The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(78)

‘Sure,’ Conway said. ‘Why not. Just like on CSI. Did civic responsibility class remind you of anything else you should be sharing?’

Julia put a finger to her chin, gazed into space. ‘You know, I honest to God can’t think of anything.’

‘Yeah,’ Conway said. ‘I figured. You let us know if you do.’ And opened the door.

Julia stretched, slid off the bed. ‘See you ’round,’ she said to me, with a little grin and a wave bye-bye.



We watched her down the corridor and into the common room. Julia didn’t look back, but her walk said she felt our eyes. Her arse was mocking.

Conway said, ‘Joanne.’ The name fell into the silence. The room spat it back out, snapped tight shut after it.

‘Means, opportunity, motive,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

‘Yeah, maybe. If everything pans out. If Chris dumped Joanne, that’d explain why she was such a bitch about him liking Selena.’

‘Specially if he dumped her for Selena.’

‘It’d explain why Joanne’s gang hate Julia’s, too.’

I said, ‘They’re using us. Both lots.’

‘Yeah. To get at each other.’ Conway, hands shoved in her back pockets, still staring where Julia had been. ‘I don’t like being some little rich kids’ bitch.’

I shrugged. ‘As long as they’re giving us what we’re after, I’m grand with them getting a bit of what they want as well.’

‘I would be, too. If I was positive we had a handle on what they want. Why they want it.’ Conway straightened up, took her hands out of her pockets. ‘Where’s Alison’s phone?’

‘On her bed.’

‘I’ll confirm with Alison where she got it. You search this.’

The thought gave me the heebie-jeebies: left alone here, surrounded by teenage girls and knickers that said maybe on the arse. Conway was right, but: we couldn’t leave Alison’s phone for someone to get rid of it, couldn’t leave this room till we’d searched it, and Conway was the one who knew her way around to look for Alison. ‘See you in five,’ I said.

‘Any of them come in here, you go straight into the common room. Where you’re safe.’

She wasn’t joking. I knew she was right, too, but the common room didn’t feel like such a safe place either.

The door shut behind her. For a stupid split second, I felt like my mate had abandoned me in the shit. Reminded myself: Conway wasn’t my mate.

I got my gloves back on, started searching. Selena’s phone spilling out of her blazer pocket onto her bed, Julia’s on her bedside locker. Rebecca’s on her bed. Holly’s missing.

I started on the bedside lockers. Something about the Julia interview was poking at me. It was stuck in a back corner of my mind, where I couldn’t get my hands on it: something she’d said, that we’d let go by when we should have pounced.

Julia shaking info in front of us like a shiny dangle, to keep us from questioning Selena. I wondered how far she would go, to protect Selena or what Selena knew.

No extra phones in the lockers. This lot had books, in with the iPods and the hairbrushes and whatever else, but nothing old and nothing with bits cut out. Julia went for crime, Holly was reading The Hunger Games, Selena was halfway through Alice in Wonderland, Rebecca liked Greek mythology.

Liked old stuff. I didn’t know the poem above her bed – I don’t know poetry the way I wish I did, just whatever they had down the library when I was a kid, whatever I pick up when I get the odd chance – but it looked old, Shakespeare-old.



A Retir’d Friendship





Here let us sit and bless our Starres



Who did such happy quiet give,



As that remov’d from noise of warres.



In one another’s hearts we live.





Why should we entertain a feare?



Love cares not how the world is turn’d.



If crouds of dangers should appeare,



Yet friendship can be unconcern’d.





We weare about us such a charme,



No horrour can be our offence;



For mischief’s self can doe no harme



To friendship and to innocence.





Katherine Philips





A kid’s pretty calligraphy, pretty trees and deer woven into the capitals; kid’s need to blaze her love on walls, tell the world. Shouldn’t have hit me, a grown man.

If I made a card to put up on the Secret Place: me, big grin, in the middle of my mates. Arms around their shoulders and heads leaning together, outlines melded into one. Close as Holly and her lot, unbreakable. The caption: Me and my friends.

They’d be holes in the paper. Cut out with tiny scissors, tiny delicate snips, perfect to the last loved hair – this guy’s head thrown back laughing, this one’s elbow locked round my neck messing, this one’s arm shooting out as he overbalanced – and not there.

I said people mostly like me. True; they do, always have. Plenty of people ready to be my mates, always. That doesn’t mean I want to be theirs. A few scoops, a bit of snooker, watch the match, lovely, I’m on. The more than that, the real thing: no. Not my scene.