SWNOVELS : Part 1 – Chapter 3
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.’
Pippa Fitz-Amobi
EPQ 03/08/2017
Production Log – Entry 3
I’m biased. Of course I am. Every time I reread the details from the last two logs, I can’t help but hosting imaginary courtroom dramas in my head: I’m a swaggering defence attorney jumping up to object, I shuffle my notes and wink at Sal when the prosecution falls into my trap, I run up and slap the judge’s bench yelling, ‘Your honour, he didn’t do it!’
Because, for reasons I don’t even quite know how to explain to myself, I want Sal Singh to be innocent. Reasons carried with me since I was twelve years old, inconsistencies that have nagged at me these past five years.
But I do have to be aware of confirmation bias. So I thought it would be a good idea to interview someone who is utterly convinced of Sal’s guilt. Stanley Forbes, a journalist at the Kilton Mail, just responded to my email saying I could ring any time today. He covered a lot of the Andie Bell case in the local press and was even present at the coroner’s inquest. To be honest, I think he’s a crappy journalist and I’m pretty sure the Singhs could sue him for defamation and libel about a dozen times over. I’ll type the transcript up here straight after.
Oooooh booooooyyyyyyy . . .
Transcript of interview with Stanley Forbes from the Kilton Mail newspaper
Stanley: | Yep. | |
Pip: | Hi, Stanley, this is Pippa, we were emailing earlier. | |
Stanley: | Yep, yeah, I know. You wanted to pick my brains about the Andie Bell/Salil Singh case, right? | |
Pip: | Yes that’s right. | |
Stanley: | Well, shoot. | |
Pip: | OK, thanks. Erm, so firstly, you attended Andie’s coroner inquest, didn’t you? | |
Stanley: | Sure did, kid. | |
Pip: | As the national press didn’t elaborate much further than reporting the verdict and the CPS’s later statement, I was wondering if you could tell me what kind of evidence was presented to the coroner by the police? | |
Stanley: | A whole bunch of stuff. | |
Pip: | Right, could you tell me some of the specific points they made? | |
Stanley: | Err, so the main investigator on Andie’s case outlined the details of her disappearance, the times and so on. And then he moved on to the evidence that linked Salil to her murder. They made a big deal about the blood in the boot of her car; they said this suggested that she was murdered somewhere and her body was put in the boot to be transported to wherever she was disposed of. In the closing remarks the coroner said something like ‘it seems clear that Andie was the victim of a sexually motivated murder and considerable efforts were made to dispose of her body.’ | |
Pip: | And did DI Richard Hawkins or any other officer provide a timeline of what they believed were the events of that night and how Sal allegedly killed her? | |
Stanley: | Yeah, I do kinda remember that. Andie left home in her car and at some point on Salil’s walk home, he intercepted her. With either him or her driving, he took her to a secluded place and murdered her. He hid her body in the boot and then drove somewhere to hide or dispose of her body. Mind you, well enough so that it hasn’t been found in five years, must have been a pretty big hole. And then he ditched the car on that road where it was found, Romer Close I think it was, and he walked home. | |
Pip: | So, because of the blood in the boot, the police believed that Andie was killed somewhere and then hidden in a different location? | |
Stanley: | Yep. | |
Pip: | OK. In a lot of your articles about the case, you refer to Sal as a ‘killer’, a ‘murderer’ and even a ‘monster.’ You are aware that without a conviction, you are supposed to use the word ‘allegedly’ when reporting crime stories. | |
Stanley: | Not sure I need a child to tell me how to do my job. Anyway, it’s obvious that he did it and everyone knows it. He killed her and the guilt drove him to suicide. | |
Pip: | OK. So for what reasons are you convinced of Sal’s guilt? | |
Stanley: | Almost too many to list. Evidence aside, he was the boyfriend, right? And it’s always the boyfriend or the ex-boyfriend. Not only that, Salil was Indian. | |
Pip: | Um . . . Sal was actually born and raised in Britain, though it is notable that you refer to him as Indian in all of your articles. | |
Stanley: | Well, same thing. He was of Indian heritage. | |
Pip: | And why is that relevant? | |
Stanley: | I’m not like an expert or anything, but they have different ways of life to us, don’t they? They don’t treat women quite like we do, their women are like their possessions. So I’m guessing maybe Andie decided she didn’t want to be with him or something and he killed her in a rage because, in his eyes, she belonged to him. | |
Pip: | Wow . . . I . . . Err . . . you . . . Honestly, Stanley, I’m pretty surprised you haven’t been sued for defamation. | |
Stanley: | That’s ’cause everyone knows what I’m saying is true. | |
Pip: | Actually, I don’t. I think it’s very irresponsible to label someone a murderer without using ‘suspected’ or ‘allegedly’ when there’s been no trial or conviction. Or calling Sal a monster. Speaking of word use, it’s interesting to compare your recent reporting of the Slough Strangler. He murdered five people and pleaded guilty in court, yet in your headline you referred to him as a ‘lovesick young man’. Is that because he’s white? | |
Stanley: | That’s got nothing to do with Salil’s case. I just call it how it is. You need to chill out. He’s dead, why does it matter if people call him a murderer? It can’t hurt him. | |
Pip: | Because his family aren’t dead. | |
Stanley: | It’s starting to sound like you actually think he’s innocent. Against all the expertise of senior police officers. | |
Pip: | I just think there are certain gaps and inconsistencies in the supposed case against Sal. | |
Stanley: | Yeah, maybe if the kid hadn’t offed himself before getting arrested, we would have been able to fill the gaps. | |
Pip: | Well, that was insensitive. | |
Stanley: | Well it was insensitive of him to kill his pretty blonde girlfriend and hide her remains. | |
Pip: | Allegedly! | |
Stanley: | You want more proof that that kid was a killer, fangirl? We weren’t allowed to print it, but my source in the police said they found a death threat note in Andie’s school locker. He threatened her and then he did it. Do you really still think he can be innocent? | |
Pip: | Yes I do. And I think you’re a racist, intolerant, dickhead, mindless bottom-feeder – |
(Stanley hangs up the phone)
Yeah, so, I don’t think Stanley and I are going to be best friends.
However, his interview has given me two bits of information I didn’t have before. The first is that police believe Andie was killed somewhere before being put in the boot of her car and driven to a second location to be disposed of.
The second bit of intel lovely Stanley gave me is this ‘death threat’. I’ve not seen it mentioned in any articles or in any of the police statements. There must be a reason: maybe the police didn’t think it was relevant. Or maybe they couldn’t prove it was linked to Sal. Or maybe Stanley made it up. In any case, it’s worth remembering when I interview Andie’s friends later on.
So now that I (sort of) know what the police’s version of events were for that night, and what the prosecution’s case might have looked like, it’s time for a MURDER MAP .
After dinner because Mum’s going to call up in about three. . . two . . . yep . . .
So professional-looking. But it does help to visualize the police’s version of events. I had to make a couple of assumptions when creating it. The first is that there are several ways to walk from Max’s to Sal’s; I picked the one that heads back through the high street because Google said it was the quickest and I’m presuming most people prefer to walk on well-lit streets at night.
It also provides a good intercept point somewhere along Wyvil Road where Andie potentially pulled over and Sal got in the car. Thinking like a detective, there are actually some quiet residential roads and a farm on Wyvil Road. These quiet, secluded places – circled – could potentially be the site of the murder (according to the police’s narrative).
I didn’t bother guessing where Andie’s body was disposed of because, like the rest of the world, I have no clue at all where that is. But given that it takes about eighteen minutes to walk from where the car was dumped on Romer Close back to Sal’s house in Grove Place, I have to presume he’d have been back in the vicinity of Wyvil Road around 12:20 a.m. So if the Andie and Sal intercept happened at around 10:45 p.m., this would have given Sal one hour and thirty-five minutes to murder her and hide the body. I mean, timewise, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. It’s possible. But there are already a dozen ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions elbowing their way in.
Andie and Sal both leave where they are at around 10:30 p.m., so they must have planned to meet up, right? It seems too coincidental for them not to have communicated and planned it. The thing is, the police have never once mentioned a phone call or any texts between Andie and Sal that would account as a meet-up arrangement. And if they planned this together, at school for example, where there would be no record of the conversation, why didn’t they just agree that Andie would pick Sal up from Max’s house? It seems weird to me.
I’m rambling. It’s 2 a.m. and I just ate half a Toblerone, that’s why.