The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(118)

I gave her my big reassuring smile. ‘Good. You’re grand to talk, right? You don’t need the matron, more allergy medicine, anything like that?’

She shook her head. The chaos at the end of the corridor had ebbed to nothing; McKenna had the fourth-years under control at last. Any minute now, she was going to come looking for us.

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘You said, in there, that you saw one of Selena Wynne’s gang do something. You were pointing at one of them. Which one?’

We braced and waited, me and Conway, to hear Julia.

Alison let out a little sigh. She said, ‘Holly.’

That easy. On the corridors above us and below, the older girls and the younger ones had gone back into their common rooms and closed the doors. There was no sound anywhere, none at all. That white silence came sifting down again, piling into little drifts in the corners, slipping down our backs to collect in the folds of our clothes.

Holly was a cop’s kid. Holly was my star witness. Holly was the one who had brought me that card. Even after I’d seen her here, deep in her own world, I had somehow thought she was on my side.

‘OK,’ I said. Easy and loose, like it was nothing, nothing at all. Felt Conway’s eyes, on me, not on Alison. ‘What’d you see?’

‘After the assembly. The one where they told us about Chris. I was . . .’

Alison was getting that look again, the one from earlier: slack and dazed, like someone after a seizure. ‘Stick with me,’ I said, smiling away. ‘You’re doing great. What happened after the assembly?’

‘We were coming out of the hall, into the foyer. I was right beside Holly. She looked round, just quickly, like she was checking if anyone was watching her. So I noticed that, you know?’

Observant, just like I’d told her that morning. Prey animal’s fast eyes.

‘And then she stuck her hand down her skirt, like in the waist of her tights?’ A snigger, limp and automatic. ‘And she pulled out this thing. Wrapped in a tissue.’

Making sure she wouldn’t leave prints. Just like Mystery Girl had done with the hoe. I nodded along, all interested. ‘That’d catch your eye, all right.’

‘It was just weird, you know? Like, what would you keep down your tights? I mean, ew? And then I kept looking because some of it was sticking out of the tissue, and I thought it was my phone. It was the same as mine. But I checked my pocket, and my phone was there.’

‘What did Holly do next?’

Alison said, ‘The lost-and-found bin’s in the foyer, right at the door of reception. It’s this big black bin with a hole at the top, so you can put things in but you can’t get them out? You have to go to Miss O’Dowd or Miss Arnold and they have the key. We were going past reception, and Holly kind of ran her hand across the bin – like she was just doing it for no reason, she didn’t even look at it, but then the phone wasn’t in her hand any more. Just the tissue.’

I saw Conway’s eyes close for a second on the Should’ve searched. She said, from her corner, ‘How come you didn’t say this to me last year?’

Alison flinched. ‘I didn’t know it had anything to do with Chris! I never thought—’

‘Course you didn’t,’ I said soothingly. ‘You’re grand. When did you start to wonder?’

‘Just a couple of months ago. Joanne was . . . I’d done something she didn’t like, and she said, “I should call the detectives and tell them your phone used to text with Chris Harper. You’d get in sooo much trouble.” I mean, she was just saying it, she wouldn’t have actually done it?’

Alison was looking anxious. ‘Course not,’ I said, all understanding. Joanne would’ve dropped Alison in a shredder feet first, if it had suited her.

‘But I started thinking. Like, “OhmyGod, what if they actually did look at my phone, they’d totally think I’d been with Chris!” And then I thought about that phone I saw Holly with. And I went, like, “What if she was getting rid of it because she was scared of the same thing?” And then I was like, “OhmyGod, what if she actually was with Chris?”’

I said, ‘Did you talk about it to Holly? Or anyone else?’

‘OhmyGod, no way, not to Holly! I said it to Gemma. I thought she’d know what to do.’

‘Gemma’s smart, all right.’ Which she was. Alison hadn’t worked out that the phone might have been Selena’s. Gemma would have. ‘What’d she say?’

Alison squirmed. Down to her lap: ‘She said it was none of our business. To just shut up and forget the whole thing.’

Conway shaking her head, jaw clenched. I said, ‘And you tried. But you couldn’t manage.’

Head-shake.

I said, ‘So you made that card. Put it up on the Secret Place.’

Alison stared, bewildered. Shook her head.

‘Nothing wrong with that. It was a good idea.’

‘But I didn’t! I swear to God, I didn’t!’

I believed her. No reason she would lie, not now. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK.’

Conway said, ‘Well done, Alison. Probably you were right to begin with and it’s nothing to do with Chris, but Detective Moran and I will have a chat with Holly, clear it up. First we’ll take you back down to Miss Arnold. You’re looking a bit pale.’