The Secret Place (22 page)

Going by what Conway had said, this was the first time anyone had talked about Chris anything like this. I said, ‘Lovely.’

‘Right? Elaine wouldn’t go anywhere she might see Colm’s guys for, like, weeks, and I think she’s still on a diet – and just by the way, she wasn’t even fat to begin with. And the thing is, Chris didn’t need to do that. I mean, it was just a
muffin
, it wasn’t the last tickets to the rugby World Cup final. But Chris thought Elaine should’ve backed down the second he wanted it. So when she didn’t’ – twist of Holly’s mouth – ‘he punished her. Like he figured she deserved.’

I said, ‘Elaine what?’

A beat, but it was easy to check. ‘Heaney.’

‘Anyone else Chris was a prick to?’

Shrug. ‘It’s not like I was taking notes. Maybe most people didn’t notice it, because like I said, it was only sometimes, and mostly he made people laugh doing it. He made it seem like just messing, just fun. But Elaine noticed. And anyone else he did it to, I bet they noticed.’

Conway said, ‘Last year you didn’t say Chris was a prick. You said you hardly knew him but he seemed like an OK guy.’

Holly examined that. Said, picking her words, ‘I was younger then. Everyone thought Chris was nice, so I figured probably he was. I didn’t really get what he was doing, till later.’

Lie: the lie Conway had been waiting for.

Conway pointed at the photo in my hand. ‘So why’d you bring us this? If Chris was such a prick, why do you give a damn if whoever killed him gets caught?’

Good-girl gaze. ‘My dad’s a detective. He’d want me to do the right thing. Whether I liked Chris or not.’

Lie again. I know Holly’s da. Doing the good-boy thing for its own sake isn’t on his horizon. He never did anything in his life without an agenda.

Got fuck-all out of her,
Conway had said.
Like pulling teeth.
Last year, Holly hadn’t wanted the killer caught, or hadn’t cared enough to stick her neck out. This year, she cared. I needed to find why.

‘Holly,’ I said. Leaned forward, close, held her eyes:
It’s me, talk to me.
‘There’s a reason why you’re so into getting this solved, all of a sudden. You need to tell me what it is. You have to know from your da: anything like that could help us out, even if you don’t see how.’

Holly said, straight on and no flinch, ‘I don’t know what you mean. There’s no
reason
. I’m just trying to do the right thing.’ To Conway: ‘Can I go?’

‘You got a boyfriend?’ Conway asked.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Angel face. ‘I’m
so
too busy. With school and everything.’

‘Such a good little student,’ Conway said. ‘You can go.’  To Houlihan: ‘All eight of them. In here.’

When they were gone, Conway said, ‘If Holly knew who killed Chris. Would she go to you or her da? Tell someone straight out?’

Or would she make up a card to bring me. I said, ‘Maybe not. She’s been a witness before, it wasn’t a great experience; she might not be on for doing it again. But if she had something she wanted to give us, she’d make good and sure we got it. Anonymous letter, probably, with all the details laid out nice and clear. Not a something-and-nothing hint like that card.’

Conway thought, pen flicking between two fingers. Nodded. ‘Fair enough. Tell you what I noticed, but. Your Holly talks like, whoever put up the card, she wanted it to get to us. She’s assuming this card wasn’t just meant to get a secret off someone’s chest; this girl wanted to tell us something, and this was the best way she could find.’

She wasn’t my Holly. That was getting obvious, to me anyway. I didn’t say it.

I said, ‘Holly could be feeling bad about coming to me. That age, taking something to adults is a big deal; makes you a rat, and that’s about the dirtiest thing you can be. So she’s convincing herself the girl wanted her to do it.’

‘Could be. Or she could know for sure.’ Conway tapped her pen up and down between her teeth. ‘If she does, what’s the odds of getting it out of her?’

Two hopes: Bob and no. Unless Holly wanted to tell us, and was waiting for a moment we couldn’t see.

I said, ‘I’ll get it out of her.’

Conway’s eyebrow said
We’ll see
. She said, ‘I want you to see them together. I’ll do the talking this time. You just watch.’

I leaned on a windowsill, sun warming my back through my jacket. Conway moved, back and forth across the front of the art room in an even long-legged stroll, hands in trouser pockets, while the girls filed in.

They settled, like birds. Holly’s lot by the windows, Joanne’s lot by the door. No one looking across the gap.

Slouched and fidgeted in their chairs; batted looks, eyebrow-lifts, whispers back and forth. They had thought we were done with them, had dumped us out of their minds. Some of them, anyway.

Conway said, over her shoulder to Houlihan, ‘You can wait outside. Thanks for your help.’

Houlihan opened and shut her mouth, made a small-animal noise, scuttled off. The girls had stopped whispering. Houlihan gone meant the fib of school protection gone; they were all ours.

They looked different, a blurry streak. Like the Secret Place, the strobe of it: I couldn’t see the separate girls any more, just all those crests on blazers, all those eyes. I felt outnumbered. Outside.

‘So,’ Conway said. ‘One of you lot lied to us today.’

They stilled.

‘At least one of you.’ She stopped moving. Pulled out the photo of the card, held it up. ‘Yesterday evening, one of you put up this card on the secrets board. Then sat here and gave us, “Oh God no, wasn’t me, never seen that before in my life.” That’s fact.’

Alison blinking like a tic. Joanne with her arms folded, bobbing a crossed foot, sliding a glance to Gemma that said
OMG can’t believe we have to listen to this
. Orla sucking her lips, trying to kill a nerves-giggle.

Holly’s lot were still. Not looking at each other. Their heads tilted inwards, like they were listening to each other, not to us. The lean of their shoulders into the centre, like they were magnetised, like it would take Superman to pull one of them away.

Just something.

Conway said, ‘I’m talking to you. The girl who put up this card. The girl who’s claiming to know who killed Chris Harper.’

A twitch around the room, a shiver.

Conway started moving again, photo balanced between her fingertips. ‘You think lying to us is the same as telling your teacher you left your homework on the bus, or telling your parents you didn’t sneak a drink at the disco. Wrong. It’s nothing like that. This isn’t small-time bullshit that’ll vanish when you leave school. This is real.’

All their eyes following Conway. Pulled by her; hungry.

She was their mystery. Not like me, not like guys, an alien mystery they were learning to barter and bargain with, a thing they knew to want but didn’t know why. Conway was theirs. She was a woman, grown: she knew things. How to wear what suited her, how to have sex right or how to turn it down, how to get her bills paid, how to balance through the wild world outside the school walls. The water where they were dipping their toes, she was over her head in it and swimming.

They wanted to get closer to her, finger her sleeves. They were judging her hard, deciding did she come up to the mark. Wondering if they would, someday. Trying to see the precarious trail that led from them to her.

‘I’m gonna spell this out for you: if you know who murdered Chris, then you’re in serious danger. Danger like, you could get killed.’ She flicked the photo through the air, a sharp snap. ‘You think this card is gonna stay a secret? If the rest of this lot here haven’t spread it round the school already, they will by the end of today. How long is it gonna take for word to get back to the killer? How long is it gonna take him or her to work out who his problem is? And what do you think a killer does about that kind of problem?’

Her voice was good. Straight, clipped, intent. Adult to adult: she’d been paying attention to what worked for me. ‘You’re in danger. Tonight. Tomorrow. Every second, right up until you tell us what you know. Once you’ve done that, the killer’s got no reason to go after you. But up until then
.
.
.’

A shiver again, a ripple. Joanne’s lot swapping those covert sideways checks. Julia scraping something off a knuckle, eyes down.

Conway pacing faster. ‘If you made up this card for the laugh, you’re in just as much danger. The killer doesn’t know you were mucking about. He, or she, can’t afford to take risks. And as far as she’s concerned, you’re a risk.’

She snapped the photo again. ‘If this card is bogus, probably you’re worried about coming clean in case you get in hassle, with us or with the school. Forget that. Yeah, me and Detective Moran, we’ll give you a lecture about wasting police time. Yeah, you’ll probably end up in detention. That’s a lot better than ending up dead.’

Joanne leaned sideways to Gemma, whispered something in her ear, not even trying to hide it. Smirked.

Conway stopped. Stared.

Joanne still smirking. Gemma fish-faced, trying to work out whether to smile or not; work out who she was more afraid of.

It needed to be Conway.

Conway moved fast, right up to Joanne’s chair, leaning in. She looked ready to head-butt.

‘Am I talking to you?’

Joanne staring back, slack-lipped with disdain. ‘Ex
cuse
me?’

‘Answer the question.’

The other girls’ eyes had come up. The arena eyes you get in classrooms when trouble starts, waiting to see who bleeds.

Joanne’s eyebrows lifting. ‘Um, I have literally no clue what it even means?’

‘I’m only talking to one person here. If that’s you, then you need to shut up and listen. If it’s not, then you need to shut up because no one’s talking to you.’

Round Conway’s patch of rough and mine, someone disses you, you punch hard and fast and straight to the face, before they see weakness and sink their teeth into it. If they back off, you’re a winner. Out in the rest of the world, people back off from that punch, too, but that doesn’t mean you’ve won. It means they’ve filed you under Scumbag, under Animal, under Stay Far From.

Conway had to know that, or she’d never have got this far. Something – this girl, this school, this case – had thrown her. She was fucking up.

Not my problem. I swore it the day I got my acceptance to cop college: that kind of rough wasn’t my problem any more, never again, not that way. Mine to handcuff and throw in the back seat of my car; not mine to give a damn about, not mine like we had anything in common. Conway wanted to fuck up, let her.

Joanne was still wearing that open-mouthed sneer. The others were leaning in, waiting for the kill. The sun felt like a hot iron pressed against the back of my jacket.

I moved, on the windowsill. Conway swung round, midway through taking a breath to reef Joanne out of it. Caught my eye.

Tiny tilt of my chin, just a fraction. Warning.

Conway’s eyes narrowed. She turned back to Joanne, slower. Shoulders easing.

Smile. Steady sticky voice, like talking to a stupid toddler.

‘Joanne. I know it’s hard for you, not being the centre of attention. I know you’re only dying to throw a tantrum and scream, “Everybody look at me!” But I bet if you try your very best, you can hang on for just a few more minutes. And when we’re done here, your friends can explain to you why this was important. OK?’

Joanne’s face was pure poison. She looked forty.

‘Can you manage that for me?’

Joanne thumped back in her chair, rolled her eyes. ‘What
ever
.’

‘Good
girl
.’

The circle of arena eyes, appreciative: we had a winner. Julia and Holly were both grinning. Alison looked terrified and over the moon.

‘Now,’ Conway said, turning back to the rest of them – Joanne was dismissed, done. ‘You; whoever you are. I know you enjoyed that, but fact is, you’ve got the same problem. You’re not taking the killer seriously. Maybe because you don’t actually know who it is, so he or she doesn’t feel real. Maybe because you do know who it is, and he or she doesn’t look all that dangerous.’

Joanne was staring at the wall, arms twisted into a knot of sulk. The rest of the girls were all Conway’s. She had done it: come up to the mark for them.

She held up the photo in a slash of sun, Chris laughing and radiant. ‘Probably Chris thought the same thing. I’ve seen a lot of people who didn’t take killers seriously. Mostly I saw them at their post-mortems.’

Her voice was steady and grave again. When she stopped, no one breathed. The breeze through the open window rattled the blinds.

‘Me and Detective Moran, we’re going to get some lunch. After that, we’ll be in the boarders’ wing for an hour or two.’ That got a reaction. Elbows shifting on desks, spines snapping straight. ‘Then we’ve got other places to be. What I’m telling you is, you’ve got maybe three hours left where you’re safe. The killer’s not gonna come after you while we’re on the grounds. Once we leave
.
.
.’