The screaming was still there inside, inhuman and angry, trapped in Pip’s bones. The sputt-sputt-sputt of a phantom printer in her ears. Both fighting against the gun in her heart. Not even a run could take them away or distract her. A run so hard she thought it might split her in two, all the violence and darkness within leaking out on to the pavement. Checking over her shoulder for Max Hastings with his slicked-back hair and his gloating eyes, but he hadn’t been there.
The run was a bad idea. Now she felt like she couldn’t move, lying here on the rug in her bedroom. Cocooned in cold air. Embalmed. She hadn’t slept at all. She’d taken the last of the Xanax almost immediately after her parents left her room last night. She’d closed her eyes and time had skipped, but it hadn’t felt like sleep. It felt like drowning.
Now she had none. Nothing at all. No crutch.
That got her to move, finally, picking herself up, cold sweat in the waistline of her leggings. She staggered towards her desk, plugs hanging loose beneath it. She’d unplugged everything in the room. The printer. The speakers. Her laptop. Her lamp. Her phone charger. All lifeless, trailing wires.
She opened the second drawer, snaked her hand inside and pulled out the burner phone at the front of the line. The same she’d used to text Luke on Wednesday. It was Saturday now, and she’d still not heard back from him. And now she was all out.
She turned on the phone and began to type, frustrated at how slow it was, pressing 4 three times just to get to I.
I’m out. Need more ASAP
Why hadn’t Luke replied yet? He normally would have by now. This couldn’t go wrong too, not on top of everything else. She had to sleep properly tonight; she could already feel her brain moving too slow, sluggish to connect thought to thought. She replaced the burner phone in the drawer, startled by a buzz from her real phone.
Ravi again. You back from your run?
He’d insisted on coming over when she’d called him earlier, still slurry from the pills as she told him about the printer and the speakers. But Pip said no. She needed a run to clear her head. And then she needed to go talk to Nat da Silva about her brother. Alone. Ravi had eventually relented, as long as she kept checking in with him all day. And there was no question about it: Pip was staying over at his house tonight. Dinner too. No question at all, he’d told her in his serious voice. Pip supposed it was a sensible idea, but what if DT somehow knew?
Look, one thing at a time. Tonight was a lifetime away, so was Ravi. She texted him a quick yes, I’m fine. Love you. But now she had to focus on her next task: talk to Nat.
It was the first thing she had to do, and the last thing she wanted to. Talking to Nat, speaking it out loud would make it real. Hey, Nat, do you think it’s at all possible that your brother is a serial killer? Yes, I know, I have a history of accusing you and your family members of murder.
They were close now, she and Nat. Found family. Found, that is, in violence and tragedy, but found nonetheless. Pip counted Nat on her fingers as one of the people who would look for her if she disappeared. Losing Nat would be far worse than losing that finger. What if this talk pushed that bond just a little too far, pushed it to breaking point?
But what choice did she have? All the signs were pointing to Daniel da Silva: he fitted the profile, he used to work at Green Scene and could very well have been the one who set off that security alarm while Jason Bell was at a dinner party, his red-flag interest in the case as a fellow officer, practically one of them, someone close to the Bells that Andie could have been afraid of, someone who had reason to hate Pip.
It all fitted. The path of least resistance.
Gunshots in her chest. Quick couplets that sounded like DT DT DT.
Pip glanced at her phone again. Fuck. How had it just gone three o’clock? She hadn’t emerged from her duvet – the last safe place – until midday, the pills too heavy in her chest to stand before then. And the run had been long, too long. Now she was hesitating, talking herself into it when she just needed to go.
No time for a shower. She peeled off her sweaty top and replaced it with a grey hoodie, zipping it up over her sports bra. She placed her water bottle and her keys in her open rucksack and removed the USB microphones; this conversation with Nat was not one for anyone else’s ears. Ever. Then she remembered she was staying at Ravi’s tonight: she grabbed a pair of underwear and some clothes for tomorrow, fetching her toothbrush from the bathroom. Although she might actually come back here first, to check the burner phone and see whether Luke had any pills for her. The idea was hot and shameful. Pip zipped up the bag and shouldered it, grabbing her headphones and her phone before she left the room.