‘No, I’m… I’m fine,’ she said, that small, cavernous word again, hiding all sorts of dark things. ‘Just from the tape. I’m fine.’
‘So, how did…？’ Ravi began, his eyes abandoning her again, slipping back over to the dead man twelve feet away.
‘He left me, tied up,’ Pip sniffed. ‘I don’t know where he went, or for how long. But I managed to push over the shelves, get free and take off the tape. There’s a window, I broke out of it. And –’
‘OK, OK,’ he cut her off. ‘OK, that’s OK, Pip. It’s going to be OK. Fuck,’ he said again, more to himself than her. ‘Whatever you did, it was in selfdefence, OK? Selfdefence. He was going to kill you, so you had to kill him. That’s what this is. Selfdefence, and that’s OK, Pip. We just need to call the police, OK? Tell them what happened, what he did to you and that it was selfdefence.’
Pip shook her head.
‘No?’ Ravi lowered his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean, no, Pip? We have to call the police. There’s a dead man on the ground over there.’
‘It wasn’t selfdefence,’ she said quietly. ‘I had escaped. I was free. I could have walked away. But I saw him return, and I went back. I killed him, Ravi. Snuck up behind him and hit him with a hammer. I chose to kill him. It wasn’t selfdefence. I had a choice.’
Ravi was shaking his head now; he still couldn’t see it, the full picture. ‘No, no, no. He was going to kill you, that’s why you killed him. That’s selfdefence, Pip. It’s OK.’
‘I killed him.’
‘Because he was going to kill you,’ Ravi said, his voice rising.
‘How do you know that?’ Pip said. She had to make him see, make him see that selfdefence wasn’t an option here, as she’d already realized, pacing up and down.
‘How do I know that?’ Ravi asked, incredulous. ‘Because he took you. Because he’s the DT Killer.’
‘The DT Killer has been in prison for more than six years,’ Pip said, not in her own voice. ‘He confessed. There have been no killings since.’
‘What? B-but–’
‘He pleaded guilty in court. There was evidence. Forensic and circumstantial. The DT Killer is already in prison. So why did I kill this man?’
Ravi’s eyes narrowed, confused. ‘Because he was the real DT Killer!’
‘The DT Killer is already in prison,’ Pip repeated, watching his eyes, waiting for him to understand. ‘Jason Bell was a respectable man. A managing director of a mid-size company, and no one has a bad word to say about him. Acquaintances, friends even, with DI Richard Hawkins. Jason has already been through a tragedy, a tragedy – you might argue – that I made much worse. So, why did I have a fixation on Jason Bell? Why was I trespassing on his private property on a Saturday evening? Why did I sneak up behind him and hit him with a hammer? Not just once. I don’t know how many times. Go look at him, Ravi. Go look. I didn’t just kill him. Overkill, that’s the term, isn’t it? And that is incompatible with selfdefence. So, why did I kill this nice, respectable man?’
‘Because he was the DT Killer?’ Ravi said, less certain now.
‘The DT Killer is already in prison. He confessed,’ she said, and she saw the shift in Ravi’s eyes as he understood what she was telling him.
‘That’s what you think the police will say.’
‘It doesn’t matter what the truth is,’ Pip said. ‘What matters is a narrative they will find acceptable. Believable. And they won’t believe my narrative. What evidence do I have other than my word? Jason got away with this for years. There might not be any evidence that he was DT.’ She deflated. ‘I don’t trust them, Ravi. I trusted the police before and they’ve let me down every single time. If we call them, the most likely outcome is that I’m going away for the rest of my life for murder. Hawkins already thinks I’m unhinged. And maybe I am. I killed him, Ravi. I knew what I was doing. And I don’t even think I regret it.’
‘Because he was going to kill you. Because he’s a monster,’ Ravi said, reaching for her hand, before remembering the blood and letting his arm fall to his side. ‘The world is better off without him. Safer.’
‘It is,’ she agreed, looking back again, checking Jason hadn’t moved, wasn’t listening in. ‘But no one else will understand that.’
‘Well, what the fuck are we going to do?’ Ravi asked, shifting his weight from foot to foot, a quiver in his lip. ‘You can’t go down for murder. That’s not fair, that’s not what this was. You… I don’t know if we can say it was the right thing, but it wasn’t wrong. It’s not like what he did to those women. He deserved it. And I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. That’s your whole life, Pip. Our whole life.’