‘Right,’ Ravi said, with a disbelieving sniff. ‘So, we’ve just got to put him in a freezer and then pop him in a microwave. Fuck, I can’t believe we are even talking about this. This is crazy. This is crazy, Pip.’

‘Not a freezer,’ Pip said, following Ravi’s lead, looking at the Green Scene complex with new eyes. ‘That’s too cold. More like a fridge temperature. And then, of course, after we’ve warmed him up again, we will have to make sure his body is found only a few hours later, by the police, and the medical examiner. Otherwise none of this will work. We need him to be warm and stiff when they find him, and his skin still blanchable – that means the pooled blood moves when you press the skin. If that’s the early morning, then they should think he died six to eight hours before then.’

‘Will it work?’

Pip shrugged, a near-laugh in her throat. Ravi was right; this was crazy. But she was alive, she was alive, and she was very nearly not. At least this was better than that. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never killed someone and got away with murder before,’ she sniffed. ‘But it should work. The science works. I did a lot of research when I was looking at that Jane Doe case. If we can do all that: cool him down, turn him a couple of times, and then heat him back up, it should work. It will look like he died more like – I don’t know – nine o’clock, ten o’clock. And we will both be somewhere else by then. Iron-clad.’

‘OK,’ Ravi nodded. ‘OK, that sounds, well, it sounds crazy, but I think we can do it. I think we might actually be able to do this. It’s a good thing you’re such an expert in murder.’

Pip pulled a face at him.

‘No, I mean, like, from studying it, not killing people. I hope this is the first and last time.’ Ravi tried and failed at a smile, shifting on his feet. ‘One thing though – say we’re actually going to try to pull this off, and we want them to find his body so this time-of-death manipulation works. Well, they’re going to know that someone killed him. And they will look for a killer until they find one. That’s what the police do, Pip. They’ll have to have a killer.’

Pip tilted her head, studied Ravi’s eyes, her reflection captured inside them. This was why she needed him; he pushed her forward or reined her back when she didn’t know she needed it. He was right. This would never work. They could shift the time of death and make sure they were far away from here in that time frame, but the police would still need a killer. They would look until they found one, and if she and Ravi made even one mistake, then...

‘You’re right,’ she nodded, her hand moving out to take his, before she remembered. ‘It won’t work. They need a killer. Someone has to have killed Jason Bell. Someone else.’

‘OK, so...’ Ravi began, talking them back to square one, but Pip’s mind wandered away from him, flipped over to show her all those things at the very back. The things she hid away: the terror, the shame, the blood on her hands, the red, red, violent red thoughts, and one face hanging there, angular and pale.

‘I know,’ Pip said, cutting Ravi off. ‘I know who the killer is. I know who’s going to have killed Jason Bell.’

‘What?’ Ravi stared at her. ‘Who?’

It was inevitable. Full circle. The end was the beginning and the beginning was the end. Back to the very start, to the origin, to set it all right.

‘Max Hastings,’ she said.

Twelve minutes.

Twelve minutes was all it took. Pip knew because she’d checked the time on the burner phone as she and Ravi talked it through. She thought it would have taken much longer, it should have taken much longer, a plan to set someone up for murder. Agonizing hours and a cascade of details, tiny yet critical. That’s what you’d think, what Pip would’ve thought. But twelve minutes and they were done. Ideas back and forth, picking holes in them and plugging the gaps when they found them. Who and where and when. Pip didn’t want to involve anyone else, but Ravi made her see it couldn’t be done, not without help. The entire thing almost unravelled until Ravi came up with the mobile phone tower idea, from a case he was working on at the firm, and Pip knew exactly what call to make. Twelve minutes, and there the plan was, like a physical thing between them. Precious and solid and clear and binding. They could never go back from this, go back to who they were before. It would be difficult, and it would be tight; they could make no wrong turns, no delays. No room for error.

But the plan worked, in theory. How to get away with murder.

Jason Bell was dead, but he wasn’t dead yet; he would be in a few hours. And Max Hastings would be the one who killed him. Finally locked away where he belonged.

‘They deserve it,’ Pip said, standing back. ‘They both deserve it, don’t they?’ It was too late for Jason, but Max... She hated him, down to the very core of who she was, but was that blinding her, leading her?

‘Yes,’ he reassured her, though she knew he hated him just as much. ‘They’ve hurt people. Jason killed five women; he would have killed you. He started everything that led to Andie and Sal dying. So did Max. Max will carry on hurting people if we do nothing. We know that. They deserve this, both of them.’ He gently tapped his finger in that safe space under her chin, pulling her face up to look at him. ‘It’s a choice between you or Max, and I choose you. I’m not losing you.’

And Pip didn’t say but she couldn’t help thinking of Elliot Ward, who’d made a choice exactly like this, making Sal a killer to save himself and his daughters. And there Pip was too, in that messy, confusing grey area, dragging Ravi in with her. The end and the beginning.

‘OK,’ she nodded, talking herself back into it. The plan was binding and they were in it now, and time was not on their side. ‘A few things still left to work out, but the most important is the –’

‘Refrigerating and heating up the dead body,’ Ravi finished the sentence for her, glancing again at those abandoned feet. He still hadn’t seen the body up close, seen what Pip had done to Jason. Pip hoped Ravi wouldn’t change his mind when he did, wouldn’t look at her any different. He pointed to the brick building behind them, separate to the corrugated-iron building with the chemical storeroom off its side. ‘That building there looks more like an office building, where the office staff work. There’s probably a kitchen in there, right? With a fridge and a freezer?’

‘Yeah, there probably is.’ Pip nodded. ‘But not humansized.’

Ravi blew out a mouthful of air, his face tight and tense. ‘Again, why couldn’t Jason Bell have owned a meat-processing factory with giant fridges?’

‘Let’s go have a look around,’ Pip said, turning back to the open metal door, and Jason’s feet lying across the threshold. ‘We have his keys.’ She nodded at them, still in the lock where Jason had left them. ‘He’s the owner, he must have a key to every door here. And he told me the security alarms were disabled everywhere, and the CCTV cameras. He told me he had all weekend, if he wanted it. So, we should be fine.’

‘Yeah, good idea,’ Ravi said, but he didn’t take a step forward, because stepping towards that door also meant stepping towards the dead body.