The Secret Place

Chapter 11

It was gone three o’clock. Conway knew where the canteen was, poked around till she found some drudge scrubbing spotless steel, told him to make us food. He tried a hairy look but Conway’s beat his. I kept an eye on him while he slapped together ham and cheese sandwiches, make sure he didn’t spit in them. Conway went to a coffee machine, hit buttons. Snagged apples out of a crate.

We took the food outside. Conway led, to a low wall off to one side of the grounds, overlooking the playing field and the gardens below it. On the playing field little girls were running around swinging hockey sticks, PE teacher keeping up a string of motivational shouts. Trees threw down shadows that stopped them spotting us. Between the branch-stripes, the sun heated my hair.

‘Eat fast,’ Conway said, parking herself on the wall. ‘After this, we search their rooms for whatever book those words got cut out of.’

Meaning she wasn’t packing me back to Cold Cases, not yet. And she wasn’t heading back to base either. A look at the noticeboard, a few chats, we’d come for. Somewhere along the line it had turned into more. Those glimpses of something peeking out at us from behind what we were being told: neither of us wanted to leave without pulling it out into the open, getting a proper look.

Unless our girl was thick, the book wasn’t in her room. But a soft tip like this one – could be nothing, could be everything – it’s a rock and a hard place. Call in a full team, swarm the school grounds with searchers, come out with nothing or with some kid’s messing: you’re the squad joke and the gaffer’s budget-waster headache, can’t be trusted to make the judgement calls. Stick to whatever you and one tagalong can get done, miss the clue stuffed behind a classroom rad, miss the witness who could steer you home: you’re the fool who had it handed to you on a plate and threw it away, who didn’t think a dead boy was important, can’t be trusted to make the judgement calls.

Conway was playing it tight, playing it careful. Not that she’d care, but I agreed with that. If our girl was smart, and the odds said she was, we wouldn’t find the book either way. Stuffed in a bush a mile away by now, into a city-centre bin. If she was extra smart she’d made the card weeks ago, ditched the book then, waited till it was well gone before she set things moving.

We set out the food on the wall between us. Conway ripped the clingfilm open and went for her sandwich. Ate like it was fast fuel, no taste. Mine was better than I’d been expecting. Nice mayo and all.

‘You’re good,’ she said, through a mouthful. Not like it was a compliment. ‘Give them what they want. Tailor it special for each one. Cute.’

I said, ‘Thought that was my job. Get them comfy.’

‘They were that, all right. Next time maybe you can give them a pedicure and a foot massage, how’s that?’

I reminded myself: Just a few days, make your mark with the gaffer, wave bye-bye. Said, ‘I thought you were gonna come in, maybe. Push them a little.’

Conway flashed me a stare that said, You questioning me? I thought that was my answer, but after a moment she said, out to the playing field, ‘I interviewed the shite out of them. Last time.’

‘Those eight?’

‘All the kids. Those eight. All their year. All Chris’s year. All of them who could’ve known anything. A week in, the tabloids were getting their kacks in a knot, “Cops are going easy on the little rich kids, there’s strings being pulled, that’s why there’s been no arrest” – a couple of them said right out, practically, there was a cover-up. But there was nothing like that. I went at these kids same as I’d have gone at a bunch of knackers out of the flats. Exactly the same.’

‘I believe you.’

Her head came round fast, chin out. Looking for snide. I stayed steady.

‘Costello,’ she said, once she relaxed again, ‘Costello was only horrified. The face on him; like I was mooning the nuns. Almost every interview, he’d stop the questioning and pull me outside to give me shite about what did I think I was doing, did I want to kill my career before I even got started.’

I kept my mouth full. No comment.

‘O’Kelly, our gaffer, he was as bad. Called me into his office twice, for a bollocking: who did I think these kids were, did I think I was dealing with the same scum I grew up with, why wasn’t I spending my time looking into homeless guys and mental patients, did I know how many phone calls the commissioner was getting from pissed-off daddies, he was gonna buy me a dictionary so I could look up “tact”…’

I do tact. I said, mild, ‘They’re a different generation. They’re old-school.’

‘Fuck that. They’re Murder. They’re trying to get a killer. That’s the only thing that matters. Or that’s what I thought back then.’

Bitter sediment, running along the bottom of her voice.

‘By that time I’d no hassle telling Costello to shove it. O’Kelly, even. The whole case was going to fuck, with my name on it. I’d’ve done anything. But by that time it was too late. Wherever my shot was, in there, I’d missed it.’

I made some kind of noise, Been there. Concentrated on my sandwich.

Some cases are like that: dirty bastards. We all get them. But get one straight out of the gate, and that’s what people see when they look at you: bad luck walking.

Anyone got too close to Typhoid Conway, he’d get that taint all over him. People would stay away from him, too; the Murder lads would.

Just a few days.

‘So,’ Conway said. Swigged her coffee, balanced it on the wall. ‘Boils down to I’ve got a file full of complaints from rich guys, I don’t have Costello to back me up any more, and best of all, a year on I still don’t have a solve. O’Kelly gets this much of an excuse’ – finger and thumb, a hair apart – ‘he’s gonna kick my arse off this case, give it to O’Gorman or one of that shower of tossers. The only reason he hasn’t done it already is he hates reassigning: says the media or the defence can spin that as the initial investigation fucked up. But they’re on at him, O’Gorman and McCann, dropping the little hints about a fresh pair of eyes.’

That was why Houlihan. Not to protect the kids. To protect Conway.

‘This time I’m playing the long game. Those interviews weren’t a waste: we’ve narrowed it down. Joanne, Alison, Selena, Julia as an outside chance. It’s a start. Yeah, maybe we’d’ve got farther if I’d started pushing them. I can’t afford to chance it.’

One more snap at Joanne, and there it would’ve been: Daddy’s phone call, O’Kelly’s excuse, both of our arse-kick out of the door.

I felt Conway think it too. Didn’t want her thanking me. Not that she probably would have, but just in case:

I said, ‘Rebecca’s changed, since you were here last. Yeah?’

‘You mean I steered you wrong.’

‘I mean with all of Joanne’s lot, what you told me was bang on. With Rebecca, it was out of date.’

‘No shit. Last time, Rebecca could hardly open her mouth. Acted like she’d be happy to curl up and die, if that’d make us leave her alone. Teachers said she was like that, just shyness, she’d outgrow it.’

‘She’s outgrown it now, all right.’

‘Yeah. She’s got better-looking – just bones and braces, last year, looked about ten; now she’s starting to come into herself. That could’ve upped her confidence.’

I nodded at the school. ‘How about the rest of that lot? Have they changed?’

Conway glanced at me. ‘Why? You figure whoever knows something, it’s gonna show?’

This whole chat, this was a test; same as the interviews, same as the search. Half of working a case together is this, table-tennising it. If that clicks, you’re golden. The best partners tossing a case around sound like two halves of the same mind. Not that I was aiming that high here – smart money said no one had ever partnered like that with Conway, even if anyone had wanted to – but the click: if that wasn’t there, I was going home.

I said, ‘They’re kids. They’re not tough. You think they could live with that for a year, like it was nothing?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. Kids, if they can’t cope with something, they’ll file it away, act like it never existed. And even if they’ve changed, so what? This age, they’re changing anyway.’

I said, ‘Have they?’

She chewed and thought. ‘Heffernan’s gang, nah. Just more of the same old. Even bitchier, even more alike. Thick blond geebag, slutty blond geebag, nervy blond geebag, geebaggy blond geebag, end of story. And the three lapdogs, they’re even scareder of Heffernan than they were.’

‘We said before: someone was scared, or she wouldn’t be messing about with postcards.’

Conway nodded. ‘Yeah. And I’m hoping she’s scareder now.’ She threw back coffee, eyes on the hockey. One of the little girls took another one down, whack to the shins, vicious enough that we heard it. ‘Holly and her gang, though. Back before, there was something about them, yeah. They were quirky or whatever, yeah. Now, though, Orla’s an idiot but she’s right: they’re weird.’

It took me till then to put my finger on it, what was different about them, or some of it. This: Joanne and all hers were what they thought I wanted them to be. What they thought guys wanted them to be, grown-ups wanted them to be, the world wanted them to be.

Holly’s lot were what they were. When they played thick or smart-arsed or demure, it was what they wanted to play. For their reasons, not mine.

Danger again, shimmering down my back with the sun.

I thought about saying it to Conway. Couldn’t work out how, without sounding like a nutter.

‘Selena,’ Conway said, ‘she’s the one that’s changed most. Last year, she was away with the fairies, all right – you could tell she had one of those dream-catcher things over her bed, or some unicorny shite that said “Believe in Your Dreams” – but nothing that stuck out a mile. And I put half of the spacy down to shock, specially if Chris had been her boyfriend. Now…’ She blew out a hiss of breath between her teeth. ‘I met her now, I’d say she was one rich daddy away from special school.’

I said, ‘I wouldn’t.’

That got Conway’s eyes off the hockey. ‘You think she’s putting it on?’

‘Not that.’ Took me a second to say it right. ‘The spacy’s real, all right. But I think there’s more underneath, and she’s using the spacy to hide it.’

‘Huh,’ Conway said. Thought back. ‘What Orla said about her hair, Selena’s? Last year that was down to her arse. Deadly hair, real blond, wavy, the rest would’ve killed for it. How many girls that age wear their hair that short?’

I’m not up on teen fashion. ‘Not a lot?’

‘When we go back in there, keep an eye out. Unless someone’s had cancer, bet you Selena’s the only one.’

I drank my coffee. Good stuff, would’ve been better if Conway had cared that not everyone takes it black. I said, ‘How about Julia?’

Conway said, ‘What’d you think of her? Hard little bitch, yeah?’

‘Tough enough, for her age. Smart, too.’

‘She’s both of those, all right.’ Corner of Conway’s mouth going up, like at least part of her approved of Julia. ‘Here’s the thing, but. Last year, she was tougher. Hard as nails. Preliminary interview, half the other girls are bawling their eyes out, or trying to. Whether they knew Chris or not. Julia walks in with a face on her like she can’t believe we’re wasting her valuable time on this shit. We get to the end of the interview, I ask her does she have anything we should know, right? And she tells me – her words, and this is in front of McKenna, remember – she doesn’t give a fuck who killed Chris Harper, he was just another Colm’s moron and it’s not like there’s a shortage. McKenna goes off on some big bullshit speech about respect and compassion, and Julia yawns in her face.’

‘Cold,’ I said.

‘Ice. And I’d swear it was the real thing. This year, though: there’s something else there. Usually a kid puts on the tough at first, till she gets tough for real. Julia, but…’

She shoved in the last of her sandwich. ‘Here’s the difference,’ she said, when she could talk. ‘See the way most of them looked at us? Hardly saw us. Julia was the same, last year. Me and Costello, far as she was concerned, we weren’t people; just grown-ups. Just this background noise that you have to put up with, so you can get back to stuff that matters. I remember that, that age, except I didn’t bother putting up with it.’

I believed it. ‘I used to tune it out. Smile, nod, do my own thing.’

‘Yeah. But this year Julia’s watching us like we’re actual people, you and me.’ Conway finished her coffee in one long gulp. ‘I can’t work out if that’s gonna be a good thing or a bad one.’

I said, ‘Holly?’

‘Holly,’ Conway said. ‘Back when you first met her, what was she like?’

‘Sharp. Stubborn. Plenty going on.’

Wry flip to the corner of her mouth. ‘No change there, anyway. The big difference, you already picked up on. Last year, we had to drag every word out of her. This year, Little Miss Helpful, card in one hand, theory in the other, motive up her sleeve. Something’s going on there.’ She stuffed the clingfilm into her coffee cup. ‘What d’you think of her theory? Someone else got one of these eight to put up the card for her?’

‘Not a lot,’ I said. ‘You’re aiming to stay anonymous, so you get someone else in on the game? Someone who isn’t even one of your best mates?’

‘Nah. Your Holly’s just spreading the love. She wants us looking at the whole school, not focusing on her gang. You know what that makes me want to do?’

‘Focus on her gang.’

‘Too fucking right. Even though, say one of them knows something and Holly doesn’t want us identifying her: why bring in that card at all? Why not bin it, give your mate the tip-line number, keep it anonymous?’ Conway shook her head. Said, again, ‘Something’s going on there.’

The tip line gets you whoever’s on duty. The card had got her me. I wondered.

Conway said, ‘If we keep talking to Holly and her lot. She going to call Daddy?’

The thought itched my back. Frank Mackey is hardcore. Even if he’s on your side, you need to be watching him from more angles than you’ve got eyes. He was the last thing I wanted in this mix.

‘Doubt it,’ I said. ‘She basically told me she doesn’t want him on board. What about McKenna?’

‘Nah. You joking? He’s a parent. She’s up there saying rosaries that none of the parents find out we’re here till we’re good and gone.’

The itch went; not gone, but down. ‘She’ll be lucky,’ I said. ‘One kid phones home…’

‘Bite your tongue. We’re on McKenna’s side there. For once.’ Conway jammed the clingfilm down harder. ‘So how about Julia and Rebecca’s theory? A gang from Colm’s came in here, something went wrong.’

I said, ‘That one could play. If the lads were planning on a bit of vandalism, maybe digging another cock and balls into the grass, they could’ve nicked the hoe out of the stables. They’re messing about, fighting or pretending to fight – guys that age, half the time there’s no difference. And someone gets carried away.’

‘Yeah. Which puts the card on Joanne, Gemma or Orla. They’re the ones going out with Colm’s guys.’ The boyfriend question, suddenly making sense. The sardonic slant to Conway’s eye said she’d seen the penny drop.

I said, ‘Whatever happened to Chris, it’s been bothering one of the guys who was there. He doesn’t want to talk to an adult, but he opens up to his girlfriend.’

‘Or he tells her because he thinks it’ll make him sound interesting, get him into her knickers. Or he makes the whole thing up.’

‘We’ve ruled out Gemma and Orla. That leaves Joanne.’

‘Her fella, Andrew Moore, he was matey enough with Chris. Arrogant little prick.’ Snap of anger. One of those complaints had come from Andrew’s da.

I said, ‘Did you work out how Chris got out of Colm’s?’

‘Yeah. Security over there was even shittier than in this place – they didn’t have to worry about any of their little princes coming back pregnant after a night on the tiles. The fire door in the boarders’ wing was alarmed, supposedly, but one kid was an electronics whiz, worked out how to disable the alarm. Took some doing to get it out of him, but we got there in the end.’ Grim smile in Conway’s voice, remembering. ‘He got expelled.’

‘When’d he disable it?’

‘A couple of months before the murder. And the kid, Finn Carroll, he was good mates with Chris. He said Chris knew all about the door, had snuck out plenty of times, but he wouldn’t name any other names. Not a chance him and Chris were the only two, though. Julia and Rebecca could be on to something: gang of Colm’s boys on the prowl, they’re going to think of this place.’ Conway rubbed her apple to a shine on her trouser thigh. ‘If Chris is out for a bit of vandalism with the lads, though, what’s he doing with a condom?’

I said, ‘Last year. Did you ask the girls were they sexually active?’

‘Course we asked. They all said no. Headmistress sitting right there, staring them out of it, what else are they gonna say?’

‘You think they were lying?’

‘What, you figure I can tell just by looking?’

But there was a grin at the corner of her mouth. I said, ‘Better than I can, anyway.’

‘Like being back in school. “D’you think she’s Done It yet?” All we talked about, when I was that age.’

‘Same here,’ I said. ‘Believe me.’

The grin hardened over. ‘I believe you, all right. And for yous, if a girl did the business, she was a slut; if she didn’t, she was frigid. Either way, yous had a perfect reason to treat her like dirt.’

It was a bit true; not a lot, not for me. I said, ‘No. Either way, she got even more exciting. If she did the do, then there was a chance you might get to have sex, and when you’re a young fella that’s the biggest thing in the world. If she didn’t, there was a chance she might think you were special enough to do it with. That’s pretty big too, believe it or not. Having a girl think you’re something special.’

‘Smooth talker, you. Bet that got you into a lot of bras.’

‘I’m only telling you. You asked.’

Conway thought that over, chewing apple. Decided she believed me; enough, anyway.

‘If I was guessing,’ she said, ‘back then, I’d’ve said Julia and Gemma had had sex, Rebecca’d never even had a snog, and the rest were somewhere in between.’

‘Julia? Not Selena?’

‘Why? Because Selena’s got bigger tits, she’s the slapper?’

‘Jaysus! No. I wasn’t noticing their… Ah, fuck’s sake, now.’

But Conway was grinning again: winding me up, and she’d snared me. ‘You fuck,’ I said, ‘that’s disgusting, that is,’ and she laughed. She had a good laugh, rich, open.

She was starting to like me, whether she liked it or not. People do, mostly. Not bragging here; just saying. You have to know your strengths, in this job.

The mad part was, a bit of me was starting to like her too.

‘Here’s the thing,’ Conway said, laugh gone. ‘If I was guessing now, I’d guess the same again about Holly’s gang.’

‘So?’

‘The four of them. Pretty girls, right?’

‘Jesus, Conway. What do you take me for?’

‘I’m not calling you a perv. I’m saying when you were sixteen. Would you have been into them? Asked them out, Facebooked them, whatever kids do these days?’

When I was sixteen, I would’ve seen those girls like polished things in museum cases: stare all you want, get drunk on the dazzle of them, but no touching, unless you’ve got the tools and the balls to smash through reinforced glass and dodge armed guards.

They looked different, now I’d seen that board. I couldn’t see pretty, any more, without seeing dangerous underneath. Splinters.

I said, ‘They’re grand. Holly and Selena are good-looking, yeah. I’d say they get plenty of attention – not from the same guys, probably. Rebecca’s going to be good-looking soon enough, but when I was sixteen I might not have copped that, and she doesn’t seem like great crack, so I’d have kept moving. Julia: she’s no supermodel, but she’s not bad, and she’s got plenty of attitude; I’d’ve looked twice. I’d say she does OK.’

Conway nodded. ‘That’s about what I’d’ve said. So why no boyfriends? If I’m guessing right, why’ve none of them got any action in the last year?’

‘Rebecca’s a late bloomer. Still at boys are icky and the whole thing’s embarrassing.’

‘Right. And the other three?’

‘Boarding school. No guys. Not a lot of free time.’

‘Hasn’t stopped Heffernan’s gang. Two yeses, one no, one sort-of: that’s what I’d expect, give or take. Holly’s gang: no, no, no, no, straight down the line. No one takes a second to decide what to say, no one says it’s complicated, no one’s giggling and blushing, nothing. Just flat-out no.’

‘You figure what? They’re gay?’

Shrug. ‘All four of them? Could be, but the odds say no. They’re a close bunch, though. Scare one of them off the fellas, you’d scare off the lot.’

I said, ‘You think someone did something to one of them.’

Conway threw her apple core. She had a good arm; it skimmed long and low between the trees, smashed into a bush with a rattle that sent a couple of small birds panicking upwards. She said, ‘And I think something’s fucked up Selena’s head. And I don’t believe in coincidences.’

She pulled out her phone, nodded at my apple. ‘Finish that. I’m gonna check my messages, then we move.’

Still giving the orders, but her tone had changed. I’d passed the test, or we had: the click was there.

Your dream partner grows in the back of your mind, secret, like your dream girl. Mine grew up with violin lessons, floor-to-high-ceiling books, red setters, a confidence he took for granted and a dry sense of humour no one but me would get. Mine was everything that wasn’t Conway, and I would’ve bet hers was everything that wasn’t me. But the click was there. Maybe, just for a few days, we could be good enough for each other.

I shoved the rest of my apple in my coffee cup, found my mobile too. ‘Sophie,’ Conway told me, phone to her ear. ‘No prints on anything. The lads in Documents say the words came out of a book, medium quality, probably fifty to seventy years old going by the typeface and the paper. From the focus on the photo, Chris wasn’t the main subject; he was just in the background, someone cropped out the rest. Nothing on the location yet, but she’s running comparisons with photos from the original investigation.’

When I turned on my phone, it beeped: a text. Conway’s head came round.

A number I didn’t recognise. The text was so far from what I was expecting, took my eyes a second to grab hold of it.

Joanne kept the key to the boarders wing/school door taped inside the Life of St Therese, third year common room bookshelf. It could be gone now but it was there a year ago.

I held the phone out to Conway.

Her face went focused. She held her mobile next to mine, tapped and flicked fast at the screen.

Said, ‘The number’s none of our girls, or it wasn’t last year. None of Chris’s friends, either.’

All their numbers, still on her phone a year later. No thread cut, not even the finest.

I said, ‘I’ll text back. Ask who it is.’

Conway thought. Nodded.

Hi – thanks for that. Sorry, I don’t have everyone’s numbers, who’s this?

I passed it to Conway. She read it three times, gnawing apple-juice sticky off her thumb. Said, ‘Go.’

I hit Send.

Neither of us said it; no need. If the text was true, then Joanne and at least one other girl, probably more, had had a way to get out of the school the night Chris Harper was killed. One of them could have seen something.

One of them could have done something.

If the text was true, then today had turned into something different. Not just about finding the card girl, not any more.

We waited. Down on the playing field, the rhythm of the hockey sticks had turned ragged: the girls had spotted us, they were missing easy shots craning over their shoulders trying to pick us out of the shadows. Little feisty birds clicking and wing-flipping in and out of the trees above us. Sun fading and blooming as thin clouds shifted. Nothing.

I said, ‘Ring it?’

‘Ring it.’

It rang out. The voicemail greeting was the default one, droid woman telling me to leave a message. I hung up.

I said, ‘It’s one of our eight.’

‘Oh, yeah. Anything else is way too much coincidence. And it’s not your Holly. She brought you the card, she’d bring you the key.’

Conway pulled out her phone again. Rang one number after another: Hello, this is Detective Conway, just confirming that we still have the correct phone number for you, in case we need to get in touch… All the voices were recorded – ‘School hours,’ Conway said, tapping; ‘phones have to be switched off in class’ – but all of them were the right ones. None of our girls had changed her number.

Conway said, ‘You got a pal at any of the mobile networks?’

‘Not yet.’ Neither did she, or she wouldn’t have asked. You stockpile useful pals, build yourself a nice fat list, over time. I felt it like a thump: us, two rookies, in the middle of this.

‘Sophie does.’ Conway was dialling again. ‘She’ll get us the full records on that number. By the end of the day, guaranteed.’

I said, ‘It’ll be unregistered.’

‘Yeah, it will. But I want to know who else it’s been texting. If Chris was meeting someone, he arranged it somehow. We never found out how.’ She slid down off the wall, phone to her ear. ‘Meanwhile, let’s go see if Little Miss Text’s fucking us around.’

McKenna came out of her office all ready to wave us goodbye, wasn’t a happy camper when she found out we weren’t goodbyeing anywhere. By now we were front-page headlines all round the school. Any minute the day girls would be heading home to tell their parents the cops were back, and McKenna’s phone would start ringing. She’d been banking on being able to say this little unpleasantness was over and done with: just a few follow-up questions, Mr and Mrs, don’t worry your pretty heads, all gone now. She didn’t ask how long it would be. We pretended not to hear her wanting to know.

A nod from McKenna, and the curly secretary gave us the key to the boarders’ wing, gave us the combinations to the common rooms, gave us signed permission for us to search. Gave us everything we wanted, but the smile had gone. Tight face, now. Tense line between her eyebrows. Not looking at us.

That bell went again, as we came out of her office. ‘Come on,’ Conway said, lengthening her stride. ‘That’s the end of classes. The matron’ll be opening the connecting door, and I don’t want anyone getting in that common room before we do.’

I said, ‘Combination locks on the common rooms. Were those there last year?’

‘Yeah. Years, they’ve had those.’

‘How come?’

Behind the closed doors, the classrooms had exploded into gabble and scraping-back chairs. Conway took the stairs down to the ground floor at a run. ‘The kids leave stuff there. There’s no locks on the bedroom doors, in case of fire or lesbians; the bedside tables lock, but they’re tiny. So a lot of stuff winds up in the common rooms – CDs, books, whatever. With the combination, anything gets robbed, there’s only a dozen people who could’ve done it. Easy enough to solve.’

I said, ‘I thought no one here did stuff like that.’

Wry sideways glance from Conway. ‘“We don’t attract that type.” Right? I said that to McKenna, said had there been problems with theft? She did the face, said no, none whatsoever. I said not since the combination locks, anyway, am I right? She did the face some more, pretended she didn’t hear me.’

Through the connecting door, standing open.

The boarders’ wing felt different from the school. White-painted, cooler and silent, a bright white silence floating down the stairwell. A tinge of some scent, light and flowery. The air nudged at me like I needed to back off, let Conway go on alone. This was girls’ territory.

Up the stairs – a Virgin Mary in her nook on the landing gave me an enigmatic smile – and down a long corridor, over worn red tiles, between closed white doors. ‘Bedrooms,’ Conway said. ‘Third- and fourth-years.’

‘Any supervision at night?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice. The matron’s room’s down on the ground floor, with the little kids. Two sixth-years on this floor, prefects, but they’re asleep, what’re they gonna do? Anyone who wasn’t a massive klutz could sneak out, no problem.’

Two oak doors at the end of the corridor, one on each side. Conway went for the left-hand one. Pushed buttons on the lock, no need to look at the secretary’s piece of paper.

Cosy enough to curl up in, the third-year common room. Storybook stuff. I knew better, I’d seen it on the board in black and white and every slap-sharp colour, but I still couldn’t picture bad things here: someone being bitch-whipped out of a conversation into one of those corners, someone snug in one of the sofas longing to cut herself.

Big squashy sofas in soft oranges and golds, a gas fire. Vase of freesias on the mantelpiece. Old wooden tables, for doing homework. Girls’ bits and bobs everywhere, hairbands, ice-creamy nail polish, magazines, water bottles, half-rolls of sweets. A meadow-green scarf with little white daisies hanging off the back of a chair, fine as a Communion veil, rising in the soft breeze through the window. A motion-sensor light snapped on like a warning, not a welcome: You. Watching you.

Two alcoves of built-in bookshelves. Ceiling-high, every shelf layers deep in books.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Conway. ‘They couldn’t just have a telly?’

A spill of high voices down the corridor, and the door banged open behind us. We both whipped round, but the girls were smaller than our lot: three of them, jammed in the doorway, staring at me. One of them giggled.

‘Out,’ Conway said.

‘I need my Uggs!’

The kid was pointing. Conway picked up the boots, tossed them over. ‘Out.’

They backed away. The whispering started before I got the door closed.

‘Uggs,’ Conway said, pulling out her gloves. ‘Fucking things should be banned.’

Gloves on. If that book and that key existed, the prints on them mattered.

One alcove each. Finger along the spines, skim, scoop the front row of books onto the floor and start on the back one. Fast, wanting to see something solid rise to the surface. Wanting it to be me who found it.

Conway had spotted the stare and giggle, or felt the shove in the air. She said, ‘Watch yourself. I was taking the piss out of you, before, but you want to be careful around this lot. That age, they’re dying to fancy someone; they’ll practice on any half-decent fella they can get. See that staff room? You think it’s a coincidence all the guy teachers are trolls?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s to keep the crazy level down. Few hundred girls, hormones up to ninety…’

I said, ‘I’m no Justin Bieber. I’m not gonna start any riots.’

That got a snort. ‘It doesn’t take Justin Bieber. You’re not a troll and you’re not sixty: good enough. They want to fancy you, great, you can use that. Just don’t ever be alone with any of them.’

I thought of Gemma, the Sharon Stone leg-cross. I said, ‘I’m not planning to be.’

‘Hang on,’ Conway said, and the sudden lift in her voice had me on my feet before I knew it. ‘Here we go.’

Low shelf, back layer, hidden away behind slick bright colours. Old hardback, dust jacket gone tatty at the edges. St Thérèse of Lisieux: The Little Flower and the Little Way.

Conway pulled it out, carefully, one fingertip. Dust came with it. Sepia young one in a nun-veil on the front, pudgy-faced, thin lips curved in a smile that could have been shy or sly. The back cover didn’t close right.

I put two fingers on the book, top and bottom, held it steady while Conway eased open the back. The corner of the jacket flap had been folded in, taped to make a triangular pocket. Inside, when Conway gently hooked it open, was a Yale key.

Neither of us touched.

Conway said, like I’d asked, ‘I’m not calling it in yet. We’ve got nothing definitive.’

This was the moment to bring in the cavalry: the full search team scouring the school, the Forensics lads taking prints to match up, the social worker in the corner of every interview. This wasn’t a scrap of card, fifty/fifty chance of a bored teenager playing attention games. This was one girl, probably four, maybe eight, who had had the opportunity to be at the murder scene. This was real.

If Conway rang for the cavalry, she would have to show O’Kelly all the shiny new good stuff that justified him blowing his budget on a case turned cold. And bang, fast enough to make our heads spin, I would be headed home and she would be paired up with someone with years under his belt, O’Gorman or some other hint-dropper who would find a way to put his name on the solve, if there was a solve. Thanks for your help, Detective Moran, see you around next time someone drops a big fat clue into your hand.

I said, ‘We don’t know for sure that this was actually the key to the connecting door.’

‘Exactly. I’ve got a copy of the real thing back at HQ, I can match it against that. Till then, I’m not calling out half the force for the key to someone’s ma’s booze cupboard.’

‘And we’ve only got the text girl’s word on who put it here and when. It might not even have been here last May.’

‘Might not.’ Conway let the pocket drop closed. ‘I wanted to take this place apart, top to bottom. The gaffer said no. Said there was no evidence that anyone inside Kilda’s was involved. What he meant was, all the posh mummies and daddies would have a conniption about some dirty detective going through their little darlings’ undies. So yeah: for all we know, the key wasn’t there to find.’

I said, ‘Why would Joanne’s lot leave it here, all this time? Why not bin it when Chris got killed and people started asking questions?’

Conway shut the book. Delicate touch, when she needed it. ‘You should’ve seen this place, after the murder. The kids didn’t get left on their own for a second, in case Hannibal Lecter jumped out of a wardrobe and ate their brains. None of them would go to the jacks without five of their mates in tow. Our lot everywhere, teachers patrolling the corridors, nuns flapping about, everyone going off like fire alarms if they spotted anything out of the ordinary. This’ – she flicked a finger at the book, no touching – ‘would’ve been the smart thing to do: leave the key, don’t risk getting caught moving it. And just a few weeks later, the school year finished up. When our girls came back in September, they were fourth-years. No code for this room, no good reason to be in it. Coming after the key would’ve been riskier than leaving it. How often do you think this book gets read? What’s the odds of anyone finding the key, or knowing what it was if they did?’

‘If Joanne or whoever didn’t bin the key, it’s a good bet she didn’t wipe down the book.’

‘Nah. We’ll get prints.’ Conway pulled a plastic evidence bag out of her satchel, shook it open with a snap. ‘Who d’you figure for the text? None of Holly’s lot are mad about Joanne.’

She held the bag open while I balanced the book into it, two-fingered. I said, ‘“Who” isn’t the bit that’s getting me. I’d love to know why.’

Wry glance from Conway, as she tucked the bag back into her satchel. ‘My scare speech wasn’t good enough for you?’

‘It was good. But it wouldn’t scare anyone into texting us about this. What’s to be scared of? Why would the killer come after her for knowing this key was here?’

‘Unless,’ Conway said. She was pulling off her gloves, carefully, finger by finger. ‘Unless the killer’s Joanne.’

The first time we’d had a name to say. It sent a fine zing through the air, rippling the throws on the sofas, twitching the curtains.

I said, ‘You’re the boss. But if it was me, I wouldn’t go at her yet.’

I half-expected a slap-down. Didn’t get one. ‘Me neither. If Joanne hid this, her buddies knew about it. Who d’you want to try? Alison?’

‘I’d go for Orla. Alison’s nervier, all right, but that’s not what we need. One push and she’ll run crying to Daddy, and we’re bollixed.’ The we flicked Conway’s eyebrow, but she said nothing. ‘Orla’s more solid, and she’s thick enough that we can run rings round her. I’d try her.’

‘Mm,’ Conway said. She was opening her mouth to say something else when we heard the sound.

Thin shrilling sound, dipping and rising like an alarm. Before I copped what it was, Conway was up and running for the door. The savage bright burst on her face as she passed me said Yes, said Action, said At fucking last.

Girls clotted halfway down the corridor, a dozen of them, more. Half of them out of their uniforms now, bright in hoodies and T-shirts, cheap bangles shaking; a few half-changed, clutching buttons together, shoving into sleeves. All of them crowding and yammering, high and fast, Whatwhatwhat? In the middle of the clot someone was screaming.

We were taller than them. Over shining heads: Joanne and her lot, surrounded. Alison was the one screaming, back pressed against the wall, hands splayed in front of her face. Joanne was trying to do something, cradle her, ministering angel, who knows. Alison was too far gone even for that.

Holly, between heads, the only one not gawping at Alison. Holly was scanning faces, with eyes like her da’s. Holly was watching for someone to give something away.

Conway grabbed the nearest kid by the arm, little dark girl who leaped and screamed. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Alison saw a ghost! She saw, she said, she said she saw Chris Harper, his ghost, she saw–’

The shrieks kept coming; the kid was jumping and rattling under them. Conway said, loud, so anyone who could hear anything could hear her: ‘You know why he’s back, right?’

The kid stared, open-mouthed. Other girls were starting to look at us, baffled, tennis-heading, trying to work out through the brain-battering noise why these adults weren’t stepping in and getting control and turning everything back to sane.

‘Because someone here knows who killed him. He’s come back to make her talk. We see it all the time, on murder cases, all the time, amn’t I right?’

Conway shot me a look like a dig. I nodded. Said, ‘This is just the start. It’s gonna get worse.’

‘They know, murder victims do, they don’t like it when someone keeps them from getting justice. Chris isn’t happy. He won’t be able to rest till everyone’s told us everything they know.’

The kid made a muffled whine. Gasps around us, a girl catching her friend’s arm, ‘OhmyGod–’ High, trembling right on the edge of a scream to join Alison’s. ‘OhmyGod–’

‘Murder victims, they’re raging. Probably Chris was a lovely guy, when he was alive, but he’s not like you remember him. He’s angry now.’

A shiver swayed them. Teeth and sharp shards of bone, they saw, coming to rip the warm flesh off them. ‘OhmyGod–’

McKenna, surging through the boiling girls, massive. Conway dropped the kid’s arm like a hot snot, stepped back smooth and fast.

McKenna boomed ‘Quiet!’ and the jabber fizzled to nothing. Only Alison’s shrieks were left, exploding like fireworks into the shocked air.

McKenna didn’t look at us. She got Alison’s shoulders and spun her, face to face. ‘Alison! Quiet!’

Alison swallowed a shriek, choked on it. Stared up at McKenna, gulping and red-faced. Swaying, like she was hanging from McKenna’s big hands.

‘Gemma Harding,’ McKenna said, not taking her eyes off Alison. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Gemma found her jaw. ‘Miss, we were just in our room, we weren’t doing anything–’

She sounded years younger, looked years younger, a shaken little girl. McKenna said, ‘I’m not interested in what you weren’t doing. Tell me exactly what happened.’

‘Alison just went to the loo, and then we heard her screaming out here. We all ran out. She was…’

Gemma’s eyes zipping around the others, finding Joanne, grabbing for signals. McKenna said, ‘Continue. At once.’

‘She was just – she was up against the wall and she was screaming. Miss, she said, she said she saw Chris Harper.’

Alison’s head fell back. She made a high whining noise. ‘Alison,’ McKenna said sharply. ‘You will look at me.’

‘She said he grabbed her arm. Miss, there’s – there’s marks on her arm. I swear to God.’

‘Alison. Show me your arm.’

Alison scrabbled at the sleeve of her hoodie, limp-fingered. Finally managed to pull it up to her elbow. Conway swept girls out of our way.

First it looked like a grip-mark, like someone had got hold of Alison and tried to drag her away. Bright red, wrapped around her forearm: four fingers, a palm, a thumb. Bigger than a girl’s hand.

Then we got in close.

Not a grip-mark. The red skin was puffy and bubbled, thick with tiny blisters. A scald, an acid burn, a poison weed.

The press of girls rippled, necks craning. Moaned.

McKenna said acidly, ‘Were any of you unaware that Alison suffers from allergies? Please, raise your hands.’

Stillness.

‘Did any of you somehow miss the incident last term when she required medical attention after borrowing the wrong brand of tanning product?’

Nothing.

‘No one?’

Girls looking at sleeves twisted round their thumbs, at the floor, sideways at each other. They were starting to feel silly. McKenna was bringing them back.

‘Alison has been exposed to a substance that triggered her allergies. Presumably, if she has just been to the toilet, it was either a hand soap or a product used by the cleaning staff. We will investigate this and make sure the trigger is removed.’

McKenna still hadn’t looked at us. Bold kids get ignored. Talking to us too, though, or at us.

‘Alison will take an antihistamine and will be fully recovered within an hour or two. The rest of you will go to your common rooms and will write me a three-hundred-word essay on allergy triggers, to be done by tomorrow morning. I am disappointed in all of you. You are old enough and intelligent enough to deal with this kind of situation with good sense rather than silliness and hysteria.’

McKenna took one hand off Alison’s shoulder – Alison slumped against the wall – and pointed down the corridor. ‘You may go now. Unless any of you have anything useful to share?’

‘Miss,’ Joanne said. ‘One of us should stay with her. In case–’

‘No, thank you. Common rooms, please.’

They went pressed together in clumps, arm-linking and whispering, throwing back glances. McKenna stared them out of sight.

Said to us, ‘I assume you realise what caused this.’

‘Haven’t a notion,’ said Conway. She moved in, between McKenna and Alison, till McKenna let go. ‘Alison. Did anyone say something about Chris Harper’s ghost, before you went to the toilet?’

Alison was white and purple-shadowed. She said faintly, ‘He was in that door. Doing pull-ups off the top of the frame. His legs were waving.’

Always doing something, Selena had said. I don’t believe in ghosts. Felt the shiver rise up between my shoulder blades anyway.

‘I think maybe I screamed. Anyway he saw me. He jumped down and came running down the corridor, really fast, and he grabbed me. He was laughing right into my face. I screamed more and I kicked him, and he disappeared.’

She sounded almost peaceful. She was wrung out, like a little kid after puking its guts.

‘That will do,’ McKenna said, in a voice that could have scared grizzlies. ‘Whatever allergy trigger you touched, it caused a brief hallucination. Ghosts do not exist.’

I said, ‘Is your arm sore?’

Alison gazed at her arm. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s really sore.’

‘Unsurprisingly,’ McKenna said coldly. ‘And will continue to be until it is treated. On which note, Detectives, please excuse us.’

‘He smelled like Vicks,’ Alison told me, over her shoulder as McKenna marched her off. ‘I don’t know if he used to smell like Vicks before.’

Conway watched them go. Said, ‘What’s the betting the Ugg kids spread the word we were in their common room?’

‘No takers. And it had plenty of time to get round.’

‘To Joanne. Who had to guess what we were after.’

I nodded after Alison. Footsteps rattling around the stairwell, echoing; her and McKenna were taking the stairs at a snappy old pace. ‘That wasn’t put on.’

‘Nah. Alison’s suggestible, but. And she was half hysterical to start with, after the interview and all.’ Conway was keeping her voice down, head tilted backwards to listen to the popcorn crackle of voices from the common rooms. ‘She’s headed for the jacks, Joanne gives it loads about Chris’s ghost being all stirred up – she knows Alison inside out, remember, knows exactly how to get her going. Then she sticks fake tan on her hand, gives Alison’s arm a squeeze. It’s a decent bet Alison’ll go mental over one thing or the other. Joanne’s hoping there’ll be enough chaos that we’ll leg it out of the common room, leave the door open, she’ll have a chance to nip in there and swipe the book.’

Sixteen-year-old kid, I almost said: would she be up to that? Copped myself on in time. Said, instead, ‘Alison’s wearing long sleeves.’

‘So Joanne got her before she put on the hoodie.’

It could work; maybe, just about, with plenty of luck. I said, ‘Joanne didn’t try to go for the common room, but. She stayed right here, in the middle of the action.’

‘Maybe she was betting we’d take Alison away, she could take her time.’

‘Or Joanne had nothing to do with it. The ghost was Alison’s imagination and the arm’s accidental, like McKenna said.’

‘Could be. Maybe.’

The footsteps had faded out of the stairwell. That white silence was sifting down again, filling the air with corner-of-the-eye shapes, making it hard to believe that anything in here was as simple as imagination and accident.

I said, ‘Does McKenna live here?’

‘Nah. Got more sense. But she’s not going home till we do.’

We. ‘Hope she likes canteen food.’

Conway flipped her bag open, checked the book tucked away inside. ‘Things happening,’ she said. Didn’t even try to hide the blaze of satisfaction. ‘Told you.’