Anyway, all very exciting here and I will of course keep you updated. I may even have my boy home for Christmas, who knows!

Thank you for believing in me and Billy.

Best wishes,

Maria Karras

Pip stroked her finger down the computer screen, stalling over the last line of the email.

Thank you for believing in me and Billy.

She had believed in them, because Pip was supposed to be the sixth victim of the DT Killer and, in a way, she always would be. From the moment Jason grabbed her, there was no doubt that an innocent man was sitting in prison. But the plan had forgotten Billy. Survival had taken over, survival and revenge, and protecting Ravi and the others from the plan. But Billy needed to be saved from Jason Bell as much as she did, and Pip had left him behind, made him secondary. She could have done something, couldn’t she? The plan only worked if she didn’t know Jason Bell was the DT Killer, had nothing to do with him, but she could have thought of something.

Another realization, stone-cold and stone-hard in her gut: Pip thought there wouldn’t be any significant evidence that Jason Bell was the DT Killer. Which meant two things: she was always going to leave Billy Karras behind, save herself and bury him away at the back of her mind. And the second: none of this had to happen. Maybe Pip could have kept walking through those trees, Jason’s car pulling up to Green Scene behind her. She could have kept going, found a road, found a house, found a person and a phone. Maybe Hawkins wouldn’t have believed her still, but he might have looked into it. Maybe he would have found the same evidence they’d found now to back up her word, acted before Jason had a chance to act again. Jason behind bars and Billy free, on the strength of Pip’s first-hand account.

But that’s not what happened. A fork in a path she hadn’t taken.

Pip had made a different choice, standing in the dark of those trees. It wasn’t an accident, or instinct, or fight or flight. She saw both paths and she’d made a choice. She went back.

And maybe that other Pip in that other life would say she’d made the right choice. She’d trusted in those who’d never trusted in her and it had worked out. Saved herself to save herself; maybe she was already fixed, Team Ravi and Pip moving on, living a normal life. But this Pip could also say hers was the right choice. Dead was the only way she could be sure the DT Killer would never hurt anyone again. And on this path, Max Hastings was going to go down too. Two birds, one stone. Two monsters and a ring of dead and dead-eyed girls of their making. One dead, one locked away for thirty-to-life, if it worked. Gone. Disappeared, and no one left to look for them. Maybe this way was better, who could say?

Anyway, there was something Pip could do now to rewrite that mistake, to un-forget Billy Karras. His mum was probably right; when they’d processed Jason’s body and entered his fingerprint information into the database, it had pinged with that remaining question mark from the DT Killer case. Maybe other DNA hits to the DT Killer crime scenes that they’d previously written off. And there was the trophies. Pip had found three of them herself now, two more by looking at an old, printed photo of the Bell family, one she’d had pinned on her murder board a year ago. A gold necklace with a coin pendant that had belonged to Phillipa Brockfield, wrapped around Dawn Bell’s neck. Two glints of light by Becca’s ears: rose gold earrings with pale green stones. The same earrings she still wore now. They belonged to Julia Hunter. Pip wished she could get a message to Becca somehow; tell her everything that happened, tell her about those earrings, because DT still had a hold over her as long as they were in her ears. Reliving the moment he’d killed these women whenever he saw his wife and his daughters.

The police had searched Jason’s house; if they’d found and collected Pip’s headphones, maybe they’d found the trophies from the other victims. Andie’s purple hairbrush, the necklace Dawn wore, Bethany Ingham’s Casio watch, Tara Yates’ keyrings.

And if they hadn’t yet found the trophies, Pip could lead Hawkins to them, she just had to show him this photo, really.

Not only that, she had Andie’s secret email account and that unsent draft. That email – Andie’s words that weren’t her last but felt like it – would be the nail in Jason Bell’s coffin. Lead the police to Andie’s connection with HH too. Pip would need to change the password on the account to something less conspicuous than her temporary DTKiller6. She did that now, swapping it out for TeamAndieAndBecca; she thought Andie would like that best.

The police might have a fingerprint, but Pip could give them everything else, shore up the case against Jason Bell to beyond reasonable doubt. So when Billy’s conviction was overturned, they didn’t take it to a retrial with this new exculpatory evidence but dismissed the charges outright. Let Billy finally go home; Pip owed him that much.

And if everyone knew who Jason Bell really was, Pip would no longer have to listen to people say how fucking awful it was that someone killed him.

Pip practised in the mirror, her voice dry and unused all day. ‘Hi, DI Hawkins, sorry, I know you must be extraordinarily busy. It’s just... well, as you know, I’ve been looking into Jason Bell’s background as part of my research into who might have killed him. Looking into his company, personal relationships, etc. And, I don’t know...’ She paused, an apologetic look on her face, teeth gritted. ‘I’ve found some troubling connections to another case. I didn’t want to bother you with them, but I really think you should take a look.’

The duct tape and rope taken from Green Scene Ltd, and the company’s connection with the dump sites. The recording of her old interview with Jess Walker about a security alarm set off on the premises on the same night Tara Yates and Andie died. The username for Andie’s secret second email address, and the just-reset password. A photo of the school planner on Andie’s desk, the purple paddle hairbrush beside it. And this family photo, with the necklace and the earrings.

‘Becca’s still wearing them. I know because I’ve been visiting her. Maybe it’s just me, but don’t these look exactly like the earrings the DT Killer took from Julia Hunter as a trophy?’

The voice in her head that sounded like Ravi told her not to. The real one would probably agree; that she should try not to bring any more attention to herself. But Pip had to do this, for Billy, for his mum, and so that the other Pip in that other life – the one who made the other choice – wasn’t right.

Pip collected everything she needed to free a man, and she left.

That same journey again, to the police station in Amersham, but this time Pip completed it. And there was no black hole in her chest any more, only determination; only rage and fear and determination. Her final chance to set everything right. Save Billy, take on Hawkins, take down Jason Bell and Max Hastings, save Ravi, save herself, live a normal life. The end was the beginning and both were running out.

She pulled up into an empty space in the car park, checked her eyes in the rear-view mirror and opened the door.

Pip shouldered her rucksack with everything inside, and slammed the door, the sound clapping through the quiet Thursday afternoon.

But it wasn’t quiet, not any more as Pip walked up to the bricked building and the bad, bad place. A rush of tyres on concrete behind her, lots of them, peeling to a stop.