‘Well, if he’s found and the ME initially examines him at the scene around 6 a.m. – in three and a half hours’ time – working the zero-point-eight-degree rule backward, it should show that he died more like nine o’clock, ten o’clock. The rate of rigor and lividity should support that too.’

‘OK,’ Ravi said. ‘Let’s take him out, then.’

He followed her outside to Jason’s car, peering in the window.

‘Hold on.’ Pip dropped to her knees beside her open rucksack. ‘I need the things I took from Max’s.’

She pulled out the freezer bag containing Max’s grey hoodie, and the one with his white trainers and cap. Ravi reached for the bag with the shoes.

‘What are you doing?’ Pip said, harder than she meant to, making him flinch and retract his hand.

‘Putting on Max’s shoes?’ he said uncertainly. ‘I thought we wanted to leave track marks through the mud, where we dump the body. The tread pattern of the shoes.’

‘Yes, we do,’ Pip said, pulling something else out of her bag. The five balled-up pairs of socks. ‘That’s why I brought these. I’m putting on the trainers. I’m dragging him out there.’ She undid her Converse shoes and started pulling on the socks, a pair at a time, padding out her feet.

‘I can help,’ Ravi said, watching her.

‘No, you can’t.’ Pip slid her first bulked-up foot into Max’s trainer, doing the laces up tight. ‘There can only be one set of tracks. Just Max’s. And you’re not dumping the body, I’m not letting you do that. It should be me. I killed him, I got us into this.’ She tied the second shoe and stood, testing out her grip against the gravel. Her feet budged a little up and down as she stepped, but it would be fine.

‘I mean, you didn’t get us into this, he did,’ Ravi said, gesturing with his thumb, back towards Jason’s body. ‘You sure you can do it?’

‘If Max can drag Jason’s body through the trees, then so can I.’ Pip unsealed the bag with Max’s hoodie and pulled it on over her own. Ravi helped her, careful not to disturb the hat covering her head, making sure she left none of her hairs behind on its collar.

‘You’re good,’ Ravi said, taking a step back to look at her. ‘I can at least help you get him out of the car.’

Yes, he could at least help with that. Pip nodded, walking over to the back door of the car, on the side where Jason’s head was. Ravi looped around her to the other side.

They opened the doors at the same time.

‘Whoa,’ Ravi said, doubling back. ‘It’s getting hot in here.’

‘Don’t!’ Pip said firmly, across the back seat.

‘What?’ He glared at her, over the tarp. ‘I wasn’t going to sing the song. Even I know when it’s stepping over a line.’

‘Sure.’

‘What I meant is that it’s really hot in here,’ he said. ‘Higher than forties, I’d say. That was almost opening the oven and the heat slaps you in the face hot.’

‘Right,’ Pip sniffed. ‘You push him this way, I’ll drag him out.’

Pip managed to pull him out of the car, using Ravi’s momentum from the other side. Jason’s tarp-wrapped feet landed on the gravel with a crash.

‘Got him?’ Ravi asked, coming around.

‘Yeah.’ Pip laid him gently down. She stepped back to her rucksack, opening up the front pocket, and pulled out the sandwich bag with the small clump of Max’s hair sealed inside. ‘Need this,’ she explained to Ravi, shoving it in the front pocket of Max’s hoodie.

‘You gonna keep him in the tarp?’ Ravi watched her as she returned to the body, struggling to pick Jason up beneath the shoulders again, his arms now stiff and unyielding.

‘Yeah, he can stay in the tarp,’ Pip said, grunting with the effort as she tried to drag Jason’s trailing feet through the stones, glad the tarp was there, so Jason’s face-down dead face wasn’t watching her as she did. ‘Max could have tried to cover him too.’

Pip took a step back and she hauled.

She tried to not think about what she was doing. Build a barrier inside her mind, a fence to keep it out. It was just one of the boxes to tick, that’s what she told herself. Focus on that. Just a task to tick off in the plan, like all the plans she’d ever made, even the small ones, even the mundane. This was no different.

Except it was, that dark voice reminded her, the one that hid at the back beside the shame, unpicking her barrier piece by piece. Because it was late at night, in that in-between time when too-late became too-early, and Pip Fitz-Amobi was dragging a dead body.

Dead Jason was heavy and Pip’s progress was slow, her mind trying to distance itself from the thing in her hands, from her hands themselves.

It was a little easier as she moved from small stones to grass, checking behind her every two steps, so she didn’t trip.

Ravi remained behind on the gravel. ‘I’ll start on the boot of the car, then,’ he said. ‘Hoover every inch.’

‘Wipe down the plastic sides too,’ Pip called, the breath struggling in her chest. ‘I touched those.’

He shot her a thumbs up and turned away.

Pip leaned Jason against her leg for a moment, to take the weight, give her arms a break. The muscles in her shoulders were already screaming. But she had to keep going. This was her job, her burden.

She dragged him to the trees, Max’s trainers crunching the first of the fallen leaves. Pip laid him down for two minutes, stretched out her aching arms, moved her head side to side to crack her neck. Stared up at the moon to ask it what the fuck she was doing. Then she picked him up again.

Hauled him between those trees and around that one. Leaves bunching up around Jason’s feet as he dragged them with him, collecting them for his final resting place.

Pip didn’t go in far. She didn’t need to. They were about fifty feet into the woodland, where the trees started to bunch close together, barring the way. A distant hum of Ravi and the vacuum cleaner. Pip checked behind her, spotting the trunk of a larger tree, old and gnarled. That would do.

She dragged Jason around that tree, and then laid him down. The plastic tarp rustled and dried-out leaves whispered dark threats to Pip as he settled into the ground, face down in the tarp.

She bent to one side of him and pushed, rolling his stiffening body over. Now he was face up, and the blood inside would settle along his back once again.

The tarp had shifted slightly, as she’d flipped him over, one corner slipping down to show her his dead face one last time. To etch that image into the underside of her eyelids forever, a new horror waiting for her in the dark whenever she blinked. Jason Bell. The Slough Strangler. The DT Killer. The monster that had chased Andie Bell away, creating this jagged circle, this awful merry-go-round they were all stuck on.

But at least Pip was still alive, to be haunted by his face. If it were the other way around, as it should have been, Jason wouldn’t have cared enough to be haunted by hers. He’d tried to take it away from her. He would have enjoyed seeing her like this, face wrapped up in tape, skin mottling to the colour of bruise, body hard like it was made from concrete and not flesh. A wrapped-up doll, and a trophy to always remember how the sight of dead-her had made him feel. Elated. Excited. Powerful.