The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(116)

Silence, and the long red stretch of the corridor, tiles shifting queasily.

‘He brought a condom.’

I said, ‘Not Rebecca. She wouldn’t think of it.’

‘Nah.’

Julia would have thought of it.

13th of May: I’ll be there.

14th of May, Selena again. Don’t worry, I know you’re not going to answer this. I just like talking to you anyway. If you want me to stop, tell me and I will. Otherwise I’ll keep texting you. We had a substitute today for Maths, when she smiled she looked exactly like Chucky - Cliona got mixed up and called her Mrs Chucky and we all almost died laughing :-D

Rewinding, back to the small stories for laughs, trying to bring Chris back with her to a safe place. I said, ‘For a while, Mystery Girl’s able to convince Chris to stay away from Selena. Wouldn’t be hard: he’s pissed off with her anyway, and if Mystery Girl’s giving him something Selena wasn’t . . . But Selena keeps texting him. If he cared about her, if that was the real thing, then those texts had to get to him. After a while, it doesn’t matter what Mystery Girl’s bringing. Chris wants Selena back.’

Conway said, ‘And Mystery Girl has to come up with a new plan.’

16th of May, 9.12 a.m.. The morning before Chris died.

Selena’s phone to Chris’s: Can you meet tonight? 1 in the cypress clearing?

4.00 p.m. – he must have checked his messages after school – Chris’s phone to Selena’s: OK.

Whoever had set up that meeting had killed Chris Harper. We had room for a crack of doubt – interception, coincidence. No more than that.

‘Love to know who he thinks he’s meeting,’ Conway said.

‘Yeah. Not Mystery Girl’s usual day, not her usual MO – this time she asks for an answer.’

‘It’s not Selena. “Cypress clearing”, Selena wouldn’t’ve said that. That was their spot. “Same time same place,” she’d’ve said.’

Selena was out, again. I said, ‘But Chris could’ve thought it was her.’

‘Could be what Mystery Girl wanted him to think. By now, she’s planning. She breaks the routine to get Chris wondering, make sure he shows up. Takes the risk of having him text her back – maybe she does nick the phone outright, this time. She knows no one’s gonna be using it from now on.’

Conway’s voice was level and low, rough-edged with fatigue. Small eddies of air nosed around it, curious, carried it away down the corridor.

‘Maybe Joanne’s twisting her arm; maybe she’s doing it off her own bat, for whatever reason. That night she sneaks out early, takes the hoe out of the shed – she’s wearing gloves, so no prints. She heads for the grove, hides in among the trees till Chris arrives. When he’s mooning around the clearing waiting for his twue wuv to show up, our girl hits him with the hoe. He goes down.’

The lazy drone of bees, this morning, long ago. Seed-heads round my ankles, smell of hyacinths. Sunlight.

‘She waits till she’s sure. Then she wipes down the hoe, puts it back where she got it. She takes Chris’s secret phone off his body and gets rid of it. Gets rid of Selena’s, too. Maybe she does it that night, goes over the wall and ditches them in a bin; maybe she hides them somewhere in the school till the fuss dies down. Now there’s nothing to link her or her mates to the crime – except maybe Joanne, and Joanne’s got enough cop to keep her mouth shut. Our girl goes back inside. Goes to bed. Waits for the morning. Gets ready to squeal and cry.’

I said, ‘Fifteen years old. You think any of them would have that kind of nerve? The murder, OK. But the wait? This whole last year?’

Conway said, ‘She did it for her friend. One way or another. For her friend’s sake. That’s got power. You do that, you’re Joan of Arc. You’ve gone through fire; nothing’s gonna break you.’

Shiver building dark in my spine, the way it does when power comes near. That beat of pain again, deep in the palms of my hands.

‘There’s someone else who knows, but. And she hasn’t been through fire for her mate; she hasn’t got that kind of nerve. She holds in the secret as long as she can, but it finally gets to be too much. She cracks, makes the postcard. Probably she genuinely doesn’t think it’ll go further than that board, corridor gossip. The bubble again: you’re inside it, the outside doesn’t feel real. But your Holly’s been to the outside before. She knows it’s there.’

Sound from the fourth-year common room, sharp and sudden. Something heavy thudding to the floor. A squeal.

I was half off the windowsill when Conway’s hand clamped round my bicep. She shook her head.

‘But—’

‘Wait.’

Murmur like bees, swelling and bristling.

‘They’re going to—’

‘Let them.’

A wail, rising above that murmur, high and trembling. Conway’s hand tightened.

Words, a terrified cry too garbled to catch through the thick door. Then the screaming started.

Conway was down and hitting the combination lock before I realised her hand was gone off my arm. The door opened on a different world.

The noise punched me in the face, sent my vision skidding. Girls up and on their feet, hands and hair flying – I’d been seeing them through texts for so long, just narrow snippets of minds shooting through dark, it felt like a double-take seeing them real and solid. And nothing like I’d seen them before, nothing. Those glossy gems, watching us cool-eyed and assessing with their knees perfectly crossed: gone. These were white and scarlet, wide-mouthed, clawed and clutching at each other, these were wild things.