The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(151)

You like things to be beautiful, Conway had said, and been right. Over my own dead body was I going to stake myself down somewhere, being someone, that didn’t have all the beautiful I could cram into me. For ugly I could’ve stayed where I started, got myself a career on the dole and a wife who hated my guts and a dozen snot-faced brats and a wall-sized telly playing 24/7 shows about people’s intestines. Call me arrogant, uppity, me the council-house kid thinking I deserved more. I’d been swearing it since before I was old enough to understand the thought: I was going to be more.

If I had to get there without friends, I could do it. Had been doing it. I’d never met anyone who brought me somewhere I wanted to stay, looked at me and saw someone I wanted to be for good; anyone who was worth giving up the more I wanted down the line.

It landed inside me then, there under the dead weight of the shadow of Kilda’s, too late. That light I had seen on Holly and her mates, so bright it hurt, the rare thing I had come into that school looking to find and to envy: I had thought it came to them showering down with the echoes from high ceilings, reflected onto them in the glow of old wood. I had been wrong. It had come from them. From the way they gave things up for each other, stripped branches off their futures and set them ablaze. What had felt like beautiful to me on the other side of today, balustrades and madrigals, those were nothing. I had been missing the heart of it, all along.

Mackey had taken one sniff of me, known the whole story. Seen me in school turning down a spliff and a laugh, in case getting caught cost me my chance at getting out; seen me at training college, big friendly smile and vague excuse to wander away from the big friendly guys who were going to be in uniform for life. Watched me f*ck Kennedy over, and known exactly what was missing out of a person who would do that.

And Conway must have smelled it off me too. All day, when I’d been thinking how we clicked, thinking we were getting on like a house on fire. Thinking against my own will that this tasted like something brand-new.

Out the back of the school. Clusters of dark shapes tossed across the green-white grass, restless and stirring, for a moment my eye went wild trying to make sense of them – I thought big cats released for the night, thought another art project, thought ghosts got loose from Holly’s model school – before one threw back her head, floodlight glossing long hair, and laughed. The boarders. Conway had told McKenna to let them out before bedtime. McKenna had been smart enough to do it.

Rustles under the trees, a shake in the hedge. They were everywhere, watching me. A trio on the grass glanced across, chins turning over shoulders, huddled in tight to whisper. Another laugh, this one fired straight at me.

Half an hour, maybe, till someone called time on the interview and I got to hunch in Conway’s passenger seat like a kid caught spray-painting, for the long silent drive home. Spend that half-hour standing here like a spare prick, with teenage girls giving me the sideways once-over and the snide commentary: bollix to that. Do a legger back round to the front of the school like this lot had terrified me off, hang around hoping no one would see me waiting for the big kids to give me my lift home: bollix to that, too.

‘And f*ck Conway anyway,’ I said, out loud, not loud enough for any of the glancing girls to hear. If we weren’t working together, then I was flying solo.

I didn’t know where to start looking. I didn’t have to: they called to me. Voices out of the black-and-white dazzle, untwisting themselves from the breeze-rustles and the bats: Detective, Detective Moran! Over here! Silvery, gauzy, everywhere and nowhere. I turned like blind-man’s-buff. Heard giggles whirl like moths among the leaves.

Off in the tree-shadows, across the slope of lawn: pale flutters, hands waving, beckoning. Detective Stephen come here come here! I went, weaving between the watching eyes. Could’ve been anyone, I would’ve gone.

They grew outlines and features out of nothing, like Polaroids. Gemma, Orla, Joanne. Propped on their elbows, legs stretched out, hair hanging to the grass behind them. Smiling.

I smiled back. That I could do, at least. That I was great at. Beat Conway any day.

‘Did you miss us?’ Gemma. Neck arched.

‘Here,’ Joanne said. Shifted closer to Gemma, patted the grass where she’d been. ‘Come talk to us.’

I knew to run. I had better sense than to be in a lit room alone with Holly Mackey, never mind out here with these three. But them looking at me like they actually wanted me around, that made a nice change; that was sweet as cool water on burns.

‘Are we allowed to call you Detective Stephen?’

‘Duh, what’s he going to do, arrest us?’

‘You’d probably enjoy it. Handcuffs—’

‘Can we? Your card said Stephen Moran.’

‘What about Detective Steve?’

‘Ew, please! That’s like a porn name.’

I kept smiling, kept my mouth shut. They were different, out in the wild and the night. Skittery, slanty-glanced, swaying with breezes I couldn’t feel. Powerful. I knew I was outnumbered, back of my neck, the way you know it when three guys with a bad walk roll around the corner and pick up the pace towards you.

‘Come on. We’re bored.’ Joanne, crossed ankles rocking. ‘Keep us company.’

I sat down. The grass was soft, springy. The air under the trees smelled richer, seething with spores and pollen.

‘What are you doing still here?’ Gemma wanted to know. ‘Are you staying here tonight?’