Kitabı oku: «A Good Girl's Guide to Murder», sayfa 2

Two

Pip’s hands strayed from the keyboard, her index fingers hovering over the w and h as she strained to listen to the commotion downstairs. A crash, heavy footsteps, skidding claws and unrestrained boyish giggles. In the next second it all became clear.

‘Joshua! Why is the dog wearing one of my shirts?!’ came Victor’s buoyant shout, the sound floating up through Pip’s carpet.

Pip snort-laughed as she clicked save on her production log and closed the lid of her laptop. It was a time-honoured daily crescendo from the moment her dad returned from work. He was never quiet: his whispers could be heard across the room, his whooping knee-slap laugh so loud it actually made people flinch, and every year, without fail, Pip woke to the sound of him tiptoeing the upstairs corridor to deliver Santa stockings on Christmas Eve.

Her stepdad was the living adversary of subtlety.

Downstairs, Pip found the scene mid-production. Joshua was running from room to room – from the kitchen to the hallway and into the living room – on repeat, cackling as he went.

Close behind was Barney, the golden retriever, wearing Pip’s dad’s loudest shirt: the blindingly green patterned one he’d bought during their last trip to Nigeria. The dog skidded elatedly across the polished oak in the hall, excitement whistling through his teeth.

And bringing up the rear was Victor in his grey Hugo Boss three-piece suit, charging all six and a half feet of himself after the dog and the boy, his laugh in wild climbing scale bursts. Their very own Amobi home-made Scooby-Doo montage.

‘Oh my god, I was trying to do homework,’ Pip said, smiling as she jumped back to avoid being mowed down by the convoy. Barney stopped for a moment to headbutt her shin and then scarpered off to jump on Dad and Josh as they collapsed together on the sofa.

‘Hello, pickle,’ Victor said, patting the sofa beside him.

‘Hi, Dad, you were so quiet I didn’t even know you were home.’

‘My Pipsicle, you are too clever to recycle a joke.’

She sat down next to them, Josh and her dad’s worn-out breaths making the sofa cushion swell and sink against the backs of her legs.

Josh started excavating in his right nostril and Dad batted his hand away.

‘How were your days then?’ he asked, setting Josh off on a graphic spiel about the football games he’d played earlier.

Pip zoned out; she’d already heard it all in the car when she picked Josh up from the club. She’d only been half listening, distracted by the way the replacement coach had stared bewilderedly at her lily-white skin when she’d pointed out which of the nine-year-olds was hers and said: ‘I’m Joshua’s sister.’

She should have been used to it by now, the lingering looks while people tried to work out the logistics of her family, the numbers and hedged words scribbled across their family tree. The giant Nigerian man was quite evidently her stepfather and Joshua her half-brother. But Pip didn’t like using those words, those cold technicalities. The people you love weren’t algebra: to be calculated, subtracted, or held at arm’s length across a decimal point. Victor and Josh weren’t just three-eighths hers, not just forty per cent family, they were fully hers. Her dad and her annoying little brother.

Her ‘real’ father, the man that lent the Fitz to her name, died in a car accident when she was ten months old. And though Pip sometimes nodded and smiled when her mum would ask whether she remembered the way her father hummed while he brushed his teeth, or how he’d laughed when Pip’s second spoken word was ‘poo,’ she didn’t remember him. But sometimes remembering isn’t for yourself, sometimes you do it just to make someone else smile. Those lies were allowed.

‘And how’s the project going, Pip?’ Victor turned to her as he unbuttoned the shirt from the dog.

‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m just looking up the background and typing up at the moment. I did go to see Ravi Singh this morning.’

‘Oh, and?’

‘He was busy but he said I could go back on Friday.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Josh said in a cautionary tone.

‘That’s because you’re a judgemental pre-pubescent boy who still thinks little people live inside traffic lights.’ Pip looked at him. ‘The Singhs haven’t done anything wrong.’

Her dad stepped in. ‘Joshua, try to imagine if everyone judged you because of something your sister had done.’

‘All Pip ever does is homework.’

Pip executed a perfect arm-swung cushion lob into Joshua’s face. Victor held the boy’s arms down as he squirmed to retaliate, tickling his ribs.

‘Why’s Mum not back yet?’ asked Pip, teasing the restrained Josh by floating her fluffy-socked foot near his face.

‘She was going straight from work to Boozy Mums’ book club,’ Dad said.

‘Meaning . . . we can have pizza for dinner?’ Pip asked. And suddenly the friendly fire was forgotten and she and Josh were in the same battalion again. He jumped up and hooked his arm through hers, looking imploringly at their dad.

‘Of course,’ Victor said, patting his backside with a grin. ‘How else am I to keep growing this junk in my trunk?’

‘Dad,’ Pip groaned, admonishing her past self for ever teaching him that phrase.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi

EPQ 02/08/2017

Production Log – Entry 2

What happened next in the Andie Bell case is quite confusing to glean from the newspaper reports. There are gaps I will have to fill with guesswork and rumours until the picture becomes clearer from any later interviews; hopefully Ravi and Naomi – who was one of Sal’s best friends – can assist with this.

Using what Angela said, presumably after taking statements from the Bell family and thoroughly searching their residence, the police asked for details of Andie’s friends.

From some seriously historical Facebook stalking, it looks like Andie’s best friends were two girls called Chloe Burch and Emma Hutton. I mean, here’s my evidence:

This post is from two weeks before Andie disappeared. It looks like neither Chloe nor Emma live in Little Kilton any more. [Maybe private-message them and see if they’ll do a phone interview?]

Chloe and Emma did a lot on that first weekend (21^st and 22^nd) to help spread the Thames Valley Police’s Twitter campaign: #FindAndie. I don’t think it’s too big of a leap to assume that the police contacted Chloe and Emma either on the Friday night or on Saturday morning. What they said to the police, I don’t know. Hopefully I can find out.

We do know that police spoke to Andie’s boyfriend at the time. His name was Sal Singh and he was attending his final year at Kilton Grammar alongside Andie.

At some point on the Saturday the police contacted Sal.

‘DI Richard Hawkins confirmed that officers had questioned Salil Singh on Saturday 21^st April. They questioned him as to his whereabouts for the previous night, particularly the period of time in which it is believed Andie went missing.’⁶

That night, Sal had been hanging out at his friend Max Hastings’ house. He was with his four best friends: Naomi Ward, Jake Lawrence, Millie Simpson and Max.

Again, I need to check this with Naomi next week, but I think Sal told the police that he left Max’s house at around 12:15 a.m. He walked home and his father (Mohan Singh) confirmed that ‘Sal returned home at approximately 12:50 a.m.’ ⁷ Note: the distance between Max’s house (Tudor Lane) and Sal’s (Grove Place) takes about 30 minutes to walk – says Google.

The police confirmed Sal’s alibi with his four friends over the weekend.

Missing posters went up. House-to-house enquiries started on the Sunday.⁸

On the Monday, 100 volunteers helped the police carry out searches in the local woodland. I’ve seen the news footage; a whole ant line of people in the woods, calling her name. Later in the day, forensic teams were spotted going into the Bell residence.⁹

And on the Tuesday, everything changed.

I think chronologically is the best way to consider the events of that day and those that followed, even though we, as a town, learned the details out of order and jumbled.

Mid-morning: Naomi Ward, Max Hastings, Jake Lawrence and Millie Simpson contacted the police from school and confessed to providing false information. They said that Sal had asked them to lie and that he actually left Max’s house at around 10:30 p.m. on the night Andie disappeared.

I don’t know for sure what the correct police procedure would have been but I’m guessing that at that point, Sal became the number-one suspect.

But they couldn’t find him: Sal wasn’t at school and he wasn’t at home. He wasn’t answering his phone.

It later transpired, however, that Sal had sent a text to his father that morning, though he was ignoring all other calls. The press would refer to this as a ‘confession text’.¹⁰

That Tuesday evening, one of the police teams searching for Andie found a body in the woods.

It was Sal.

He had killed himself.

The press never reported the method by which Sal committed suicide but by the power of high school rumour, I know (as did every other student at Kilton at the time).

Sal walked into the woods near his home, took a load of sleeping pills and placed a plastic bag over his head, secured by an elastic band around his neck. He suffocated while unconscious.

At the police press conference later that night no mention of Sal was made. The police only revealed that bit of information about CCTV imaging placing Andie as driving away from her home at 10:40 p.m.¹¹

On the Wednesday, Andie’s car was found parked on a small residential road (Romer Close).

It wasn’t until the following Monday that a police spokeswoman revealed the following: ‘I have an update on the Andie Bell investigation. As a result of recent intelligence and forensic information, we have strong reason to suspect that a young man named Salil Singh, aged 18, was involved in Andie’s abduction and murder. The evidence would have been sufficient to arrest and charge the suspect had he not died before proceedings could be initiated. Police are not looking for anyone else in relation to Andie’s disappearance at this time but our search for Andie will continue unabated. Our thoughts go out to the Bell family and our deepest sympathies for the devastation this update has caused them.’

Their sufficient evidence was as follows:

They found Andie’s mobile phone on Sal’s body.

Forensic tests found traces of Andie’s blood under the fingernails of his right middle and index fingers.

Andie’s blood was also discovered in the boot of her abandoned car. Sal’s fingerprints were found around the dashboard and steering wheel alongside prints from Andie and the rest of the Bell family.¹²

The evidence, they said, would have been enough to charge Sal and – police would have hoped – to secure a conviction in court. But Sal was dead, so there was no trial and no guilty conviction. No defence either.

In the following weeks, there were more searches of the woodland areas in and around Little Kilton. Searches using cadaver dogs. Police divers in the River Kilbourne. But Andie’s body was never found.

The Andie Bell missing persons case was administratively closed in the middle of June 2012.¹³ A case may be ‘administratively closed’ only if the ‘supporting documentation contains sufficient evidence to charge had the offender not died before the investigation could be completed’. The case ‘may be reopened whenever new evidence or leads develop’.¹⁴

Off to the cinema in 15 minutes: another superhero film that Josh has emotionally blackmailed us to see. But there’s just one final part to the background of the Andie Bell/Sal Singh case and I’m on a roll.

Eighteen months after Andie Bell’s case was administratively closed, the police filed a report to the local coroner. In cases like this, it is up to the coroner to decide whether further investigation into the death is required, based on their belief that the person is likely to be dead and that sufficient time has elapsed.

The coroner will then apply to the Secretary of State for Justice, under the Coroners Act 1988 Section 15, for an inquest with no body. Where there is no body, an inquest will rely mostly on evidence provided by the police, and whether the senior officers of the investigation believe the missing person is dead.

An inquest is a legal enquiry into the medical cause and circumstances of death. It cannot ‘blame individuals for the death or establish criminal liability on the part of any named individual.’¹⁵

At the end of the inquest, January 2014, the coroner returned a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ and Andie Bell’s death certificate was issued.¹⁶ An unlawful killing verdict literally means ‘the person was killed by an “unlawful act” by someone’ or, more specifically, death by ‘murder, manslaughter, infanticide or death by dangerous driving.’¹⁷

This is where everything ends.

Andie Bell has been legally declared dead, despite her body never having been found. Given the circumstances, we can presume that the ‘unlawful killing’ verdict refers to murder. After Andie’s inquest, a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘The case against Salil Singh would have been based on circumstantial and forensic evidence. It is not for the CPS to state whether Salil Singh killed Andie Bell or not, that would have been a jury’s job to decide.’¹⁸

So even though there has never been a trial, even though no head juror has ever stood up, sweaty palmed and adrenaline-pumped, and declared: ‘We the jury find the defendant guilty,’ even though Sal never had the chance to defend himself, he is guilty. Not in the legal sense, but in all the other ways that truly matter.

When you ask people in town what happened to Andie Bell, they’ll tell you without hesitation: ‘She was murdered by Salil Singh.’ No allegedly, no might have, no probably, no most likely.

He did it, they say. Sal Singh killed Andie.

But I’m just not so sure . . .

[Next log – possibly look at what the prosecution’s case against Sal might have looked like if it went to court. Then start pecking away and putting holes in it.]

Three

It was an emergency, the text said. An SOS emergency. Pip knew immediately that that could only mean one thing.

She grabbed her car keys, yelled a perfunctory goodbye to Mum and Josh and rushed out of the front door.

She stopped by the shop on her way to buy a king-size chocolate bar to help mend Lauren’s king-size broken heart.

When she pulled up outside Lauren’s house, she saw that Cara had had the exact same idea. Yet Cara’s post-break-up first-aid kit was more extensive than Pip’s; she had also brought a box of tissues, crisps and dip, and a rainbow array of face mask packets.

‘Ready for this?’ Pip asked Cara, hip-bumping her in greeting.

‘Yep, well prepared for the tears.’ She held up the tissues, the corner of the box snagging on her curly ash-blonde hair.

Pip untangled it for her and then pressed the doorbell, both of them wincing at the scratchy mechanical song.

Lauren’s mum answered the door.

‘Oh, the cavalry are here,’ she smiled. ‘She’s upstairs in her room.’

They found Lauren fully submerged in a duvet fort on the bed; the only sign of her existence was a splay of ginger hair poking out of the bottom. It took a full minute of coaxing and chocolate bait to get her to surface.

‘Firstly,’ Cara said, prising Lauren’s phone from her fingers, ‘you’re banned from looking at this for the next twenty-four hours.’

‘He did it by text!’ Lauren wailed, blowing her nose as an entire snot-swamp was cannon-shot into the woefully thin tissue.

‘Boys are dicks, thank god I don’t have to deal with that,’ Cara said, putting her arm round Lauren and resting her sharp chin on her shoulder. ‘Loz, you could do so much better than him.’

‘Yeah.’ Pip broke Lauren off another line of chocolate. ‘Plus Tom always said “pacifically” when he meant “specifically”.’

Cara clicked eagerly and pointed at Pip in agreement. ‘Massive red flag that was.’

‘I pacifically think you’re better off without him,’ said Pip.

‘I atlantically think so too,’ added Cara.

Lauren gave a wet snort of laughter and Cara winked at Pip; an unspoken victory. They knew that, working together, it wouldn’t take them long to get Lauren laughing again.

‘Thanks for coming, guys,’ Lauren said tearfully. ‘I didn’t know if you would. I’ve probably neglected you for half a year to hang out with Tom. And now I’ll be third-wheeling two best friends.’

‘You’re talking crap,’ Cara said. ‘We are all best friends, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah,’ Pip nodded, ‘us and those three boys we deign to share in our delightful company.’

The others laughed. The boys – Ant, Zach and Connor – were all currently away on summer holidays.

But of her friends, Pip had known Cara the longest and, yes, they were closer. An unsaid thing. They’d been inseparable ever since six-year-old Cara had hugged a small, friendless Pip and asked, ‘Do you like bunnies too?’ They were each other’s crutch to lean on when life got too much to carry alone. Pip, though only ten at the time, had helped support Cara through her mum’s diagnosis and death. And she’d been her constant two years ago, as a steady smile and a phone call into the small hours when Cara came out. Cara’s wasn’t the face of a best friend; it was the face of a sister. It was home.

Cara’s family were Pip’s second. Elliot – or Mr Ward as she had to call him at school – was her history teacher as well as tertiary father figure, behind Victor and the ghost of her first dad. Pip was at the Ward house so often she had her own named mug and pair of slippers to match Cara’s and her big sister Naomi’s.

‘Right.’ Cara lunged for the TV remote. ‘Rom-coms or films where boys get violently murdered?’

It took roughly one and a half soppy films from the Netflix backlog for Lauren to wade through denial and extend a cautionary toe towards the acceptance stage.

‘I should get a haircut,’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re supposed to do.’

‘I’ve always said you’d look good with short hair,’ said Cara.

‘And do you think I should get my nose pierced?’

‘Ooh, yeah.’ Cara nodded.

‘I don’t see the logic in putting a nose-hole in your nose-hole,’ said Pip.

‘Another fabulous Pip quotation for the books.’ Cara feigned writing it down in mid-air. ‘What was the one that cracked me up the other day?’

‘The sausage one,’ Pip sighed.

‘Oh yeah,’ Cara snorted. ‘So, Loz, I was asking Pip which pyjamas she wanted to wear and she just casually says: “It’s sausage to me.” And then didn’t realise why that might be a strange answer to my question.’

‘It’s not that strange,’ said Pip. ‘My grandparents from my first dad are German. “It’s sausage to me” is an everyday German saying. It just means I don’t care.’

‘Or you’ve got a sausage fixation,’ Lauren laughed.

‘Says the daughter of a porn star,’ Pip quipped.

‘Oh my god, how many times? He only did one nude photoshoot in the eighties, that’s it.’

‘So, on to boys from this decade,’ Cara said, prodding Pip on the shoulder. ‘Did you go and see Ravi Singh yet?’

‘Questionable segue. And yes, but I’m going back to interview him tomorrow.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve already started your EPQ,’ Lauren said with a mock dying-swan dive back on to the bed. ‘I want to change my title already; famines are too depressing.’

‘I imagine you’ll be wanting to interview Naomi sometime soon.’ Cara looked pointedly at Pip.

‘Certainly, can you please warn her I may be coming around next week with my voice recorder app and a pencil?’

‘Yeah,’ Cara said, then hesitated. ‘She’ll agree to it and everything but can you go easy on her? She still gets really upset about it sometimes. I mean, he was one of her best friends. In fact, probably her best friend.’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Pip smiled, ‘what do you think I’m going to do? Pin her down and beat responses out of her?’

‘Is that your tactic for Ravi tomorrow?’

‘I think not.’

Lauren sat up then, with a snot-sucking sniff so loud it made Cara visibly flinch.

‘Are you going to his house then?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh, but . . . what are people going to think if they see you going into Ravi Singh’s house?’

‘It’s sausage to me.’