‘They won’t believe me,’ Pip told herself, in her own voice now. ‘They never believe us.’ Out loud so she would truly listen this time, understand. She was on her own. Charlie Green wasn’t the one with all the answers; she was. She didn’t need to hear it from him to know what to do this time.

Break the circle. It was hers to break, here and now. And there was only one way to do that.

Pip turned, leaves bunching, clinging to the white soles of her shoes.

And she walked back.

Returned through the darkening trees. A glint of young moonlight across the surface of the dropped hammer, showing her the way. She bent to pick it up, testing out her grip.

Dried-out leaves to grass, to dirt, to gravel, easing her steps, pressing her feet down with no sound. Maybe she was too loud for him, but he’d never hear her coming now.

Ahead, Jason was out of his car, walking up to the metal door he’d dragged her through, his steps disguising hers. Closer and closer. He stopped and she did too, waiting. Waiting.

Jason slid his hand down into his pocket, returning with the ring of keys. A rustle of tinkling metal and Pip took a few slow steps, hiding beneath the sound.

Jason found the right key, long and jagged. He pushed it into the lock, metal scraping metal, and Pip moved closer.

Break the circle. The end was the beginning and this was both, the origin. Finish it where it had all begun.

He twisted the key, and the door unlocked with a dark click, the sound echoing in Pip’s chest.

Jason pushed open the door into the yellow-lit storeroom. He took one step over the threshold, looked up, then took one back, staring ahead. Taking in the scene: tipped-over shelves, smashed-open window, a river of spilled weedkiller, lengths of unwound duct tape.

Pip was right behind him.

‘What the –’ he said.

Her arm knew what to do.

Pip pulled it back and swung the hammer.

It found the base of his skull.

A sickening crunch of metal on bone.

He staggered. He even dared to gasp.

Pip swung again.

A crack.

Jason dropped, falling forward on to the concrete, catching himself with one hand.

‘Please –’ he began.

Pip pulled her elbow back, a spray of blood hitting her in the face.

She leaned over him and swung again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Until nothing moved. Not a twitch in his fingers, or a jerk in his legs. Only a new river, a red one, slowly leaking out of his undone head.

He was dead.

Jason Bell, the DT Killer: one and the same and he was dead.

Pip didn’t need to check the swell of his chest or feel for a pulse to know that. It was clear just looking at him, at what was left of his head.

She’d killed him. Broken the circle. He’d never hurt her and he’d never hurt anyone.

It wasn’t real and she wasn’t real, tucked against the wall by her overturned shelves, hugging her legs to her chest. Her warped reflection in the discarded hammer as she rocked back and forth. It was real, he was right there in front of her, and she was here. He was dead and she’d killed him.

How long had she been sat there now, going backward and forward over this? What was she doing, waiting to see if he’d take a breath and stand back up? She didn’t want that. It had been her or him. Not self-defence but a choice, a choice she made. He was dead and that was good. Right. Supposed to be.

So, what was supposed to happen now?

There hadn’t been a plan. Nothing beyond breaking the circle, beyond surviving, and killing him was how she survived. So, now that it was done, how did she keep on surviving? She repeated the question, asking the Ravi who lived in her head. Asking him for help because he was the only person she knew how to ask. But he’d gone quiet. No other people in there, just a ringing in her ears. Why had he left her? She still needed him.

But he wasn’t the real Ravi, only her thoughts wrapped up in his voice, her lifeline at the very brink. She wasn’t at the brink any more. She had lived, and she would see him again. And she needed to, right now. This was too much for her alone.

Pip picked herself up from the ground, trying not to look at the flecks of blood up her sleeves. And on her hands too. Real this time. Earned. She wiped them off on her dark leggings.

She’d spotted it from across the room, a rectangular shape in Jason’s back pocket. His iPhone, protruding out from the fabric. Pip approached, carefully, avoiding the red river reflecting the overhead lights. She didn’t want to get any closer, scared that her proximity might somehow drag him back from death. But she had to. She needed his phone to call Ravi so he could come and tell her that everything would be OK, would be normal again, because they were a team.

She reached out for the phone. Wait, Pip, hold on a second. Think about this. She paused. If she used Jason’s phone to call Ravi, that would leave a trace, irrevocably tying Ravi to the scene. DT was a murderer but he was also a murdered man, and it didn’t matter that he deserved it, the law didn’t care about that. Someone would have to pay for his broken-open head. No. Pip couldn’t have Ravi tied to the scene, to Jason, not in any way. That was unthinkable.

But she couldn’t do this on her own, without him. That was unthinkable too. A loneliness too dark and deep.

Her legs felt weak as she stepped over Jason’s body and stumbled outside on to the gravel. Fresh air. She breathed in the fresh twilit air, but it was tainted somehow, by the metallic smell of blood.

She walked, six, seven steps away, towards his car, but that smell, it followed her, held on to her. Pip turned to look at herself, her dark reflection in the window of the car. Her hair was matted and torn. Her face raw and inflamed from the tape. Her eyes faraway and yet also right here. And those freckles there, they were new. Cast-offs of Jason’s blood.

Pip felt her vision dip in and out, knees buckling underneath her. She looked at herself and then looked into herself, through the dark of her eyes. And then past herself: there was something beyond the window drawing her eye, a moonlit glint on its surface, showing her the way again. It was her bag. Her bronze-coloured rucksack, sitting in the back seat of Jason’s car.

He’d taken it when he’d taken her.

It wasn’t much but it was hers, and it felt like an old friend.

Pip scrabbled for the door handle and pulled. It opened. Jason must have left the car unlocked, his keys still waiting there in the ignition. He had meant to finish it quickly, but Pip had finished it first.

She reached in and pulled out her bag, and she wanted to hug it to her chest, this part of her old self before she’d almost died. To borrow some of its life. But she couldn’t do that, she’d get his blood on it. She lowered it to the gravel and undid the zip. Everything was still here. Everything she’d packed when she’d left the house that afternoon: clothes for staying at Ravi’s, her toothbrush, a water bottle, her purse. She reached in and took a long draw from the water bottle, her mouth dried out from all those taped-up screams. But if she drank any more, she’d be sick. She replaced the bottle and stared at the bag’s contents.

Her phone wasn’t here. She’d already known that, but hope had partially hidden the memory from her. Her phone was smashed; dropped and abandoned in the road down Cross Lane. There was no way Jason had brought it with him for that very same reason: an irrevocable link to the victim. He’d got away with this for a long time; he knew things like that, just as she knew them.