The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(66)

She sounded almost peaceful. She was wrung out, like a little kid after puking its guts.

‘That will do,’ McKenna said, in a voice that could have scared grizzlies. ‘Whatever allergy trigger you touched, it caused a brief hallucination. Ghosts do not exist.’

I said, ‘Is your arm sore?’

Alison gazed at her arm. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s really sore.’

‘Unsurprisingly,’ McKenna said coldly. ‘And will continue to be until it is treated. On which note, Detectives, please excuse us.’

‘He smelled like Vicks,’ Alison told me, over her shoulder as McKenna marched her off. ‘I don’t know if he used to smell like Vicks before.’

Conway watched them go. Said, ‘What’s the betting the Ugg kids spread the word we were in their common room?’

‘No takers. And it had plenty of time to get round.’

‘To Joanne. Who had to guess what we were after.’

I nodded after Alison. Footsteps rattling around the stairwell, echoing; her and McKenna were taking the stairs at a snappy old pace. ‘That wasn’t put on.’

‘Nah. Alison’s suggestible, but. And she was half hysterical to start with, after the interview and all.’ Conway was keeping her voice down, head tilted backwards to listen to the popcorn crackle of voices from the common rooms. ‘She’s headed for the jacks, Joanne gives it loads about Chris’s ghost being all stirred up – she knows Alison inside out, remember, knows exactly how to get her going. Then she sticks fake tan on her hand, gives Alison’s arm a squeeze. It’s a decent bet Alison’ll go mental over one thing or the other. Joanne’s hoping there’ll be enough chaos that we’ll leg it out of the common room, leave the door open, she’ll have a chance to nip in there and swipe the book.’

Sixteen-year-old kid, I almost said: would she be up to that? Copped myself on in time. Said, instead, ‘Alison’s wearing long sleeves.’

‘So Joanne got her before she put on the hoodie.’

It could work; maybe, just about, with plenty of luck. I said, ‘Joanne didn’t try to go for the common room, but. She stayed right here, in the middle of the action.’

‘Maybe she was betting we’d take Alison away, she could take her time.’

‘Or Joanne had nothing to do with it. The ghost was Alison’s imagination and the arm’s accidental, like McKenna said.’

‘Could be. Maybe.’

The footsteps had faded out of the stairwell. That white silence was sifting down again, filling the air with corner-of-the-eye shapes, making it hard to believe that anything in here was as simple as imagination and accident.

I said, ‘Does McKenna live here?’

‘Nah. Got more sense. But she’s not going home till we do.’

We. ‘Hope she likes canteen food.’

Conway flipped her bag open, checked the book tucked away inside. ‘Things happening,’ she said. Didn’t even try to hide the blaze of satisfaction. ‘Told you.’





Chapter 12


In a way they were right: it’s not the same the second time they sneak out, or the third. It turns out that doesn’t matter. The glade where they lie and talk always has that other one behind it, a promise waiting for the right moment to be kept. It colours everything.

I never thought I’d have friends like you guys, Becca says, deep inside the third night. Never. You’re my miracles.

Not even Julia bats that away. Their four hands are twined together on the grass, loose and warm.



Late in January, half past ten at night. Fifteen minutes till lights-out, for third-years and fourth-years at Kilda’s and at Colm’s. Chris Harper – brushing his teeth, half-thinking about the cold soaking into his feet from the tiled floor of the bathroom, half-listening to a couple of guys giving a first-year hassle in a toilet cubicle and wondering whether he can be arsed stopping them – has just under four months left to live.

A breadth of darkness away in Kilda’s, snow brushes at the dorm-room window, small fitful flakes, not sticking. Winter has clamped down hard: early sunsets, petty sleet and the streaming cold that’s been going around mean it’s been a week since Julia and Holly and Selena and Becca felt daylight, and they’re jiggly with confinement and leftover sniffles. They’re arguing about the Valentine’s dance.

‘I’m not going,’ Becca says.

Holly is lying on her bed in her pyjamas, copying Julia’s maths as fast as she can, throwing in the odd minor mistake for authenticity. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I’d rather burn off my own fingernails with a lighter than wiggle myself into some stupid dress with a stupid micro-mini skirt and a stupid stuck-on low-cut top, even if I owned that kind of crap, which I don’t and I’m not going to ever. Is why.’

‘You have to go,’ Julia says, from her bed, where she’s face-down reading.

‘No I don’t.’

‘If you don’t, you’ll get sent to Sister Ignatius and she’ll ask if you don’t want to go because you were abused when you were little, and when you tell her you weren’t, she’ll say you need to learn self-esteem.’

Becca is sitting on her bed with her arms around her knees, clenched into a furious red knot. ‘I have self-esteem. I have enough self-esteem that I’m not going to wear something stupid just because everyone else is.’