Pip glanced up to her other side, exchanging a small, strained smile with Stella Chapman. But the face of Layla Mead stared back at her, sending a cold shiver down her back. They’d been out here for over an hour already, and all the team had found was a tied baggie of dog shit and a crumpled prawn cocktail crisp packet.
‘Jamie!’ someone down the line called.
The shouting had been going on for a while. Pip didn’t know who’d started it, who’d first called out his name, but it had caught on, spreading sporadically up and down the line as they trudged on.
‘Jamie!’ she called in answer. It was probably pointless, a literal shout into the void. Jamie couldn’t still be here; and if he was, he’d no longer be able to hear his name. But at least it felt like they were actually doing something.
Pip stalled, breaking the line for a moment as she bent to check beneath a raised tree root. Nothing.
Her phone chimed, disturbing the crunching of their feet. It was a text from Connor: OK, we split into threes to do the door knocking, just finished Tudor Lane and moving on to the fields. Found anything? X
‘Jamie!’
Pip was relieved she didn’t have to cover Tudor Lane, the road where Max Hastings lived, even though his house was actually just outside the search zone. And no one was in anyway; he and his parents were staying in an expensive hotel near the Crown Court for the duration of the trial. But still, she was glad she didn’t have to go anywhere near that house.
Nothing yet, she texted back. ‘Jamie!’
But as she pressed send, her screen was overtaken by an incoming call from Cara.
‘Hey,’ Pip answered in an almost-whisper.
‘Hi, yeah,’ Cara said, the wind rattling against her microphone. ‘Um, someone on my team just found something. I’ve told everyone to stand back from it, set up a perimeter, as you’d say. But, um, you need to get here. Now.’
‘What is it?’ Pip said, the panic riding her voice, twisting it. ‘Where are you?’
‘We’re at the farmhouse. The abandoned farmhouse on Sycamore Road. You know the one.’
Pip did know the one.
‘On my way,’ she said.
*
They were running now, her and Ravi, turning the corner on to Sycamore Road, the farmhouse set back and growing out of the small hill. Its dull white painted bricks were cut through and sliced up by blackened timber, and the roof seemed to be curving inwards now, in a way that roofs shouldn’t do, like it could no longer quite hold up the sky. And the place just out of sight, behind the abandoned building, where Becca Bell had hidden her sister’s body for five and a half years. Andie had been right here all along, decomposing in the septic tank.
Pip tripped as they crossed from gravel on to grass, Ravi’s hand skimming hers instinctively, to pull her up. And as they neared, she saw the gathering of people, Cara’s team, a colourful spattering of clothes against the dull colours of the farmhouse and the long neglected land, strewn with high tufts of weedy grass that tried to grab her feet.
Everyone was standing in a loose formation, all eyes trained on the same place: a small cluster of trees by the side of the house, the branches grown so close to the building, like they were slowly reaching over to claim it as their own.
Cara was in front of the group, with Naomi, waving Pip over as she shouted over her shoulder for everyone to get back.
‘What is it?’ Pip said, breathless. ‘What did you find?’
‘It’s over there, in the long grass at the bottom of those trees.’ Naomi pointed.
‘It’s a knife,’ said Cara.
‘A knife?’ Pip repeated the words, her feet following her eyes over to the trees. And she knew. She knew before she even saw it, exactly which knife it would be.
Ravi was beside her as she bent down to look. And there it was, lying half concealed by the grass: a grey-bladed knife with a yellow band around the handle.
‘That’s the one missing from the Reynoldses’ kitchen, isn’t it?’ Ravi asked, but he didn’t need Pip to answer, her eyes told him enough.
She studied it through squinted eyes, not daring to get any closer. From here, a few feet away, the knife looked clean. Maybe a few flecks of dirt, but no blood. Not enough to be seen, at least. She sniffed, pulling out her phone to take a photo of it where it lay, then she drew back, beckoning Ravi to come with her.
‘OK,’ she said, the panic hardening into something like dread. But Pip could control dread, use it. ‘Cara, can you call Connor, tell him to let everyone on his team go and come over here, right now.’
‘On it,’ she said, the phone already halfway up to her ear.
‘Naomi, when Cara’s done, can you tell her to call Zach to dismiss my search team as well?’
She and Ravi had left their team in the care of Zach and Stella Chapman. But they wouldn’t find anything out there in the woods, because Jamie had come here. Jamie was here, carrying a knife he must have taken from his house. Here, at the outer limit of their search zone, which meant that Jamie’s brief stop had been somewhere else, before he’d walked to the farmhouse. And here, right here at 12:28 a.m., his Fitbit stopped recording his heart rate and step count. And there was a knife.
A knife was evidence. And evidence had to be dealt with in the proper way, without breaking the chain of custody. No one here had touched the knife, and no one would, not until the police got here.
Pip dialled the number of the police station in Amersham. She walked away from the gathering, plugging her other ear against the wind.
‘Hello Eliza,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s Pip Fitz-Amobi. Yep. Is anyone in at the station? Uh-huh. Could you do me a favour and ask anyone who’s free to come over to the farmhouse on Sycamore Road in Kilton? Yes that’s where Andie B— No, this is about an open missing persons case. Jamie Reynolds. I’ve found a knife that’s connected to his case, and it needs to be collected and documented properly as evidence. I know I’m supposed to call the other number . . . could you just, this one favour, Eliza, I swear, just this once.’ She paused, listening down the other end. ‘Thank you, thank you.’
‘Fifteen minutes,’ she said, rejoining Ravi. They might as well use those fifteen minutes, start trying to work out why Jamie might have come here.
‘Can you keep everyone back from those trees?’ she asked Naomi.
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Come on.’ Pip led Ravi towards the farmhouse entrance, the red-painted front door dangling off its hinges, like a mouth hanging open.
They stepped through and the inside of the house wrapped them up in its dim light. The windows were fogged over by moss and grime, and the old carpet crunched under their feet, covered in stains. It even smelled abandoned in here: mildew and must and dust.
‘When do we move in?’ Ravi said, looking around in disgust.
‘Like your bedroom is much better than this.’
They continued down the hallway, the old blue faded wallpaper peeling off and away in rolls that exposed the white underside, like small waves breaking up against the walls. An archway opened into a large space that once must have been a living room. There was a staircase on the far side, yellowing and peeling. Windows with limp, sun-bleached curtains that might have been floral-patterned in another life. Two old red sofas in the middle, brushed with grey, clinging dust.