‘Perfect,’ Ravi said, picking up two jerry cans so she only had to carry one. It felt heavier than it should, the weight of the dead body still in her muscles somehow.
‘We should lead the fire in here too,’ Pip said, dousing a row of still-full mowers in the petrol, pouring a trail behind her as they walked back towards the chemical storeroom. ‘We want things to go boom. Blow out the windows to cover up the one I broke.’
‘Lots of things to go boom in here,’ Ravi said, flicking the lights off with his elbow as he followed her. He tilted one of his cans, pouring a thick trail of petrol alongside Pip’s as they stepped together. She doused the workbench and Ravi continued on to the upturned shelving unit, lifting the can high to splash petrol all over it, spattering against the plastic vats and dripping down the metal shelves.
They coated the room, the walls, the floor, a new river along the concrete, beside the weedkiller in the gutter. Pip’s can was almost empty, the final drops splattering out on to the ground as she avoided the pool of blood; they didn’t want that to burn. The fire was to bring the police here, the blood was to send them out to Jason. That’s how this night would finally end, in fire and blood, and a sweep of the trees to find what Pip had left for them.
Ravi finished his can too, threw it behind his shoulder back into the room.
Pip stepped outside, and let the night breeze play across her face, breathing it in until she felt steady again. She didn’t, not until Ravi was standing beside her, holding her gloved hand in his, that small gesture anchoring her. The final jerry can was in his other hand.
There was a question in his eyes and Pip nodded.
Ravi turned to Jason’s SUV. He started in the boot, soaking the carpet floor and the plastic sides. Over the retractable cover and on to the soft material of the ceiling. Covering the back seats and the footwells, and into the front too. He left the can on the back seat where Jason had laid, some petrol still sloshing around inside it.
Boom, he mimed with his hands.
Pip had pulled on Max’s baseball cap now, over the beanie she already wore, so it would never touch her, never pick up a trace. And one last thing from the rucksack before she pulled the straps over her shoulders. In went the rubber tube that Ravi had pressed his mouth to, out came the lighter that her mum used to light their Autumn Spice candle every evening.
Pip readied the lighter in her hand, pulling out the strips of cardboard.
She clicked it, and a small blueish flame emerged at the end. Pip held it to a corner of the cardboard, waiting for it to catch. She let the fire grow, whispering to it, welcoming it to the world.
‘Step back,’ she told Ravi as she leaned forward and threw it into the boot of Jason’s car.
A whirl of bright yellow flames erupted with a loud roar, growing and spreading, licking out towards her face.
Hot, so incredibly hot, drying out her eyes, cleaving at her throat.
‘Nothing cleans like fire,’ Pip said, handing the lighter and another strip of cardboard to Ravi as he walked back towards the storeroom.
The click of the lighter, the flame eating up the cardboard, adolescent and slow. Until Ravi threw it on to their new river, and that small flame exploded into an inferno, high and angry. The screaming of ghosts as it melted plastic and began to twist metal.
‘I’ve always secretly wanted to set fire to something,’ Ravi said, returning to her, re-taking her hand, fingers fusing together as the gravel crunched under their feet and the flames flickered at their backs.
‘Well,’ Pip said, her voice rough and scorched, ‘arson is another crime we can tick off the list tonight.’
‘Think we’ve probably got a full house by now,’ he replied. ‘Bingo.’
They walked towards Max’s car.
Back out the waiting gates of Green Scene Ltd, those spiked metal posts like an open jaw, spitting them out as its body withered and burned.
Pip blinked as they stepped through, picturing these gates in a few hours, blue and white crime scene tape wrapped across them, barring the way, the buzz of murmured voices and police radios in the smoky aftermath. A body bag and the squeaking wheels of a gurney.
Follow the fire, follow the blood, follow her story. That’s all they had to do. It was out of her hands now.
Their fingers broke apart as Pip dropped into the driver’s seat and shut herself in. Ravi opened the back door, climbing inside and laying down across the footwell there, to hide. He couldn’t be seen. They were taking the main roads back to Little Kilton, through as many traffic cameras as they could. Because it wasn’t Pip driving, it was Max this time, driving home after breaking a man’s head open and setting fire to the scene. Here he was, in his hoodie and his hat, if any of those cameras had a view through the windows. Pressing his shoes into the pedals, leaving behind traces of blood.