The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(51)

Holly said, straight on and no flinch, ‘I don’t know what you mean. There’s no reason. I’m just trying to do the right thing.’ To Conway: ‘Can I go?’

‘You got a boyfriend?’ Conway asked.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Angel face. ‘I’m so too busy. With school and everything.’

‘Such a good little student,’ Conway said. ‘You can go.’ To Houlihan: ‘All eight of them. In here.’

When they were gone, Conway said, ‘If Holly knew who killed Chris. Would she go to you or her da? Tell someone straight out?’

Or would she make up a card to bring me. I said, ‘Maybe not. She’s been a witness before, it wasn’t a great experience; she might not be on for doing it again. But if she had something she wanted to give us, she’d make good and sure we got it. Anonymous letter, probably, with all the details laid out nice and clear. Not a something-and-nothing hint like that card.’

Conway thought, pen flicking between two fingers. Nodded. ‘Fair enough. Tell you what I noticed, but. Your Holly talks like, whoever put up the card, she wanted it to get to us. She’s assuming this card wasn’t just meant to get a secret off someone’s chest; this girl wanted to tell us something, and this was the best way she could find.’

She wasn’t my Holly. That was getting obvious, to me anyway. I didn’t say it.

I said, ‘Holly could be feeling bad about coming to me. That age, taking something to adults is a big deal; makes you a rat, and that’s about the dirtiest thing you can be. So she’s convincing herself the girl wanted her to do it.’

‘Could be. Or she could know for sure.’ Conway tapped her pen up and down between her teeth. ‘If she does, what’s the odds of getting it out of her?’

Two hopes: Bob and no. Unless Holly wanted to tell us, and was waiting for a moment we couldn’t see.

I said, ‘I’ll get it out of her.’

Conway’s eyebrow said We’ll see. She said, ‘I want you to see them together. I’ll do the talking this time. You just watch.’



I leaned on a windowsill, sun warming my back through my jacket. Conway moved, back and forth across the front of the art room in an even long-legged stroll, hands in trouser pockets, while the girls filed in.

They settled, like birds. Holly’s lot by the windows, Joanne’s lot by the door. No one looking across the gap.

Slouched and fidgeted in their chairs; batted looks, eyebrow-lifts, whispers back and forth. They had thought we were done with them, had dumped us out of their minds. Some of them, anyway.

Conway said, over her shoulder to Houlihan, ‘You can wait outside. Thanks for your help.’

Houlihan opened and shut her mouth, made a small-animal noise, scuttled off. The girls had stopped whispering. Houlihan gone meant the fib of school protection gone; they were all ours.

They looked different, a blurry streak. Like the Secret Place, the strobe of it: I couldn’t see the separate girls any more, just all those crests on blazers, all those eyes. I felt outnumbered. Outside.

‘So,’ Conway said. ‘One of you lot lied to us today.’

They stilled.

‘At least one of you.’ She stopped moving. Pulled out the photo of the card, held it up. ‘Yesterday evening, one of you put up this card on the secrets board. Then sat here and gave us, “Oh God no, wasn’t me, never seen that before in my life.” That’s fact.’

Alison blinking like a tic. Joanne with her arms folded, bobbing a crossed foot, sliding a glance to Gemma that said OMG can’t believe we have to listen to this. Orla sucking her lips, trying to kill a nerves-giggle.

Holly’s lot were still. Not looking at each other. Their heads tilted inwards, like they were listening to each other, not to us. The lean of their shoulders into the centre, like they were magnetised, like it would take Superman to pull one of them away.

Just something.

Conway said, ‘I’m talking to you. The girl who put up this card. The girl who’s claiming to know who killed Chris Harper.’

A twitch around the room, a shiver.

Conway started moving again, photo balanced between her fingertips. ‘You think lying to us is the same as telling your teacher you left your homework on the bus, or telling your parents you didn’t sneak a drink at the disco. Wrong. It’s nothing like that. This isn’t small-time bullshit that’ll vanish when you leave school. This is real.’

All their eyes following Conway. Pulled by her; hungry.

She was their mystery. Not like me, not like guys, an alien mystery they were learning to barter and bargain with, a thing they knew to want but didn’t know why. Conway was theirs. She was a woman, grown: she knew things. How to wear what suited her, how to have sex right or how to turn it down, how to get her bills paid, how to balance through the wild world outside the school walls. The water where they were dipping their toes, she was over her head in it and swimming.

They wanted to get closer to her, finger her sleeves. They were judging her hard, deciding did she come up to the mark. Wondering if they would, someday. Trying to see the precarious trail that led from them to her.

‘I’m gonna spell this out for you: if you know who murdered Chris, then you’re in serious danger. Danger like, you could get killed.’ She flicked the photo through the air, a sharp snap. ‘You think this card is gonna stay a secret? If the rest of this lot here haven’t spread it round the school already, they will by the end of today. How long is it gonna take for word to get back to the killer? How long is it gonna take him or her to work out who his problem is? And what do you think a killer does about that kind of problem?’