As Good As Dead

It’s 6:47 on an August evening, and Pip is reeling from realizing she has just killed Jason Bell. She knows that going to the police is out of the question because they won’t believe her. Pip feels that she needs Ravi to help her get through this ordeal. Remembering that Jason has an untraceable burner phone, she calls Ravi and tells him to come to Green Scene without using his GPS while keeping to the backroads.

When Ravi arrives, he initially tries to convince Pip to go to the police, but she says,

‘The DT Killer is already in prison,’ Pip repeated, watching his eyes, waiting for him to understand. ‘Jason Bell was a respectable man. A managing director of a midsize company, and no one has a bad word to say about him’ (259).

They decide to stage a murder scene for a different time of death. Pip believes that cooling Jason’s body and then warming it will throw off the medical examiner’s estimate by several hours. She also knows that the police will keep looking for a culprit, so Pip decides to give them one—Max Hastings.

As they plan out the steps to stage the crime and establish their own alibis, Ravi says, “Jason killed five women; he would have killed you.