‘Define lately?’

‘I don’t know, maybe a week or more,’ she said. ‘Maybe I left them somewhere... I can’t really remember.’

‘No?’ Hawkins said lightly.

‘No.’ Pip stared him down, but her eyes were weaker than his. Blood on her hands, gun in her heart, bile at the back of her throat and a cage tightening around her, squeezing the skin on her arms. Biting, like the duct tape had. ‘I’m as confused as you are.’

‘You have no explanation?’ Hawkins said.

‘No, none,’ Pip said. ‘I didn’t realize they were missing.’

‘So, they can’t have been gone long?’ he asked. ‘Maybe nine or ten days? Could you have lost them on the same day you lost your phone?’

Pip knew then. He didn’t believe her. He wouldn’t follow the path she’d created for him. She wasn’t a peripheral outsider to the case any more, there was a direct line between her and Jason. Hawkins had found her, the real her, not the one she’d planted for him to find. He’d won.

‘I really don’t know,’ Pip said, and the terror was back, that cliff-edge inside her own head, breaths coming faster, throat narrowing. ‘I guess I can ask my family, see if they remember when they last saw me with the headphones. But I can’t think how this happened.’

‘Right,’ Hawkins said.

She needed to leave, get out before the panic took over her face and she couldn’t hide it any more. She had to leave – and she could, this interview was voluntary. They couldn’t arrest her. Not yet. The headphones were only circumstantial; they’d need more.

‘In fact, I probably need to get going. My mum’s taking me shopping for university supplies in a bit. I’m going this weekend and I’m not organized yet. Leaving everything to the last minute as she’d say. I’ll ask my family if they remember when I last had those headphones, and I’ll get back to you on that.’

She stood up.

‘Interview terminated 11:57.’ Hawkins clicked stop on the tape and stood as well, picking up the evidence bag. ‘I’ll walk you out,’ he said.

‘No,’ Pip said from the door. ‘No, don’t worry. Been here enough times, I know the way.’

Back out into that corridor, in the bad, bad place, blood on her hands, blood on her hands, blood on her face and everywhere, marking her out in red as she stumbled outside.

Flipped her laptop over. Panicked fingers, almost dropped it. A screwdriver from her dad’s toolkit. Pip could remove the hard drive, she knew exactly how, put it in the microwave and watch it explode. If they got a warrant and took her computer, they couldn’t see that she’d been looking into Green Scene before Jason died, or Andie’s second email account, or any connection to Jason or the DT Killer. The time of death was nine thirty to midnight and she had an alibi, she had an alibi, the headphones were just circumstantial and she had an alibi.

She got one screw out before she realized the truth, before it crashed into her, solid and indisputable, stuck through the middle of her chest. She was in denial but the voice at the back of her mind knew, guided her out, slowly, slowly.

It was over.

Pip dropped everything and cried into her hands. But her alibi; the plan had worked, one last part of her protested. No, no. She couldn’t think like that any more, she couldn’t fight, she couldn’t see this through to the end. She could have, if it were just her, but she wasn’t the only one at risk here. Ravi, and Cara and Naomi, and Jamie and Connor and Nat. They’d helped her because she’d asked, because they loved her and she loved them.

And there it was. She loved them, a simple and powerful truth. Pip loved them all and she couldn’t let them fall when she did.

That was the promise.

And if this was it, the beginning of the end, there was only one way Pip knew to protect them all now. She had to make sure they were removed from the narrative before it was uncovered. She had to create a new one, a new story, a new plan.

It hurt to even think of it, to know what it meant for her and the life that she’d never live.

She had to confess.

‘No, you’re fucking not,’ Ravi said to her, his voice cracking down the line, his breath fast and panicked.

Pip gripped the phone too hard against her ear. One of her burner phones; she didn’t trust her real phone for this conversation. All those traces, those ties to Ravi.

‘I have to,’ she said, picturing the look in his eyes, staring off into that middle space as the world fell down around them.

‘I asked you multiple times,’ he said, a flash of anger now, crackling in his voice. ‘I said did you check you had everything in your bag. I said that, Pip! I said did you check!’

‘I know, I’m sorry, I thought I did.’ She blinked, tears pooling at the crack in her mouth, her gut twisting to hear him like this. ‘I forgot about them. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault, that’s why I have to confess, so it’s only me –’

‘But you have an alibi,’ he said, and he was trying not to cry now, Pip could tell. ‘The pathologist thinks Jason died between half nine and twelve and you’re covered for that whole time. It’s not over, Pip. The headphones are circumstantial, we can think of something.’

‘It’s a direct link between me and Jason,’ she said.

‘We can think of something,’ Ravi said louder, speaking over her. ‘Come up with a new plan. That’s what you do, what we do.’

‘Hawkins caught me in a lie, Ravi. He caught me in a lie and that and the headphones give him probable cause. That means they can probably get a warrant to collect my DNA, if they want to. And if we accidentally left any hairs, anything behind at the scene, then it’s over. The plan only worked if there was never a connection to me, only indirectly through my call to Epps that night and the podcast. It’s over.’

‘It isn’t over!’ he shouted, and he was scared, Pip could feel it through the phone, catching her too, burrowing under her skin like a living thing. ‘You’re giving up.’

‘I know,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘I am giving up. Because I can’t have you go down with me. Or the Reynoldses or the Wards or Nat. That was the deal. If it went wrong, I was the only one who would take the fall. It went wrong, Ravi, I’m sorry.’

‘It hasn’t gone wrong.’ She heard shuffling down the line, the sound of his fist punching out against a pillow. ‘It worked. It fucking worked and you have an alibi. How can you confess when you were somewhere else at the time?’

‘I’ll tell them what I did with the car air-con, the same trick, it just didn’t work as well. Your alibi covers you from 8:15 that night, so maybe I tell them I killed him at around eight, that leaves you totally in the clear. I put him in the car and I went to fake my alibi with Cara and Naomi. They didn’t know anything. They’re innocent.’ Pip wiped her eyes. ‘They’ll stop looking if I do this. A confession is the single most prejudicial piece of evidence, we know that from Billy Karras. They won’t need to keep looking. I’ll tell Hawkins who Jason was, what he was going to do to me. I don’t think they’ll believe me, unless there’s any evidence Jason was DT, but maybe there is, somewhere. There’s the trophies. Self-defence is out the window, especially with the whole elaborate scheme to cover it up, but maybe a good lawyer would be able to argue the charge down from murder to voluntary manslaughter and I ca—’