The Secret Place (6 page)

‘Oh, yeah. The three mates said the same. Selena wasn’t meeting him, she wasn’t going out with him, she only knew him from around. Shocked, they were, that I’d suggest anything like that.’ A dry edge on Conway’s voice. Not convinced.

‘What did Chris Harper’s mates say?’

Snort. ‘“Urgh, dunno,” mostly. Sixteen-year-old boys, you’d get more sense going down the zoo and interviewing the chimp cage. There was one that could make sentences – Finn Carroll – but it’s not like he had much to tell us. They’re not staying up all night having heart-to-hearts, the way the girls are. They said yeah, Chris fancied Selena, but he fancied a lot of girls, and a lot of girls fancied him. As far as the guys knew, him and Selena never went further than that.’

‘Anything to contradict that? Contact on their phones, on Facebook?’

Conway shook her head. ‘No calls or texts between them, nothing on Facebook. These kids all have Facebook accounts, but the boarders mostly only use them during the holidays; both the schools block social networking sites on their computers, don’t allow smartphones. God forbid little Philippa runs off with some internet pervert she met on school time. Or even worse, little Philip. Imagine the lawsuit.’

‘So it’s just Joanne Heffernan’s evidence.’

‘Heffernan didn’t
have
evidence. All she had was “And then I saw him look at her, and then I saw her look at him, and then he said something to her this other time, so they were definitely shagging.” Her mates all swore they thought the same, but they would. She’s a poison bitch, Heffernan is. Her gang, they’re the cool crowd, and she’s the queen bee. The rest are petrified of her. Any of them blink without her say-so, they’ll be out in the cold, taking nonstop shit from her and the posse till they leave school. They say what they’re told.’

I said, ‘Holly and her lot. Cool crowd or not?’

Conway watched another red light and tapped two fingers on the steering wheel, in time to her blinker. ‘Odd crowd,’ she said, in the end. ‘Not the boss bitches; not part of Heffernan’s gang. But I wouldn’t say Heffernan gives them any hassle, either. She dropped Selena in the shit when she got the chance, nearly wet her knickers with the thrill, but she wouldn’t take them on face to face. They’re not the top of the totem pole, but they’re high enough.’

Something in my face, start of a grin.

‘What?’

‘You’re talking like these are girl gangs from East LA. Razor blades in their hair.’

‘Close,’ said Conway, and swung the MG off the main road. ‘Close enough.’

The houses turned bigger, set farther back off the street. Big cars, sparkly new ones; not a lot of those about, these days. Electric gates everywhere. One front garden had a statue thing made of polished concrete, looked like a five-foot mug handle.

I said, ‘So you fancied Selena for it? Or someone who was jealous of her going out with Chris, on one side or the other?’

Conway slowed down – not a lot, for a residential area. Thought.

‘I’m not saying I fancied Selena. You’ll see her; I wouldn’t’ve said she could get the job done, not right. Heffernan was jealous as fuck – Selena’s twice the looker Heffernan is – but I’m not saying I fancied her either. Not even saying I believed her. I’m just saying there was something. Just something.’

And there it was, probably: the reason she had let me come along. Something in the corner of her eye, gone when she looked at it straight. Costello hadn’t been able to pin it down either. Conway thought maybe a fresh pair of eyes; maybe me.

I said, ‘Could a teenage girl have done the job? Physically, like?’

‘Yeah. No problem. The weapon – and this wasn’t released either – the weapon was a hoe out of the groundskeepers’ shed. One blow, right through Chris Harper’s skull and into his brain. The Bureau said, with the long handle and the sharp blade, it wouldn’t have taken a lot of strength. A kid could’ve done it, easy, if she got a good swing.’

I started to ask something, but Conway spun the car into a turn – so sudden, no blinker, I almost missed the moment we crossed over: high black-iron gates, stone guardhouse, iron arch with ‘St Kilda’s College’ picked out in gold. Inside the gates she braked. Let me take a good look.

The drive swung a semicircle of white pebbles around a gentle slope of clipped green grass that went on forever. At the top of that slope was the school.

Someone’s ancestral home, once, someone’s mansion with grooms holding dancing carriage horses, with tiny-waisted ladies drifting arm in arm across the grass. Two hundred years old, more? A long building, soft grey stone, three tall windows up and more than a dozen across. A portico held up by slim curl-topped columns; a rooftop balustrade, pillars curved delicate as vases. Perfect, it was; perfect, everything balanced, every inch. Sun melting over it, slow as butter on toast.

Maybe I should have hated it. Community-school me, classes in run-down prefabs; keep your coat on when the heating went every winter, arrange the geography posters to cover the mould patches, dare each other to touch the dead rat in the jacks. Maybe I should have looked at that school and wanted to take a shite in the portico.

It was beautiful. I love beautiful; always have. I never saw why I should hate what I wish I had. Love it harder. Work your way closer. Clasp your hands around it tighter. Till you find a way to make it yours.

‘Look at that,’ said Conway. Leaning back in her seat, eyes narrow. ‘This is the only time I’m sorry I’m a cop. When I see a shitpile like this and I can’t petrol-bomb it to fuck.’

Watching me, for my reaction. A test.

I could’ve passed, easy. Could’ve given out some stink about spoilt rich brats and my corpo-house life. Mostly I would’ve. Why not? I’d been wishing for the Murder squad for a long time. Work your way closer, make it yours.

Conway wasn’t someone I wanted to bond with.

I said, ‘It’s beautiful.’

Her head going back, mouth twisting sideways, what could have been a grin if it hadn’t been something else. Disappointment?

‘They’re gonna love you in here,’ she said. ‘Come on; let’s find you some West Brit arse to lick.’ She gunned it and we went shooting up the drive, pebbles flying out from under the wheels.

The car park was round to the right, screened off by tall dark-green trees – cypress, I was pretty sure; wished I knew trees better. No sparkly Mercs here, but no wrecks, either; the teachers could afford to drive something decent. Conway parked in a ‘Reserved’ space.

Odds were, no one at St Kilda’s was going to see the MG, not unless they’d been looking out of a front window when we came in the gate. Conway had picked it for herself; for how she wanted to go in, not how she wanted people to see her go in. I rewrote what I thought of her, again.

She swung herself out of the car, threw her bag over her shoulder – nothing girly, black leather satchel, more butch than most of the Murder lads’ briefcases. ‘I’ll take you round the scene first. Let you get your bearings. Come on.’

Through the cool curtain of shade under the screening trees. A sound like a sigh, above us; Conway’s head snapped up, but it was just wind nosing through the dense branches. On our left, when we came out into the sun again: the back of the school. Right: another great down-slope of grass, bordered by a low hedge.

The main building had wings, one stretching out to the rear from each end. Built on later, maybe, but built to match. Same grey stone, same light hand on the ornaments; someone going for line, not for frills.

Conway said, ‘Classrooms, hall, offices, all the school stuff, they’re in the main building. That’ – the near wing – ‘that’s the nuns’ gaff. Separate entrance, no connecting door to the school; the wing’s locked up at night, but all the nuns have keys, and they’ve got their own rooms. Any of them could’ve snuck out and bashed Chris Harper. There’s only a dozen of them left, most of them are about a hundred and none of them’s under fifty; but like I said before, it didn’t take a bodybuilder.’

‘Any motive?’

She squinted up at the windows. Sun flashed off them into our eyes. ‘Nuns are fucked up. Maybe one of them saw him stick his hand up some girl’s jumper, figured he was a minion of Satan, corrupting the innocent.’

She headed across the smooth lawn at a diagonal, away from the building. Nothing said keep off the grass, but it looked it. Two heads like us in a place like this: I was waiting for a gamekeeper to burst out of the trees and chase us off the grounds, attack dogs chewing the arses out of our trousers.

‘The other wing, that’s the boarders. Locked down tight as a nun’s gee at night; the girls don’t have keys. Bars on the ground-floor windows. Door at the back there, but it’s alarmed at night. Connecting door to the school on the ground floor, and that’s where it gets interesting. The school windows don’t have bars. And they’re not alarmed.’

I said, ‘The connecting door isn’t kept locked?’

‘Yeah, course it is. Day and night. But if there’s something important, like if some boarder forgets her homework in her room, or if she needs a book from the library to get some project done, she can ask for a key. The school secretary and the nurse and the matron – I’m not joking you, there’s a
matron
– they’ve got one each. And January last year, four months before Chris Harper, the nurse’s key went missing.’

‘They didn’t change the lock?’

Conway rolled her eyes. Not just her face was on the edge of foreign; something in the way she moved, too, in the straight back and the swing of her shoulders, the quickfire expressions. ‘You’d think, right? Nah. The nurse kept the key on a shelf, right above her bin; she figured it’d just fallen off, got dumped with the rubbish. Got a new one cut and forgot the whole thing, tra-la-la, everything’s grand, till we came asking questions. Honest to Jaysus, I don’t know who’s the most naïve in this place, the kiddies or the staff. If a boarder had that key? She could go through the connecting door into the school any night, nip out a window, do whatever she wanted till she had to show for breakfast.’

‘There’s no security guard?’

‘There is, yeah. Night watchman, they call him; I think they think it sounds classier. He sits in that gatehouse we passed coming in, does the rounds every two hours. Dodging him wouldn’t be a problem, though. Wait’ll you see the size of the grounds. Over here.’

A gate in the hedge, wrought-iron curlicues, long soft squeak when Conway swung it open. Beyond it was a tennis court, a playing field, and then: more green, this time carefully organised to look that bit less organised; not wild, just wild enough. Mishmash of trees that had taken centuries, birch, oak, sycamore. Little pebbled paths twisting between flowerbeds mounded with yellow and lavender. All the greens were spring ones, the ones so soft your hand would go right through.

Conway snapped her fingers in my face. ‘Focus.’

I said, ‘What do the boarders sleep in? Dorms or single rooms?’

‘First- and second-years, six to a dorm. Third- and fourth-years, four to a room. Fifth- and sixth-years, two to a room. So yeah, you’d have at least one roommate to worry about, if you were sneaking out. But here’s the thing: from third year up, you get to choose who you share with. So whoever’s in your room, chances are they’re already on your side.’

Down the side of the tennis court – nets loose, couple of balls rolled into a corner. I still felt the school windows staring at my back. ‘How many boarders are there?’

‘Sixty-odd. But we narrowed it down. The nurse gave some kid the key on a Tuesday morning, kid brought it straight back. Friday lunchtime, someone else asks for it and it’s gone. The nurse’s office is locked when she’s not there – she swears she managed to get that right, at least, stop anyone from mainlining Benylin or whatever she keeps in there. So if someone nicked the key, it was someone who was in to the nurse between Tuesday and Friday.’

Conway shoved a branch out of her way and headed down one of the little paths, deeper into the grounds. Bees working away at apple blossom. Birds up above, not rattly magpies, just little happy birds getting the gossip.

‘The nurse’s log said there were four of those. Kid called Emmeline Locke-Blaney, first-year, boarder; she was so petrified of us she practically wet herself, I don’t see her being able to keep anything back. Catríona Morgan, fifth-year, day girl – which doesn’t rule her out, she could’ve passed the key on to a mate who boarded, but they clique up pretty tight; day girls and boarders don’t really mix, don’tchaknow.’ A year on, every name off by heart, easy as that. Chris Harper had got to her, all right. ‘Alison Muldoon, third-year, boarder – one of Heffernan’s little bitches. And Rebecca O’Mara.’

I said, ‘Holly Mackey’s gang again.’

‘Yeah. See why I’m not convinced your little buddy’s telling you everything?’

‘Their reasons for going to the nurse. Did they check out?’

‘Emmeline was the only one with a verifiable reason: sprained her ankle playing hockey or polo or whatever, needed it strapped. The other three had headaches or period cramps or dizzy fits or some bullshit. Could’ve been legit, or they could’ve just wanted to get out of class, or
.
.
.’ A lift of Conway’s eyebrow. ‘They got a couple of painkillers and a nice lie-down, right by the shelf with the key.’

‘And they all said they didn’t touch it.’