The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(133)

Not a blush on Holly, while she dumped the story she’d told me, all sincerity, about five minutes earlier; not a blink. Daddy’s girl. ‘Yeah. So? If you knew that your friend was about to get in trouble for something she definitely hadn’t even done, you mean you wouldn’t try and get her out of it?’

I said, ‘I would, yeah. It’s only natural.’

‘Exactly. Anybody would, who has any kind of loyalty. So yeah, I did.’

I said, ‘Thanks. That clears that up. Except for one thing. When did you get the phone out of your room?’

Holly’s face went still. ‘What?’

‘The only thing that’s confusing me. Chris’s body was found at what time?’

‘Little after seven-thirty a.m.,’ Conway said. Quietly, staying invisible. I was doing all right.

‘And the assembly was when?’

Holly shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. Before lunch. Noon?’

I said, ‘Did you have morning classes? Or did you get sent back to your rooms?’

‘Classes. Well. Sort of. No one was paying any attention, even the teachers, but we still had to sit in the classrooms and act like we cared.’

‘So maybe you started hearing rumours around breakfast,’ I said. ‘At that stage it would’ve been just general stuff, police on the grounds; probably everyone thought it was about the groundskeeper who was dealing. Maybe a bit later, if someone saw the morgue van arriving and knew what it was, there might’ve been some talk about a dead person, but there’s no way yous could’ve known who it was. When was Chris ID’d?’

‘Half-eightish,’ Conway said. ‘McKenna thought he looked familiar, rang up Colm’s to see if they were missing anyone.’

I balanced the evidence bag on one end, caught it when it fell. ‘So by noon, Chris’s immediate family would’ve been notified, but we wouldn’t have released his name to the media, not till the family got the chance to tell everyone who needed to know. You couldn’t have heard it on the radio. The assembly had to be the first time you heard what had happened, and who the victim was.’

‘Yeah. So?’

‘So how did you know this phone could get Selena in trouble, in time to go get it before the assembly?’

Holly didn’t miss a beat. ‘We were all watching out the windows, every chance we got – the teachers kept telling us not to, but yeah, right. We saw uniforms and Technical Bureau guys, so I knew there’d been a crime, and then we saw Father Niall from Colm’s – he’s like eight feet tall and he looks like Voldemort and he wears the robe, so it’s not like you could get him mixed up for anyone else. So obviously something had to have happened to a Colm’s boy. And Chris was the only one who I knew had been wandering around the grounds at night. So I guessed it had to be him.’

Little cock of her eyebrow to me, as she finished up. Like a middle finger.

I said, ‘But you thought he and Selena had broken up. And you say you knew she hadn’t been out that night, so it’s not like you thought they’d got back together. What would Chris have been doing at Kilda’s?’

‘He could’ve got together with someone else. He wasn’t exactly the deep type who’d spend months pining away for his lost true love. Him and Selena had been broken up for at least ten minutes; I’d’ve been amazed if he hadn’t found someone else. And, like I said, he was the only one who I knew could get out of Colm’s. I wasn’t going to wait around till we found out for sure. I said I needed something from our room, I don’t even remember what, and I got the phone.’

‘What did you figure would happen when Selena noticed it was gone? Specially if it turned out you were wrong, and Chris wasn’t dead after all?’

Holly shrugged. ‘I figured I’d deal with that if it happened.’

‘At that point, you were just focusing on protecting your mate.’

‘Yeah.’

I said, ‘How far would you go to protect your mates?’

Mackey moved. He said, ‘That’s gibberish. She can’t answer a question unless it means something.’

Conway said, not invisible any more, ‘We’re interviewing her. Not you.’

‘You’re getting two for the price of one. You don’t like it, tough shit. No one’s under arrest; piss either of us off, and we’ll walk.’

‘Dad,’ Holly said. ‘I’m OK.’

‘I know you are. That’s why we’re still here. Detective Moran, if you’ve got a specific question in there, ask it. If all you’ve got is the tag line for some teenybopper summer film, let’s move on.’

I said, ‘Specifically, Holly: Selena didn’t tell the rest of yous that she was seeing Chris. Why do you think that was?’

Holly said coolly, ‘Because we didn’t like him. I mean, Becca would’ve probably been fine with it – she thought Chris was OK; like I said, she’s innocent. But Julia and I would’ve been like, “Are you serious? He’s an enormous tool, he thinks he’s this big playa, he’s probably three-timing you, what is wrong with you?” Selena doesn’t like arguments – specially not with Julia, because Julia never ever backs down. I can totally see where Lenie would’ve been like, “Oh, I’ll tell them in a while, when I’m sure it’s going somewhere, meanwhile I’ll just try and get them to see he might not be a total prick after all, it’ll all turn out fine in the end . . .” She’d still be doing that now, if they hadn’t broken up. And if he hadn’t died, obviously.’