The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(170)

They don’t feel it, what’s prickling at Holly’s scalp. The tug in the air has hooked them – Lenie is buttoning her shirt too fast, Jules is bouncing on her toes as she leans against the window – but they don’t understand what it means: bad things.

Trust your instincts, Dad always says. If something feels dodgy to you, if someone feels dodgy, you go with dodgy. Don’t give the benefit of the doubt because you want to be a nice person, don’t wait and see in case you look stupid. Safe comes first. Second could be too late.

All the school feels crammed with dodgy, like cicada noises zizzing through a hot green afternoon, so shrill and many that you’ve got no chance of picking out any single one and seeing it straight. Joanne would go a long long way to get Selena in bad trouble.

I don’t get pissed off with people like her. I get rid of them.

The bell for school goes. ‘Come on,’ Becca says. She hasn’t come to the window; she’s been plaiting her hair in a calm methodical rhythm, like there’s a pearly bubble of cool air between her and that fizz. ‘You guys aren’t even ready. We’re going to be late.’

Holly’s heartbeat has reared up to match the cicada pulse. Selena’s made it so easy for Joanne. Whatever Joanne’s done, she did it knowing: all it’ll take is one sentence to a teacher or to the detectives who’ll be patient in the corner of everything from now on, one fake slip of the tongue, and oopsie!

‘Shit,’ Holly says, when they reach the bottom of the stairs. Through the open connecting door they can hear the net of school noise, pulled tighter and higher today. Someone squeals, And a police car!! ‘Forgot my poetry book. Hang on—’ and she’s squeezing back up the stairs against the flow and yammer, hand already outstretched to dive down the side of Selena’s mattress.



Two hundred and fifty of them bundle whispering into the hall. They settle instantly like good girls, hands all demure, like they’re not sucking up every detail of the two plainclothes police being bland in back corners, like that eager boil isn’t simmering just below their smooth eyes. They’re jumping to know.

That groundskeeper guy Ronan you know how he you-know-what, I heard cocaine I heard gangsters came looking for him I heard there were cops with guns right out there on the grounds! I heard they shot him I heard the shots I heard I heard— Selena catches Julia’s sideways grin – the grounds, like it’s some scary jungle full of drug lords and probably aliens – and manages to come up with one back. Actually she barely has the energy to pretend she cares about whatever pointless drama is going on here. She wishes she knew how to puke on demand like Julia, so she could go back to their room and be left alone.

But McKenna coming up behind the podium has her mouth and her eyebrows rearranged into her special solemn face, carefully mixed stern and sad and holy. Back when they were in first year and a fifth-year got killed in a car crash over the Christmas break, they all came back in January to that face. They haven’t seen it since.

Not Ronan the groundskeeper. People are twisting to see if they can spot anyone missing. Lauren Mulvihill isn’t in ohmyGod I heard she was going to fail her exams I heard she got dumped ohmyGod—

‘Girls,’ McKenna says. ‘I have some tragic news to share with you. You will be shocked and grieved, but I expect you to behave with the good sense and dignity that are part of the St Kilda’s tradition.’

Straining silence. ‘Someone found a used condom,’ Julia guesses, on a breath too low for anyone but the four of them to hear.

‘Shh,’ Holly says, without looking at her. She’s sitting up high and straight, staring at McKenna and wrapping a tissue around and around her hand. Selena wants to ask if she’s OK, but Holly might kick her.

‘I am sorry to tell you that this morning a student from St Colm’s was found dead on our grounds. Christopher Harper—’

Selena thinks her chair’s spun over backwards, into nothing. McKenna’s gone. The hall has turned grey and misty, tilting, clanging with bells and squeals and distorted scraps of music left over from the Valentine’s dance.

Selena understands, way too late and completely, why she wasn’t punished after that first night. She had some nerve, back then, thinking she had any right to hope for that mercy.

Something hurts, a long way away. When she looks down she sees Julia’s hand on her upper arm; to anyone watching it would look like a shock-grab, but Julia’s fingers are digging in hard. She says, low, ‘Don’t f*cking faint.’

The pain is good; it pushes the mist back a little. Selena says, ‘OK.’

‘Just don’t break down, and keep your mouth shut. Can you do that?’

Selena nods. She’s not sure what Julia’s talking about, but she can remember it anyway; it helps, having two solid things to hold on to, one in each hand. Behind her someone is sobbing, loud and fake. When Julia lets go of her arm she misses the pain.

She should have seen this coming, after that first night. She should have spotted it seething in every shadow, red-mouthed and ravenous, waiting for a great golden voice to give it the word to leap.

She thought she was the one who would be punished. She let him keep coming back. She asked him to.

The splinters of music won’t stop scraping at her.



Becca watches the assembly through the clearest coldest water in the world, mountain water full of movement and quirky little questions. She can’t remember if she expected this part to be difficult; she thinks probably she never thought about it. As far as she can tell she’s having the easiest time of anyone in the whole room.