The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(139)

Conway caught my eye, as I sat down beside her. Hers said: Ready. Steady. Go.

She didn’t rewind to where we’d been, to how Holly had to have hated Chris. No point: Mackey had wrecked that moment, nice and thorough. Instead she said, ‘You were right: we’ve narrowed the card down to the eight of you. One of the other seven knows who killed Chris.’

Holly rolled the clay along the table, from hand to hand. ‘Yeah, well. Or at least she says she does.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

Incredulous face. ‘How do I feel ? What is this, Guidance? You want me to draw a picture of my feelings in coloured pencil?’

‘Are you worried?’

‘If I was worried, I wouldn’t have brought you the card to begin with. Duh.’

Too brazen, that hair-flick. Holly was putting it on.

That morning, she’d been grand with the card. Since then, something had happened.

I said, ‘That just means you weren’t worried this morning. How about now?’

‘What would I worry about?’

Conway said, ‘That one of your friends knows something that could put her in danger. Or that someone knows something that you might not want us to find out.’

Holly threw herself back in her chair, hands flying up. ‘Oh my God, look. Nobody in school knows what happened to Chris. Joanne invented the card because she was looking for attention. OK?’

Conway lifted an eyebrow. ‘How come you didn’t say this to Detective Moran when you brought him the card? “Here you go, and by the way, it’s a load of bollix, this girl Joanne Heffernan made it up.” Or did something happen since this morning, to make Joanne into your favourite theory?’

‘Joanne keeps trying to get us into shit, is what’s happened. When you guys showed up, obviously she totally freaked out – she probably wasn’t expecting actual police, because she’s an actual idiot. So she’s spent all day frantically trying to make you look at us, so you won’t figure out what she did and she won’t get in trouble for wasting your time. Why would she be arsed, unless she had something she didn’t want you noticing?’

Conway said, ‘If she wanted to make us look at you and your mates, she’s done a good job.’

‘Yeah, obviously. Or I wouldn’t be sitting here. It never even occurred to you that she might be a huge liar?’

‘I’d say she is, all right. But we don’t need to take her word for anything. Selena meeting Chris, for example: when all we had was Joanne’s word for it, we weren’t too impressed. But then she showed us video. Of the two of them together.’

Something skidding across Holly’s face. Not surprise.

That video was how Holly had known about Chris and Selena.

She said, coolly, ‘What a pervert. I’m not even surprised.’

Conway said, and I felt her mind right there next to mine, ‘Did she show it to you?’

Snort. ‘Yeah, no. Joanne and I don’t share stuff.’

Conway shook her head. ‘I wasn’t thinking about sharing and caring. I was thinking about blackmail.’

Blank. ‘Like how?’

‘Joanne went out with Chris for a while. Before he was with Selena.’

Holly’s eyebrows went up. ‘Yeah? Shame it didn’t work out.’

Still no surprise. I asked, ‘You think Joanne was happy that he dumped her for Selena?’

‘I doubt it. I hope it gave her a brain aneurysm.’

‘Just about,’ Conway said. ‘You know Joanne better than I do. You think it would piss her off enough that she’d want him dead?’

‘Oh yeah. Definitely. Can I go now, and you can bother her instead?’

‘Thing is,’ I said, ‘we’re pretty sure Joanne didn’t actually kill Chris. We’re wondering if she got someone to do it for her.’

‘Orla,’ Holly said promptly. ‘Any dirty work Joanne wants done, she gets Orla to do it.’

Conway was shaking her head. ‘Nah. We’ve got solid evidence that it was one of your four.’

Still nothing out of Mackey, not yet, but his eyes were fixed on Conway. Holly had the same look on her. No more messing with the clay, that was over. She knew: this was the heart of it. She said, ‘Evidence like what?’

‘We’ll get to that. We think maybe Joanne showed that video to one of you four. Told her, “Get rid of Chris for me, or this goes to McKenna and you all get expelled.”’

Conway was leaning in, picking up the rhythm. I eased back, put my head down over my notebook. Left her to it.

Holly’s eyebrows were up. ‘And we just went, “Uhhh, OK, anything you say”? Seriously? If we were that terrified of being expelled, we wouldn’t’ve snuck out to begin with. We’d’ve stayed inside like good little girls.’

‘Not just because you were scared of being expelled. Joanne picked carefully. She picked someone who’d do a lot to protect her mates, who was already frantic about the damage Chris was doing, already hated his guts—’

Conway was ticking off finger after finger, relentless. Holly snapped, ‘I’m not stupid – Dad, leave me alone, I want to say this! If I was going to kill someone, which I didn’t, no way would I do it in some kind of conspiracy with Joanne Heffernan. And be stuck for the rest of my life with that bitch holding that over my head? Do I look brain-dead? No f*cking way. No matter what she had on video.’