Pip gripped the window frame and pulled herself forward, sliding her legs out ahead of her. She held on as she dipped her shoulders and head and manoeuvred them out too. She stared down at the gravel, at the hammer, and she let go.
Landed. Hard on her feet, the force ricocheting up her legs. A pain in her left knee. But she was free, she was alive. A breath came out too hard that it was almost a laugh. She’d done it. She’d survived.
Pip listened. The only sound was the wind in the trees, some of it finding the new holes in her too, blowing through her ribcage. Pip bent down and picked up her hammer, holding it at her side, just in case. But as she rounded the corner of the building, she could see that the complex was empty. Jason’s car wasn’t here and the gate was locked again. The metal fence at the front was high, too high, she’d never be able to climb it. But the back of the yard was bordered by woods, and the fence was unlikely to encircle those too.
New plan: she just had to follow the trees. Follow the trees, find a road, find a house, find someone, call the police. That was all. The easy parts left, just one foot in front of the other.
One foot in front of the other, the crunch of gravel. She walked past the parked vans, and large bins and machines, trailers with ride-on mowers, and a small fork-lift over there. One foot in front of the other. Gravel became dirt became the crunch of leaves. The last of the daylight was gone, but the moon was out early, watching over Pip. She was surviving: one foot in front of the other, that’s all it took. Her trainers and the leaves crunching beneath them. She dropped the hammer and carried on through the trees.
A new sound stopped her in her tracks.
The distant drone of a car engine. The slam of a car door far behind her. The shrieking of a gate.
Pip darted behind a tree and stared back into the complex.
Two yellow headlights, winking at her through the branches, as they pulled forward. Wheels on gravel.
It was DT. Jason Bell. He’d returned. He was back to kill her.
But he wouldn’t find her there, only the parts she’d left behind. Pip was out, she’d escaped. All she had to do was find a house, find a person, call the police. The easy parts. She could do that. She turned, leaving the headlights in the unknown behind her. Moving on, picking up her pace. She just had to call the police and tell them everything; that DT had just tried to kill her and she knew who he was. She could even call DI Hawkins directly, he’d understand.
She faltered, one foot hovering above the ground.
Wait.
Would he understand?
He never understood. Not any of it. And it wasn’t even a question of understanding, it was a question of believing. He’d come right out and said it to her face, said gently but said all the same: that she was imagining it. She didn’t have a stalker, she was just seeing things, seeing danger around every corner because of the trauma she’d lived through. Even though he’d been part of that trauma, because he hadn’t believed her when she went to him about Jamie.
It was a repeating pattern. No, not a pattern, it was a circle. That’s what this all was, everything winding up, coming full circle. The end was the beginning. Hawkins hadn’t believed her before, twice, so why did she think he’d believe her now?
And the voice in her head wasn’t Ravi any more, it was Hawkins. Said gently, but said all the same. ‘The DT Killer is already in prison. He’s been there for years. He confessed.’ That’s what he’d say.
‘Billy Karras isn’t the DT Killer,’ Pip would counter. ‘It’s Jason Bell.’
Hawkins shook his head inside hers. ‘Jason Bell is a respectable man. A husband, a father. He’s already been through so much, because of Andie. I’ve known him for years, we play tennis sometimes. He’s a friend. Don’t you think I’d know? He’s not the DT Killer and he’s not a danger to you, Pip. Are you still talking to someone? Are you getting help?’
‘I’m asking you for help.’
Asking him again and again, and when would she finally learn? Break the circle?
And if her worst fears were right, if the police didn’t believe her, didn’t arrest Jason, then what? DT would still be out there. Jason might take her again, or someone else. Take someone she cared about to punish her, because she was too loud and had to be silenced some way. He’d get away with it. They always got away with it. Him. Max Hastings. Above the law because the law was wrong. A legion of dead girls and dead-eyed girls left behind them.
‘They won’t believe me,’ Pip told herself, in her own voice now. ‘They never believe us.’ Out loud so she would truly listen this time, understand. She was on her own. Charlie Green wasn’t the one with all the answers; she was. She didn’t need to hear it from him to know what to do this time.