distract it. Don’t think about the end for now, just the next step. One day at a time. But how many more of those did she have?

Shut up, leave her alone. First step: Green Scene. The echo of those two words sounding in her head, morphing into the click of her pen. DT. DT. DT.

And that’s when she realized, Jason Bell wasn’t the only person she knew who was connected to Green Scene Ltd. There was someone else too: Daniel da Silva. Before he became a police officer, he’d worked at Jason Bell’s company for a couple of years. Maybe even worked directly with Billy Karras.

This case, which just yesterday had seemed so far away from her, so remote, was creeping closer and closer to home, just like those chalk figures climbing up her wall. Closer and closer, like it was leading her right back to Andie Bell and to the very beginning of everything.

There was a sudden sound, a harsh buzzing.

Pip flinched.

It was only her phone, vibrating against the desk with an incoming call.

Pip glanced at the screen as she picked up the phone. No Caller ID.

‘Hello?’ she said.

There was no answer down the other end. No voice, no sound, other than the faintest trace of static.

‘Hello?’ Pip said again, holding on to the o sound. She waited, listened. Could she hear someone breathing, or was that just her own? ‘Maria?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

No answer.

A telemarketing call maybe, with a bad connection.

Pip held her breath and listened. Closed her eyes to focus her ears. It was faint, but it was there. Someone was there, breathing into the phone. Couldn’t they hear her speaking?

‘Cara?’ Pip said. ‘Cara, I swear, if you think this is funny then –’

The call ended.

Pip lowered the phone and stared at it. Stared at it for far too long, as though it might explain itself to her. And it wasn’t her own voice in her head now, it was Harriet Hunter who spoke to her, in an imagined voice Pip created for her, talking about her murdered sister from that article about DT. She also mentioned getting a few prank calls. That was in the week before she went missing.

Pip’s heart reacted, and the gun went off inside her chest. Billy Karras might be the DT Killer. And he might not. And if - an if that circled Pip like a black hole – if Billy wasn’t DT, then the game had changed again. Into the final round. And now a timer was ticking down.

The week before.

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

File Name:

Download: Billy Karras police interview.pdf

The town was sleeping but Pip was not. And neither was someone else.

An alert on her phone. A new message through her website. A notification on Twitter.

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

Her blood didn’t feel right. It was too fast, foaming uncomfortably as it crashed in and out of her chest. Maybe those two coffees in a row at the café had been a mistake. But Cara had offered, said Pip looked tired at this ungodly hour of the morning. Now Pip’s hands were shaking, and her blood was fizzing as she walked from the café towards Church Street.

She was running on empty, no sleep at all last night, none. Even though she’d taken a full pill, a double dose. It was wasted on her after reading through Billy Karras’ interview transcript. More times than she could count, sounding out the voices in her head like a play, the pauses filled with static from the recorder. And the voice she’d imagined for Billy... it didn’t sound like a killer at all. He sounded scared, confused. He sounded like her.

Every shadow in her room had taken on the shape of a man, watching her wrapped up in her duvet. Every blinking electronic light was a pair of eyes in the dark: the LEDs on her printer and the Bluetooth speaker on her desk. It was even worse after the new message came through at two thirty, the world shrinking to just her and those prowling shadows.

Pip had lain there, eyes growing scratchy and dry as she stared up at the black ceiling. If she was being honest with herself, truly honest, she could hardly even call that a confession at all. Yes, the words had come out of Billy’s mouth. Yes, he’d said, I was the one who hurt those women, but the context changed everything. The lead-up and the aftermath. It stripped the meaning right out of those words.

Maria hadn’t been exaggerating, hadn’t been twisting the truth because she’d read the transcript through a mother’s eyes. She was right: the confession did seem coerced. The detective had trapped Billy into a corner by talking in circles, catching him in lies he never meant to tell. No one had seen Billy with Tara Yates the night before, that wasn’t true. And yet Billy had believed it of himself, believed a made-up person over his own memory. DCI Nolan had fed him everything, all the details of the murders. Billy didn’t even know how he’d killed his own victims before being told.