A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, page 10
Now was Pip’s perfect moment to act.
‘Hey, can I borrow your laptop for two secs?’ she asked Cara, relaxing her face so it wouldn’t betray her. ‘Just want to look up this book for English.’
‘Yep, sure,’ Cara said, passing it across the table. ‘Don’t close my tabs.’
‘Won’t,’ Pip said, turning the laptop so Cara couldn’t see the screen.
Pip’s heartbeat bolted into the tops of her ears. There was so much blood behind her face she was sure she must be turning red. Leaning down to hide behind the screen, she clicked up the control panel.
She’d been up until three last night, that what if question haunting her, chasing away sleep. So she had trawled through the internet, looking at badly worded forum questions and wireless printer instruction manuals.
Anyone could have followed her there into the woods. That was true. Anyone could have watched her, lured her and her friends out of the marquee so they could leave their message. True. But there was one name on her persons of interest list, one person who would have known exactly where Pip and Cara were camping. Naomi. She’d been stupid to discount her because of the Naomi she thought she knew. There could well be another Naomi. One who may or may not be lying about leaving Max’s for a period of time the night Andie died. One who may or may not have been in love with Sal. One who may or may not have hated Andie enough to kill her.
After hours of stubborn research, Pip had learned that there was no way to see the previous documents a wireless printer had printed. And no one in their right mind would save a note like that on their computer, so attempting to look through Naomi’s would be pointless. But there was something else she could do.
She clicked into Devices and Printers on Cara’s laptop and hovered the mouse over the name of the Ward family printer, which someone had nicknamed Freddie Prints Jr. She right-clicked into Printer Properties and on to the advanced tab.
Pip had memorized the steps from a ‘how to’ webpage with cartoon illustrations. She checked the box next to Keep Printed Documents , clicked apply and it was done. She closed down the panel and clicked back on to Cara’s homework.
‘Thanks,’ she said, passing the laptop back, certain that her heart was loud enough to hear, a boom box sewn on the outside of her chest.
‘No problemo.’
Cara’s laptop would now keep track of everything that came through their printer. If Pip received another printed message, she could find out for definite if it had come from Naomi or not.
The kitchen door opened with an explosion from the White House and federal agents screaming to ‘Get out of here!’ and ‘Save yourself!’ Naomi stood in the door frame.
‘God, Nai,’ Cara said, ‘we’re working in here, turn it down.’
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, as though it compensated for the loud TV. ‘Just getting a drink. You OK, Pip?’ Naomi looked at her with a puzzled expression and only then did Pip realize she had been staring.
‘Err . . . yep. You just made me jump,’ she said, her smile just a little too wide, carving uncomfortably into her cheeks.
Pippa Fitz-Amobi
EPQ 08/09/2017
Production Log – Entry 13
Transcript of second interview with Emma Hutton
Pip:
Thanks for agreeing to talk again. This is a really short follow-up, I promise.
Emma:
Yeah, no that’s fine.
Pip:
Thanks. OK, so firstly I’ve been asking around about Andie and I’ve heard certain rumours I wanted to run by you. That Andie may have been seeing someone at the same time as Sal. An older guy perhaps? Had you ever heard anything like that?
Emma:
Who told you that?
Pip:
Sorry, they asked me to keep them anonymous.
Emma:
Was it Chloe Burch?
Pip:
Again, sorry, I was asked not to say.
Emma:
It had to be her; we were the only ones who knew.
Pip:
So it’s true? Andie was seeing an older man during her relationship with Sal?
Emma:
Well, yeah, that’s what she said; she never told us his name or anything.
Pip:
Did you have any indication about how long it had been going on for?
Emma:
Like, not long at all before she went missing. I think she started talking about it in March. That’s just a guess, though.
Pip:
And you knew nothing about who it was?
Emma:
No, she liked teasing us that we didn’t know.
Pip:
And you didn’t think it was relevant to tell the police?
Emma:
No because, honestly, those are the only details we ever knew. And I kind of thought Andie had made him up for some drama.
Pip:
And after the whole Sal thing happened, you never thought to tell the police that that could be a possible motive?
Emma:
No, ’cause again I wasn’t convinced he was real. And Andie wasn’t stupid; she wouldn’t have told Sal about him.
Pip:
But what if Sal found out anyway?
Emma:
Hmm, I don’t think so. Andie was good at keeping secrets.
Pip:
OK, moving on to my final question, I was wondering if you knew whether Andie had ever fallen out with Naomi Ward. Or whether they had a strained relationship?
Emma:
Naomi Ward, Sal’s friend?
Pip:
Yeah.
Emma:
No, not to my knowledge.
Pip:
Andie never mentioned any tension with Naomi or said bad things about her?
Emma:
No. Actually, now you mention it, she definitely was hating on one of the Wards, but it wasn’t Naomi.
Pip:
What do you mean?
Emma:
You know Mr Ward, the history teacher? I don’t know if he’s still at Kilton Grammar. But yeah, Andie did not like him. I remember her referring to him as an arsehole, among other stronger words.
Pip:
Why? When was this?
Emma:
Um, I couldn’t say specifically but I think it was around that Easter. So, not long before everything happened.
Pip:
But Andie wasn’t taking history?
Emma:
No, it must have been something like he’d told her that her skirt was too short for school. She always hated that.
Pip:
OK that’s everything I needed to ask. Thanks again for all your help, Emma.
Emma:
No worries. Bye.
NO . Just no.
First Naomi, who I can’t even look in the eye any more. And now Elliot? Why are questions about Andie Bell returning answers about the people close to me?
OK, Andie insulting a teacher to her friends in the lead-up to her death looks like an utter coincidence. Yes. It could be entirely innocent.
But – and it’s quite a big but – Elliot told me he hardly knew Andie or had anything to do with her in the last two years of her life. So why did she call him an arsehole if they had nothing to do with each other? Was Elliot lying, and for what reason?
I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t speculate wildly, as I have before, just because I’m close to Elliot. So even though it physically pains me: could this innocuous clue, in fact, indicate that Elliot Ward was the secret older man? I mean, I first thought the ‘secret older guy’ would be someone in their mid to late twenties. But maybe my instincts were wrong; maybe it refers to someone much older. I baked the cake for Elliot’s last birthday, so I know he’s now forty-seven, which would have made him forty-two in the year of Andie’s disappearance.
Andie told her friends she could ‘ruin’ this man. I thought this meant that the guy – whoever he was – was married. Elliot wasn’t; his wife had died a couple of years before. But he was a teacher at her school, in a position of trust. If there was some inappropriate relationship, Elliot could have faced jail time. That certainly can be covered under ‘ruining’ someone.
Is he the type of person who would do that? No, he isn’t. And is he the kind of man a seventeen-year-old beautiful blonde student would lust after? I don’t think so. I mean, he’s not hideous and he has a certain greying professorial look but . . . just no. I can’t see it.
I can’t believe I’m even allowing myself to think this. Who will be next on the persons of interest list? Cara? Ravi? Dad? Me?
I think I should just grit my teeth and ask Elliot so I can bite down on some actual facts. Otherwise I may end up suspecting everybody I know who may have spoken to Andie at some point in their lives. And paranoia does not suit me.
But how do you casually ask a grown man you’ve known since you were six why they lied about a murdered girl?
Persons of Interest
Jason Bell
Naomi Ward
Secret Older Guy
Elliot Ward
Thirteen
Her writing hand must have had its own mind, an independent circuitry from the one contained in her head.
Mr Ward was speaking, ‘But Lenin did not like Stalin’s policy towards Georgia after the Red Army invasion in 1921,’ and Pip’s fingers moved in harmony, scribbling it all down with dates underlined too. But she wasn’t really listening.
There was a war going on inside her, the two sides of her head squabbling and pecking at each other. Should she ask Elliot about Andie’s comments, or was that a risk to the investigation? Was it rude to ask probing questions about murdered students, or was it an entirely forgivable Pippism?
The bell rang for lunch and Elliot called over the scraping chairs and zipping bags, ‘Read chapter three before our next lesson. And if you want to be really keen, you can Trotsky on over to chapter four as well.’ He chuckled at his own joke.
‘You coming, Pip?’ Connor said, standing up and swinging his rucksack on to his back.
‘Um, yeah I’ll come find you lot in a minute,’ she said. ‘I need to ask Mr Ward something first.’
‘You need to ask Mr Ward something, eh?’ Elliot had overheard. ‘That’s ominous. I hope you haven’t started thinking about the coursework already.’
‘No, well, yes I have,’ Pip said, ‘but that’s not what I want to ask you about.’
She waited until they were the only two left in the classroom.
‘What is it?’ Elliot glanced down at his watch. ‘You have ten of my minutes before I start panicking about the panini queue.’
‘Yeah, sorry,’ Pip said, grasping for her stash of courage but it leaked out of reach. ‘Um . . .’
‘Everything OK?’ Elliot said, sitting back on his desk, his arms and legs crossed. ‘You worrying about university applications? We can go over your personal statement some time if –’
‘No, it’s not that.’ She took a breath and blew out her top lip. ‘I . . . when I interviewed you before you said you didn’t have anything to do with Andie in the last two years of school.’
‘Yes, correct.’ He blinked. ‘She didn’t take history.’
‘OK, but –’ the courage trickled back all at once and her words raced each other out – ‘one of Andie’s friends said that, excuse the language, Andie referred to you as an arsehole and other unsavoury words sometime in the weeks before she went missing.’
The why question was evidently there hiding beneath her words; she didn’t need to speak it.
‘Oh,’ Elliot said, rubbing the dark hair back from his face. He looked at her and sighed. ‘Well, I was hoping this wouldn’t come up. I don’t see what good it can do to dwell on it now. But I can see you’re being very thorough with your project.’
Pip nodded, her long silence beckoning an answer.
Elliot shuffled. ‘I don’t feel too comfortable about it, saying unpleasant things about a student who has lost their life.’ He glanced up at the open classroom door and scooted over to shut it. ‘Um, I didn’t have much to do with Andie at school but I knew of her, of course, as Naomi’s dad. And . . . it was in that capacity, through Naomi, that I learned some things about Andie Bell.’
‘Yes?’
‘No soft way of saying it but . . . she was a bully. She was bullying another girl in their year. I can’t remember her name now, something Portuguese-sounding. There was some sort of incident, a video online that Andie had posted.’
Pip was both surprised and not at all. Yet another path opening up in the maze of Andie Bell’s life. Palimpsest upon palimpsest, the original concept of Andie only just peeking out through all the overlaying scribbles.
‘I knew enough to understand that Andie would be in trouble with both the school and the police for what she’d done,’ Elliot continued. ‘And I . . . I thought it was a shame because it was the first week back after Easter and her A-level exams were coming up. Exams that would determine her entire future.’ He sighed. ‘What I should have done, when I found out, was tell the head teacher about the incident. But the school has a no-tolerance policy on bullying or cyber-bullying and I knew Andie would be expelled immediately. No A levels, no university and I, well, I just couldn’t do it. Even though she was a bully, I couldn’t live with myself knowing I’d play a part in ruining a student’s future.’
‘So what did you do?’ Pip asked.
‘I looked up her father’s contact details and I called him, the first day of term after the Easter holidays.’
‘You mean the Monday of the week Andie disappeared?’
Elliot nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose it was. I phoned Jason Bell and I told him everything I’d learned and said that he needed to have a very serious talk with his daughter about bullying and consequences. And I suggested restricting her online access. I said I was trusting him to sort this out, otherwise I would have no choice but to inform the school and have Andie expelled.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Well, he was thankful that I was giving his daughter a second chance she possibly didn’t deserve. And he promised he would sort it out and talk to her. I’m guessing now that when Mr Bell did speak to Andie he mentioned that I was the source of the information. So, if I was the target of some choice words from Andie that week, I’m not entirely surprised, I must say. Disappointed is all.’
Pip took a deep breath, one glazed with undisguised relief.
‘What’s that for?’
‘I’m just glad you weren’t lying for a worse reason.’
‘Think you’ve read too many mystery novels, Pip. Why not some historical biographies instead?’ He smiled gently.
‘They can be just as disturbing as fiction.’ She paused. ‘You’d never told anyone before, had you . . . about Andie’s bullying?’
‘Of course not. It seemed pointless after everything that happened. Insensitive too.’ He scratched his chin. ‘I try not to think about it because I get lost in butterfly-effect theories. What if I had just told the school and Andie was expelled that week? Would it have changed the outcome? Would the conditions that led to Sal killing her not have been in place? Would those two still be alive?’
‘That’s a rabbit hole you shouldn’t go down,’ Pip said. ‘And you definitely don’t remember the girl that who bullied?’
‘No, sorry,’ he said. ‘Naomi would remember; you could ask her about it. Not sure what this has to do with use of media in criminal investigations, though.’ He looked at her with a slightly scolding look.
‘Well, I’m yet to decide on my final title,’ she smiled.
‘OK, well, don’t go falling down your own rabbit hole.’ He wagged his finger. ‘And now I’m running away from you because I’m desperate for a tuna melt.’ He smiled and dashed out into the corridor.
Pip felt lighter, the bulk of doubt disappearing, just as Elliot now had through the door. And instead of misplaced speculation leading her astray, she now had another real lead to follow. And one less name on her list. It was a good trade to make.
But the lead was taking her back to Naomi again. And Pip would have to look her in the eyes like she didn’t think there was something dark hiding behind them.
Pippa Fitz-Amobi
EPQ 13/09/2017
Production Log – Entry 15
Transcript of second interview with Naomi Ward
Pip:
OK, recording. So, your dad told me that he found out Andie was bullying another girl in your year. Cyber-bulling. He thought there was some online video involved. Do you know anything about this?
Naomi:
Yeah, like I said, I thought Andie was trouble.
Pip:
Can you tell me more about it?
Naomi:
There was a girl in our year, called Natalie da Silva, and she was pretty and blonde too. They looked quite similar actually. And I guess Andie felt threatened by her because ever since the start of our final year Andie started spreading rumours about her and finding ways to humiliate her.
Pip:
If Sal and Andie didn’t start seeing each other until that December, how did you know all this?
Naomi:
I was friends with Nat. We had biology together.
Pip:
Oh. And what kind of rumours was Andie starting?
Naomi:
The kind of disgusting things only a teenage girl could think up. Things like her family was incestuous, that Nat watched people undress in the changing rooms and touched herself. Those kinds of things.
