The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(88)

Joanne said coolly, ‘I don’t like her. OK? I don’t like any of them. They’re a bunch of freaks, and they act like that’s totally OK; like they’re so special, they can just do whatever they want. I thought Selena should find out that it doesn’t work like that. Like you said, I was actually doing her a favour.’

I did puzzled. ‘You were fine with Julia and Finn, but. Any particular reason why Selena and Chris was a problem?’

Shrug. ‘Finn was OK, if you go for that kind of thing, but he wasn’t a big deal. Chris was. Everyone was into him. I wasn’t going to let Selena think someone like her had a right to get someone like that. Hello, Earth calling whale: just because you do whatever disgusting stuff you did to even get Chris to look at you, that doesn’t mean you get to keep him.’

I said, ‘It wasn’t because you’d been going out with Chris, just a few months earlier.’

Joanne didn’t miss a beat. Gusty sigh, eye-roll. ‘Hello, haven’t we been over this already? Am I imagining things? Am I out of my mind? I never went out with Chris. Only in his dreams.’

Conway lifted the evidence bag with Alison’s phone, waggled it at Joanne. ‘Try again.’

Half a second where Joanne went rigid. Then she turned her head away from Conway, folded her arms deliberately.

‘Oh, ouch,’ Conway said, hand to her heart. ‘That’s put me in my place.’

‘Joanne,’ I said, leaning in. ‘I know this is none of our business, or anyway it wouldn’t be normally. But if you were close enough to Chris that he might have told you anything that could be important, then we need to know. Make sense?’

Joanne thought. I could see her trying out the star-witness seat, liking the feel.

I said, ‘That phone that my partner’s got, that was yours till you sold it to Alison. And we’ve got records of a million texts back and forth between that number and Chris’s secret phone.’

Joanne sighed. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘All right.’

She rearranged herself on the edge of the bed. Hands folded, ankles crossed, eyes down. She was getting into character: bereaved girlfriend. ‘Chris and I were together. For a couple of months, the autumn before last.’

It practically exploded out of her. She’d been only dying to tell, for a year now. Held it in because it might get her suspected, because she didn’t want to admit she’d been dumped, because we were adults and the enemy, who knew. Finally, we’d given her the excuse to talk.

‘But he never said anything about, like, having an enemy or anything. And he would’ve told me. Like you said, we were really close.’

‘Is that what you used that key for?’ I asked. ‘Going out at night to meet Chris, yeah?’

Joanne shook her head. ‘I only got the key after we split up. And anyway, he couldn’t get out at night either. I mean, obviously he found some way later, because he was meeting that fat cow, but he couldn’t when we were together.’

‘And he had a secret phone specially for texting you, as well?’

‘Yeah. He said the guys at Colm’s went through each other’s phones all the time, looking for sexts or photos – you know, photos? From girls?’ Meaningful stare. I nodded. ‘Chris said the priests did it too – some of them are such perverts, it’s just eww. I was like, “Hello, if you think you’re getting pictures of my la-la, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to work a little harder than that?” But it wasn’t like that; Chris just wasn’t going to have anyone reading my texts. Anything I said meant too much to him to have some D-head leching over them.’

I caught a glance off Conway. Chris had been good, all right. ‘What kind of phone was it?’ I asked. ‘Did you ever see it?’

Misty smile, reminiscent. ‘Exactly like my one, only red. “A matching pair,” that’s what Chris said. “Like us.”’

Conway’s eye said Puke. ‘How come all the secrecy?’ I asked. ‘Why not just tell everyone you were together?’

That made Joanne move, a defensive jerk: the secret hadn’t been her idea. She took a breath and got back in character. ‘I mean, this wasn’t just some stupid shallow teenage thing. We had something special, me and Chris. It was so intense, it was like, ohmyGod, something out of a song? People wouldn’t have understood; they literally wouldn’t have been able to get it. I mean, obviously we were going to tell them anyway, in a while. Just not yet.’

Coming out too pat and brittle, learned off by heart. The lines Chris had given her, that she’d told herself over and over to make it feel OK.

I asked, ‘It wasn’t because there was someone specific who Chris didn’t want finding out? A jealous ex, something like that?’

‘No. I mean . . .’ Joanne thought about that, liked it. ‘There could’ve been. I mean, lots of people would’ve been so jel if they’d known. But he never mentioned anyone.’

‘How’d you manage to meet up in secret, if you couldn’t get out at night?’

‘At the weekends, mostly. Sometimes in the afternoons, between classes and study period, but it was hard finding a place where we wouldn’t get spotted. This one time, you know the little park down past the Court? It was November, so it was dark early and the park was closed, but me and Chris climbed over the railings. There’s this little roundabout, for kids; we sat on that and . . .’