Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder #2)(2)

It had been just a couple of weeks since she’d stood up in the school hall and told everyone what really happened. But the media still weren’t telling the story right; even now they clung to their own angles because they were cleaner, neater. Yet the Andie Bell case had been anything but neat.

‘If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,’ Pip said, her gaze climbing the spiking audio clips. Right then, she couldn’t decide whether this felt like something beginning or something ending. But she knew which she wanted it to be.

‘So, what’s next?’ asked Ravi.

‘I export the episode files, upload them to Soundcloud on schedule, once a week, and then copy the RSS feed to podcast directories like iTunes and Stitcher. But I’m not quite finished,’ she said. ‘I need to record the intro, over this theme song I found on Audio Jungle. But to record an intro, you need a title.’

‘Ah,’ Ravi said, stretching back, ‘we’re still title-less are we, Lady Fitz-Amobi?’

‘We are,’ she said. ‘I’ve narrowed it down to three options.’

‘Hit me,’ he said.

‘No, you’ll be mean about them.’

‘No, I won’t,’ he said earnestly, with the smallest of smiles.

‘OK.’ She looked down at her notes. ‘Option A is: An Examination into a Miscarriage of Justice. Wha— Ravi, I can see you laughing.’

‘That was a yawn, I swear.’

‘Well, you won’t like option B either because that’s A Study into a Closed Case: The Andie Bell – Ravi, stop!’

‘Wha— I’m sorry, I can’t help it,’ he said, laughing until his eyes lined with tears. ‘It’s just . . . of all your many qualities, Pip, there’s one thing you lack –’

‘Lack?’ She spun her chair to face him. ‘I lack something?’

‘Yes,’ he said, meeting her attempt at stony eyes. ‘Pizazz. You are almost entirely pizazzless, Pip.’

‘I am not pizazzless.’

‘You need to draw people in, intrigue them. Have a word like “kill” or “dead” in there.’

‘But that’s sensationalism.’

‘And that’s exactly what you want, for people to actually listen,’ he said.

‘But all of my options are accurate and –’

‘Boring?’

Pip threw a yellow highlighter at him.

‘You need something that rhymes, or alliteration. Something with . . .’

‘Pizazz?’ she said in her Ravi voice. ‘You think of one then.’

‘Crime Time,’ he said. ‘No, oh Little Kilton . . . maybe Little Kill Town.’

‘Ew, no,’ said Pip.

‘You’re right.’ Ravi got up, started to pace. ‘Your unique selling point is, really, you. A seventeen-year-old who solved a case the police had long considered closed. And what are you?’ he looked at her, squinting his eyes.

‘Lacking, clearly,’ she said with mock irritation.

‘A student,’ Ravi thought aloud. ‘A girl. Project. Oh, how about Project Murder and Me?’

‘Nah.’

‘OK . . .’ He chewed his lip and it made Pip’s stomach tighten. ‘So, something murder, or kill or dead. And you are Pip, who’s a student and a girl who’s good at . . . oh shit,’ he said suddenly, eyes widening. ‘I’ve got it!’

‘What?’ she said.

‘I’ve literally got it,’ he said, far too pleased with himself. ‘What is it?’

‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.’

‘Noooo.’ Pip shook her head. ‘That’s bad, way too try-hard.’

‘What are you talking about? It’s perfect.’

‘Good girl?’ she said, dubiously. ‘I turn eighteen in two weeks; I won’t contribute to my own infantilization.’

‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,’ Ravi said in his deep, movie-trailer voice, pulling Pip up from her chair and spinning her towards him.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he retorted, placing one hand on her waist, his warm fingers dancing up her ribs.

‘Absolutely not.’



If you haven’t yet listened to episode 6 of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, look away now. Serious spoilers below.

Of course, many of us knew how this mystery ended, from when it exploded on to the news cycles last November, but the whodunnit wasn’t the whole story here. The real story of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder has been the journey, from a 17-year-old sleuth’s hunch about a closed case – the murder of teenager Andie Bell, allegedly by her boyfriend Sal Singh – to the spiralling web of dark secrets she uncovers in her small town. The ever-shifting suspects, the lies and the twists.

The final episode certainly isn’t lacking in twists as it brings us the truth, starting with Pip’s shocking revelation that Elliot Ward, her best friend’s father, wrote the threatening notes Pip received during her investigation. Irrefutable proof of his involvement and truly a ‘loss of innocence’ moment for Pip. She and Ravi Singh – Sal’s younger brother and co-detective on this case – believed that Andie Bell might still be alive and Elliot had been keeping her the whole time. Pip confronted Elliot Ward alone and, recounting Ward’s words, the whole story unravels. An illicit relationship between student and teacher, allegedly initiated by Andie. “If true,” Pip theorizes, “I think Andie wanted an escape from Little Kilton, particularly from her father who allegedly, according to a source, was controlling and emotionally abusive. Perhaps Andie believed Mr Ward could get her a place at Oxford, like Sal, so she could get far away from home.”