Ravi considered for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip.
‘How would we manipulate those factors?’ he said, eyes ahead, skimming over dead Jason and back.
‘Temperature,’ Pip said. ‘Temperature is the main one. Colder temperatures slow the onset of rigor mortis, and lividity – that’s the blood pooling. But also, with lividity, if you turn the body before the blood has settled, it will re-settle again. And if you could turn the body a few times, you could buy yourself hours there, alongside cooling the body.’
Ravi nodded, turning his head, studying their surroundings. ‘How could we cool his body, though? I suppose it was too much to ask for Jason Bell to have owned a fridge-freezer company instead.’
‘The problem is body temperature, though. If we keep him cool to delay rigor and lividity, his body temperature will also drop. He will be too cold, and the plan won’t work. So we would have to cool him down, and then be able to warm him up again.’
‘Right,’ Ravi said, with a disbelieving sniff. ‘So, we’ve just got to put him in a freezer and then pop him in a microwave. Fuck, I can’t believe we are even talking about this. This is crazy. This is crazy, Pip.’
‘Not a freezer,’ Pip said, following Ravi’s lead, looking at the Green Scene complex with new eyes. ‘That’s too cold. More like a fridge temperature. And then, of course, after we’ve warmed him up again, we will have to make sure his body is found only a few hours later, by the police, and the medical examiner. Otherwise none of this will work. We need him to be warm and stiff when they find him, and his skin still blanchable – that means the pooled blood moves when you press the skin. If that’s the early morning, then they should think he died six to eight hours before then.’
‘Will it work?’
Pip shrugged, a near-laugh in her throat. Ravi was right; this was crazy. But she was alive, she was alive, and she was very nearly not. At least this was better than that. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never killed someone and got away with murder before,’ she sniffed. ‘But it should work. The science works. I did a lot of research when I was looking at that Jane Doe case. If we can do all that: cool him down, turn him a couple of times, and then heat him back up, it should work. It will look like he died more like – I don’t know – nine o’clock, ten o’clock. And we will both be somewhere else by then. Iron-clad.’
‘OK,’ Ravi nodded. ‘OK, that sounds, well, it sounds crazy, but I think we can do it. I think we might actually be able to do this. It’s a good thing you’re such an expert in murder.’
Pip pulled a face at him.
‘No, I mean, like, from studying it, not killing people. I hope this is the first and last time.’ Ravi tried and failed at a smile, shifting on his feet. ‘One thing though – say we’re actually going to try to pull this off, and we want them to find his body so this time-of-death manipulation works. Well, they’re going to know that someone killed him. And they will look for a killer until they find one. That’s what the police do, Pip. They’ll have to have a killer.’
Pip tilted her head, studied Ravi’s eyes, her reflection captured inside them. This was why she needed him; he pushed her forward or reined her back when she didn’t know she needed it. He was right. This would never work. They could shift the time of death and make sure they were far away from here in that time frame, but the police would still need a killer. They would look until they found one, and if she and Ravi made even one mistake, then…
‘You’re right,’ she nodded, her hand moving out to take his, before she remembered. ‘It won’t work. They need a killer. Someone has to have killed Jason Bell. Someone else.’
‘OK, so…’ Ravi began, talking them back to square one, but Pip’s mind wandered away from him, flipped over to show her all those things at the very back. The things she hid away: the terror, the shame, the blood on her hands, the red, red, violent red thoughts, and one face hanging there, angular and pale.
‘I know,’ Pip said, cutting Ravi off. ‘I know who the killer is. I know who’s going to have killed Jason Bell.’
‘What?’ Ravi stared at her. ‘Who?’
It was inevitable. Full circle. The end was the beginning and the beginning was the end. Back to the very start, to the origin, to set it all right.
‘Max Hastings,’ she said.
Twelve minutes.
Twelve minutes was all it took. Pip knew because she’d checked the time on the burner phone as she and Ravi talked it through. She thought it would have taken much longer, it should have taken much longer, a plan to set someone up for murder. Agonizing hours and a cascade of details, tiny yet critical. That’s what you’d think, what Pip would’ve thought. But twelve minutes and they were done. Ideas back and forth, picking holes in them and plugging the gaps when they found them. Who and where and when. Pip didn’t want to involve anyone else, but Ravi made her see it couldn’t be done, not without help. The entire thing almost unravelled until Ravi came up with the mobile phone tower idea, from a case he was working on at the firm, and Pip knew exactly what call to make. Twelve minutes, and there the plan was, like a physical thing between them. Precious and solid and clear and binding. They could never go back from this, go back to who they were before. It would be difficult, and it would be tight; they could make no wrong turns, no delays. No room for error.