Pip: Can you tell me what happened?
Jackie: Well, Jason Bell was here a few weeks ago, standing in line to order his coffee. He came in quite a bit. And there was someone in the queue in front of him, it was [---BEEEEEEEP---]
[…] Jason shoved him back, spilled his coffee […] told him to stay out of his way.
Pip: A physical altercation, would you say?
Jackie: Yes, it was quite violent, quite angry I’d say. […] Very clear that they disliked each other.
Pip: And you said this was just two weeks before Jason was killed?
Jackie: Yes.
Pip: Are you suggesting that [BEEP] might be the one who killed him?
Jackie: No, I… no, of course not. It’s just that I think there was already animosity between them.
Pip: Bad blood?
Jackie: Yeah […] because of what [BEEP] did to Jason’s daughter, Becca. Even though he wasn’t convicted. I’m sure that gave Jason plenty of reason to hate him.
[End clip]
Pip: I don’t know about you, but there’s already one name on my Persons of Interest list. All of this and more coming up in episode one. Join us soon for Season 3 of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: Who Killed Jason Bell?
[Insert clip]
DI Hawkins: I promise I will find out what happened to Jason – who killed him.
[End clip]
Pip: So do I.
[Jingle plays]
It began with a phone call.
‘Hi, Pip, it’s DI Hawkins here. I wonder if you have time to come down to the station today for a little chat?’
‘Sure,’ Pip had told him. ‘What’s this about?’
‘It’s about that podcast trailer you posted a couple of days ago, about the Jason Bell case. I just have a few questions for you, that’s all. It’s a voluntary interview.’
She pretended to think about it. ‘OK. I can be there in an hour?’
The hour was gone now and here she was, standing outside the bad, bad place. The greying building of Amersham Police Station, a gun going off in her heart and her hands slick with sweat and Stanley’s blood. Pip locked her car and wiped her red hands off on her jeans.
She’d called Ravi to tell him where she was going on the drive. He hadn’t said much, other than the word fuck over and over again, but Pip told him it was OK, not to panic. This was to be expected; she was indirectly involved in the case, either through her interview with Jackie, or through her phone call to Max’s lawyer that night. That’s all this would be about, and Pip knew exactly how to play her part. She was on the outskirts of this murder, that’s all, a peripheral player. Hawkins wanted information from her.
And she wanted some from him in return. This could be it: the answer to the question she couldn’t shake, the lurking undertow to every waking thought. The moment Pip learned whether they’d managed to pull it off or not, whether their time-of-death trick had worked. If it had, she was free. She’d survived. She was never there and she hadn’t killed Jason Bell. If it hadn’t worked… well, not worth thinking about quite yet. She locked that trailing thought in the dark place at the back of her mind and walked through the sliding automatic doors.
‘Hello Pip.’ Eliza the detention officer gave her a strained smile from behind the reception desk. ‘It’s all go here, I’m afraid,’ she said, her hands fidgeting a pile of papers.
‘DI Hawkins called me, asked me to come in for a chat,’ Pip replied, digging her hands into her back pockets so Eliza wouldn’t see how they shook. Calm down. Need to calm down. She could crumble inside, but she couldn’t let it show.
‘Oh, right.’ Eliza stepped back. ‘I’ll just go tell him you’re here, then.’
Pip waited.
She watched as an officer she knew, Soraya, hurried through reception, stopping only briefly to swap quick hellos and how are yous. Pip wasn’t covered in blood this time, not the kind you could see, anyway.
As Soraya walked through the locked door at the back, someone else came through the other way. DI Hawkins, his limp hair pushed back, his face paler than usual, greyer, as though he’d spent too much time in this building and its colour was leaching into him too, claiming him.
He can’t have slept much since Jason’s body was found.
‘Hi, Pip.’ He beckoned her over and she followed.
Down that same corridor, from the bad, bad place to the worse, worse place. Treading in her own out-of-time footsteps again. But this one, this Pip, she was the one in control, not that scared girl who’d just seen death for the first time. And she might be following Hawkins now, into Interview Room 3, but really he was following her.