The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(13)

And there it was, probably: the reason she had let me come along. Something in the corner of her eye, gone when she looked at it straight. Costello hadn’t been able to pin it down either. Conway thought maybe a fresh pair of eyes; maybe me.

I said, ‘Could a teenage girl have done the job? Physically, like?’

‘Yeah. No problem. The weapon – and this wasn’t released either – the weapon was a hoe out of the groundskeepers’ shed. One blow, right through Chris Harper’s skull and into his brain. The Bureau said, with the long handle and the sharp blade, it wouldn’t have taken a lot of strength. A kid could’ve done it, easy, if she got a good swing.’

I started to ask something, but Conway spun the car into a turn – so sudden, no blinker, I almost missed the moment we crossed over: high black-iron gates, stone guardhouse, iron arch with ‘St Kilda’s College’ picked out in gold. Inside the gates she braked. Let me take a good look.

The drive swung a semicircle of white pebbles around a gentle slope of clipped green grass that went on forever. At the top of that slope was the school.

Someone’s ancestral home, once, someone’s mansion with grooms holding dancing carriage horses, with tiny-waisted ladies drifting arm in arm across the grass. Two hundred years old, more? A long building, soft grey stone, three tall windows up and more than a dozen across. A portico held up by slim curl-topped columns; a rooftop balustrade, pillars curved delicate as vases. Perfect, it was; perfect, everything balanced, every inch. Sun melting over it, slow as butter on toast.

Maybe I should have hated it. Community-school me, classes in run-down prefabs; keep your coat on when the heating went every winter, arrange the geography posters to cover the mould patches, dare each other to touch the dead rat in the jacks. Maybe I should have looked at that school and wanted to take a shite in the portico.

It was beautiful. I love beautiful; always have. I never saw why I should hate what I wish I had. Love it harder. Work your way closer. Clasp your hands around it tighter. Till you find a way to make it yours.

‘Look at that,’ said Conway. Leaning back in her seat, eyes narrow. ‘This is the only time I’m sorry I’m a cop. When I see a shitpile like this and I can’t petrol-bomb it to f*ck.’

Watching me, for my reaction. A test.

I could’ve passed, easy. Could’ve given out some stink about spoilt rich brats and my corpo-house life. Mostly I would’ve. Why not? I’d been wishing for the Murder squad for a long time. Work your way closer, make it yours.

Conway wasn’t someone I wanted to bond with.

I said, ‘It’s beautiful.’

Her head going back, mouth twisting sideways, what could have been a grin if it hadn’t been something else. Disappointment?

‘They’re gonna love you in here,’ she said. ‘Come on; let’s find you some West Brit arse to lick.’ She gunned it and we went shooting up the drive, pebbles flying out from under the wheels.



The car park was round to the right, screened off by tall dark-green trees – cypress, I was pretty sure; wished I knew trees better. No sparkly Mercs here, but no wrecks, either; the teachers could afford to drive something decent. Conway parked in a ‘Reserved’ space.

Odds were, no one at St Kilda’s was going to see the MG, not unless they’d been looking out of a front window when we came in the gate. Conway had picked it for herself; for how she wanted to go in, not how she wanted people to see her go in. I rewrote what I thought of her, again.

She swung herself out of the car, threw her bag over her shoulder – nothing girly, black leather satchel, more butch than most of the Murder lads’ briefcases. ‘I’ll take you round the scene first. Let you get your bearings. Come on.’

Through the cool curtain of shade under the screening trees. A sound like a sigh, above us; Conway’s head snapped up, but it was just wind nosing through the dense branches. On our left, when we came out into the sun again: the back of the school. Right: another great down-slope of grass, bordered by a low hedge.

The main building had wings, one stretching out to the rear from each end. Built on later, maybe, but built to match. Same grey stone, same light hand on the ornaments; someone going for line, not for frills.

Conway said, ‘Classrooms, hall, offices, all the school stuff, they’re in the main building. That’ – the near wing – ‘that’s the nuns’ gaff. Separate entrance, no connecting door to the school; the wing’s locked up at night, but all the nuns have keys, and they’ve got their own rooms. Any of them could’ve snuck out and bashed Chris Harper. There’s only a dozen of them left, most of them are about a hundred and none of them’s under fifty; but like I said before, it didn’t take a bodybuilder.’

‘Any motive?’

She squinted up at the windows. Sun flashed off them into our eyes. ‘Nuns are f*cked up. Maybe one of them saw him stick his hand up some girl’s jumper, figured he was a minion of Satan, corrupting the innocent.’

She headed across the smooth lawn at a diagonal, away from the building. Nothing said keep off the grass, but it looked it. Two heads like us in a place like this: I was waiting for a gamekeeper to burst out of the trees and chase us off the grounds, attack dogs chewing the arses out of our trousers.

‘The other wing, that’s the boarders. Locked down tight as a nun’s gee at night; the girls don’t have keys. Bars on the ground-floor windows. Door at the back there, but it’s alarmed at night. Connecting door to the school on the ground floor, and that’s where it gets interesting. The school windows don’t have bars. And they’re not alarmed.’