Seventeen

The Book Cellar stood out along the high street. It always had done, as far back as Pip could remember. And not just because it had been her favourite place to go, dragging her mum in by the arm when she needed just one more book. But quite literally: the owner had painted the outside of the shop a bright, cheerful purple, where the rest of the street was uniform in its clean white facades and black criss-crossing timber beams. Apparently, it had caused quite the uproar ten years ago.

Connor was lagging behind Pip on the pavement. He still wasn’t quite on board with this whole catfish theory, as he’d phrased it. Even when she pointed out that, in Connor’s own words, Jamie had been on his phone all the time in recent weeks.

‘It fits everything we know so far,’ she carried on, eyeing the bookshop up ahead. ‘Late-night phone calls. And he’s been protective about no one seeing his screen, which makes me think that his relationship with this Leila, this catfish, is a romantic one. Jamie was probably feeling vulnerable after the whole Nat da Silva situation; it’s easy to see how he might fall for someone online. Especially someone using Stella Chapman’s photos.’

‘I guess. Just not what I expected.’ Connor dipped his head into his shoulders, a gesture that could either have been a nod or a shrug.

It wasn’t the same, doing this with Connor. Ravi knew just what to say, what to pick out, how to push her into thinking clearly. And he jumped with her, hand in hand, into even her wildest conclusions. They just worked like that, teased out the best in each other, knowing when to talk and when to just be there. Ravi was still at the courthouse, but she’d called him earlier, after Stella’s interview. He’d been waiting around for Max’s defence to start because the prosecution had just rested, and they’d talked through it all together – Jamie, Leila – until it all fit. But this was the third time she’d run the explanation by Connor, and each time he’d shrugged, making the doubts creep into Pip’s mind. There wasn’t time for doubts, so Pip tried to outrun them, hurrying along the pavement as Connor struggled to keep up.

‘It’s the only explanation that fits the evidence we have,’ she said. ‘Hunches have to follow the evidence, that’s how this works.’ She turned her attention to The Book Cellar, drawing to a stop before the door. ‘When we’re finished here with this potential sighting, we’ll go back to mine and see if we can find this Leila online and confirm the theory. Oh,’ she turned to him, ‘and let me do the talking, please. It works better that way.’

‘Yeah fine,’ he said. ‘I said sorry about the Stella thing.’

‘I know. And I know you’re just worried.’ She softened her face. ‘Just leave it to me. That’s what I’m here for.’

A bell tinkled above the glass door as Pip pushed her way in. She loved the smell inside here, an ancient kind of smell, stale and timeless. You could get lost in here, a labyrinth of dark mahogany bookshelves signposted by gold metal letters. Even as a child, she’d always found herself in front of the Crime shelves.

‘Hi,’ came a deep voice from behind the counter. And then: ‘Oh, it’s you. Hi.’

The guy at the till side-stepped the desk and moved towards them across the shop floor. He looked out of place here, as tall as the very highest shelves and almost as wide, his arms thick with muscle, and his near-black hair tied back from his face in a small bun.

‘I’m Harry,’ he said, holding his hand out to Pip. ‘Scythe,’ he clarified when she shook it. ‘The one who emailed you.’

‘Yes, thank you so much for that,’ Pip said. ‘I came as soon as I could, we ran out after final bell.’ A floorboard creaked under Connor’s feet. ‘This is Connor Reynolds, Jamie’s brother.’

‘Hello,’ Harry said, pivoting the outstretched hand to Connor now too. ‘I’m sorry about your brother, man.’

Connor mumbled a few half-words.

‘Could I ask you about what you saw on Friday night?’ Pip asked. ‘Would you mind if I record us?’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Hey, Mike,’ he called to a guy restocking shelves at the back. ‘Go get Soph from the office! All three of us were there when we saw him,’ he explained.

‘Perfect. And could I set up the microphones here?’ She gestured to the desk, beside the till.

‘Sure, sure, it’s always quiet from four till closing anyway.’ Harry cleared a pile of brown paper bags so Pip could set her rucksack down. She pulled out her laptop and the two USB microphones.

Soph and Mike appeared from the back office. Pip had always been so curious about what was back there, the sort of wonder that dies a little more each year you grow older.

They swapped new hellos and introductions and Pip instructed the three Book Cellar employees to gather around one microphone. She had to raise theirs up on a stack of books to compensate for Harry’s height.

When everyone was ready, Pip pressed record and nodded pointedly. ‘So, after the memorial, Harry, you said you went to someone’s house. Where was that?’

‘It was my house,’ said Mike, scratching his beard too hard, making the blue audio line spike on Pip’s screen. He looked older than the other two, in his thirties at least. ‘On Wyvil Road.’

‘Whereabouts do you live?’

‘It’s number fifty-eight, halfway up where the road bends.’

She knew exactly where he meant. ‘OK, so you all spent the evening together?’

‘Yep,’ Soph said. ‘Us and our friend, Lucy. She’s not in today.’

‘And did you all leave Mike’s house at the same time?’

‘Yeah, I was driving,’ said Harry. ‘I dropped Soph and Lucy home on my way.’

‘OK,’ Pip said, ‘and do any of you remember what time exactly you left the house?’

‘It was, like, 11:45ish, wasn’t it?’ Harry said, glancing at his friends. ‘I tried to work it back from the time I got home.’

Mike shook his head. ‘Think it was just before that. I was already in bed at 11:45, ’cause I looked at my phone to set my alarm. I went straight up after seeing you lot off and it only takes me five minutes to get ready, so I’m thinking it was closer to 11:40.’

‘11:40? That’s great, thank you,’ Pip said. ‘And can you tell me about seeing Jamie? Where was he? What was he doing?’

‘He was walking,’ Harry said, pushing back some flyaway strands of hair. ‘Quite fast . . . with purpose, I mean. He was on the pavement on Mike’s side of the road, so he crossed only a few feet behind us. He didn’t even glance at us. Seemed totally focused on wherever he was going.’

‘Which direction was he going in?’

‘Up Wyvil Road,’ said Mike, ‘away from the centre of town.’

‘Did he go all the way up Wyvil Road? Or could he have turned off, say, down Tudor Lane or somewhere?’ she asked, holding her headphones to her ears and glancing back to check Connor was OK. He was watching intently, eyes tracking every spoken word.

‘Don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘We didn’t see him after he passed us, we went the other way to my car. Sorry.’