‘Was my favourite sports bra, you fucker,’ she muttered to herself as she took the scissors to them, cutting the stretchy material into small strips, and then into smaller squares. She did the same to her leggings, and her hoodie and all the clothes that had come into contact with Jason Bell or his blood. The cleaning cloths too. Cutting and snipping, and as she did, imagining a scene ten miles away, the fire brigade arriving at an out-of-control fire at a medium-sized grounds maintenance and cleaning company, summoned by a call from a concerned neighbour, not close enough to hear screams, but close enough to hear the sound of explosions in the night, wondering if they were fireworks.
A wet pile building up in front of her, mismatched squares of material.
The gloves next, cutting the latex ones into two-inch pieces. The material of the Green Scene work gloves was thicker, harder to cut, but Pip persisted, making sure to decimate the logo. Ravi’s mum’s mittens too, not tied to the crime scene, but Ravi had worn them when picking up Max’s car, and there might be fibres left inside; they had to be destroyed too. No room for errors or mistakes, even a microscopic one could mean the undoing of the plan and the undoing of Pip.
She cut the duct tape into two-inch pieces, finding where the gap in her left eyebrow had come from, the small hairs stuck into the tape that had wrapped her face. And finally, she snipped the rubber tube into tiny pieces, pushing the trainers and the two burner phones aside; she’d have to get rid of those some other way.
But the rest of it, this pile in front of her, it was all going one place: down the toilet.
Thank fuck for central sewage systems. As long as she didn’t block the pipes in the house – and she’d cut the pieces small to make sure that didn’t happen – everything here, all of this incriminating evidence, would end up at a public sewage treatment centre, no possible way to ever trace it back to her, or this house. Not that they would ever be found anyway; people flushed all sorts of things. It would all be filtered out of the sewage and end up in some landfill somewhere, or even incinerated. As close to disappearing as it was possible to get. No traces. Air-tight, iron-clad. It never happened.
Pip grabbed the clear bag of the remaining Rohypnol pills first; she didn’t like the way they were looking at her, and she didn’t trust herself around them. She grabbed a small handful of cut-up material too and, treading quietly, she walked across to the bathroom, closed the door, lowered her hands into the toilet bowl and dropped it all in.
She flushed, and watched it disappear, the pills the last thing to be sucked away by the whirlpool. Her family shouldn’t wake; they slept like the dead. And the flush was quiet, especially with the bathroom door shut.
The toilet bowl refilled as normal. Good. She shouldn’t try to push it, keep it to a small handful each time, and leave several minutes between every flush, so there was no build up anywhere in the pipes.
Pip quickly worked it out in her head. She had this toilet here, in the upstairs family bathroom, and the one downstairs near the front door. Two toilets, small handfuls, that large pile of evidence. This was going to take a while. But she had to be done before her family woke up. On the flip side, she couldn’t let her exhaustion make her rush, take too much at a time and cause a blockage in the pipes.
Pip went back for a second handful, sharing it between her cupped hands as she crept down the stairs – skipped the third step – and flushed it down the toilet.
Alternating trips, to the bathroom, and to the downstairs toilet, leaving enough time between each to refill. Doubting herself every time she flushed, that brief second of panic where it seemed like the toilet wasn’t refilling and oh shit she must have blocked it, she was finished, it was over, but the water always came back.
She wondered if the fire service had called the police in as soon as they saw the burned-out car and smelled the accelerant. It was a clear case of arson. Or would they wait, until they had the fire under control, and could see the bloody concrete floor in the ruined building?
Another handful. Another flush. Pip resting her mind in the repetition, just letting her hands do all the work for her, all the thinking. Up and down, to the pile and out.
At 6 a.m., her mind stirred back to life behind her dried-out eyes, wondering if the police were now just arriving at the smoky scene, nodding as the firefighters pointed out the obvious signs of foul play. It was clear someone had been badly hurt here, maybe even killed. Look at that hammer, we think that might have been the weapon. Were they starting their searches of the surrounding area? It wouldn’t take long for them to find the tarp, and the dead man inside it.