The Secret Place (52 page)

‘OhmyGod,’ Julia says, hand over her mouth. It’s so easy. ‘If someone had gone past and seen it, you’d have been in
so
much shit. You could’ve been
expelled
.’

Finn shrugs, all fake-casual, leaning back with one foot up and his hands in his jeans pockets. ‘Totally worth it.’

‘When’d you do it? We could’ve run into each other.’ She giggles.

‘Ages back. A couple of weeks after the dance.’

Plenty of time for Chris to set up a meeting with Selena, a dozen meetings; if he knew. ‘On your own? Was that a selfie? Jesus, you really aren’t scared of the nun, are you?’

‘Live nuns, God, yeah: terrified. Dead ones, nah.’

Julia laughs along. ‘So you went out there by yourself? Seriously?’

‘Brought a couple of mates, for the laugh. I’d go on my own, though.’ Finn rearranges his feet and examines whatever he was drawing on his runner, like it’s fascinating. ‘So,’ he says. ‘Seeing as we can both get out, and we’re both not scared. Want to meet, some night? Just to hang out. See if we can spot the ghost nun.’

This time Julia misses her chance to laugh along. A discreet distance away, among the ragwort and dandelions that are growing even taller and thicker this year, Selena and Holly and Becca are all trying to listen to something on Becca’s iPod at the same time; Selena and Holly are elbowing each other for the earbud, laughing, hair in each other’s face, like everything’s that simple still. They make Julia want to shoot off the breeze blocks and explode. Any second now some mate of Finn’s is going to show up and come bouncing over, and by then she needs to know. If Gemma wasn’t lying, just if, Julia needs the weekend to figure out what to do.

‘You’re friends with Chris Harper,’ she says. ‘Right?’

Finn’s face closes over. ‘Yeah,’ he says. He holds out a hand for his phone, shoves it back in his pocket. ‘So?’

‘Does he know you’ve cut off the alarm?’

His mouth is getting a cynical curl to it. ‘Yeah. It was his idea. He’s the one that took the photo.’

Gemma wasn’t lying.

‘And if he’s who you wanted to hook up with all along, you could’ve just said that to start with.’

Finn thinks he’s been played for a fool. Julia says, ‘He’s not.’

‘I should’ve fucking known.’

‘If Chris disappeared off the earth in a puff of sleazebaggy smoke, I’d be celebrating. Believe me.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Finn has changed colours, eyes gone dark, a raw burned red high on his cheeks. If she were a guy, he would punch her. Since she isn’t, he’s left stinging and helpless. ‘You’re some piece of work, you know that?’

Julia understands that if she doesn’t fix this right now, the chance will be gone and he will never forgive her. If they run into each other on the street when they’re forty, Finn’s face will get that burned look and he’ll keep walking.

She doesn’t have room to work out how to mend this. The other thing is spreading white and blinding across her mind, pushing Finn to the edges.

‘Believe what you want,’ she says. ‘I have to go,’ and she slides off the breeze blocks and heads back to the others, feeling the Daleks’ eyes scratching at her skin like needles, wishing she was a guy so that Finn could punch her and get it over with and then she could find Chris Harper and smash his face in.

Holly’s eyes meet Julia’s for a second, but whatever she sees warns her or satisfies her, or both. Becca glances up and starts to ask something, but Selena touches her arm and they go back to the iPod. Some game is sending little orange darts zipping across the screen; white balloons explode in slow motion, silent fragments fluttering down. Julia sits in the weeds and watches Finn walk away.

Chapter 21

We didn’t talk about Holly, me and Conway. We held her name between us like nitroglycerine and didn’t look at each other, while we did what needed doing: handed Alison over to Miss Arnold, told her to hang on to the kid overnight. Asked her for the key to the lost-and-found bin, and the story on how long things stayed in there before they got dumped. Low-value stuff went to charity at the end of each term, but pricey things – MP3 players, phones – they got left indefinitely.

The school building was dim-lit for nighttime. ‘What?’ Conway demanded, when the crack of a stair made me shy sideways.

‘Nothing.’ When that wasn’t enough: ‘A bit jumpy.’

‘Why?’

No way was I going to say
Frank Mackey
. ‘That light-bulb was a bit freaky. Is all.’

‘It wasn’t fucking
freaky
. The wiring in this place is a hundred years old; shit must blow up all the time. What’s freaky about that?’

‘Nothing. The timing, just.’

‘The
timing
was there’d been people in that common room all evening. The motion sensor’s been working overtime, something overheated and the bulb blew. End of fucking story.’

I wasn’t going to fight her on it, not when I agreed with her and she probably knew it. ‘Yeah. I’d say you’re right.’

‘Yeah. I am.’

Even arguing, we were keeping our voices down – the place made you feel like someone could be listening, getting ready to jump out at you. Every sound we made flitted away up the great curve of the stairwell, settled to rest in the shadows somewhere high above us. Above the front door the fanlight glowed blue, delicate as wing-bones.

The bin was black metal, old, off in a corner of the foyer. I fitted the key – quietly as I could, feeling like a kid slipping through forbidden places, springy with adrenaline – and swung open the panel at the bottom. Things came tumbling out at me: a cardigan smelling of stale perfume, a plush cat, a paperback, a sandal, a protractor.

The pearly pink flip-phone was at the bottom. We’d walked past it on our way into the school, that morning.

I put on my gloves, eased it out between two fingertips like we might get prints. We wouldn’t. Not off the outside, not off the inside of the cover, not off the battery or the SIM card. Everything would be shiny clean.

‘Great,’ Conway said, grim. ‘A cop’s kid. Beautiful.’

I said, finally, ‘This doesn’t mean for definite that Holly did it.’

My voice sounded reedy and stupid, too weak to convince even me. Flick of Conway’s eyebrow. ‘You don’t think?’

‘She could’ve been covering for Julia or Rebecca.’

‘Could’ve been, but we’ve got nothing that says she was. Everything else could point to any of them; this is the only thing we’ve got that’s specific, and it points straight at Holly. She couldn’t stand Chris. And from what I’ve seen of her, the kid’s determined, independent, got brains, got guts. She’d make a great killer.’

The cool of Holly, that morning in Cold Cases. Running the interview, glossy and sharp, throwing me a compliment to jump for at the end. Taking control.

‘Anything I’m missing,’ Conway said, ‘feel free to point it out.’

I said, ‘Why bring me the card?’

‘I didn’t miss that.’ Conway shook out another evidence envelope, spread it on top of the bin and started labelling. ‘She’s got balls, too. She knew someone would come to us sooner or later, figured doing it herself would take her off the suspect list – and it worked, too. If there’s trouble waiting for you, better to go out and meet it head-on, not stick your head in the sand and hope it doesn’t find you. I’d do the same thing.’

The look on Holly, that afternoon in the corridor when Alison lost the plot. Scanning faces. For a murderer, I’d thought then. For an informer had never crossed my mind.

I said, ‘That’s a lot of balls for a sixteen-year-old.’

‘So? You don’t think she’s got them?’

No answer to that. It hit me like a mouthful of ice: Conway had had Holly in her sights all along. The second I had shown up in her squad room, all eager, with my little card and my little story, she had started wondering.

Conway said, ‘I’m not saying she definitely did the job all by herself. Like we said before, it could’ve been her and Julia and Rebecca together; could’ve been the whole four of them. But whatever went down, Holly was up to her tits in it.’

‘And I’m not saying she wasn’t. I’m just keeping an open mind.’

Conway had finished labelling the envelope and straightened up, watching me. She said, ‘You think the same thing. You just don’t like that your Holly had you fooled.’

‘She’s not
my
Holly.’

Conway didn’t answer that. She held out the envelope for me to drop in the phone. Let it swing between her fingers. ‘If this interview is gonna be a problem for you,’ she said, ‘I need to know now.’

I kept my voice even. ‘Why would it be a problem?’

‘We’re gonna have to get her da in.’

No way to pretend Holly wasn’t a suspect. The stupidest detective alive wouldn’t bite on that. Holly’s da isn’t stupid.

I said, ‘Yeah. And?’

‘Word on the street is that Mackey’s done you a few favours. I’m not giving you hassle for that; you do what you need to do. But if the two of you are all buddy-buddy, or if you owe him, then you’re not the guy to interrogate his kid for murder.’

I said, ‘I don’t owe Mackey anything. And he’s not my buddy.’

Conway watched me.

‘It’s been years since I even talked to the guy. I came in useful to him once, he’s made sure to be useful to me since – he wants everyone knowing that helping him out pays off. That’s it. End of.’

‘Huh,’ Conway said. Maybe she looked satisfied; maybe she just looked like she had decided it might soften Mackey up, having an ally in the room. She sealed off the envelope, shoved it in her satchel with the rest. ‘I don’t know Mackey. Is he gonna give us hassle?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He will. I wouldn’t say he’ll whip Holly straight off home, tell us to talk to his solicitor; he’s not like that. He’ll fuck with us, but he’ll do it sideways, and he won’t leave unless it looks like we’re getting somewhere. He’ll want to keep us talking till he works out our theory, what we’ve got.’

Conway nodded. Said, ‘Got his number?’

‘Yeah.’

Next second I wished I’d said no, but all Conway said was, ‘Ring him.’

Mackey picked up fast. ‘Stephen, my man! Long time no talk.’

I said, ‘I’m at St Kilda’s.’

The air sharpened, instantly, to a knifepoint. ‘What’s happened.’

‘Holly’s fine,’ I said, fast. ‘Totally fine. We just need to have a chat with her, and we figured you’d want to be there.’

Silence. Then Mackey said, ‘You don’t say Word One to her till I get there. Not Word One. Have you got that?’

‘Got it.’

‘Don’t forget it. I’m nearby. I’ll be there in twenty.’ He hung up.

I put my phone away. ‘He’ll be here in fifteen minutes,’ I said. ‘We need to be ready.’

Conway slammed the panel of the lost-and-found bin, hard. The deep clang shot off into the shadows, took its time dissolving.

She said, loud, to the high darkness, ‘We’ll be ready.’

McKenna launched herself out of the common room at Conway’s knock like she’d been waiting behind the door. The long day and the white light in the corridor weren’t good to her. Her hair was still set solid and the expensive suit hadn’t a crease, but the discreet makeup was wearing off, in clumps. Her wrinkles had got deeper since that morning; her pores looked the size of chicken-pox scars. She had her phone in her hand: still doing damage control, trying to patch leaking seams.

She was raging. ‘I have no idea whether your standard procedures involve sending witnesses into hysterics—’

‘We weren’t the ones who kept a dozen teenage girls cooped up all day,’ Conway said. Gave the common-room door a slap. ‘Lovely room and all, but after a few hours the most tasteful decor in the world won’t stop them going stir-crazy. If I were you, I’d make sure they get a chance to stretch their legs before bed, unless you want them going off again at midnight.’

McKenna’s eyes closed for a second on the thought. ‘Thank you for your advice, Detective, but I think you’ve done enough already. The students have been
cooped up
in case you needed to speak with them, and that will no longer be an issue. I would like you to leave now.’

‘Can’t be done,’ Conway said. ‘Sorry. We need a quick word with Holly Mackey. Just waiting for her da to get here.’

That sent McKenna up another notch. ‘I gave you permission to speak to our students specifically so you would
not
need to request parental authorisation. Involving the parents is completely unnecessary, it can only complicate the situation both for you and for the school—’

‘Holly’s da’s going to hear all about this anyway, soon as he shows up for work in the morning. Don’t worry: I wouldn’t say he’ll be straight on the phone to the mummy network to pass on the gossip.’

‘Is there any earthly reason why this needs to be done tonight? As you so cleverly pointed out, the students have already had more than enough of this pressure for one day. In the morning—’