The Secret Place (9 page)

‘I
can’t
, ohmyGod, I soooo can’t—’

‘Course you can. Hello, it’s the twenty-first century? Like, girl power? We don’t have to wait for guys to ask us out any more. Just do it. Think about how happy he’ll be.’

‘Then he’ll take you back behind the Court,’ Gemma says, body moving languidly on the fountain-edge, ‘and he’ll put his arms around you, and he’ll start kissing you
.
.
.’ Orla twists herself into a knot and snorts with giggles.

Julia says, ‘A fiver says she actually does it. Anyone on?’

Selena says quietly, glancing over at Andrew Moore, ‘If she does, he’s going to be horrible.’

‘A total dick,’ Julia agrees. She throws a couple of Mentos into her mouth, like she’s at the cinema, and watches with interest.

‘Let’s go,’ Becca says. ‘I don’t want to see this. This is awful.’

‘Tough. I do.’

‘Better hurry up,’ says Joanne, singsong, nudging Orla’s leg with her toe again. ‘He’s not going to wait forever, no matter how much he fancies you. If you don’t get in there fast, he’ll go off with someone else.’

‘I could use a fiver,’ Holly says. She turns around. ‘Hey! Orla!’ And when Orla unrolls herself enough to look over, red and grinning like an idiot: ‘They’re just messing with you. If Andrew Moore wants to be with someone, you think he’s too shy to chat her up? Seriously?’

‘Ex
cuse
me?’ Joanne snaps, sitting up straight and shooting Holly a vile look. ‘I don’t actually remember asking you what you think?’

‘Excuse
me
, you’re screaming in the middle of the
Court
. If I have to listen to it, I get to have an opinion about it. And my opinion is, he doesn’t even know Orla exists.’

‘And
my
opinion is that you’re an ugly skanger who should be in some community school where normal people wouldn’t have to listen to your stupid
opinions
.’

‘Whoa,’ says the guy with Gemma’s head in his lap. ‘Catfight.’

‘Ohhh yeah,’ says the tall guy, grinning. ‘Bring it on.’

‘Holly’s dad’s a detective,’ Julia explains, to the guys. ‘He arrested Joanne’s mum for hooking. She’s still holding a grudge.’

The guys start to laugh. Joanne draws herself up and opens her mouth to come back with something terrible – Becca is already flinching – when, across the fountain, the noise level goes up. Andrew and three of his mates are holding another one over the water, swinging him by his wrists and his ankles while he shouts and struggles. They all have one eye on the girls, to make sure they’re noticing.

‘OhmyGod!’ Joanne nudges Orla so violently she almost goes into the fountain. ‘Did you see that? He was looking straight at you!’

Orla’s eyes go to Holly. Holly shrugs. ‘Whatever.’

Orla stares, paralysed. Her head is obviously spinning so hard she can’t think, even by her standards.

‘What are you looking at me for?’ Julia wants to know. ‘I’m just here for the show.’

Selena says gently, ‘Holly’s right, Orla. If he likes you, he’ll say something.’

Gemma is watching, amused, from her guy’s lap. She says, ‘Or else you’re just jel.’

‘Um, obviously? Because Andrew Moore wouldn’t touch any of them with someone else’s,’ Joanne snaps. ‘Who are you going to believe? Us, or
them
?’

Orla’s mouth is hanging open. For a second her eyes meet Becca’s, stupid and desperate. Becca knows she has to say something –
Don’t do it, he’ll rip you to pieces in front of everyone
.
.
.

‘Because if you trust them more than us,’ Joanne says, cold enough to freeze Orla’s face off, ‘maybe they should be your best friends from now on.’

That snaps Orla out of her daze. Even she understands when to be scared. ‘I don’t! I mean, I don’t trust them. I trust you.’ She gives Joanne a wet smile, belly-up dog. ‘I do.’

Joanne keeps up the cold stare for a moment, while Orla twists with anxiety; finally she smiles back, graciously, all forgiveness. She says, ‘I know you do. I mean, hello, you’re not
stupid
. So off you go.’ She shoves Orla’s leg with her foot, pushing her off the fountain-edge.

Orla gives her one last agonised look. Joanne and Gemma and Alison nod encouragingly. Orla heads off around the fountain, so tentatively that her walk turns into a half-tiptoe mince.

Joanne looks up at the tall guy, with her head dropping to one side, and smirks. He grins back. His hand slides onto the side of her waist, and down, as they watch Orla get closer to Andrew Moore.

Becca lies on her back on the cold sticky marble and looks up at the domed ceiling of the Court, four high stories above them, so she won’t have to see. The people scurrying upside-down on the balconies look tiny and precarious, like any second they’re going to lose their footing and go plummeting, arms outspread, smash head first into the ceiling. From the other side of the fountain she hears the rising predator roar of laughter, the mocking shouts –
Wahey Moooore scooore! – Go for it,  Andy, the ugly ones give the best head
–
Pity fuck! Pity fuck!
And, nearer, the high insane screams of laughter from Joanne and Gemma and Alison.

‘I’ll have my fiver now,’ Julia says.

Becca looks up at the top floor, at the corner where the car-park pay-stations are hidden away. Next to them is a thin slice of daylight. She hopes a couple of first-years are up there, craning their necks out of the window, all of this greasy mess windblown out of their minds by the sweet wide world rolled out below them. She hopes they don’t get kicked out. She hopes as they’re leaving they light a piece of paper on fire, toss it in the bin and burn the Court to the ground.

Chapter 5

The front door was heavy wood, dark and battered. For a second after Conway pushed it open, the deserted stillness stayed. Empty dark-wood staircase sweeping upwards. Sun across worn chequerboard tiles.

Then a bell went off, everywhere. Doors flew open and feet came drumming out, floods of girls in that same navy-and-green uniform, all talking at once. ‘Fucking
hell
,’ said Conway, raising her voice so I could hear her. ‘Timing. Come on.’

She headed up the stairs, shouldering through the wave of bodies and books. Her back was set like a boxer’s. She looked like this was Internal Affairs and root canal rolled into one.

I went after her, up those stairs. Girls poured round me, flying hair and flying laughs. The air felt full and glossy, felt high, felt shot through with sun at mad-dash angles; sun swirling along the banisters like water, snatching colours and spinning them in the air; lifting me, catching me everywhere and rising. I felt different, changing. Like today was my day, if I could just figure out how. Like danger, but my danger, conjured up by a high-tower wizard specially for me; like my luck, sweet tricky urgent luck, tumbling through the air, heads or tails?

I’d never been anywhere like this before, but it felt like it took me back. It had that pull, all down the length of your bones. It made me think words I hadn’t thought since I was a young fella reading my way through the Ilac Centre library, thinking that would get me in between walls like these. Deliquescent. Numinous. Halcyon. Me, long-legged and clumsy and daydreaming, far off my patch so no one would see me, giddy with thrill like I was doing something bold.

‘We’ll start with the headmistress,’ Conway said, on the landing, when we could get side by side again. ‘McKenna. She’s a cow. First thing she asked me and Costello, when we got on the scene? Could we stop the media naming the school. Do you believe that? Fuck the dead kid, fuck gathering info to catch whoever did it: all she cared about was that this made her school
look bad
.’

Girls dodging past us, ‘’Scuse me!’ high and breathless. A couple of them threw looks back over their shoulders at one of us, or both; most were moving too fast to care. Lockers banging open. Even the corridors were lovely, high ceilings and plaster mouldings, soft green and paintings on the walls.

‘Here,’ Conway said, nodding at a door. ‘Put your game face on.’ And pushed the door open.

A curly blonde turned around from a filing cabinet, hitting the big-smile button, but Conway said, ‘Howya,’ and kept walking, past her and through the inner door. She closed it behind us.

Quiet, in there. Thick carpet. The room had been done up with plenty of time and money, to look like someone’s old-fashioned study: antique desk with green leather on top, full bookshelves everywhere, heavy-framed oil painting of a nun who was no oil painting. Only the fancy executive chair and the sleek laptop said
office
.

The woman behind the desk put down a pen and stood up. ‘Detective Conway,’ she said. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’

‘No flies on you,’ Conway said, tapping her temple. She picked up two straight chairs from against a wall, spun them both to the desk and sat down. ‘Nice to be back.’

The woman ignored that. ‘And this is
.
.
. ?’

‘Detective Stephen Moran,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said the woman. ‘I believe you spoke to the school secretary earlier today.’

‘That was me.’

‘Thank you for keeping us informed. Miss Eileen McKenna. Headmistress.’ She didn’t put out her hand, so I didn’t either.

‘Sometimes we like to bring in a fresh pair of eyes,’ Conway said. Her accent had got rougher. ‘A specialist. Yeah?’

Miss McKenna raised her eyebrows, but when no one gave her more, she didn’t ask. Sat down again – I waited to sit till she had – and folded her hands on the green leather. ‘And what can I do for you?’

Big woman, Miss Eileen McKenna. Not fat, just big, the way some women get in their fifties after years of being the boss: all out front, hoisted up high and solid, ready to sail through anything and not get wet. I could see her in a breaktime corridor, girls skittering away in front of her before they even knew she was coming. Lots of chin; lots of eyebrow. Iron hair and steely glasses. I don’t know women’s gear but I know quality, and the greeny tweed was quality; the pearls weren’t from Penney’s.

Conway said, ‘How’s the school getting on?’

Leaning back in her chair, legs sprawled, elbows out. Taking up as much of the office as she could. Prickly as fuck. History there, or just chemistry.

‘Very well. Thank you.’

‘Yeah? Seriously? ’Cause I remember you telling me the whole place was about to go
.
.
.’ Nosedive move with her hand, long whistle. ‘All those years of tradition and whatever, down the tubes, if us plebs insisted on doing our jobs. Here was me feeling guilty. Nice to see it all turned out grand after all.’

Miss McKenna said – to me, leaving Conway out – ‘As I’m sure you can imagine, most parents were disturbed by the thought of letting their daughters stay in a school where a murder had been committed. The fact that the murderer remained uncaught didn’t improve matters.’

Thin smile at Conway. Nothing back.

‘Ironically, neither did the ongoing police presence and the constant interviews – possibly they should have helped everyone to feel that the situation was under control, but in fact they prevented any return to normality. The persistent media intrusion, which the police were too busy to curb, exacerbated the problem. Twenty-three sets of parents removed their daughters from the school. Almost all the others threatened to, but I was able to persuade them that it would not be in their daughters’ best interests.’

I bet she had. That voice: like Maggie Thatcher turned Irish, shoulder-barging the world into its place with no room for argument. Made me feel like I should apologise quick, if I could work out what for. It’d take a parent with balls of steel to contradict that voice.

‘For several months it was touch and go. But St Kilda’s has survived more than a century of various ups and downs. It has survived this.’

‘Lovely,’ said Conway. ‘While it was surviving, anything come up that we should know?’

‘If anything had, we would have contacted you immediately. On which note, Detective, I should be asking you the same question.’

‘Yeah? Why’s that?’

‘I assume,’ Miss McKenna said, ‘that this visit is connected to the fact that Holly Mackey left school without permission, this morning, to speak to you.’

She was talking to me. I said, ‘We can’t go into details.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to. But, just as you have the right to know anything that might be crucial to your job – hence the fact that I have always given consent for you to speak with the students – I have a right, even an obligation, to know anything that might be crucial to mine.’

Just the right amount of threat. ‘I appreciate that. You can be sure I’ll tell you if anything relevant comes up.’

Glint off the glasses. ‘With all due respect, Detective, I’m afraid I’ll have to be the judge of what is and isn’t relevant. It’s impossible for you to make that decision for a school and a girl about which you know nothing.’