Pip’s face in the near-dark, underlit by the ghostly glow of her laptop, shadows like bruises around her eyes. A voice in her ears, Jackie from the café, and her own, in an interview recorded yesterday, Cara murmuring in the background. It went perfectly: Pip pushing her just the right amount, to get her to say what she needed her to say, sentences dancing around each other and silences that were full of meaning. The way Jackie’s voice hissed between her teeth as she spoke Max’s name, the hairs rising up the back of Pip’s neck.

She listened to it again, in the dead of night, an old pair of white earphones plugged into her laptop. Josh must have stolen her black headphones again to play FIFA, but that was OK; he could take whatever he wanted from her. Just a week ago she thought she’d never see him again, thought she’d become the ghost he tried not to think about. He could take whatever he wanted, and Pip would love him back twice as hard.

She studied the spiking blue lines on her audio software, the erratic picture of her own voice, firm when it needed to be, quiet when it should, up and down, mountains and valleys. She isolated a clip and copied it into a new file.

Pip imagined Hawkins listening to these same words in a couple of days, imagined him snapping to attention, pushing out of his chair as this out-of-time Pip pulled the strings. The same Pip he’d find grinning in the security footage from McDonalds if he ever needed to look. Pip couldn’t include Max’s name, Hawkins would have to go find it himself, but she was showing him exactly where to look.

Follow the trail, Hawkins. The path of least resistance was right here, he only had to follow it, as he had once followed it to Sal Singh. Pip was making it so easy for him. All he had to do was follow, step into the world she was creating just for him.

File Name:

Teaser for AGGGTM Season 3: Who Killed Jason Bell?.wav

[Jingle plays]

[Insert clip]

Newsreader: Little Kilton [...] a town that has had more than its fair share of tragedy [...] confirmation today from local police that resident Jason Bell, the father of Andie Bell, has been found dead [...] police are treating his death as suspicious [...]

[End clip]

[Insert sound file of police siren]

Pip: Hi, my name is Pip Fitz-Amobi, and I live in a small town. Over six years ago, two teenagers were killed in this small town. A few months ago, a man was shot dead in this small town. There’s that saying, isn’t there? That things always come in threes, even murder. One small town and this week we learned that someone else is dead.

[Insert clip]

DI Hawkins: Jason Bell [...] a resident of Little Kilton, was found dead early Sunday morning [...]

[End clip]

Pip: Jason Bell, the father of Andie and Becca Bell, was found dead at his place of work in a nearby village last week.

[Insert clip]

DI Hawkins: We are investigating Jason’s death as a homicide [...]

[End clip]

Pip: It wasn’t an accident, or a natural death. Someone killed him, but beyond that, very few details of the case are as yet known. It appears the murder took place on the evening of the 15th of September, judging by information police have released when appealing for witnesses in the area. Jason was found at his place of work, a grounds maintenance and cleaning company he owned called Green Scene and Clean Scene Ltd. That’s it. We might not know much, except one thing: there’s a killer out there, and someone needs to catch them. Join us for a new season as we attempt to piece together this case alongside the active police investigation. Someone killed him, so someone wanted him dead, and there must be a trail somewhere. People talk, in a small town. And there’s been a lot of talk over the last week – the town is practically cracking open with whispered secrets and furtive glances. Most isn’t worth listening to, but there is some that cannot be ignored.

[Insert clip]

Pip: Hi Jackie, so just to introduce you, you’re the owner of an independent café in Little Kilton, on the high street.

Jackie: Yes, that’s me.

[...]

Pip: Can you tell me what happened?

Jackie: Well, Jason Bell was here a few weeks ago, standing in line to order his coffee. He came in quite a bit. And there was someone in the queue in front of him, it was [---BEEEEEEEP---]

[...] Jason shoved him back, spilled his coffee [...] told him to stay out of his way.

Pip: A physical altercation, would you say?

Jackie: Yes, it was quite violent, quite angry I’d say. [...] Very clear that they disliked each other.

Pip: And you said this was just two weeks before Jason was killed?

Jackie: Yes.

Pip: Are you suggesting that [BEEP] might be the one who killed him?

Jackie: No, I... no, of course not. It’s just that I think there was already animosity between them.

Pip: Bad blood?

Jackie: Yeah [...] because of what [BEEP] did to Jason’s daughter, Becca. Even though he wasn’t convicted. I’m sure that gave Jason plenty of reason to hate him.

[End clip]

Pip: I don’t know about you, but there’s already one name on my Persons of Interest list. All of this and more coming up in episode one. Join us soon for Season 3 of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: Who Killed Jason Bell?

[Insert clip]

DI Hawkins: I promise I will find out what happened to Jason – who killed him.

[End clip]

Pip: So do I.

[Jingle plays]

It began with a phone call.

‘Hi, Pip, it’s DI Hawkins here. I wonder if you have time to come down to the station today for a little chat?’

‘Sure,’ Pip had told him. ‘What’s this about?’

‘It’s about that podcast trailer you posted a couple of days ago, about the Jason Bell case. I just have a few questions for you, that’s all. It’s a voluntary interview.’

She pretended to think about it. ‘OK. I can be there in an hour?’

The hour was gone now and here she was, standing outside the bad, bad place. The greying building of Amersham Police Station, a gun going off in her heart and her hands slick with sweat and Stanley’s blood. Pip locked her car and wiped her red hands off on her jeans.

She’d called Ravi to tell him where she was going on the drive. He hadn’t said much, other than the word fuck over and over again, but Pip told him it was OK, not to panic. This was to be expected; she was indirectly involved in the case, either through her interview with Jackie, or through her phone call to Max’s lawyer that night. That’s all this would be about, and Pip knew exactly how to play her part. She was on the outskirts of this murder, that’s all, a peripheral player. Hawkins wanted information from her.

And she wanted some from him in return. This could be it: the answer to the question she couldn’t shake, the lurking undertow to every waking thought. The moment Pip learned whether they’d managed to pull it off or not, whether their time-of-death trick had worked. If it had, she was free. She’d survived. She was never there and she hadn’t killed Jason Bell. If it hadn’t worked... well, not worth thinking about quite yet. She locked that trailing thought in the dark place at the back of her mind and walked through the sliding automatic doors.

‘Hello Pip.’ Eliza the detention officer gave her a strained smile from behind the reception desk. ‘It’s all go here, I’m afraid,’ she said, her hands fidgeting a pile of papers.