The Secret Place
Authors: Tana French
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #International Mystery & Crime, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Police Procedural
Also by Tana French
In the Woods
The Likeness
Faithful Place
Broken Harbour
The Secret Place
Tana French
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
The right of Tana French to be identified as the Author of the Work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 444 75559 6
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
For Dana, Elena, Marianne and Quynh Giao,
who luckily were nothing like this
Contents
Prologue
There’s this song that keeps coming on the radio, but Holly can only ever catch bits of it.
Remember oh remember back when we were
, a girl’s voice clear and urgent, the fast light beat lifting you up off your toes and speeding your heart to keep up, and then it’s gone. She keeps trying to ask the others
What is it?
but she never catches enough to ask about. It’s always slipping in through the cracks, when they’re in the middle of talking about something important or when they have to run for the bus; by the time things go quiet again it’s gone, there’s just silence, or Rihanna or Nicki Minaj pounding silence away.
It comes out of a car, this time, a car with the top down to dragnet all the sunshine it can get, in the sudden explosion of summer that could be gone tomorrow. It comes over the hedge into the park playground, where they’re holding melting ice creams away from their back-to-school shopping. Holly – on the swing, head tipped back to squint up at the sky, watching the sunlight pendulum across her eyelashes – straightens up to listen. ‘That song,’ she says, ‘what’s—’ but just then Julia drops a glob of ice cream in her hair and shoots up on the roundabout yelling ‘Fuck!’, and by the time she’s got a tissue off Becca and borrowed Selena’s water bottle to wet it and cleaned the sticky off her hair, bitching the whole time – to make Becca blush, mostly, says the wicked sideways glance at Holly – about how she looks like she gave a blowjob to someone with bad aim, the car’s gone.
Holly finishes her ice cream and hangs backwards by the swing chains, just keeping the ends of her hair from brushing the dirt, watching the others upside down and sideways. Julia has lain back on the roundabout and is turning it slowly with her feet; the roundabout squeaks, a lazy regular sound, soothing. Next to her Selena sprawls on her stomach, stirring idly through her shopping bag, letting Jules do the work. Becca is threaded through the climbing frame, dabbing at her ice cream with the tip of her tongue, seeing how long she can make it last. Traffic-noises and guys’ shouts seep over the hedge, sweetened by sun and distance.
‘Twelve days left,’ Becca says, and checks to see if the rest of them are happy about that. Julia raises her cone like a toast; Selena clinks it with a maths notebook.
The huge paper bag by the swing-set frame hangs in the corner of Holly’s mind, a pleasure even when she’s not thinking about it. You want to drop your face and both hands into it, get that pristine newness on your fingertips and deep into your nose: glossy ring binder with unbumped corners, matched graceful pencils with long points sharp enough to draw blood, geometry set with every tiny measuring-line clean and unworn. And other stuff, this year: yellow towels, ribbon-wrapped and fluffy; a duvet cover, striped in wide yellow and white, slick in its plastic.
Chip-chip-chip-churr,
says a loud little bird out of the heat. The air is white and burns things away from the edges in. Selena, glancing up, is only a slow toss of hair and an opening smile.
‘Net bags!’ Julia says suddenly, up to the sizzling sky.
‘Hmmm?’ Selena asks, into her fanned handful of paintbrushes.
‘On the boarders’ equipment list. “Two net bags for in-house laundry service.” Like, where do you get them? And what do you do with them? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a net bag.’
‘They’re to keep your stuff together in the wash,’ Becca says. Becca and Selena have been boarding since the start, back when they were all twelve. ‘So you don’t end up with someone else’s disgusting knickers.’
‘Mum got mine last week,’ Holly says, sitting up. ‘I can ask her where,’ and as the words come out she smells laundry at home rising warm from the dryer, her and Mum shaking out a sheet to fold between them, Vivaldi bouncing in the background. Out of nowhere for one hideous swooping moment the thought of boarding turns into a vacuum inside her, sucking till her chest’s caving in on itself. She wants to scream for Mum and Dad, fling herself on them and beg to stay at home forever.
‘Hol,’ Selena says gently, smiling up as the roundabout takes her past. ‘It’s going to be great.’
‘Yeah,’ Holly says. Becca is watching her, clutching the bar of the climbing frame, instantly spiky with worry. ‘I know.’
And it’s gone. There’s just a residue left, graining the air and gritting the inside of her chest: still time to change your mind, do it fast before it’s too late, run run run all the way home and bury your head.
Chip-chip-churr,
says the loud little bird, mocking and invisible.
‘I dibs a window bed,’ Selena says.
‘Uh-uh, you do not,’ says Julia. ‘No fair dibsing now, when me and Hol don’t even know what the rooms are
like
. You have to wait till we get there.’
Selena laughs at her, as they turn slowly through hot blurred leaf-shadows. ‘You know what a window’s like. Dibs it or don’t.’
‘I’ll decide when I get there. Deal with it.’
Becca is still watching Holly under pulled-down eyebrows, rabbit-gnawing absently on her cone. ‘I dibs the bed farthest from Julia,’ Holly says. Third-years share four to a room: it’ll be the four of them, together. ‘She snores like a buffalo drowning.’
‘Bite my big one, I totally do not. I sleep like a dainty fairy princess.’
‘You do too, sometimes,’ Becca says, turning red at her own daring. ‘Last time I stayed over at yours I could actually
feel
it, like vibrating the entire room,’ and Julia gives her the finger and Selena laughs, and Holly grins at her and can’t wait for Sunday week again.
Chip-chip-churr,
the bird says one more time, lazy now, blurred with doziness. And fades.
Chapter 1
She came looking for me. Most people stay arm’s length away. A patchy murmur on the tip-line,
Back in ’95 I saw,
no name,
click
if you ask. A letter printed out and posted from the wrong town, paper and envelope dusted clean. If we want them, we have to go hunting. But her: she was the one who came for me.
I didn’t recognise her. I was up the stairs and heading for the squad room at a bounce. May morning that felt like summer, juicy sun spilling through the reception windows, lighting the whole cracked-plaster room. A tune playing in my head, me humming along.
I saw her, course I did. On the scraped-up leather sofa in the corner, arms folded, crossed ankle swinging. Long platinum ponytail; sharp school uniform, green-and-navy kilt, navy blazer. Someone’s kid, I figured, waiting for Daddy to bring her to the dentist. The superintendent’s kid, maybe. Someone on better money than me, anyway. Not just the crest on the blazer; the graceful slouch, the cock of her chin like the place was hers if she could be arsed with the paperwork. Then I was past her – quick nod, in case she was the gaffer’s – and reaching for the squad-room door.
I don’t know if she recognised me. Maybe not. It had been six years, she’d been just a little kid, nothing about me stands out except the red hair. She could have forgotten. Or she could have known me right off, kept quiet for her own reasons.
She let our admin say, ‘Detective Moran, there’s someone to see you,’ pen pointing at the sofa. ‘Miss Holly Mackey.’
Sun skidding across my face as I whipped around, and then: of course. I should’ve known the eyes. Wide, bright blue, and something about the delicate arc of the lids: a cat’s slant, a pale jewelled girl in an old painting, a secret. ‘Holly,’ I said, hand out. ‘Hiya. It’s been a long time.’
A second where those eyes didn’t blink, took in everything about me and gave back nothing. Then she stood up. She still shook hands like a little girl, pulling away too quick. ‘Hi, Stephen,’ she said.
Her voice was good. Clear and cool, not that cartoon squeal. The accent: high-end, but not the distorted ugly-posh. Her dad wouldn’t have let her away with that. Straight out of the blazer and into community school, if she’d brought that home.
‘What can I do for you?’
Lower: ‘I’ve got something to give you.’
That left me lost. Ten past nine in the morning, all uniformed up: she was mitching off, from a school that would notice; this wasn’t about a years-late thank-you card. ‘Yeah?’
‘Well, not
here
.’
The eye-tilt at our admin said
privacy
. A teenage girl, you watch yourself. A detective’s kid, you watch twice as hard. But Holly Mackey: bring in someone she doesn’t want, and you’re done for the day.
I said, ‘Let’s find somewhere we can talk.’
I work Cold Cases. When we bring witnesses in, they want to believe this doesn’t count: not really a murder investigation, not a proper one with guns and cuffs, nothing that’ll slam through your life like a tornado. Something old and soft, instead, worn fuzzy round the edges. We play along. Our main interview room looks like a nice dentist’s waiting room. Squashy sofas, Venetian blinds, glass table of dog-eared magazines. Crap tea and coffee. No need to notice the video camera in the corner or the one-way glass behind one set of blinds, not if you don’t want to, and they don’t. This won’t hurt a bit, sir, just a few little minutes and off you go home.
