‘Oh,’ he said sarcastically, pulling the accompanying face. ‘Didn’t realize we were looking for clues in the night sky.’ He turned his laptop, showing her four consecutive photos of the Chinese lanterns floating against the darkness.
‘Just checking, Grumpus.’
‘That’s my word for you,’ he said. ‘You aren’t allowed to have it.’
Pip went back to her screen, clicking through the photos and videos that had been emailed over by calamity-goers. Ravi was going through the memorial photographs, more than two hundred sent in already.
‘Is this the best use of our time?’ Ravi skipped quickly through another sequence of photos. ‘We know Jamie went to the calamity party after the memorial, and now we know he left there, alive and well, at half ten. Shouldn’t we be trying to track down his movements after that?’
‘We know he left the calamity party,’ said Pip, ‘but we still don’t know why he was there, which is strange enough by itself. And then add to that the phone conversation George heard. It’s all behaviour that’s very out of character, I mean, you saw Connor’s face when I told him. It’s weird. There’s no other word for it. Jamie’s behaviour starting from the memorial is weird. It has to be relevant to his disappearance somehow.’
‘I guess.’ Ravi returned his gaze to his laptop screen. ‘So, we’re thinking Jamie spotted “someone” – whoever they are – at the memorial. He found them in the crowd and waited, then he followed them when they walked towards Highmoor and into the party. Gropey Stephen said it looked like Jamie was just standing there, watching?’
‘I think so.’ Pip chewed her bottom lip. ‘That makes most sense to me. Which means that “someone” is most likely a person at school, in my year or maybe year below.’
‘Why would Jamie follow someone from your school?’
Pip picked up on the uneasiness in Ravi’s voice, though he tried to disguise it. She felt an instinct to defend Jamie, but all she could say was, ‘I really don’t know.’ Nothing about it looked good. She was glad she’d sent Connor home with a four-page printed questionnaire about typical password elements, for him and his mum to try on Jamie’s computer. It was harder to talk about Jamie with him right there. But Pip was struggling to accept it too. They had to be missing something, something that would explain why Jamie had been there, who he was looking for. It must have been important for him to blow Nat off and ignore all her calls. But what?
Pip glanced at the time on the bottom right-hand corner of her screen. It was half four now. And with Jamie’s new last-seen-alive-and-well time of 10:32 p.m., he’d now been missing for forty-two hours. Just six hours to go until the forty-eight-hour mark. The mark by which the majority of missing persons had returned: almost seventy-five percent. But Pip had a feeling Jamie wouldn’t be one of those.
And the next problem: Pip’s family were currently out at the supermarket, her mum had texted to let her know. She’d avoided them all day, and Josh had gone with them, so he was bound to cause some delay with all his impulse buying (last time he’d persuaded Dad to buy two bags of carrot sticks, which went to waste when he remembered he didn’t actually like carrots). But even with Josh’s distractions, they’d be home soon, and there was no way they hadn’t seen Jamie’s missing posters by now.
Well, there was nothing she could do, she’d just have to deal with it when they got back. Or maybe avoid it even longer by insisting Ravi never leave; her parents probably wouldn’t yell at her in front of him.
Pip clicked through more of the photos sent in by Katie C, one of the six Katies in her year. Pip had only found evidence of Jamie in two photos of the many dozens she’d been through so far, and one wasn’t even certain. It was just the lower part of an arm, peeking out behind a group of boys posing for a photo in the hallway. The disembodied arm wore a burgundy shirt that matched Jamie’s, and the boxy black watch he’d had on too. So, it probably was him, but it gave her no real information, other than Jamie had been walking through the party at 9:16 p.m. Maybe that was when he’d first arrived?
In the other you could at least see his face, in the background of a photo of Jasveen, a girl from Pip’s year, sitting on a blue-patterned sofa. The camera was focused on Jas, who was pouting in exaggerated sadness, presumably because of the huge red drink stain down the front of her once very-white top. Jamie was standing several feet behind her, beside a darkened bay window, a little blurred, but you could pinpoint his eyes, staring diagonally out the left side of the frame. His jaw looked tense, like he was gritting his teeth. This must have been when Stephen Thompson saw him; he did look like he was watching someone. The metadata said the photo was taken at 9:38 p.m., so Jamie had been at the party for at least twenty-two minutes by this point. Had he stood there that whole time, watching?
Pip opened another email, from Chris Marshall in her English class. She downloaded the attached video file, replaced her headphones and pressed play.
It was a series of stills and short video clips: it must have been Chris’ story on either Snapchat or Instagram that he’d saved to his reel. There was a selfie of him and Peter-from-politics downing two bottles of beer, followed by a short clip of some guy Pip didn’t recognize doing a handstand while Chris cheered him on, voice crackling against the microphone. Next a photo of Chris’ tongue, which had somehow turned blue.
Then another video clip, the sound exploding into Pip’s ears, making her flinch. Voices screeched across each other, people loudly chanting, ‘Peter, Peter,’ while others in the room booed and jeered and laughed. They were in what looked like a dining room, chairs pushed back from the table which was set up with plastic cups assembled into two triangles either side.
Beer pong. They were playing beer pong. Peter-from-politics was on one side of the table, lining up the shot with a bright orange ping-pong ball, one eye screwed shut as he focused. He flicked his wrist and the ball flew out of his hand, landing with a small splash into one of the outlying cups.
Pip’s headphones vibrated with the screams that erupted around the room, Peter roaring in victory as the girl on the other side complained about having to down the drink. But then Pip noticed something else, her eyes straying into the background. She paused the clip. Standing to the right of the bi-fold glass doors into the dining room was Cara, mouth wide as she cheered, a wave of dark liquid erupting out the top of her cup in this frozen moment of time. And there was something else: in the bright yellow-lit corridor behind her, just disappearing beyond the door, was a foot. A sliver of leg in jeans the same colour Jamie was wearing that night, and a white trainer.
Pip scrolled the video back four seconds, back to before Peter’s victory. She pressed play and immediately paused it again. It was Jamie, out in the corridor. His edges were blurred because he was mid-walk, but it had to be him: dark blonde hair and a collarless burgundy shirt. He was looking down at the dark object clasped between his hands. It looked like a phone.
Pip un-paused it and watched as Jamie walked quickly down the hallway, ignoring all the commotion in the dining room, eyes down on his phone. Cara’s head is turned, following his progress for half a second, before the ball lands in the cup and the screaming pulls her attention back into the room.
Four seconds.
The sighting lasts just four seconds. Then Jamie is gone, his white trainer the very last trace of him.
‘Found him,’ Pip said.
Thirteen
Pip dragged the cursor back and pressed play to show Ravi.
‘That’s him,’ he confirmed, resting his sharp chin on her shoulder. ‘That’s when Cara saw him. Look.’
‘Who needs CCTV when you have Snapchat stories,’ Pip remarked. ‘Do you think he’s walking down the corridor towards the front door?’ She turned to watch Ravi’s eyes as she played the clip again. ‘Or further into the back of the house?’
‘Could be either,’ Ravi said. ‘Hard to tell without knowing the layout of the house. Do you think we can go round to Stephen’s and see?’
<
br /> ‘Doubt he’ll let us in,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t want his mum to know about the party.’
‘Hm,’ said Ravi, ‘we might be able to find the floorplan on Zoopla or Rightmove or something.’
The video kept playing beyond the beer pong, into another clip where Peter was hugging the toilet, throwing up into it while Chris giggled behind the camera, saying: ‘You alright, big man?’
Pip paused it so they didn’t have to listen to any more of Peter’s retching.
‘Do you have a time for that Jamie sighting?’ Ravi asked.
‘No. Chris just sent me the saved story; it doesn’t have time-stamps for any individual part.’
‘Call him and ask him.’ Ravi reached across, dragging her laptop towards him. ‘I’ll see if I can find the house on Zoopla. What number is Stephen?’
‘Nineteen, Highmoor,’ Pip said, spinning her stool to face away from Ravi and taking out her phone. She had Chris’ number in here somewhere. She knew she did, because they’d done a group project together a few months ago. Aha, there it was: Chris M.
‘Hello?’ Chris said when he picked up. The word trailed up like a question; clearly he hadn’t saved her number.
‘Hi, Chris. It’s Pip.’
‘Oh, hey,’ he said. ‘I just sent you an email –’
‘Yeah, thank you for that. That’s actually what I wanted to ask you about. This clip here, of Peter playing beer pong, do you know what time it was taken?’
‘Um, can’t remember.’ Chris yawned on the other end of the line. ‘I was quite drunk. But, actually, hold on . . .’ His voice grew echoey and distant as he put her on speaker. ‘I saved that story so I could abuse Peter with it, but I take videos in the actual camera app because Snapchat always crashes on me.’
‘Oh, that’s great if it’s on your camera roll,’ Pip said. ‘It’ll have a time-stamp.’
‘Crap,’ Chris hissed. ‘I must have deleted them all, sorry.’
Pip’s stomach dropped. But only for a second, crawling its way back up as she said: ‘Recently deleted folder?’
‘Oh, good shout.’ Pip could hear the fiddling of Chris’ fingers against the device. ‘Yeah, here it is. Beer pong video was taken at 9:56 p.m.’
‘9:56,’ Pip repeated, writing the time down in the notebook Ravi had just slid across to her. ‘Perfect, thank you so much, Chris.’
Pip hung up the phone, even though Chris was still speaking. She’d never been a fan of those straggling bits of talk that happened at the beginnings and ends of conversations, and she didn’t have time to pretend right now. Ravi often referred to her as his little bulldozer.
‘Hear that?’ she asked him.
He nodded. ‘And I’ve found the old listing of Stephen’s house on Rightmove, last sold in 2013. Photos don’t give much away, but the floorplan is still up.’ He turned the screen back, showing her a black and white diagram of the ground floor of Stephen’s house.
Pip reached for the screen, tracing her finger from the 16’ by 12’5” box labelled Dining Room, out of the double bi-fold doors, turning left down the corridor to follow Jamie’s path. That way led to the front door.
‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘He was definitely leaving the house at 9:56.’ Pip copied the floorplan and pasted it into Paint to annotate it. She drew an arrow down the corridor towards the front door and labelled it: Jamie leaves 9:56 p.m. ‘And he’s looking at his phone,’ Pip said. ‘Do you think he’s about to call whoever George then sees him on the phone with?’
‘Seems likely,’ Ravi said. ‘That would make it a pretty long phone call. Like, half an hour at least.’
Pip drew a pair of forward and backward arrows, outside the front door on the floorplan, as Jamie had paced the pavement on his phone. She labelled the timespan of the phone call and then drew another arrow leading away from the house, when Jamie finally left.
‘Have you ever considered becoming a professional artist?’ Ravi said, looking over her shoulder.
‘Oh, be quiet, it does the job,’ she said, poking the cleft in his chin. Ravi uttered a robotic ‘Booooop,’ pretending to reset his face.
Pip ignored him. ‘Actually, this might help with that other Jamie sighting.’ She pulled up the photo of Jamie standing behind Jasveen and her stained top. She dragged it to the side to split-screen it beside the floorplan. ‘There’s a sofa there, so this has to be the living room, right?’
Ravi agreed. ‘Sofa and a bay window.’
‘OK,’ Pip said. ‘And Jamie’s standing just to the right of that window.’ She pointed to the bay window symbol in the floorplan. ‘But if you look at his eyes, he’s looking away, to the left.’
‘Can solve murders, but can’t tell her left from right,’ Ravi smiled.
‘That’s left,’ she insisted, glowering up at him. ‘Our left, his right.’
‘OK, please don’t hurt me.’ He held his hands up in surrender, his crooked smile stretching across his cheeks. Why did he enjoy winding her up so much? And why did she like it when he did? It was maddening.
Pip turned back, placing her finger on the floorplan where Jamie had been standing, and drew her finger out, following Jamie’s approximate eyeline. It brought her to a boxy black figure against the next wall. ‘What does that symbol mean?’ she asked.
‘That’s a fireplace,’ said Ravi. ‘So Jamie was watching someone who’s standing near that fireplace at 9:38 p.m. Likely the same someone he followed from the memorial.’
Pip nodded, marking these new points and times on the annotated floorplan.
‘So, if I stop looking for Jamie,’ she said, ‘and instead look for photos taken near the fireplace around 9:38, I might be able to narrow down who that someone is.’
‘Good plan, Sarge.’
‘You get back to your job,’ she said, pushing Ravi away with her foot, back around the island. He went, but not before stealing her sock.
Pip heard just one click of his mousepad before he said, quietly, ‘Shit.’
‘Ravi, can you stop messing around –’
‘I’m not,’ he said, and there was no trace of a smile on his face any more. ‘Shit.’ He said it louder that time, dropping Pip’s sock.
‘What?’ Pip slid off her stool and followed him to his side. ‘You found Jamie?’
‘No.’
‘The someone?’
‘No, but it’s definitely a someone,’ Ravi said darkly as Pip finally saw what was on his screen.
The photograph was filled with a hundred faces, all looking up at the sky, watching the lanterns. The nearest people were lit with a ghostly silver glow, points of red eyes as the camera flash set them ablaze. And standing near the very back, where the crowd thinned out, was Max Hastings.
‘No,’ Pip said, and the word carried on silently, breathing out until her chest felt ragged and bare.
Max was standing there, alone, in a black jacket that blended into the night, a hood hiding most of his hair. But it was unmistakably him, eyes bright red, face blank and unreadable.
Ravi slammed his fist down on the marble top, making the laptop and Max’s eyes shudder. ‘Why the fuck was he there?’ He sniffed. ‘He knew he wasn’t welcome. By anyone.’
Pip put a hand on his shoulder and felt the rage like a tremor beneath Ravi’s skin. ‘Because he’s the sort of person who does whatever he wants, no matter who he hurts,’ she said.
‘I didn’t want him there,’ Ravi said, staring Max down. ‘He shouldn’t have been there.’
‘I’m sorry, Ravi.’ She trailed her hand down his arm, tucking it into his palm.
‘And I have to look at him all day tomorrow. Listen to more of his lies.’
‘You don’t have to go to the trial,’ she said.
‘Yes, I do. I’m not just doing it for you. I mean, I am doing it for you, I’d do anything for you.’ He dropped his gaze. ‘But I’m doing it for me too. If Sal had ever known what a monster Max really was, he would have been devastated. Devastated. He thought they were friends. How d
are he come.’ He slammed his laptop closed, shutting Max’s face away.
‘In just a few days, he won’t be able to go anywhere for a long while,’ Pip said, squeezing Ravi’s hand. ‘Just a few days.’
He gave her a weak smile, running his thumb over her knuckles. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I know.’
Ravi was interrupted by the scratching sound of a key as the front door clacked open. Three sets of feet padded against the floorboards. And then:
‘Pip?’ Her mum’s voice echoed, arriving in the kitchen just before she did. She looked at Pip with her eyebrows raised, whittling four angry lines down her forehead. She dropped the look for just a second to flash Ravi a smile, before turning back to Pip. ‘I saw your posters,’ she said, steadily. ‘When were you going to tell us about this?’
‘Uh . . .’ Pip began.
Her dad appeared in the room, carrying four brimming bags, clumsily walking through and breaking the eye contact between Pip and her mum as he dumped the shopping on the counters. Ravi took his opportunity in the brief interlude, standing and sliding his laptop under his arm. He stroked the back of Pip’s neck and said, ‘Good luck,’ before making his way to the door, saying his charmingly awkward goodbyes to her family.
Traitor.
Pip lowered her head, trying to disappear inside her plaid shirt, using her laptop as a shield between herself and her parents.
‘Pip?’
Fourteen
‘Hello?’
‘Yes, sorry.’ Pip closed her laptop, avoiding her mum’s gaze. ‘I was just saving something.’
‘What do those posters mean?’
Pip shuffled. ‘I think their meaning is pretty clear. Jamie’s gone missing.’
‘Don’t get smart with me,’ her mum said, one hand going to her hip: always a dangerous sign.
Pip’s dad paused putting the shopping away – once the fridge items had been done, of course – and was now leaning against the counter, almost exactly equidistant between Pip and her mum, yet far enough away that he was safe from the battle. He was good at that: making camp in the neutral ground, building a bridge.
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