There was another reason she had to do this and do this alone, of course. But she couldn’t tell Ravi; he wouldn’t understand because it didn’t make sense, it was beyond that. It couldn’t fit into words, even if she tried. Pip had asked for this, wished for it, begged for it. One last case, the right one, to fix all of the cracks inside herself. And if Billy Karras was innocent, and if the man who wanted her to disappear was DT, then she couldn’t have wished for something more perfect. There was no grey area here, none at all, not even a trace. The DT Killer was the closest thing to evil the world could offer her. There was no good in him at all: no mistakes, no good intentions twisted, no redemption, nothing like that. And if Pip were the one to finally catch him, to free an innocent man, that would be an objectively good thing. No ambiguity. No guilt. Good and bad set right inside her again. No gun in her heart or blood on her hands. This would fix everything so it could go back to normal. To Team Ravi and Pip living their normal lives. Save herself to save herself. That’s why she had to do this her way.
‘Is that… is that better?’ she asked him.
‘Yes.’ He gave her a weak smile. ‘That’s better. So, concrete evidence.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘I’m guessing Jason Bell didn’t tell you anything useful?’
‘Ah, that,’ she said, clicking her pen again, and all she could hear was DT DT DT. ‘Yeah, no, he didn’t give me anything and basically told me to never darken their doorway again.’
‘I thought it might go that way,’ Ravi said. ‘I think they like their privacy, the Bells. Andie never even invited Sal over when they were together. And, of course, you are chief doorway darkener, Sarge.’
‘But,’ she said, ‘I do think the security alarm at Green Scene that night is key. That it was DT breaking in to get the duct tape and the rope he needed, for Tara. And he must have left before Jason Bell got there to check it out. Whether it was Billy or… someone else.’
‘Someone else,’ Ravi said absently, chewing on the phrase. ‘So that FBI profiler from that article, before Billy was caught, said that the DT Killer was a white man who could be anywhere from their early twenties to mid-forties.’
Pip nodded.
‘I guess that rules Max Hastings out,’ he sniffed.
‘Yeah,’ she said grudgingly. ‘He would have been just seventeen at the time of the first murder. And the night Tara died, and Andie Bell too, Max had Sal and Naomi Ward and the others round his house. He could have left when the others were asleep, but I don’t think it fits. And he has no connection to Green Scene. So, yeah, not him, as much as I want to put Max Hastings away for life.’
‘But Daniel da Silva used to work at Green Scene, right?’ Ravi asked.
‘Yes, he did,’ she said, her teeth gritted. ‘I just worked out the timeline this afternoon.’ She flipped through the scribbles in her notebook. She knew Daniel da Silva’s exact age, because he’d been one of the men in town who’d matched Charlie Green’s age profile for Child Brunswick. ‘Had to scroll back really far on his Facebook. He worked as the caretaker at school from 2008 to 2009, when he was around twenty years old. Then he started working at Green Scene at the end of 2009, and he stayed there until October-ish 2011, I think, when he started his police training. So, he was twenty-one when he started at Green Scene, and twenty-three when he left.’
‘And he was still working there when the first two DT murders happened?’ Ravi said, pressing his lips into a thin line.
‘The first three, actually. Bethany Ingham was killed August 2011. I think she used to be Dan’s supervisor, as well as Billy’s. The name redacted in the police transcript – I think that’s Daniel Billy’s talking about. Then Jason Bell gave Dan a job in the office – rather than out in the field, as it were – and that was at the start of 2011, as far as I can tell. Oh, and he married his wife, Kim, in September 2011. They’d been together for years before that.’
‘Interesting,’ Ravi said, running his hand over Pip’s curtains, checking they were fully closed.
She grunted in agreement, a dark sound at the back of her throat, as she flipped back to her to-do list in the notebook. Most of the crudely drawn boxes beside were now filled with ticks. ‘So, if Jason won’t talk to me, I’ve had a look to see if there are any ex-employees of Green Scene or Clean Scene – people who worked in the office who might know more about that security alarm on the 20th April 2012. I found a couple on LinkedIn and I’ve sent them a message.’