Pippa Fitz-Amobi EPQ 25/08/2017
Production Log – Entry 11
UPDATE : I researched to see if I could find the owner of the car with the number plate Sal had written down in his notes: R009 KKJ. Ravi was right. We’d need to know the make and model of the car to send a request to the DVLA. I guess that particular lead is dead.
OK, back to the task at hand. I just got off the phone with Chloe. I tried a different tactic this time; I didn’t need to go over the same things I’d learned from Emma and I didn’t want to hinder the interview with any dormant Andie emotional issues.
But I stumbled into some anyway . . .
Transcript of interview with Chloe Burch
[I’m getting bored of typing out the interview intros; they’re all the same and I always sound awkward. Skipping from now on straight to juicy bits.] Pip: OK, so my first question is how would you describe Andie and Sal’s relationship?
ChloeYeah, good, he was nice to her and she thought he was hot. Sal always seemed :really calm and chilled; I thought he would mellow Andie out a bit.
Pip: Why would Andie have needed mellowing out?
ChloeOh, just because she always had some drama going on.
: Pip: And did Sal mellow her?
Chloe(Laughs) No. : Pip: But were they quite serious about each other?
ChloeI don’t know, I guess so. Define serious? : Pip: Well, excuse the question, but were they sleeping together?
[Yes, I do cringe hearing this back. But I need to know everything.] ChloeWow, school projects have changed since I left. Why on earth would you need to
:know that?
Pip: Did she not tell you?
ChloeOf course she told me. And no, they weren’t, actually.
: Pip: Oh. Was Andie a virgin?
ChloeNo, she wasn’t.
: Pip: So who was she sleeping with?
Chloe(Small pause) I don’t know.
: Pip: You didn’t know?
ChloeAndie liked her secrets, OK? They made her powerful. She got a thrill out of me and :Emma not knowing certain things. But she’d dangle them in front of us because she liked us to ask. Like where she got all that money from; she would just laugh and
wink when we asked.
Pip: Money?
ChloeYeah. That girl was always shopping, always had a load of cash on her. And, in our :final year, she told me she was saving up to get lip fillers and a nose job. She never told Emma that, just me. But she was generous with it too; she’d buy us make-up and stuff, and always let us borrow her clothes. But then she’d pick her moment at the party to say something like: “Oh, Chlo, looks like you’ve stretched that. I’ll have to give it to Becca now.” Sweet girl.
Pip: Where did her money come from? Did she have a part-time job?
ChloeNo. I told you, I didn’t know. I just presumed her dad was giving it to her.
: Pip: Like an allowance?
ChloeYeah, maybe. : Pip: So when Andie first went missing, was there any part of you that thought she had run away to punish someone? Maybe her father?
ChloeAndie had things too good to want to run away. : Pip: But was there tension in Andie’s relationship with her dad?
[As soon as I say the word ‘dad’ Chloe’s tone flips.] ChloeI don’t see how that can be relevant to your project. Look, I know I’ve been flippant :about her and, yeah, she had her flaws, but she was still my best friend who got murdered. I don’t think it’s right to be talking about her personal relationships and her family, however many years later.
Pip: No, you’re right, sorry. I just thought if I knew what Andie was like and what was happening in her life, I could better understand the case.
ChloeYeah OK, but none of that is relevant. Sal Singh killed her. And you’re not going to :get to know Andie from a few interviews. It was impossible to know her, even when you were her best friend.
[I inelegantly try to apologize and bring us back on topic, but it is clear Chloe is done. I thank her for her help before she hangs up.] Grrr, so frustrating. I thought I was actually getting somewhere, but, no, I blundered into a giant minefield of raw emotion with both of Andie’s friends and ruined it. I guess even though they think they’ve moved on, they still haven’t quite broken free of Andie’s hold.
Maybe they are even still keeping some of her secrets. I certainly struck a nerve when I brought up Andie’s dad; is there a story there?
I just read the transcript another few times and . . . maybe there’s something else hidden here. When I asked Chloe who Andie was sleeping with, what I’d meant to ask was who Andie had slept with before Sal, any past relationships. But I accidentally phrased it in the past continuous: ‘who was she sleeping with?’ This, in context, means that what I accidentally asked was: who else was Andie sleeping with at the same time as her relationship with Sal? But Chloe didn’t correct me. She just said she didn’t know.
I’m grasping at straws, I know. Of course, Chloe could have been answering the question I’d meant to ask. This could be nothing. I know I can’t solve this case by being particular about grammar, that’s not how the real world works unfortunately.
But now I’ve got the scent of it, I can’t let it go. Was Andie secretly seeing someone else?
Did Sal find out and that’s why they were arguing? Does this explain Sal’s last text to Andie before she disappeared: im not talking to you till youve stopped ?
I’m not a police officer, this is still just a school project, so I can’t make them tell me anything. And these are the kinds of secrets you only share with your best friends, not some random girl doing her EPQ.
Oh My God. I’ve just had a horrible but maybe brilliant idea. Horrible and certainly immoral and probably stupid. And definitely, definitely wrong. And even so, I think I should do it. I can’t come out of this thing entirely squeaky clean if I actually want to find out what happened to Andie and Sal.
I’m going to catfish Emma, pretending to be Chloe.
I have that pay-as-you-go SIM I used on holiday last year. If I put that in my phone, I can text Emma pretending that I’m Chloe with a new number. It might work; Emma said they lost contact so she might not realize. And it might not work. But I have nothing to lose, and maybe secrets to gain and a killer to find.
Holy pepperoni.
I have never sweated so much in my whole damn life. I’m in shock that I managed to pull that off. I almost lost it a couple of times but . . . I actually did it.
I do feel bad, though. Emma is so nice and trusting. But it’s good that I feel guilty; it shows I haven’t quite lost my moral compass. I might still be a good girl yet . . .
And just like that, we have two more leads.
Jason Bell was already on the persons of interest list, but now he goes on in bold as number-one suspect. He was having an affair and Andie knew about it. More so than that, Jason knew that Andie knew. She must have approached him about it, or maybe she’s the one who caught him. That’s definitely filled in some of the gaps about why their relationship was strained.
And, now I think about it, was all this secret money Andie had given to her by her dad BECAUSE she knew? Was she, maybe, blackmailing him? No, that’s pure conjecture; I
need to consider the money as separate intel until I can confirm where it came from.
The second lead and the biggest reveal of the night then: Andie was secretly seeing an older man during her relationship with Sal. So secret that she never told her friends who it was, only that she could ruin him. My mind goes immediately to that place: a married man.
Could he have been the source of the secret money? I have a new suspect. One who would certainly have motive to silence Andie for good.
This is not the Andie I expected to find in my investigation, so removed from that public image of a beautiful blonde victim. A victim loved by her family, a victim adored by her friends, a victim who was taken too soon by her ‘cruel, murderous ’ boyfriend. Maybe that Andie was a fictional character all along, designed to bucket-collect people’s sympathy, to exchange their coins for newspapers. And now that I’m scratching, that image is starting to
peel away at the corners.
I need to call Ravi.
Persons of Interest Jason Bell Naomi Ward Secret Older Guy (how much older?)
