The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(123)

‘Live nuns, God, yeah: terrified. Dead ones, nah.’

Julia laughs along. ‘So you went out there by yourself? Seriously?’

‘Brought a couple of mates, for the laugh. I’d go on my own, though.’ Finn rearranges his feet and examines whatever he was drawing on his runner, like it’s fascinating. ‘So,’ he says. ‘Seeing as we can both get out, and we’re both not scared. Want to meet, some night? Just to hang out. See if we can spot the ghost nun.’

This time Julia misses her chance to laugh along. A discreet distance away, among the ragwort and dandelions that are growing even taller and thicker this year, Selena and Holly and Becca are all trying to listen to something on Becca’s iPod at the same time; Selena and Holly are elbowing each other for the earbud, laughing, hair in each other’s face, like everything’s that simple still. They make Julia want to shoot off the breeze blocks and explode. Any second now some mate of Finn’s is going to show up and come bouncing over, and by then she needs to know. If Gemma wasn’t lying, just if, Julia needs the weekend to figure out what to do.

‘You’re friends with Chris Harper,’ she says. ‘Right?’

Finn’s face closes over. ‘Yeah,’ he says. He holds out a hand for his phone, shoves it back in his pocket. ‘So?’

‘Does he know you’ve cut off the alarm?’

His mouth is getting a cynical curl to it. ‘Yeah. It was his idea. He’s the one that took the photo.’

Gemma wasn’t lying.

‘And if he’s who you wanted to hook up with all along, you could’ve just said that to start with.’

Finn thinks he’s been played for a fool. Julia says, ‘He’s not.’

‘I should’ve f*cking known.’

‘If Chris disappeared off the earth in a puff of sleazebaggy smoke, I’d be celebrating. Believe me.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Finn has changed colours, eyes gone dark, a raw burned red high on his cheeks. If she were a guy, he would punch her. Since she isn’t, he’s left stinging and helpless. ‘You’re some piece of work, you know that?’

Julia understands that if she doesn’t fix this right now, the chance will be gone and he will never forgive her. If they run into each other on the street when they’re forty, Finn’s face will get that burned look and he’ll keep walking.

She doesn’t have room to work out how to mend this. The other thing is spreading white and blinding across her mind, pushing Finn to the edges.

‘Believe what you want,’ she says. ‘I have to go,’ and she slides off the breeze blocks and heads back to the others, feeling the Daleks’ eyes scratching at her skin like needles, wishing she was a guy so that Finn could punch her and get it over with and then she could find Chris Harper and smash his face in.

Holly’s eyes meet Julia’s for a second, but whatever she sees warns her or satisfies her, or both. Becca glances up and starts to ask something, but Selena touches her arm and they go back to the iPod. Some game is sending little orange darts zipping across the screen; white balloons explode in slow motion, silent fragments fluttering down. Julia sits in the weeds and watches Finn walk away.





Chapter 21


We didn’t talk about Holly, me and Conway. We held her name between us like nitroglycerine and didn’t look at each other, while we did what needed doing: handed Alison over to Miss Arnold, told her to hang on to the kid overnight. Asked her for the key to the lost-and-found bin, and the story on how long things stayed in there before they got dumped. Low-value stuff went to charity at the end of each term, but pricey things – MP3 players, phones – they got left indefinitely.

The school building was dim-lit for nighttime. ‘What?’ Conway demanded, when the crack of a stair made me shy sideways.

‘Nothing.’ When that wasn’t enough: ‘A bit jumpy.’

‘Why?’

No way was I going to say Frank Mackey. ‘That light-bulb was a bit freaky. Is all.’

‘It wasn’t f*cking freaky. The wiring in this place is a hundred years old; shit must blow up all the time. What’s freaky about that?’

‘Nothing. The timing, just.’

‘The timing was there’d been people in that common room all evening. The motion sensor’s been working overtime, something overheated and the bulb blew. End of f*cking story.’

I wasn’t going to fight her on it, not when I agreed with her and she probably knew it. ‘Yeah. I’d say you’re right.’

‘Yeah. I am.’

Even arguing, we were keeping our voices down – the place made you feel like someone could be listening, getting ready to jump out at you. Every sound we made flitted away up the great curve of the stairwell, settled to rest in the shadows somewhere high above us. Above the front door the fanlight glowed blue, delicate as wing-bones.

The bin was black metal, old, off in a corner of the foyer. I fitted the key – quietly as I could, feeling like a kid slipping through forbidden places, springy with adrenaline – and swung open the panel at the bottom. Things came tumbling out at me: a cardigan smelling of stale perfume, a plush cat, a paperback, a sandal, a protractor.

The pearly pink flip-phone was at the bottom. We’d walked past it on our way into the school, that morning.