Good Girl, Bad Blood

The doorbell was shrill, splitting your ears the same way as a scream. Pip withdrew her finger, restoring quiet to the white-bricked terraced house. She hoped this was the right house, this was the one they’d told her: number thirteen Beacon Close, dark red door.

An aggressively white BMW sports car sat in the drive, throwing the morning sun back into Pip’s eyes, blinding her.

She was about to ring the bell again, when she heard a sliding bolt. The door swung inwards and a man appeared in the gap, screwing his eyes against the brightness outside. This must have been the new boyfriend, then. He was wearing a crisp white jumper – black Adidas track marks up the arms – and a pair of dark basketball shorts.

‘Yeah?’ he said gruffly, voice crackling like he’d not long been awake.

‘Hello,’ Pip said brightly. The man had a tattoo across the front of his neck, the grey ink stark against his white skin in symmetrical repeating shapes that looked a little like scales. A flock of birds emerged from the pattern, flying up the side of his face and into his brown close-shaved hair. Pip returned her gaze to his eyes. ‘Um, is Nat da Silva in? I just asked at her parents’ house and her mum said she’d probably be here.’

‘Yeah she’s in,’ he sniffed. ‘You a friend of hers?’

‘Yes,’ Pip said, which was a lie, but it was easier to say than: No she still hates me even though I keep trying to make her not hate me. ‘I’m Pip . . . Fitz-Amobi. Can I come in? I need to talk to her about something quite urgent.’

‘Yeah, I guess. It’s kinda early,’ he said, stepping back and gesturing for her to follow. ‘I’m Luke. Eaton.’

‘Nice to meet you.’ Pip closed the front door and followed Luke around the bend in the corridor, into the kitchen at the back.

‘Nat, friend of yours,’ Luke said as they entered.

The room was square, kitchen counters in an L-shape on one side, the other filled with a large wooden table. On one end of the table was what looked like a stack of money, the pile weighted down by BMW car keys. And on the other end sat Nat da Silva, a bowl of cereal in front of her. She was wearing what must have been one of Luke’s jumpers, her dyed white hair brushed to one side.

She dropped her cereal-loaded spoon and it clattered noisily against the bowl.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Hi Nat.’ Pip stood there awkwardly, trapped halfway between Luke in the doorway and Nat at the table.

‘You already said what you wanted to say to me at the memorial,’ Nat said dismissively, picking the spoon back up.

‘Oh, no, this isn’t about the trial.’ Pip chanced one step towards Nat.

‘What trial?’ Luke said behind her.

‘Nothing,’ Nat responded, the word spoken over her mouthful. ‘What is it, then?’

‘It’s Jamie Reynolds,’ Pip said. A breeze came through the open window, fluttering the lace curtain and rustling a couple of brown paper bags on the counter. Probably takeaway bags. ‘Jamie’s missing,’ she added.

Nat’s eyebrows lowered, darkening her blue eyes. ‘Missing? His mum called me yesterday, asking if I’d seen him. He still hasn’t turned up?’

‘No, and they’re really worried. They filed a missing person report yesterday, but the police aren’t doing anything about it.’

‘My brother, you mean?’

Pip had walked right into that one.

‘Well, no, I spoke to the Detective Inspector. He says there’s nothing they can do. So the Reynoldses asked if I would investigate.’

‘For your podcast?’ Nat said that last word full of spite, hardening the consonants, sharpening them to a point.

‘Well, yes.’

Nat swallowed another bite of cereal. ‘How opportunistic of you.’

Luke sniggered behind her.

‘They asked me to,’ Pip said quietly. ‘I’m guessing you won’t want to do a recorded interview.’

‘Perceptive too,’ she said, milk dripping on to the table as another spoonful hovered between her and the bowl.

‘Jamie told his brother he was going to your house – your parents’ house – after the memorial, to spend the evening with you.’

‘He was supposed to. He never showed up.’ Nat sniffed, glancing quickly up at Luke. ‘Never texted to say he wasn’t coming. I waited. Tried calling him.’

‘So, the last contact you had with Jamie was at the memorial, in person?’

‘Yes.’ Nat crunched another mouthful. ‘Until just after Andie’s friends spoke, when I noticed Jamie staring into the crowd on the other side, trying to see something. I asked him what was up, and he said, “I’ve just seen someone.”’

‘And?’ Pip said when Nat paused for too long.

‘Then he left, presumably to go talk to whoever it was,’ she said.

That’s when Pip had last seen him too. Jostling her as he made his way to the other side of the crowd, a strange intensity on his face. But who was he moving towards?

‘Do you have any idea who the “someone” is that he spotted?’

‘No,’ Nat said, stretching her neck out with an audible crack. ‘Can’t be somebody I know or he would’ve said their name. He’s probably with whoever that someone is. He’ll come home. Jamie’s like that, very all or nothing.’

‘His family are convinced something has happened to him,’ Pip said, her legs starting to prickle from standing still too long. ‘That’s why I need to work out his movements during and after the memorial. Find out who he interacted with on Friday night. Do you know anything that might help?’

She heard an intake of breath behind her, from Luke, before he spoke. ‘Nat’s right, Jamie’s probably just staying with a friend. I’m sure this is a load of trouble over nothing.’

‘Do you know Jamie?’ Pip half-turned to look at him.

‘Nah, not really, only through Nat. They’re good friends. If she says he’s OK, then he’s probably OK.’

‘Well, I –’ Nat started.

‘Were you at the memorial?’ Pip asked Luke. ‘Did you see –’

‘Nah, wasn’t there.’ Luke clicked his tongue. ‘Never knew either of those kids. So no, didn’t see Jamie. Didn’t actually leave the house at all on Friday.’

Pip nodded at him, then twisted back to the kitchen table. As she did, she caught just the tail-end of the expression on Nat’s face. She was looking up at Luke, hand frozen mid-air on its way back to the spoon, mouth slightly open like she’d started to speak but had forgotten how. Then her eyes flicked to Pip and the face immediately dropped out, so fast Pip wasn’t sure she’d really seen it at all, nor what it might mean.

‘So,’ Pip said, watching Nat more closely now, ‘was Jamie acting strangely that night, or in recent weeks?’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Nat. ‘I haven’t heard from him much lately.’

‘Have you been texting? Late-night phone calls?’ asked Pip.

‘Well, not . . .’ Nat suddenly abandoned her cereal, sitting back in the chair with her arms crossed. ‘What is this?’ she said, her voice jagged with anger. ‘Are you interrogating me? I thought I was just telling you when I last saw Jamie, but now it’s sounding like you suspect me of something. Like last time.’

‘No, I’m not –’

‘Well you were wrong back then, weren’t you? Should learn from your mistakes.’ Nat pushed her chair back and it screeched on the tiles, cutting right through Pip. ‘Who made you the vigilante of this crappy town, anyway? Everyone else might be happy to play along, but I’m not.’ She shook her head and dropped her pale blue eyes. ‘You’re leaving now.’

‘I’m sorry, Nat,’ Pip said. There was nothing else she could say; anything she tried only made Nat hate her more. And there was only one person to blame for that. But Pip wasn’t that person any more, was she? That yawning feeling opened up in her gut again.

Luke led Pip back down the hallway and opened the front door.

‘You lied to me,’ he said as Pip passed, a faint hint of amusement in his voice. ‘Said you were friends.’

She screwed her eyes against the glare from Luke’s car, turned back and shrugged.

‘Thought I was good at spotting liars.’ His grip tightened around the edge of the door. ‘Leave us out of it, whatever it is you’re up to. You hear?’

‘I hear.’

Luke smiled at something and closed the door with a sharp click.

Walking away from the house, Pip pulled out her phone to check the time. 10:41 a.m. Thirty-eight and a half hours missing. Her home screen was piling up with notifications from Twitter and Instagram, more coming in as she watched. The scheduled post on her website and social media had gone out at half ten, announcing the second season of the podcast. So now everyone knew about Jamie Reynolds. There really was no going back.

A few emails had come in too. Another company inquiring about sponsorship. One from Stanley Forbes with twenty-two attachments, the subject reading: memorial pictures. And one from two minutes ago: Gail Yardley, who lived down Pip’s road.

Hello Pippa, it read. I’ve just seen the missing posters around town. I don’t remember seeing Jamie Reynolds that evening, but I’ve had a quick look through my photographs from the memorial, and I’ve found him. You might want to take a look at this photo.

It’s unmistakably Jamie, standing there in Gail Yardley’s photo. The metadata tells me the photo is time-stamped from 8:26 p.m., so here Jamie is, undisappeared, ten minutes after I last saw him.

Jamie is almost facing the camera, and that itself is the strangest thing about the photograph. Everyone else, every single other face and every other pair of eyes are all turned up, looking at the exact same thing: the lanterns for Andie and Sal, hovering just over the roof of the pavilion during this sliver of time.

But Jamie is looking the wrong way.

His pale, freckled face is in the near darkness, at a slight angle to Gail’s camera, looking at something behind her. Or someone. Probably the same someone he’d told Nat da Silva about.

And his face – there’s something there I can’t quite read. He doesn’t look scared, per se. But it’s something not far off. Concerned? Worried? Nervous? His mouth is hanging open, eyes wide with one eyebrow slightly angled up, like he could be confused about something. But who or what caused this reaction? Jamie told Nat he’d spotted someone, but why was it urgent enough to fight through the crowd during the middle of the memorial? And why is he standing here, presumably staring at that someone instead of joining them? There’s something strange about this.

I’ve flicked through Stanley Forbes’ photos. Jamie isn’t in any of them, but I cross-referenced them against Gail’s photograph, trying to find her in the crowd to see if I can work out who Jamie is looking at, or at least narrow it down. Stanley has just one photo pointing that way, time-stamped before the memorial began. I can see the Yardleys standing there, a few rows from the front on the left. I’ve zoomed right in on the faces behind, but the photo was taken from quite a distance and it’s not very clear. From the black police uniforms and shiny peaked hats, I can tell Daniel da Silva and Soraya Bouzidi are standing next to the Yardleys. That dark green jacket blur beside them must be DI Richard Hawkins. I think I recognize a few of the pixelated faces behind as people from my year at school, but it’s impossible to tell who Jamie might have been looking at. Plus, this photo was taken an hour before the Jamie photo; the crowd might have shifted in that time.

• – Record these observations later for episode 1.

The photo – coupled with Nat’s evidence – has certainly opened up a lead to focus the investigation on. Who is the “someone” Jamie went to find in the crowd? They might know something about where Jamie went that night. Or what happened to him.

Other Observations

• Jamie must have been distracted by something or someone that night because he doesn’t go to Nat’s house as planned, or even text her to say he isn’t coming. Is what we see in this photo the very start of that distraction?
• Jamie’s recent late-night phone calls and constant texting haven’t been with Nat da Silva, unless she just didn’t want to say so in front of Luke (he is quite intimidating).
• That expression on Nat’s face when Luke said he hadn’t left the house at all on Friday. Might be nothing. Might be a ‘couple’ thing between them that I don’t understand. But her reaction seemed significant to me. Most likely nothing to do with Jamie, but I should note down everything. (Not to mention in podcast – Nat hates me enough already.)