‘Happy heating,’ Pip said, stepping out of the car, shutting the door behind her. She closed the other doors too, sealing Jason back up inside the warming car, his temporary tomb.
A rattling sound behind her. Footsteps.
Pip turned, a gasp ready in her throat. But it was only Ravi, returning from the office.
She told him off with her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Look what I found.’ In one hand he was holding a Tesco Bag for Life, filled with assorted anti-bac spray bottles, bleach and dusting cloths. On top of the pile was a wrapped-up extension cord, black and industrial. And in his other arm, clasped in the nook of his elbow and draped around his neck, was a vacuum cleaner. Red, its two eyes glancing coyly up at the night sky. ‘I found a Henry Hoover,’ he said, giving the machine a little shake, making it say hello.
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Pip said.
‘And this massive extension cord, so we can go over any places you were, in case any hairs are left behind. The boot too.’ He nodded at Jason’s car.
‘Yeah,’ Pip said, unnerved by the innocent smile on Henry Hoover’s face, a forever grin, just as happy to help them clear up a crime scene. ‘I’m afraid he’s stolen your job, though.’
‘What, the comic relief?’ Ravi asked. ‘That’s fine, he’s better suited to it, and I’m more of a leadership role anyway. Co-CEO of Team Ravi and Pip.’
‘Ravi?’
‘Yeah, right, sorry, nervous rambling. Still not used to seeing a dead body up close. Let’s get going.’
They started in the chemical storeroom, carefully stepping over and around the pool of blood. They didn’t need to clean that, they would leave the blood there, untouched; Max had to have killed Jason somewhere, after all. And they needed the blood as a signal, to tell the first people on the scene that something bad – very bad – had happened here, so they’d look for a body, and find it, while Jason was still warm and stiff. That was important.
Ravi plugged the extension cord in from an outlet in the larger storage room – where the machines were kept – and started vacuuming. He went over and over the places Pip pointed out to him. Everywhere she’d been dragged, everywhere she’d walked and run in a blind panic. Everywhere he’d been too. Careful to keep a margin around the spot where Jason died, and the river of blood.
Pip worked on the shelves, a spray bottle in one hand, a cloth in the other. She went up and down the upturned shelves, the metal poles, spraying and wiping everywhere she’d touched or brushed up against. Every side, every angle. Finding the screw and nut she’d removed from the shelf and wiping those down too. Her fingerprints were already on file; she couldn’t leave even a partial behind.
She climbed up the collapsed shelves again, like a ladder, painstakingly wiping anywhere she might have touched: the lip of the metal shelves, the plastic vats of weedkiller and fertilizer. Up to the wall and around the smashed window, even polishing the pieces of jagged glass left in the frame, in case she’d touched those.
Clambering back down carefully, avoiding Ravi as he vacuumed back and forth, and over to the toolbox on the workbench at the far end. Pip removed everything from inside it; she could have touched anything as her hand burrowed through. One by one she wiped down every single one of the tools, even the individual drill heads and fittings. She ran out one of the spray bottles and had to fetch another, carrying on. She’d touched the Post-it note about Blue team’s tools; she remembered doing it. She peeled the note off, crumpled it and shoved it in the front pocket of her rucksack to take home.
The blood had almost dried on the hammer as Pip picked it up from its resting place, clumps of Jason’s hair stuck in the gore. Pip left that end as it was, wiping up and down the handle, again and again, removing any traces of herself. Replacing it close to the river of blood, staging it.
Door handles, locks, Jason’s large ring of Green Scene keys, light switches, the cupboard in the office building that Ravi touched. All of it, wiped and wiped again. Once more over the shelves to be sure.
When Pip finally looked up, ticking another box in her head, she checked the time on the burner phone. It had just ticked past 2:30 a.m.; they’d been cleaning for close to two hours, and Pip was warm with sweat inside her hoodie.
‘I think I’m done,’ Ravi said, re-emerging from the larger storeroom, an empty jerry can in his hands.
‘Yeah.’ Pip nodded, slightly breathless. ‘Just the car to do after. Mostly the boot. And his car keys. But it’s been almost two hours now,’ she said, glancing through the open storeroom door, back into the dark night. ‘I think it’s time.’