Ravi finished his can too, threw it behind his shoulder back into the room.

Pip stepped outside, and let the night breeze play across her face, breathing it in until she felt steady again. She didn’t, not until Ravi was standing beside her, holding her gloved hand in his, that small gesture anchoring her. The final jerry can was in his other hand.

There was a question in his eyes and Pip nodded.

Ravi turned to Jason’s SUV. He started in the boot, soaking the carpet floor and the plastic sides. Over the retractable cover and on to the soft material of the ceiling. Covering the back seats and the footwells, and into the front too. He left the can on the back seat where Jason had laid, some petrol still sloshing around inside it.

Boom, he mimed with his hands.

Pip had pulled on Max’s baseball cap now, over the beanie she already wore, so it would never touch her, never pick up a trace. And one last thing from the rucksack before she pulled the straps over her shoulders. In went the rubber tube that Ravi had pressed his mouth to, out came the lighter that her mum used to light their Autumn Spice candle every evening.

Pip readied the lighter in her hand, pulling out the strips of cardboard.

She clicked it, and a small blueish flame emerged at the end. Pip held it to a corner of the cardboard, waiting for it to catch. She let the fire grow, whispering to it, welcoming it to the world.

‘Step back,’ she told Ravi as she leaned forward and threw it into the boot of Jason’s car.

A whirl of bright yellow flames erupted with a loud roar, growing and spreading, licking out towards her face.

Hot, so incredibly hot, drying out her eyes, cleaving at her throat.

‘Nothing cleans like fire,’ Pip said, handing the lighter and another strip of cardboard to Ravi as he walked back towards the storeroom.

The click of the lighter, the flame eating up the cardboard, adolescent and slow. Until Ravi threw it on to their new river, and that small flame exploded into an inferno, high and angry. The screaming of ghosts as it melted plastic and began to twist metal.

‘I’ve always secretly wanted to set fire to something,’ Ravi said, returning to her, re-taking her hand, fingers fusing together as the gravel crunched under their feet and the flames flickered at their backs.

‘Well,’ Pip said, her voice rough and scorched, ‘arson is another crime we can tick off the list tonight.’

‘Think we’ve probably got a full house by now,’ he replied. ‘Bingo.’

They walked towards Max’s car.

Back out the waiting gates of Green Scene Ltd, those spiked metal posts like an open jaw, spitting them out as its body withered and burned.

Pip blinked as they stepped through, picturing these gates in a few hours, blue and white crime scene tape wrapped across them, barring the way, the buzz of murmured voices and police radios in the smoky aftermath. A body bag and the squeaking wheels of a gurney.

Follow the fire, follow the blood, follow her story. That’s all they had to do. It was out of her hands now.

Their fingers broke apart as Pip dropped into the driver’s seat and shut herself in. Ravi opened the back door, climbing inside and laying down across the footwell there, to hide. He couldn’t be seen. They were taking the main roads back to Little Kilton, through as many traffic cameras as they could. Because it wasn’t Pip driving, it was Max this time, driving home after breaking a man’s head open and setting fire to the scene. Here he was, in his hoodie and his hat, if any of those cameras had a view through the windows. Pressing his shoes into the pedals, leaving behind traces of blood.

Max started the engine and reversed. Pulling away just as the explosions began behind them. Those rows and rows of mowers blowing up, firing into the night like gunshots. Six holes in Stanley’s chest.

A yellow flare-up that set the sky ablaze, growing smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror. Someone would hear that, Pip told herself as Max drove, another blast cracking the earth around them, much louder than a thousand screams. A billowing column of smoke smothering the low moon.

Max Hastings got home at 3:27 a.m. after killing Jason Bell.

Pip pulled up into the drive outside the Hastings house, parking the car exactly where it had been before, at the start of the night. She switched off the engine; the headlights blinked off and the darkness crept in.

Ravi pulled himself up from the back seat, stretched out his neck. ‘Glad the petrol light came on, just to give this night one last jolt of adrenaline. Really needed one last hit.’

‘Yeah,’ Pip exhaled, ‘that was a fun little plot twist.’

They couldn’t have stopped to fill up the car, of course; they were supposed to be Max Hastings, and petrol stations were covered in security cameras. But they’d made it home – Pip’s eyes constantly flicking to the warning light – and now it didn’t matter any more.

‘I should go in alone,’ Pip said, grabbing her rucksack and pulling out the car keys. ‘Be quick and quiet as possible. I don’t know how deep he’ll still be. You can walk home.’

‘I’ll wait,’ Ravi said, climbing out the door and carefully pushing it shut. ‘Make sure you’re OK.’

Pip stepped out, studied his face in the darkness, a streak of red in his eyes as she blipped the fob to lock Max’s car.

‘He’s unconscious,’ she said.

‘He’s still a rapist,’ Ravi replied. ‘I’ll wait. Go on, get it done.’

‘OK.’

Pip moved silently up to the front door, a glance at the taped-up cameras either side. She slid the house key into the lock and stepped inside the dark, sleeping house.

She could hear Max’s breaths from the sofa, deep and rattling, moving forward with each in and out to hide her steps beneath the sound. She wiped the car keys on Max’s hoodie; neither of them had touched them with their bare hands, but she wanted to be sure.

Upstairs first, her steps light and cautious, trekking mud from the crime scene into the carpet. She flicked on the light in Max’s bedroom, and dropped her bag to the floor, removing Max’s cap from her head and peeling his hoodie away from the one she was wearing underneath, careful not to dislodge her beanie. Pip checked the grey material for any of her dark hairs that might have caught. It was clear.

She studied the sleeves, to find the one with the bloodstain. Moved silently across the landing to the bathroom. Light on. Tap on. Dipped the bloody sleeve under the water, rubbed at it with her gloved fingers until the blood faded to a muted brown mark. She took it back to his bedroom with her, over to the wash basket where she’d found it. Pushed aside the towering pile of clothes and dumped the grey hoodie in, shoving it down to the very bottom.

She unlaced Max’s shoes, her own feet looking oversized and ridiculous in their five extra pairs of socks. The zigzag soles of his trainers were still caked in mud, clumps falling away as Pip placed them at the very back of his wardrobe, building up another pile of shoes around them, to hide them. From Max, not from the people who really mattered, the forensic team.

She went back for the cap, replacing it where she’d found it, balancing atop the hangers, and then closed the wardrobe. She returned to her bag, putting her own shoes on and reached inside for the sandwich bag with Max’s phone. Crept back down the stairs with it gripped in her hand.