The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(132)

It was true. Maybe the whole truth, maybe not, but true.

‘Does that answer all your questions?’

I said, ‘One left. I don’t get why you’d tell me all that.’

‘I’m establishing interdepartmental cooperation, Detective. Showing the love, in a professional kind of way.’ Mackey flicked his smoke onto the ground, crushed it out in one heel-twist. ‘After all,’ he said over his shoulder with a great big grin, as he pushed the door open, ‘we’re working together.’



Holly was sitting where we’d left her; Conway was at the window, hands in her pockets, looking down at the gardens. They hadn’t been talking. The air in the room, the fast turn from both of them when we came in, said they’d been listening hard to each other instead.

Mackey shifted his spot, keep us on our toes: sat on a table behind Holly, found himself a stray chunk of modelling clay to play with. I pulled Selena’s phone towards me. Turned the evidence bag in circles on the table, between my fingertips.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Let’s go back to this phone. You say you found it on the foyer floor, the morning after Chris died. Let’s stick with that for now. You’d seen Selena’s secret phone; you knew what it looked like. You had to know this was it.’

Holly shook her head. ‘I thought it was Alison’s. Selena kept hers down the side of her bed; how would it get to the foyer?’

‘You didn’t even ask her?’

‘No way. Like I told you, I didn’t want to get into that with her. If I even thought about it – and I don’t remember if I did – I would’ve figured, if it was somehow Selena’s phone, then she’d rather go get it out of the lost-and-found than have to talk about how I knew it was hers and all that crap.’

Smooth as butter. No one, not even Frank Mackey’s kid, comes up with that kind of good stuff off the top of her head. Holly had been thinking this through, stuck in that common room with wild things zapping the air. Methodically going through everything we could know, working out her answers.

Some innocent people would do that. Not a lot.

‘Makes sense,’ I said. Behind Holly, Mackey had flattened the clay into a disc, was trying to spin it on his finger. ‘Here’s the thing, but. The way our witness tells the story, you didn’t find the phone in the foyer. You had it tucked down your waistband, wrapped in a tissue.’

Holly’s eyebrows pulling together, baffled. ‘No I didn’t. I mean, I might’ve had a tissue in my hand, everyone was crying—’

‘You didn’t like Chris. And you’re not the type to fake a crying fit for someone you didn’t like.’

‘I never said I was crying. I wasn’t. I’m saying I might have been giving someone else a tissue, I don’t remember. But I do know the phone was on the floor.’

I said, ‘I think you took Selena’s phone out from behind her bed and found a good way to ditch it. The lost-and-found bin, that was smart. It worked well. It almost worked for good.’

Holly’s mouth opened, but I held up my hand. ‘Hang on a sec. Let me finish first, before you tell me if I’m right or wrong. You knew there was a chance we’d search the school. You knew if we found the phone, we’d be talking to Selena. You knew what police questioning is like; let’s face it, there’s better ways to spend your day. You didn’t want Selena put through that, not when she was already traumatised about Chris’s death. So you binned the phone. Does that sound about right?’

It was an out: an innocent reason why she would have wanted the phone gone. Never take the out. It looks safe as houses. It takes you a step closer to where we want you.

Mackey said, without glancing up from his new toy, ‘You don’t have to answer that.’

I said, ‘No reason why you shouldn’t. You think we’re going to press charges against a minor for concealing something that might not even be evidence? We’ve got a lot more on our minds. Your da can tell you himself, Holly: if you’re after something big, you’re happy to let the small stuff slide. This is small stuff. But we need to clear it up.’

Holly watched me, not her dad. Thought, or I thought she did, about that moment when she had seen me understand.

She said, ‘Selena didn’t kill Chris. No way. I never worried that she did, not even for a second. She doesn’t work like that.’ Straight-backed, straight-eyed, trying to shove it into my head. ‘I know you’re thinking Yeah, right. But I’m not just being na?ve. I know with most people you don’t have a clue what they’re capable of. I know that.’

Mackey’s piece of clay had gone still. It was true: Holly did know that.

‘But with Selena I do. She wouldn’t have hurt Chris. Ever. I swear to God, it’s totally impossible.’

I said, ‘Probably you’d have sworn to God that she wouldn’t go out with Chris, either.’

Twitch of impatience, I was losing cred again. ‘Like that’s the same thing? Come on. Anyway, I don’t expect you to just take my word about what kind of person she is. She actually physically couldn’t have done it. Like I told you, sometimes I can’t sleep. The night Chris died, I was having trouble sleeping. If Selena had gone out, I would’ve known.’

It was a lie, but I left it. I said, ‘So you ditched the phone.’