Page 127 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

I know.

Pip:

Can you give me her number?

Fourteen

‘Did you get all dressed up to come and see me, Sarge?’ Ravi said, leaning against his front door frame in a green plaid flannel shirt and jeans.

‘Nope, I came straight from school,’ said Pip. ‘And I need your help. Put some shoes on –’ she clapped her hands – ‘you’re coming with me.’

‘Are we going on a mission?’ he said, staggering back to slip on some old trainers discarded in the hallway. ‘Do I need to bring my night-vision goggles and utility belt?’

‘Not this time,’ she smiled, starting down the garden path as Ravi closed the front door, following behind her.

‘Where we going?’

‘To a house where two potential Andie-killer suspects grew up,’ Pip said. ‘One of them just out of prison for committing an “assault occasioning actual bodily harm”,’ she used quotation fingers around her words. ‘You’re my back-up as we’re going to speak to a potentially violent person of interest.’

‘Back-up?’ he said, catching up to walk alongside her.

‘You know,’ Pip said, ‘so there’s someone there to hear my screams of help if they’re required.’

‘Wait, Pip.’ He closed his fingers round her arm and pulled them both to a stop. ‘I don’t want you doing something that’s actually dangerous. Sal wouldn’t have wanted that either.’

‘Oh, come on.’ She shrugged him off. ‘Nothing gets in between me and my homework, not even a little danger. And I’m just going to, very calmly, ask her a few questions.’

‘Oh, it’s a her?’ Ravi said. ‘OK then.’

Pip swung her rucksack to whack him on the arm.

‘Don’t think I didn’t notice that,’ she said. ‘Women can be just as dangerous as men.’

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