‘Well, we aren’t alone.’ Pip gestured to Connor. ‘And the door can stay wide open, if you want. All I care about is finding Jamie Reynolds alive. And to do that, I need to you to tell me everything you know about Layla Mead.’
‘Stop,’ Mr Clark said, the red creeping above his beard into his cheeks now. ‘I am your teacher, please stop trying to manipulate me.’
‘No one’s manipulating here,’ Pip said coolly, glancing back at Connor. She knew exactly what she was about to do, and that pit in her stomach knew too, reflooding with guilt. Ignore it, just ignore it. ‘Although I do wonder whether you knew Layla was using the photos of a current student here at Kilton: Stella Chapman?’
‘I didn’t know that at the time,’ he said, voice dipping into whispers. ‘I don’t teach her, I only worked it out a few weeks ago when I saw her walking down the hall, and that was already after me and Layla had stopped talking.’
‘Still,’ Pip pulled a face with gritted teeth, sucking in a breath between them. ‘I wonder if that would get you into hot water if anyone found out.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Here’s what I suggest,’ she said, replacing her expression with an innocent smile. ‘You record an interview with me in which I use a plug-in to distort your voice. Your name will never be mentioned and I’ll bleep out any information that might potentially identify you. But you tell me everything you know about Layla Mead. If you do that, I’m sure no one will ever find out anything you wouldn’t want them to.’
Mr Clark paused for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek, glancing at Connor as though he could help. ‘Is that blackmail?’
‘No sir,’ Pip said. ‘It’s just persuasion.’
Pip:
So, let’s start with how you and Layla met.
Anonymous:
[DISTORTED] We never met. Not in real life.
Pip:
Right, but what was your first online communication? Who initiated contact? Did you match on Tinder?
Anonymous:
No, no, I’m not on there. It was Instagram. I have my account set to private so that [-------------BEEP-------------]. One day, I think near the end of February, this woman Layla requested to follow me. I checked out her profile, thought she looked nice, and clearly she was local to Little Kilton because she had photos from around town. And I’d only been living here a couple of months then and hadn’t really had the chance to meet any people outside of [--BEEP--]. I thought it might be nice to get to know someone new, so I approved her and followed her back. Liked a couple of her photos.
Pip:
Did you start messaging each other directly?
Anonymous:
Yes, I got a DM from Layla, something like, ‘Hey, thanks for following me back.’ Said she thought she recognized me, asked if I lived in Little Kilton. I’m not going to go into all the particulars of our conversations, by the way.
Pip:
Yes, I understand. So, to clarify, the nature of your and Layla’s conversations, would you say they were . . . romantic? Flirtatious?
Anonymous:
Pip:
OK, no need to answer. Loud and clear. I don’t want you to recount every conversation, I just want to know anything Layla said that might help me identify who she really is. Did you ever have a phone conversation with her?
Anonymous:
No. Only on Instagram. And really, we only spoke on and off for a few days. A week at most. It wasn’t a big deal.
Pip:
Did Layla tell you where she lives?
Anonymous:
Yes, Little Kilton. We didn’t get to the point of swapping addresses, obviously. But she seemed to have local knowledge, talked about drinking in the King’s Head.
Pip:
Did she tell you anything else about herself?
Anonymous:
Said she was twenty-five. That she lived with her dad and she worked in HR somewhere in London but she was signed off work sick at the moment.
Pip:
Sick? With what?
Anonymous:
I didn’t ask. We hardly knew each other, that would have been rude.
Pip:
Seems like a classic catfish line to me. Did you suspect she wasn’t who she said she was at any time?
Anonymous:
No. No idea, not until I saw Stella Chapman [------------ BEEP----------] and I was very shocked that I’d been catfished. At least it hadn’t gone on long at all.
Pip:
So, you only spoke for a week? What kind of things did you talk about? The clean stuff.
Anonymous:
She asked me a lot of questions about myself. A lot, in fact. I found it quite refreshing to meet someone so interested in me.
Pip:
Really? What kinds of things did she ask?
Anonymous:
It wasn’t like she was interviewing me or anything, her questions all occurred naturally during conversation. Right at the start she wanted to know how old I was, asked me directly. I told her I was twenty-nine, and then she asked when I would turn thirty, and if I had any plans yet for the big birthday. She was chatty like that. Nice. And she was interested in my family too, asked if I still lived with any of them, if I had siblings, how my parents were. She would sort of avoid answering when I returned those questions, though. Seemed more interested in me. Made me think she didn’t have such a good home life.
Pip:
It seems like you two were getting on well, why did you stop messaging after a week?
Anonymous:
She stopped messaging me. It felt completely out of the blue to me.
Pip:
She ghosted you?
Anonymous:
Yes, embarrassingly. I kept messaging after, like, ‘Hello? Where’ve you gone?’ And nothing. Never heard from her again.
Pip:
Do you have any idea why she ghosted? Anything you might’ve said?
Anonymous:
Don’t think so. I know what the last thing I said to her was, before she disappeared. She’d asked me what I did for a living, and so I replied and told her that I was a [----- BEEP-----] at the [----BEEP----]. And then that was it, she never replied. I guess maybe she’s one of those people who doesn’t want to go out with a [--BEEP--]. Maybe she feels like she can do better, or something.
Pip:
I know you didn’t know she was a catfish at the time, but looking back now, did Layla let anything slip, any clues about her real identity? Her age? Any out-of-date slang she might have used? Did she mention Jamie Reynolds to you? Or any other people she interacts with in real life?
Anonymous:
No, nothing like that. I believed she was exactly who she told me she was. No slips. So, if she’s a catfish, then I guess she’s a pretty damn good one.
Twenty-One
Connor wasn’t eating. He pushed the food around his plate, scoring deep lines through the untouched pasta with the points of his plastic fork.
Zach had noticed too; Pip accidentally caught his eye across the table as she watched Connor sitting there silently in the deafening cafeteria. It was the comments, she knew. Strangers on the internet with their theories and their opinions. Jamie Reynolds must be dead. And: He’s definitely been murdered – seems he kind of deserved it, though. Pip told Connor to ignore them, but it was clear he couldn’t, their words skulking around him, leaving their mark.
Cara was sitting beside her, close enough that her elbow occasionally nudged Pip’s ribs. She’d picked up on Connor’s silence too, hence her attempt to bring up Connor’s favourite topic: Area 51 conspiracies.
The only ones who hadn’t noticed were Ant and Lauren. Ant was supposed to be Connor’s best friend, but he had his back turned to him, side-straddling the bench as he and Lauren huddled and giggled about something. Pip couldn’t say she was surprised. Ant hadn’t seemed all that concerned about Connor yesterday either, only bringing Jamie up once. She knew it was an awkward situation and most people
struggled with what to talk about, but you say sorry at least once. It’s just what you do.
Lauren snorted at whatever Ant had whispered and Pip felt a flash of something hot under her skin, but she bit her lip and talked it down. This wasn’t the time to pick a fight. Instead she watched as Cara pulled a KitKat from her bag and slowly slid it across the table, into Connor’s eyeline. It broke his trance and he looked at her, the corners of his mouth twitching in a small, passing smile as he abandoned the fork and reached out to accept her offering.
Cara passed that same smile on to Pip. She looked tired. Three nights had gone by, three nights that Pip had been too busy to call her, to talk her to sleep. Pip knew she must be lying awake; the tint beneath Cara’s eyes told her that. And now they told her something else, widening and gesturing up just as someone behind Pip tapped her on the shoulder. She swivelled and looked up to see Tom Nowak standing there with an awkward wave. Lauren’s ex-boyfriend; they’d broken up last summer.
‘Hi,’ he said, over the din of the cafeteria.
‘Urgh,’ Lauren immediately butted in. Oh, so now she paid attention. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing,’ Tom said, shaking his long hair out of his eyes. ‘I just need to talk to Pip about something.’
‘Sure,’ Ant charged in now, sitting up as tall as he could, crossing one arm in front of Lauren to grip the table. ‘Any excuse to come over to our table, right?’
‘No, it’s . . .’ Tom trailed off with a shrug, turning back to Pip. ‘I have some information.’
‘No one wants you here. Go away,’ Ant said, and an amused smile spread across Lauren’s face as she threaded her arm through his.
‘I’m not talking to you,’ Tom said. He looked back at Pip. ‘It’s about Jamie Reynolds.’
Connor’s head jerked up, his eyes blinking away that haunted look as he focused on Pip. She held up her hand and nodded, gesturing for him to stay put.
‘Oh, sure,’ Ant said with a sneer.
‘Wind it in, will you, Ant.’ Pip stood up and shouldered her heavy bag. ‘No one’s impressed, except Lauren.’ She climbed over the plastic bench and told Tom to follow her as she headed towards the doors to the courtyard outside, knowing Connor would be watching them go.
‘Let’s talk over here,’ she said outside, gesturing to the low wall. It had rained that morning and the bricks were still a little wet as she sat down, soaking into her trousers. Tom spread out his jacket before joining her. ‘So, what information do you have about Jamie?’
‘It’s about the night he went missing,’ Tom said with a sniff.
‘Really? Have you listened to the first episode? I released it last night.’
‘No, not yet,’ he said.
‘I only ask because we’ve built up a timeline of Jamie’s movements last Friday. We know he was at the calamity party from 9:16 p.m. and left the area around 10:32 p.m., if that’s where you saw him.’ Tom stared at her blankly. ‘What I mean is, I already have that information, if that’s what you were going to say.’
He shook his head. ‘Er, no, it’s something else. I wasn’t at the calamity party, but I saw him. After that.’
‘You did? After 10:32?’ And suddenly Pip was hyperaware: the shrieking year ten boys playing football, a fly that had just landed on her bag, the wall pressing into her bones.
‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘It was after that.’
‘How long after?’
‘Um, maybe fifteen minutes, or twenty,’ he screwed up his face in concentration.
‘So, around 10:50 p.m.?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. That sounds about right.’
Pip sat forward, waiting for Tom to carry on.
He didn’t.
‘And?’ she said, starting to grow annoyed despite herself. ‘Where were you? Where did you see him? Was it somewhere near Highmoor, where the party was?’
‘Yeah, it was that road, um, what’s it called . . . oh, Cross Lane,’ he said.
Cross Lane. Pip only knew one person who lived down Cross Lane, with a bright blue door and an angled front path: Nat da Silva and her parents.
‘You saw Jamie on Cross Lane at 10:50 p.m.?’
‘Yeah, I saw him, in a burgundy shirt and white trainers. I pacifically remember that.’
‘That’s what he was wearing, specifically,’ she said, wincing at Tom’s butchering of the word. ‘Why were you there at that time?’
He shrugged. ‘Just going home from a friend’s house.’
‘And what was Jamie doing?’ Pip asked.
‘He was walking. Walked past me.’
‘OK. And was he on the phone when he walked past you?’ she said.
‘No, don’t think so. No phone.’
Pip sighed. Tom wasn’t making this very easy for her.
‘OK, what else did you see? Did it look like he was heading somewhere? Maybe a house?’
‘Yeah,’ Tom nodded.
‘Yeah, what?’
‘A house. He was walking to a house,’ he said. ‘Like maybe halfway up the lane.’
Nat da Silva’s house was about halfway up, Pip’s thoughts intruded, demanding her attention. She felt a thrumming in her neck as her pulse picked up. Palms growing sticky, and not from the rain.
‘How do you know he was heading to a house?’
‘Because I saw him. Go into a house,’ he said.
‘Inside?’ The word came out, louder than she’d intended.
‘Yes.’ He sounded exasperated, like she was the one making this difficult.
‘Which house?’
‘Ah,’ Tom said, scratching his hair, switching the parting to the other side. ‘It was late, I wasn’t looking at the numbers. Didn’t see.’
‘Well, can you describe what the house looked like at all?’ She was gripping the wall now, fingertips grazing against it. ‘What colour was the front door?’
‘Um,’ he looked at her. ‘I think it was white.’
Pip exhaled. She sat back from him, unhooked her fingers and dropped her gaze. Not Nat da Silva’s house, then. Good.
‘Wait,’ Tom said suddenly, eyes settling on her again. ‘Actually no, I don’t think it was white. No, I remember now . . . it was bl-blue. Yeah, blue.’
Pip’s heart reacted immediately, a beating in her ears, quick couplets that almost sounded like: Nat-da Sil-va, Nat-da Silva, Nat-da Sil-va.
She forced her mouth shut, and reopened it again to ask: ‘White-bricked house? Vine on one side?’
Tom nodded, more life in his face now. ‘Yeah, that’s the one. I saw Jamie going into that house.’
‘Did you see anyone else? Who was at the door?’
‘No. Just saw him go in.’
Into Nat da Silva’s house.
That had been the plan after all, for Jamie to go to Nat’s house after the memorial. That’s what he’d told Connor. That’s what Nat had said to Pip. Except she also said he never turned up. That the last time she saw him was when he walked away from her into the crowd to find ‘someone’.
But Tom saw Jamie going into her house at 10:50 p.m. After the calamity party.
So, somebody was lying here.
And who would have reason to?
‘Tom,’ she said. ‘Would you mind if we went over this again, in a recorded interview?’
‘Sure. No problem.’
Twenty-Two
Pip tried not to look. She averted her eyes, but there was something about the house that dragged them right back. It could never be just a normal house, not after everything it had seen. It felt almost otherworldly, as though death clung to the air around it, making it shimmer in a way a house shouldn’t, with its crooked roofline and stippled bricks swallowed by ivy.
The Bells’ house. The place where Andie had died.
And through the window into the living room, Pip could see the back of Jason Bell’s head, the TV flickering at the other end. He must have heard their footsteps on the pavement outside because just then he snapped his head around and stared. He and P
ip made eye contact for just a moment, and Jason’s gaze soured when he recognized her. Pip recoiled and dropped her eyes as they carried on, leaving the house behind. But she still felt marked in some way by Jason’s eyes.
‘So,’ Ravi said, unaware; clearly he hadn’t felt the same need to look at the house. ‘You got this idea from someone on Reddit?’ he asked as they walked up the road where it wound up to the church on top of the hill.
‘Yeah, and it’s a good theory,’ Pip said. ‘I should’ve thought of it.’
‘Any other good tips since the ep went out?’
‘Nah,’ she said, the effort of the steep hill breaking up her voice as they wound around a corner and the old church appeared in the distance, nestled among the tree tops. ‘Not unless you count the “I saw Jamie in a McDonalds in Aberdeen” tip. Or the one who saw him in the Louvre in Paris, apparently.’
They crossed the pedestrian bridge over the fast-moving road below, the sound of the cars like a rushing inside her ears.
‘OK,’ she said, as they neared and the churchyard split into two on either side of the building, the wide path separating them. ‘The Redditor thinks the “left” in the note might refer to left-hand side. So let’s check this way.’ She led Ravi off the path and on to the long stretch of grass to the left that wrapped around the hill. Everywhere you looked were flat marble plaques and standing gravestones in wavering rows.
‘What’s the name, Hillary . . . ?’ asked Ravi.
‘Hillary F. Weiseman, died 2006.’ Pip narrowed her eyes, studying the graves, Ravi beside her.
‘So, you think Nat da Silva lied to you?’ he asked between reading names.
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