A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

‘Yeah it was horrible,’ Pip said, ‘but I should still be there.’ She should; she’d promised to follow this story to all of its ends. But instead, Ravi would be there every day in the public gallery, taking notes for her. Because school wasn’t optional: so said her mum and the new headteacher.

‘Pip, please,’ her mum said in that warning voice. ‘This week is difficult enough as it is. And with the memorial tomorrow too. What a week.’

‘Yep,’ Pip agreed with a sigh.

‘You OK?’ Her mum paused, resting a hand on Pip’s shoulder.

‘Yeah. I’m always OK.’

Her mum didn’t quite believe her, she could tell. But it didn’t matter because a moment later there was a rapping of knuckles against the front door: Ravi’s distinctive pattern. Long-short-long. And Pip’s heart picked up to match it, as it always did.

[Jingle plays] Pip: Hello, Pip Fitz-Amobi here and welcome back to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: The Trial of Max Hastings. This is the third update, so if you haven’t yet heard the first two mini-episodes, please go back and listen to those before you return. We are going to cover what happened today, the third day of Max Hastings’ trial, and joining me is Ravi Singh . . . Ravi: Hello. Pip: . . . who has been watching the trial unfold from the public gallery. So today started with the testimony from another of the victims, Natalie da Silva. You may well recognize the name; Nat was involved in my investigation into the Andie Bell case. I learned that Andie had bullied Nat at school, and had even sought and distributed indecent images of her on social media. I believed this could be a possible motive and, for a time, I considered Nat a person of interest. I was entirely wrong, of course. Today, Nat appeared in Crown Court to give evidence about how, on 24 February 2012 at a calamity party, she was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted by Max Hastings, the charges listing one count of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. So, Ravi, can you take us through how her testimony went? Ravi: Yeah. So, the prosecutor asked Nat to establish a timeline of that evening: when she arrived at the party, the last instance she looked at the time before she began to feel incapacitated, what time she woke up in the morning and left the house. Nat said that she only has a few hazy snatches of memory: someone leading her into the back room away from the party and laying her on a sofa, feeling paralyzed, unable to move and someone lying beside her. Other than that, she described herself as being blacked out. And then, when she woke up the next morning, she felt dreadful and dizzy, like it was the worst hangover she’d ever had. Her clothes were in disarray and her underwear had been removed. Pip: And, to revisit what the prosecution’s expert witness said on Tuesday about the effects of benzodiazepines like Rohypnol, Nat’s testimony is very much in line with what you’d expect. The drug acts like a sedative and can have a depressant effect on the body’s central nervous system, which explains Nat’s feeling of being paralyzed. It feels almost like being separated from your own body, like it just won’t listen to you, your limbs aren’t connected any more. Ravi: Right, and the prosecutor also made sure the expert witness repeated, several times, that a side effect of Rohypnol was ‘blacking out’, as Nat said, or having anterograde amnesia, which means an inability to create new memories. And I think the prosecutor wants to keep reminding the jury of this point, because it will play a significant part in the testimonies of all the victims; the fact that they don’t remember exactly what happened because the drug impacted their ability to make memories. Pip: And the prosecutor was keen to repeat that fact regarding Becca Bell. As a reminder, Becca recently changed her plea to guilty, accepting a three-year sentence, despite a defence team who were confident they could get her no jail time due to her being a minor at the time of Andie’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it. So yesterday, Becca gave her evidence by video link from prison, where she will be for the next eighteen months. Ravi: Exactly. And, like with Becca, today the prosecution was keen to establish that they both only had one or two alcoholic drinks the night of the alleged attacks, which couldn’t possibly account for the level of intoxication. Specifically, Nat said she only drank one 330-millilitre bottle of beer all night. And she stated, explicitly, who gave her that drink on her arrival: Max. Pip: And how did Max react, while Nat was giving her evidence? Ravi: From the public gallery, I can only really see him from the side, or the back of his head. But he seems to be acting the same way he has since Tuesday. This sort of calm, very still demeanour, eyes turned to whoever’s in the witness box as though he’s really interested in what they’re saying. He’s still wearing those thick-rimmed glasses, and I’m one hundred per cent certain they aren’t prescription lenses – I mean, my mum’s an optometrist. Pip: And is his hair still long and sort of unkempt, like it was on Tuesday? Ravi: Yeah, that seems to be the image he and his lawyer have settled on. Expensive suit, fake glasses. Maybe they think his blonde, messy hair will be disarming to the jury or something. Pip: Well, it’s worked for certain recent world leaders. Ravi: The courtroom sketch artist let me take a photo of her sketch today, and said we could post it after the press published it. You can see her impression of Max sitting there while his solicitor, Christopher Epps, cross-examines Nat on the stand. Pip: Yes, and if you’d like to look at the sketch, you can find it on the appendix materials on the website agoodgirlsguidetomurderpodcast.com. So, let’s talk about the cross-examination. Ravi: Yes, it was . . . pretty rough. Epps asked a lot of invasive questions. What were you wearing that night? Did you dress promiscuously on purpose? –showing photos of Nat that night from social media. Did you have a crush on your classmate, Max Hastings? How much alcohol would you drink on an average night? He also brought up her past criminal conviction for assault occasioning bodily harm, implying that it made her untrustworthy. It was, essentially, a character assassination. You could see Nat getting upset, but she stayed calm, took a few seconds to breathe and have a sip of water before answering each question. Her voice was shaking, though. It was really hard to watch. Pip: It makes me so angry that this kind of cross-examination of victims is allowed. It almost shifts the burden of proof on to them, and it isn’t fair. Ravi: Not fair at all. Epps then grilled her about not going to the police the next day, if she was sure she was assaulted and who the perpetrator was. That if she’d gone within seventy-two hours, a urinalysis could have confirmed whether she even had Rohypnol in her system which, he claimed, was up for debate. Nat could only reply that she hadn’t been sure afterwards, because she had no memory. And then Epps said, ‘If you have no memory, how do you know you didn’t consent to any sexual activity? Or that you even interacted with the defendant that night?’ Nat replied that Max had made a loaded comment to her the following Monday, asking if she’d had a ‘good time’ at the party because he had. Epps never let up. It must have been exhausting for Nat. Pip: It seems this is his tactic for Max’s defence. To somehow undermine and discredit each of us as witnesses. With me, it was his claim about how convenient it was that I had Max to use as a male patsy, to try make Becca Bell and her alleged manslaughter sympathetic. That it was all part of the ‘aggressive feminist narrative’ I’ve been pushing with my podcast. Ravi: Yeah, that does seem to be the route Epps is going down. Pip: I guess that’s the kind of aggressive strategy you get when your lawyer costs three hundred pounds an hour. But money is no issue for the Hastings family, of course. Ravi: It doesn’t matter whatever strategy he uses; the jury will see the truth.

Two

Words spliced, growing across the gaps like vines as her eyes unfocused, until her handwriting was just one writhing blur. Pip was looking at the page, but she wasn’t really there. It was like that now; giant holes in her attention that she slipped right into.

There was a time, not too long ago, she would have found a practice essay about Cold War escalation enthralling. She would have cared, really cared. That was who she was before, but something must have changed. Hopefully it was just a matter of time until those holes filled back in and things went back to normal.

Her phone buzzed against the desk, Cara’s name lighting up.

‘Good evening, Miss Sweet F-A,’ Cara said when Pip picked up. ‘Are you ready to Netflix and chill in the upside down?’

‘Yep CW, two secs,’ Pip said, taking her laptop and phone to bed with her, sliding under the duvet.

‘How was the trial today?’ Cara asked. ‘Naomi almost went this morning, to support Nat. But she couldn’t face seeing Max.’

‘I just uploaded the next update.’ Pip sighed. ‘Makes me so angry that Ravi and I have to tiptoe around it when we record, saying ‘allegedly’ and avoiding anything that steps over the presumption of innocence when we know he did it. He did all of it.’

‘Yeah, it’s gross. But it’s OK, it will be over in a week.’ Cara rustled in her covers, the phone line crackling. ‘Hey, guess what I found today?’

‘What?’

‘You’re a meme. An actual meme that strangers are posting on Reddit. It’s that photo of you with DI Hawkins in front of all the press microphones. The one where it looks like you’re rolling your eyes at him while he’s talking.’

‘I was rolling my eyes at him.’

‘And people have captioned the funniest things. It’s like you’re the new “jealous girlfriend” meme. This one has a caption of Me . . . by you, and beside Hawkins it says Men on the internet explaining my own joke back to me.’ She snorted. ‘That’s when you know you’ve made it, becoming a meme. Have you heard from any more advertisers?’

‘Yeah,’ Pip said. ‘A few companies have emailed about sponsorship. But . . . I still don’t know if it’s the right thing, profiting off what happened. I don’t know, it’s too much to think about, especially this week.’

‘I know, what a week.’ Cara coughed. ‘So tomorrow, you know . . . the memorial, would it be weird for Ravi . . . and his parents, if Naomi and I were there?’

Pip sat up. ‘No. You know Ravi doesn’t think like that, you’ve spoken to each other about it.’

‘I know, I know. But I just thought, with tomorrow being about remembering Sal and Andie, now we know the truth, maybe it would be weird for us to –’

‘Ravi is the last person who’d ever want you to feel guilty for what your dad did to Sal. His parents too.’ Pip paused. ‘They lived through that, they know better than anyone.’

‘I know, it’s just –’

‘Cara, it’s OK. Ravi would want you there. I’m pretty sure he’d say Sal would’ve wanted Naomi there. She was his best friend.’

‘OK, if you’re sure.’

‘I’m always sure.’

‘You are. You should think about taking up gambling,’ Cara said.

‘Can’t, Mum’s already too concerned about my addictive personality.’

‘Surely mine and Naomi’s fucked-uppedness helps to normalize you.’

‘Not enough, apparently,’ said Pip. ‘If you could try a bit harder, that would be great.’

That was Cara’s way of getting through the last six months; her new normal. Hiding behind the quips and one-liners that made others squirm and fall silent. Most people don’t know how to react when someone jokes about their father who murdered a person and kidnapped another. But Pip knew exactly how to react: she crouched and hid behind the one-liners too, so that Cara always had someone right there next to her. That was how she helped.

‘Note taken. Although not sure my grandma can cope with any more. You know Naomi’s had this new idea: apparently she wants to burn all of Dad’s stuff. Grandparents obviously said no and got straight on the phone to our therapist.’

‘Burn it?’

‘I know, right?’ Cara said. ‘She’d accidentally summon a demon or something. I probably shouldn’t tell him; he still thinks Naomi will turn up one day.’

Cara visited her dad in Woodhill Prison once a fortnight. She said it didn’t mean she’d forgiven him, but, after all, he was still her dad. Naomi had not seen him once and said she never would.

‘So, what time does the memorial – hold on, Grandpa’s talking to me . . . yes?’ Cara called, her voice directed away from the phone. ‘Yeah, I know. Yeah, I am.’

Cara’s grandparents – her mum’s parents – had moved into the house with them last November, so Cara had some doctor-ordered stability until she finished school. But April was almost over, and exams and the end of school were fast approaching. Too fast. And when summer arrived, they would put the Wards’ house on the market and move the girls back to their home in Great Abington. At least they’d be close when Pip started university in Cambridge. But Little Kilton wasn’t Little Kilton without Cara, and Pip quietly wished the summer would never come.

‘OK. Goodnight Grandpa.’

‘What was that?’

‘Oh, you know, it’s gone ten thirty so it’s suuuuuuuper late and past “lights out” time and I should have been in bed hours ago and not chatting to my “girlfriends”. Plural. At this rate, I’ll probably never have a girlfriend, let alone multiple, plus no one has said “lights out” since like the seventeen hundreds,’ she huffed.

‘Well, the light bulb was invented in 1879 so –’

‘Ugh, please stop. Have you got it lined up?’

‘Almost,’ Pip said, dragging her finger across the mousepad. ‘We’re on episode four, yes?’

This had started in December, when Pip first realized Cara wasn’t really sleeping. Not surprising, really; lying in bed at night is always when the worst thoughts come. And Cara’s were worse than most. If only Pip could stop her listening to them, distract her into sleep. As kids, Cara was always the first one to go at sleepovers, her light snores disrupting the end of the cheesy horror film. So Pip tried to recreate those childhood sleepovers, calling Cara while they binge-watched Netflix together. It worked. As long as Pip was there, awake and listening, Cara eventually fell asleep, her soft breaths whistling through the phone.

Now they did it every night. They’d started with shows Pip could legitimately argue had ‘educational value’. But they’d been through so many that the standard had slipped somewhat. Still, at least Stranger Things had some historical quality.

‘OK, ready?’ Cara said.

‘Ready.’ It had taken them several attempts to get the shows to run in exact synchronization; Cara’s laptop had a slight delay so she pressed play on one and Pip went on go.

‘Three,’ Pip said.

‘Two.’

‘One.’

‘Go.’

FRIDAY

Three

She knew his footsteps; knew them across carpet and hardwood floors, and knew them now across the gravel on the common car park. She turned and smiled at him, and Ravi’s feet picked up in that small-stepped half-run he always did when he spotted her. It made Pip glow every time.

‘Hey, Sarge,’ he said, pressing the words into her forehead with his lips. His very first nickname for her, now one among dozens.

‘You OK?’ she asked, though she already knew he wasn’t; he’d just over-sprayed deodorant and it was following him around like a fog. That meant he was nervous.

‘Yeah, bit nervous,’ Ravi said. ‘Mum and Dad are already there but I wanted to shower first.’

‘That’s OK, the ceremony doesn’t start until seven thirty,’ Pip said, taking his hand. ‘There are lots of people around the pavilion already, maybe a few hundred.’

‘Already?’

‘Yeah. I walked through on my way home from school and the news vans were already setting up.’

‘Is that why you came in disguise?’ Ravi smiled, tugging at the bottle-green jacket hood pulled over Pip’s head.

‘Just until we get past them.’

It was probably her fault they were here anyway; her podcast had reignited Sal and Andie’s stories on the news cycles. Especially this week, the six-year anniversary of their deaths.

‘How did court go today?’ asked Pip, and then: ‘We can talk about it tomorrow if you don’t want –’

‘No, it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I mean, it wasn’t OK. Today was one of the girls who lived in the same halls as Max at university. They played her 999 call from the morning after.’ Ravi swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘And in cross-examination, Epps went in on her, of course: no DNA profile lifted from the rape kit, no memory, that sort of thing. You know, watching Epps sometimes makes me reconsider if I really want to be a criminal defence solicitor.’

That was The Plan they’d worked out: Ravi would resit his A-Level exams as a private candidate the same time Pip was taking hers. Then he would apply for a six-year law apprenticeship starting in September, when Pip went to university. ‘Quite the power couple,’ Ravi had remarked.

‘Epps is one of the bad ones,’ Pip said. ‘You’ll be a good one.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Are you ready? We can wait here a bit longer if you –’

‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘Just . . . I . . . will you stay with me?’

‘Of course.’ She pressed her shoulder into his. ‘I won’t let go.’

The sky was already darkening as they left the crunchy gravel behind for the soft grass of the common. To their right, little clusters of people were walking out on to the green from the direction of Gravelly Way, all heading towards the pavilion on the south side of the common. Pip heard the crowd before she saw them; that low, living hum that only happens when you put hundreds of people into one small place. Ravi gripped her hand tighter.

They rounded a tight knot of whispering sycamore trees and the pavilion came into view, glowing a faint yellow; people must have started lighting the candles and tealights laid out around the structure. Ravi’s hand started to sweat against hers.

She recognized a few faces at the back as they approached: Adam Clark, her new history teacher, standing beside Jill from the café, and over there Cara’s grandparents waving at her. They pushed forward and, as eyes turned and met theirs, the crowd parted for Ravi, swallowing them, re-forming behind them to block the way back.

‘Pip, Ravi.’ A voice pulled their attention to the left. It was Naomi, hair pulled back tight, like her smile. She was standing with Jamie Reynolds – the older brother of Pip’s friend Connor – and, Pip realized with a stomach lurch, Nat da Silva. Her hair so white in the thickening twilight that it almost set the air around her aglow. They had all been in the same school year as Sal and Andie.

‘Hi,’ Ravi said, pulling Pip out of her thoughts.

‘Hi Naomi, Jamie,’ she said, nodding to them in turn. ‘Nat, hey,’ she faltered as Nat’s pale-blue eyes fell on her and her gaze hardened. The air around her lost its glow and turned cold.

‘Sorry,’ Pip said. ‘I-I . . . just wanted to say I’m sorry you had to go through that, th-the trial yesterday, but you did amazingly.’

Nothing. Nothing but a twitch in Nat’s cheek.

‘And I know this week and next must be awful for you, but we are going to get him. I know it. And if there’s anything I can do . . .’

Nat’s eyes slid off Pip like she wasn’t really there at all. ‘OK,’ Nat said, a sharp edge to her voice as she faced the other way.

‘OK,’ Pip said quietly, turning back to Naomi and Jamie. ‘We’d better keep moving. See you later.’

They moved on through the crowd, and when they were far enough away, Ravi said in her ear, ‘Yeah, she definitely still hates you.’

‘I know.’ And she deserved it, really; she had considered Nat a murder suspect. Why wouldn’t Nat hate her? Pip felt cold, but she packed away Nat’s eyes into the pit in her stomach, alongside the rest of those feelings.

She spotted Cara’s messy dark blonde top-knot, bobbing above the heads in the crowd, and she manoeuvred herself and Ravi towards it. Cara was standing with Connor, who was nodding his head in quick doubles as she spoke. Beside them, heads almost pressed together, were Ant and Lauren, who were now always Ant-and-Lauren said in one quick breath, because one was never seen without the other. Not now that they were together together, unlike before when they must have been pretend together. Cara said apparently it had started at the calamity party they all went to last October, when Pip had been undercover. No wonder she hadn’t noticed. Zach was standing the other side of them, ignored, fiddling awkwardly with his liquid black hair.

‘Hi,’ Pip said as she and Ravi breached the outer circle of the group.

‘Hey,’ came a quiet chorus of replies.

Cara turned to look up at Ravi, nervously picking at her collar. ‘I, um . . . I’m . . . how are you? Sorry.’

Cara was never lost for words.

‘It’s OK,’ Ravi said, breaking free from Pip’s hand to hug Cara. ‘It really is, I promise.’

‘Thank you,’ Cara said quietly, blinking at Pip over Ravi’s shoulder.

‘Oh, look,’ Lauren hissed, nudging Pip and indicating with a flash of her eyes. ‘It’s Jason and Dawn Bell.’

Andie and Becca’s parents. Pip followed Lauren’s eyes. Jason was wearing a smart wool coat, surely too hot for the evening, leading Dawn towards the pavilion. Dawn’s eyes were down on the ground, on all those bodiless feet, her eyelashes mascara-clumped like she’d already been crying. She looked so small behind Jason as he pulled her along by the hand.

‘Have you heard?’ Lauren said, beckoning for the group to draw in tighter. ‘Apparently Jason and Dawn are back together. My mum says his second wife is divorcing him and apparently Jason has moved back into that house with Dawn.’

That house. The house where Andie Bell died on the kitchen tiles and Becca stood by and watched. If those apparentlys were true, Pip wondered how much choice Dawn had had in that decision. From what she’d heard about Jason during her investigation, she wasn’t sure how much choice anyone around him ever had. He’d certainly not come out of her podcast smelling of roses. In fact, in a twitter poll a listener made of the Most Hateable Person in AGGGTM, Jason Bell had received almost as many votes as Max Hastings and Elliot Ward. Pip herself had come in close fourth place.