It had to be just the right case.
And here it was: an unknown woman between twenty and twenty-five found naked and mutilated just outside of Cambridge. No one had looked for her when she disappeared. Never claimed so never missed. It couldn’t have been clearer: this woman deserved justice for the things done to her. And the man who had done them, he could never be anything other than a monster. No grey, no contradictions or confusion. Pip could solve this case, save Jane Doe, but the most important point was that Jane Doe would save her.
One more case would do it, put everything right.
Just one more.
Pip didn’t see them until she was standing right on top of them. She might never have seen them if she hadn’t stopped to re-tie the laces on her trainers. She lifted her foot and stared down. What the...
There were faint lines, drawn in white chalk, right at the top of the Amobis’ driveway, where it met the pavement just beyond. They were so faded that maybe they weren’t chalk at all, maybe they were salt marks left behind from the rain.
Pip rubbed her eyes. They were scratchy and dried out from staring at her ceiling all night. Even though yesterday evening with Ravi’s family had gone well and her face actually ached from smiling, she hadn’t earned back her sleep. There’d been only one place to find it, in that forbidden second drawer down.
She removed her balled-up fists from her eyes and blinked, her gaze just as gritty as before. Unable to trust her eyes, she bent to swipe a finger through the nearest line, held it up against the sun to study it. Definitely seemed like chalk, felt like it too, between the bulbs of her fingers. And the lines themselves, they didn’t seem like they could be natural. They were too straight, too intentional.
Pip tilted her head to look at them from another angle. There seemed to be five distinct figures; a repeating pattern of crossing and intersecting lines. Could they... could they be birds maybe? Like how children drew birds from a distance; squashed out Ms mounting cotton-candy skies? No, that wasn’t right, too many lines. Was it some kind of cross? Yeah, it looked like a cross maybe, where the longer stem split into two legs nearer the bottom.
Oh, wait – she stepped over them to look from the other side. They could also be little stick people. Those were their legs, the trunk of their body, crossed through with their overstraightened arms. The small line above was their neck. But then, nothing... They were headless.
So – she straightened up – either a cross with two legs, or a stick figure with no head. Neither particularly comforting. Pip didn’t think Josh had chalk in the house, and he wasn’t the kind of kid who enjoyed drawing anyway. Must be one of the neighbourhood kids then, one with a somewhat morbid imagination. Although, who was she to comment on that?
Pip checked as she walked up Martinsend Way; there were no chalk lines on anyone else’s driveway, nor the pavement or road. Nothing out of the ordinary, in fact, for a Sunday morning in Little Kilton. Other than an innocuous square of duct tape that had been stuck on to the black and white road sign, so it now instead read Martinsend Wav.
Pip shrugged the figures off as she turned on to the high street, chalked it up to the Yardley children from six doors down. And, anyway, she could see Ravi up ahead, approaching the café from the other end.
He looked tired – normal tired – his hair ruffled and the sun flashing off his new glasses. He’d found out over the summer that he was ever-so-slightly short-sighted, and you can bet he made as much fuss as he could at the time. Though now he sometimes forgot to even put them on.
He hadn’t spotted her yet, in his own world.
‘Oi!’ she called from ten feet away, making him jump.
He stuck out his bottom lip in exaggerated sadness. ‘Be gentle,’ he said. ‘I’m delicate this morning.’
Of course, Ravi’s hangovers were the worst hangovers the world had ever seen. Near fatal every time.
They made it to each other, outside the café door, Pip’s hand finding its home in the crook of Ravi’s elbow.
‘And what’s this “Oi” we’ve started?’ He pressed the question into her forehead. ‘I have an array of beautiful and flattering nicknames for you, and the best you can come up with is “Oi”?’
‘Ah, well,’ Pip said. ‘Someone very old and wise once told me that I am entirely without pizazz, so...’
‘I think you meant someone very wise and very handsome, actually.’
‘Did I?’
‘So,’ he paused to scratch his nose with his sleeve, ‘I think last night went really well.’
‘Really?’ Pip said tentatively. She thought it had too, but she didn’t entirely trust herself any more.
He broke into a small laugh, seeing her worried face. ‘You did good. Everyone loved you. Genuinely. Rahul even messaged this morning to say how much he liked you. And,’ Ravi lowered his voice conspiratorially, ‘I think even Auntie Zara might have warmed to you.’
‘No?!’
‘Yes,’ he grinned. ‘She scowled about twenty per cent less than her normal rate, so I call that a raging success.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Pip said, leaning into the café door to push it open, the bell jangling overhead. ‘Hi Jackie,’ she called as usual to the woman who owned the café, currently re-stocking the sandwich shelves.
‘Oh, hello dear,’ Jackie said with a quick glance back, almost losing a brie and bacon roll to the floor. ‘Hi, Ravi.’
‘Morning,’ he said, a thickness to his voice until he cleared his throat.
Jackie freed herself from the packaged sandwiches and turned to face them. ‘I think she’s out back, in a fight with the temperamental sandwich toaster. Hold on.’ She backed up behind the counter and called, ‘Cara!’
Pip spotted the topknot first, bobbing atop Cara’s head as she walked out from the kitchen through the employee’s entrance, wiping her hands on her green apron.
‘Nah, it’s still on the fritz,’ she said to Jackie, eyes focused on a crusted stain on her apron. ‘Best we can offer are marginally warm paninis for the time –’ She finally glanced up, eyes springing to Pip’s, a smile following close behind. ‘Miss Sweet FA. Long time, no see.’
‘You saw me yesterday,’ Pip replied, catching on too late to Cara’s waggling eyebrows. Well, she should have waggled first, then spoken; they established these rules long ago.
Jackie smiled, as though she could read the hastened conversation happening between their eyes. ‘Well, girls, if it’s been a whole day, you probably have a long overdue catch-up, no?’ She turned to Cara. ‘You can start your break early.’
‘Oh, Jackie,’ Cara said, with an over-flourished bow. ‘You are too good to me.’
‘I know, I know.’ Jackie waved her off. ‘I’m a saint. Pip, Ravi, what can I get you?’
Pip ordered a strong coffee; she’d already had two before leaving the house and her fingers were fast and fidgety. But how else would she make it through the day?
Ravi pursed his lips, eyeballing the ceiling like this was the hardest decision he’d ever faced. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I could be tempted by one of those marginally warm paninis.’