Max started the engine and reversed. Pulling away just as the explosions began behind them. Those rows and rows of mowers blowing up, firing into the night like gunshots. Six holes in Stanley’s chest.
A yellow flare-up that set the sky ablaze, growing smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror. Someone would hear that, Pip told herself as Max drove, another blast cracking the earth around them, much louder than a thousand screams. A billowing column of smoke smothering the low moon.
Max Hastings got home at 3:27 a.m. after killing Jason Bell.
Pip pulled up into the drive outside the Hastings house, parking the car exactly where it had been before, at the start of the night. She switched off the engine; the headlights blinked off and the darkness crept in.
Ravi pulled himself up from the back seat, stretched out his neck. ‘Glad the petrol light came on, just to give this night one last jolt of adrenaline. Really needed one last hit.’
‘Yeah,’ Pip exhaled, ‘that was a fun little plot twist.’
They couldn’t have stopped to fill up the car, of course; they were supposed to be Max Hastings, and petrol stations were covered in security cameras. But they’d made it home – Pip’s eyes constantly flicking to the warning light – and now it didn’t matter any more.
‘I should go in alone,’ Pip said, grabbing her rucksack and pulling out the car keys. ‘Be quick and quiet as possible. I don’t know how deep he’ll still be. You can walk home.’
‘I’ll wait,’ Ravi said, climbing out the door and carefully pushing it shut. ‘Make sure you’re OK.’
Pip stepped out, studied his face in the darkness, a streak of red in his eyes as she blipped the fob to lock Max’s car.
‘He’s unconscious,’ she said.
‘He’s still a rapist,’ Ravi replied. ‘I’ll wait. Go on, get it done.’
‘OK.’
Pip moved silently up to the front door, a glance at the taped-up cameras either side. She slid the house key into the lock and stepped inside the dark, sleeping house.
She could hear Max’s breaths from the sofa, deep and rattling, moving forward with each in and out to hide her steps beneath the sound. She wiped the car keys on Max’s hoodie; neither of them had touched them with their bare hands, but she wanted to be sure.
Upstairs first, her steps light and cautious, trekking mud from the crime scene into the carpet. She flicked on the light in Max’s bedroom, and dropped her bag to the floor, removing Max’s cap from her head and peeling his hoodie away from the one she was wearing underneath, careful not to dislodge her beanie. Pip checked the grey material for any of her dark hairs that might have caught. It was clear.
She studied the sleeves, to find the one with the bloodstain. Moved silently across the landing to the bathroom. Light on. Tap on. Dipped the bloody sleeve under the water, rubbed at it with her gloved fingers until the blood faded to a muted brown mark. She took it back to his bedroom with her, over to the wash basket where she’d found it. Pushed aside the towering pile of clothes and dumped the grey hoodie in, shoving it down to the very bottom.
She unlaced Max’s shoes, her own feet looking oversized and ridiculous in their five extra pairs of socks. The zigzag soles of his trainers were still caked in mud, clumps falling away as Pip placed them at the very back of his wardrobe, building up another pile of shoes around them, to hide them. From Max, not from the people who really mattered, the forensic team.
She went back for the cap, replacing it where she’d found it, balancing atop the hangers, and then closed the wardrobe. She returned to her bag, putting her own shoes on and reached inside for the sandwich bag with Max’s phone. Crept back down the stairs with it gripped in her hand.
Pip shuffled down the hallway, closer to him, closer, when all she wanted was to recoil, hide, in case two bright eyes snapped open in the middle of that angular face. The face of a killer; that’s what everyone had to believe.
One more step and she caught sight of Max over the back of the sofa, in the exact same position she’d left him more than six hours ago. Cheek crushed against the arm of the sofa and a thawed bag of peas, a string of saliva connecting him to it. Bruise darkening around his eye. Breaths so deep they shuddered his entire body.
He was out cold still. Pip checked, nudging the sofa, ready to duck if he stirred. He didn’t.
She stepped forward and slid his phone out of the sandwich bag, back on to the coffee table. She picked up his blue water bottle, took it over to the dark kitchen to wash it out several times and refill it, so there were no traces, no dregs of the drugs along the bottom.