The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(185)
The gates opened on one long slow creak. The second there was an inch to spare on either side, Conway floored it, nearly took off the MG’s wing mirror. And Kilda’s was gone.
Conway felt in her jacket pocket, tossed something on my lap. The photo of the card. Chris smiling, golden leaves. I know who killed him.
She said, ‘Who’s your money on?’
Even in the dimness, every line of him was packed electric enough with life that he could’ve leapt off the paper. I tilted the photo to the dashboard light, tried to read his face. Tried to see if that smile blazed with the reflection of the girl he was looking at; if it said love, brand-new and brand-fiery. It kept its secrets.
I said, ‘Selena.’
‘Yeah. Same here.’
‘She knew it was Rebecca, from when Rebecca brought her Chris’s phone. She managed to keep it to herself for a year, but in the end it was wrecking her head so badly she couldn’t take it any more, had to get it out.’
Conway nodded. ‘But she wasn’t about to squeal on her mate. The Secret Place was perfect: get it out of your system, blow off the pressure, without telling anyone anything that mattered. And Selena’s flaky enough, she never realised it’d bring us in. She thought it’d be a day’s worth of gossip, then gone.’
Street lights came and went, flickered Chris in and out of existence. I said, ‘Maybe now she’ll stop seeing him.’
I wanted to hear Conway say it. He’s gone. We dissolved him right out of her mind. Left them both free.
‘Nah,’ Conway said. Hand over hand on the wheel, strong and smooth, arcing us round a corner. ‘The state of her? She’s stuck with him for good.’
The gardens we’d passed that morning were empty, deep under a thick fall of silence. We were metres from a main road, but among all that careful graceful leafiness we were the only thing moving. The MG’s smooth engine sounded rude as a raspberry.
‘Costello,’ Conway said, and left it, like she was deciding whether to keep talking. The people with the five-foot concrete mug-handle had it floodlit; make sure we could all appreciate it twenty-four-seven, or make sure no one nicked it to go with his eight-foot concrete mug.
Conway said, ‘They haven’t replaced him yet.’
‘Yeah. I know.’
‘O’Kelly was talking about July; something about after the mid-year budget. Unless this goes tits-up, I should still be in the good books then. If you were thinking of applying, I could put in a word.’
That meant partners. You want him, Conway, you work with him . . . Me and Conway.
I saw it all, clear as day. The slaggings from the butch boys, the sniggers rising when I found the gimp mask on my desk. The paperwork and the witnesses that took just that bit too long to reach us; the squad pints we only heard about the next morning. Me trying to make nice, making an eejit of myself instead. Conway not trying at all.
It means you can take whatever goes wrong, I had said to Rebecca. As long as you’ve got your friends.
I said, ‘That’d be deadly. Thanks.’
In the faint glow of the car lights I saw the corner of Conway’s mouth go up, just a fraction: that same ready-for-anything curl it had had when she was on the phone to Sophie, way back in the squad room. She said, ‘Should be good for a laugh, anyway.’
‘You’ve got a funny idea of a laugh.’
‘Be glad I do. Or you’d be stuck in Cold Cases for the duration, praying for some other teenage kid to bring you another ticket out.’
‘I’m not complaining,’ I said. Felt a matching curl take the corner of my mouth.
‘Better not,’ Conway said, and she spun the MG onto the main road and hit the pedal. Someone smacked his horn, she smacked hers back and gave him the finger, and the city fireworked alive all around us: flashing with neon signs and flaring with red and gold lights, buzzing with motorbikes and pumping with stereos, streaming warm wind through the open windows. The road unrolled in front of us, it sent its deep pulse up into the hearts of our bones, it flowed on long and strong enough to last us for ever.
Chapter 30
They come back to school for fourth year in the rain, thick clammy rain that leaves your skin splashed with sticky residue. The summer was weird, disjointed: someone was always away on holiday with her parents, someone else always had a family barbecue or a dentist appointment or whatever, and somehow the four of them have barely seen each other since June. Selena’s mum has taken her to have her new short hair cut properly – it makes her look older and sophisticated, till you get a proper look at her face. Julia has a hickey on her neck; she doesn’t tell, and none of them ask. Becca has shot up about three inches and got her braces off. Holly feels like she’s the only one who’s still the same: a little taller, a little more shape to her legs, but basically just her. For a dizzy second, standing with her bag dragging at her shoulder in the doorway of the Windex-smelling room they’ll be sharing this year, she’s almost shy of the others.
None of them mention the vow. None of them mention getting out at night, not to talk about how cool it was, not to suggest they could find a new way. One tiny corner of Holly starts to wonder if for the others it was one big joke, just a way of making school or themselves more interesting; if she made a tool of herself, believing it mattered.
Chris Harper has been dead for three and a half months. No one mentions him; not them, not anyone. No one wants to be the first, and after a few days it’s too late.