Page 96 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

‘It’s number fifty-eight, halfway up where the road bends.’

She knew exactly where he meant. ‘OK, so you all spent the evening together?’

‘Yep,’ Soph said. ‘Us and our friend, Lucy. She’s not in today.’

‘And did you all leave Mike’s house at the same time?’

‘Yeah, I was driving,’ said Harry. ‘I dropped Soph and Lucy home on my way.’

‘OK,’ Pip said, ‘and do any of you remember what time exactly you left the house?’

‘It was, like, 11:45ish, wasn’t it?’ Harry said, glancing at his friends. ‘I tried to work it back from the time I got home.’

Mike shook his head. ‘Think it was just before that. I was already in bed at 11:45, ’cause I looked at my phone to set my alarm. I went straight up after seeing you lot off and it only takes me five minutes to get ready, so I’m thinking it was closer to 11:40.’

‘11:40? That’s great, thank you,’ Pip said. ‘And can you tell me about seeing Jamie? Where was he? What was he doing?’

‘He was walking,’ Harry said, pushing back some flyaway strands of hair. ‘Quite fast . . . with purpose, I mean. He was on the pavement on Mike’s side of the road, so he crossed only a few feet behind us. He didn’t even glance at us. Seemed totally focused on wherever he was going.’

‘Which direction was he going in?’

‘Up Wyvil Road,’ said Mike, ‘away from the centre of town.’

‘Did he go all the way up Wyvil Road? Or could he have turned off, say, down Tudor Lane or somewhere?’ she asked, holding her headphones to her ears and glancing back to check Connor was OK. He was watching intently, eyes tracking every spoken word.

‘Don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘We didn’t see him after he passed us, we went the other way to my car. Sorry.’

‘And are you certain it was Jamie Reynolds?’

‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was him,’ Soph spoke up, leaning instinctively towards the microphone. ‘There was no one else walking around at that time, so I sort of noticed him more, if that makes sense. I knew it when Harry showed me your poster. I walked out the front door first, saw Jamie walking towards us and then I turned around to say bye to Mike.’

‘What was he wearing?’ Pip asked. It wasn’t a test, exactly, but she had to be sure.

‘He had on a dark red, purply kind of shirt,’ Soph said, looking for confirmation in her friends’ eyes.

‘Yeah, burgundy colour,’ Harry said. ‘Jeans. Trainers.’

Pip unlocked her phone, scrolling to the clear photo of Jamie from the memorial. She held it up, and Soph and Harry nodded. But only Soph and Harry.

‘I dunno,’ Mike said, stretching out one side of his mouth in a sort of wince. ‘I could’ve sworn he was wearing something darker. I mean, I only looked at him for a couple of seconds, and it was dark. But I thought he was wearing something with a hood. Lucy thinks so too. And I swear I couldn’t see his hands because they were in pockets, like jacket pockets. If he was just wearing a shirt, then where were his hands? But I got to the door last, so I only really saw the back of him.’

Pip flipped her phone back, looking again at Jamie. ‘This is what he was wearing when he disappeared,’ she said.

‘Ah, guess I just didn’t get a proper look,’ Mike conceded, shuffling a half step back.

‘That’s OK,’ she smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s hard to remember small details you don’t know will later become significant. Can you remember anything else about Jamie? His demeanour?’

‘Nothing that really stuck out,’ Harry said, speaking across Soph. ‘Guess I noticed he was breathing pretty hard. But he just looked like a guy in a hurry to be somewhere.’

In a hurry to be somewhere. Pip’s mind replayed those words, adding her own:and now he was nowhere.

‘OK.’ She clicked stop on the recording. ‘Thank you all so much for your time.’

Eighteen

Pip returned to the scrap of paper in her hand, running her eyes over the list she’d scribbled half an hour ago:

Leila

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