She returned to the other side, to her vat of weedkiller, the dark liquid draining into the gutter like a cursed river. A bright line was reflected in the liquid, but it wasn’t from the overhead lights. It was from the window, high up in front of her, letting in the last of the evening light. Or the first of it. Pip didn’t know the time. And her tipped-back shelves, they reached right up to the window, almost like a ladder.

The window was small, and it didn’t look like it opened. But Pip could fit through it, she was sure she could. And if she couldn’t, she would make herself fit. Climb through and drop down on the outside. She just needed something to break it with.

She checked around. Jason had left the roll of duct tape on the floor by the door. Beside it was a coiled length of blue rope. The blue rope, she realized with a shiver. The rope DT was going to use to kill her. Was. But would still, if he came back right now.

What else was in the room? Just her and lots of weedkiller and fertilizer. Oh wait, her mind jumped back to the other side of the storeroom. There was a toolbox down there.

She ran to the other side again, an ache in her ribs and a pain in her chest. There was a Post-it note stuck to the top of the toolbox. In slanting scribbles, it said, J – Red team keep taking tools assigned to Blue team. So I’m leaving this in here for Rob to find. – L

Pip undid the clips and pulled open the lid. Inside was a jumble of screwdrivers and screws, a tape measure, pliers, a small drill, some kind of wrench. Pip dug her hand inside. And underneath it all, was a hammer. A large one.

‘Sorry, Blue team,’ she muttered, tightening her grip around the hammer, pulling it out.

Pip stood before the tipped-over shelves, her shelves, and looked back once more at the room where she’d known she would die. Where the others had died, all five of them. And then she climbed, balancing her feet on the lowest shelf like a rung, pulling herself up to the next level. There was still strength left in her legs, moving adrenaline-fast.

Feet planted on the top shelf, she crouched, balancing herself in front of the window. A hammer in her hand, and an unbroken window in front of her; Pip had been here before. Her arm knew what to do, it remembered, arching back to pick up momentum. Pip swung at the window and it cracked, a spiderweb splintering through the reinforced glass. She swung again, and the hammer went through, glass shattering around it. Shards still clung to the frame, but she knocked them out one by one, so she wouldn’t cut herself open. How far was it to the ground? Pip dropped the hammer through and watched it tumble to the gravel below. Not far. She should be fine if she bent her legs.

And now it was just her and a hole in the wall, and something was waiting on the other side. Not something. Everything. Life, normal life, and Team Ravi and Pip and her parents and Josh and Cara and everyone. They might even be looking for her now, though she hadn’t disappeared for long. Some parts of her might be gone, parts she might never get back, but she was still here. And she was coming home.

Pip gripped the window frame and pulled herself forward, sliding her legs out ahead of her. She held on as she dipped her shoulders and head and manoeuvred them out too. She stared down at the gravel, at the hammer, and she let go.

Landed. Hard on her feet, the force ricocheting up her legs. A pain in her left knee. But she was free, she was alive. A breath came out too hard that it was almost a laugh. She’d done it. She’d survived.

Pip listened. The only sound was the wind in the trees, some of it finding the new holes in her too, blowing through her ribcage. Pip bent down and picked up her hammer, holding it at her side, just in case. But as she rounded the corner of the building, she could see that the complex was empty. Jason’s car wasn’t here and the gate was locked again. The metal fence at the front was high, too high, she’d never be able to climb it. But the back of the yard was bordered by woods, and the fence was unlikely to encircle those too.

New plan: she just had to follow the trees. Follow the trees, find a road, find a house, find someone, call the police. That was all. The easy parts left, just one foot in front of the other.

One foot in front of the other, the crunch of gravel. She walked past the parked vans, and large bins and machines, trailers with ride-on mowers, and a small fork-lift over there. One foot in front of the other. Gravel became dirt became the crunch of leaves. The last of the daylight was gone, but the moon was out early, watching over Pip. She was surviving: one foot in front of the other, that’s all it took. Her trainers and the leaves crunching beneath them. She dropped the hammer and carried on through the trees.

A new sound stopped her in her tracks.

The distant drone of a car engine. The slam of a car door far behind her. The shrieking of a gate.

Pip darted behind a tree and stared back into the complex.

Two yellow headlights, winking at her through the branches, as they pulled forward. Wheels on gravel.

It was DT. Jason Bell. He’d returned. He was back to kill her.

But he wouldn’t find her there, only the parts she’d left behind. Pip was out, she’d escaped. All she had to do was find a house, find a person, call the police. The easy parts. She could do that. She turned, leaving the headlights in the unknown behind her. Moving on, picking up her pace. She just had to call the police and tell them everything; that DT had just tried to kill her and she knew who he was. She could even call DI Hawkins directly, he’d understand.

She faltered, one foot hovering above the ground.

Wait.

Would he understand?

He never understood. Not any of it. And it wasn’t even a question of understanding, it was a question of believing. He’d come right out and said it to her face, said gently but said all the same: that she was imagining it. She didn’t have a stalker, she was just seeing things, seeing danger around every corner because of the trauma she’d lived through. Even though he’d been part of that trauma, because he hadn’t believed her when she went to him about Jamie.

It was a repeating pattern. No, not a pattern, it was a circle. That’s what this all was, everything winding up, coming full circle. The end was the beginning. Hawkins hadn’t believed her before, twice, so why did she think he’d believe her now?

And the voice in her head wasn’t Ravi any more, it was Hawkins. Said gently, but said all the same. ‘The DT Killer is already in prison. He’s been there for years. He confessed.’ That’s what he’d say.

‘Billy Karras isn’t the DT Killer,’ Pip would counter. ‘It’s Jason Bell.’

Hawkins shook his head inside hers. ‘Jason Bell is a respectable man. A husband, a father. He’s already been through so much, because of Andie. I’ve known him for years, we play tennis sometimes. He’s a friend. Don’t you think I’d know? He’s not the DT Killer and he’s not a danger to you, Pip. Are you still talking to someone? Are you getting help?’

‘I’m asking you for help.’

Asking him again and again, and when would she finally learn? Break the circle?

And if her worst fears were right, if the police didn’t believe her, didn’t arrest Jason, then what? DT would still be out there. Jason might take her again, or someone else. Take someone she cared about to punish her, because she was too loud and had to be silenced some way. He’d get away with it. They always got away with it. Him. Max Hastings. Above the law because the law was wrong. A legion of dead girls and dead-eyed girls left behind them.