The Secret Place

Chapter 15

Conway banged the door open hard enough that I jumped a mile, hands leaping out of the wardrobe like I’d been doing something dirty. The corner of a grin, malicious, said she hadn’t missed it.

She dumped her bag on Rebecca’s bed. ‘How’d you get on?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing. Julia’s got half a pack of smokes and a lighter wrapped up in a scarf at the back of her bit of wardrobe. That’s it.’

‘Good little girls,’ Conway said, not like a compliment. She was moving around the room, fast, tilting the frames on the bedside lockers to glance at the photos; or to make sure the room looked good and searched. ‘Any of them come looking for you? Looking to talk, jump your bones, whatever?’

I shut my mouth on the slice of shadow at the door; maybe that grin, maybe the fact that I couldn’t swear there had been anything there. ‘Nah.’

‘They’ll come. The longer we leave them to it, the tighter they’ll wind themselves. I listened outside the common room: they’re up to ninety, the place sounds like a wasps’ nest. Give them long enough and someone’ll snap.’

I shoved Selena’s flute case back into the wardrobe, shut the door on it. ‘How’s Alison getting on?’

Conway snorted. ‘Tucked up in the sick room like she’s dying in some season finale. Little fadey voice on her and all. She’s having a great old time. The arm’s grand, almost; the mark’s still there, but the blisters have gone down. I’d say she’d be back in the common room by now, only McKenna’s hoping the mark’ll go, doesn’t want the rest of them gawping at it.’ She pulled Holly’s book out of her locker, zipped a nail through the pages and tossed it back in. ‘I tried to get at whether Joanne put the whole stunt in Alison’s head, but the minute she heard Chris’s name she shut down, gave me the bunny stare. I don’t blame her: McKenna and Arnold were right there, dying to jump on anything they didn’t like. So I backed off.’

I said, ‘How about the phone?’

Triumph lifted Conway’s chin. Winning looked good on her. She flipped her satchel open, held up an evidence bag. The mobile I’d seen on Alison’s bed: pretty pearly-pink flip-phone, small enough to fit in a palm, silver charm dangling. Chris had picked carefully.

‘Alison got it off Joanne. She didn’t like admitting it; tried to dodge, pretended she felt faint. I didn’t fall for it, kept pushing, in the end she came clean. Joanne sold her the phone just after last Christmas, a year and a bit ago. Sixty quid, she charged her. Robbing bitch.’

Conway threw the phone back in her satchel, started circling again. The triumph had worn off fast. ‘That’s all Alison would give me, though. When I started asking about where Joanne got the phone, why she was selling it, Alison went whiny on me: “I don’t know I don’t know my arm hurts I feel dizzy can I have a drink of water?” That helium voice girls do, what the fuck is that? Do guys think that’s sexy?’

‘Never thought about it,’ I said. Conway was still moving. Something had her wound tight. I stayed back against the wall, out of her way. ‘Does nothing for me, anyway.’

‘Makes me want to punch them in the mouth. There’s nothing left on the phone from before last Christmas, no texts, no call logs: Joanne wiped it before she sold it. Here’s the good part, though. Alison didn’t swap her old SIM card into Joanne’s phone. When she bought it, her old one was out of credit, and Joanne’s one had twenty-odd quid left on it, so she just binned her old one and switched to using Joanne’s number. Which means we don’t need to track that number down, beg the network for the records, all that shit: we’ve got them already. Me and Costello pulled records on half the school, last year, including Alison. I rang Sophie; she’ll have them e-mailed to me any minute.’

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I thought you said none of the girls’ numbers linked up to Chris’s.’

‘They didn’t. But if Chris gave Joanne this phone’ – Conway gave her bag a slap, as she paced past – ‘to keep the relationship secret, that means he thought people might go through their normal phones. Right?’

‘Kids snoop.’

‘Kids, parents, teachers, whoever. People snoop. If Chris didn’t want that, and he was loaded, like Julia said? I guarantee he had a dedicated girlie-phone of his own. We go through the records off Joanne’s one’ – another slap to the bag, harder – ‘what’s the odds we find one number showing up for a couple of months before last Christmas, a shitload of contact back and forth?’

I said, ‘And then we check that number, Chris’s secret number, for links to the phone that texted me today. If he did this with one girl, chances are he did it with a few. If Selena actually was with him, she might have her own spare phone lying around.’

‘We cross-check Chris’s secret number for links to everyone. I knew, back last year, I knew it was weird he didn’t have his phone on him. These kids, they don’t take a shite without bringing their phones along. I should’ve– Jesus!’ A savage kick to Rebecca’s bedpost; it had to hurt, but Conway kept pacing circles like she felt nothing. ‘I should’ve fucking known.’

There it was. Anything like reassurance – No way you could know, no one could’ve – would get me ripped apart. ‘If Joanne’s our woman,’ I said, ‘she’d have a good reason to take Chris’s phone off his body. It would’ve linked her to him.’

Conway pulled open a drawer, raked through the neat stacks of knickers. ‘No shit. And it’s probably landfill by now; no way we can prove he ever had it to begin with. We wave the records at Joanne, she says she was texting someone she met online or fuck only knows what she’ll come up with. And there’s nothing we can do.’

I said, ‘Unless we track down someone else Chris was contacting on the secret phone. Get her to come clean.’

Conway laughed, short and harsh. ‘Right. Get her to come clean. Easy as that. ’Cause that’s how this case rolls.’

‘Worth a shot.’

She slammed the drawer on the mess she’d made. ‘Jaysus, you’re a little ray of sunshine, aren’t you? Like working with bleeding Pollyanna–’

‘What do you want me to say? “Ah, fuck it, it’s never gonna work, let’s go home”?’

‘Do I look like quitting to you? I’m going nowhere. But if I have to listen to you being fucking chirpy, I swear to God–’

Both of us glaring, Conway shoving her face and her finger in close, me still against the wall so I couldn’t have backed off if I’d wanted to. We were on the edge of a full-on barney.

I don’t argue, not with people who have my career in their hands. Not even when I should; definitely not over bugger-all.

I said, ‘You’d rather have Costello, yeah? Depressing fucker like him? How’d that work out for you?’

‘You shut your–’

A buzz from Conway’s jacket. Message.

She wheeled away instantly, grabbing for her pocket. ‘That’s Sophie. Joanne’s phone records. About bloody time.’ She hit buttons, watched the download, knee jiggling.

I stayed well back. Waited, heart going ninety, for Fuck off home.

Conway glanced up, impatient. ‘What’re you doing? Come see this.’

Took me a second to cop: the fight was over, gone.

I took a breath, moved in at her shoulder. She tilted the phone so I could see the screen.

There it was. October, November, a year and a half back: one number going back and forth with the phone that had been Joanne’s, over and over again.

No calls, just messages. Text from the new number, text to it, media message from, text from, from, from, to. Chris chasing, Joanne playing it cool.

First week of December, the pattern changed. Text to the new number, text to, text to, text to, text to. Chris ignoring, Joanne pressing, Chris ignoring harder. Then, when she finally gave up, nothing.

Down the corridor outside, rattle of a trolley, clinking plates, warm smell of chicken and mushrooms making my mouth water. Someone – I pictured a frilly apron – was bringing dinner up to the fourth-years. McKenna wasn’t going to have them heading down to the canteen, spreading stories and panic like flu, yammering away with no nun to listen in. She was keeping them corralled nice and safe in their common room, everything under control.

Joanne’s phone records went blank till mid-January. Then a mix of other numbers, to and from, calls and texts. No sign of Chris’s number. Just what you’d expect off a girl’s normal phone; off Alison.

‘Sophie, you fucking star,’ Conway said. ‘We’ll get her on to the network, see if that number links to–’

I felt her go still. ‘Hang on a second. Two nine three–’ She snapped her fingers at me, staring at the screen. ‘Your phone. Show me that text.’

I pulled it up.

That triumph lifting Conway’s head again, making her profile into something off a statue. ‘Here we go. I knew I’d seen that number.’ She held out the two phones, side by side. ‘Have a look at this.’

That memory. She was right. The number that had told me where to find the key was the same number that had been playing phone footsie with Joanne.

‘Fuck me,’ I said. ‘Didn’t see that coming.’

‘Me neither.’

‘So either Joanne’s secret romance wasn’t with Chris at all, it was with one of our other seven–’

Conway shook her head. ‘Nah. A breakup would explain why the two gangs hate each other, yeah, but you can’t tell me we wouldn’t have got even one hint from somewhere. Gossip, or Joanne giving it loads of “So-and-so’s a big dyke, she tried to jump my sexy body,” trying to get the ex in shite. Nah.’

I said, ‘–or else someone just texted me off Chris Harper’s secret phone.’

A moment of silence.

Conway said, ‘Looks like it.’ Something in her voice, but I couldn’t tell whether it was exhilaration or anger, or smelling blood. Whether there was a difference, for her.

The day had changed again, shifted under our eyes into something new. We weren’t looking for a witness, in that roomful of shining hair and restless feet and watching eyes. We were looking for a killer.

‘The way I see it,’ I said, ‘there’s three ways that could’ve happened. One: Joanne killed Chris, took his phone, she used it to text us about the key because she wants to get caught–’

Conway snorted. ‘She does in her arse.’

‘Yeah, me neither. Two: the killer – Joanne or someone else – took the phone, handed it on to someone else.’

‘The same way Joanne sold her own to Alison. That’d fit her.’

‘Three,’ I said. ‘Someone else killed Chris, took the phone, has it still.’

Conway started pacing again, but steady this time, none of that restless looking for something to wreck. She was focusing. ‘Why, but? She has to know the phone’s evidence. Hanging onto it is dangerous. Why not bin it, a year ago?’

‘Dunno. But it mightn’t be the actual phone she kept. She might’ve ditched the phone, just hung onto the SIM card. That’s a lot safer. Then today, she needs an anonymous number to text us from, swaps Chris’s SIM into her own phone…’

‘Why hang on to any of it?’

I said, ‘Say it’s Theory Two, the killer passed it on to someone else. Maybe the other girl had a feeling there was something dodgy about it, something to do with Chris; she hung onto the phone, or just the SIM card, in case she ever felt like turning it in to us. Or maybe she didn’t cop there was a connection, just liked the idea of having an anonymous number stashed away. Or maybe it just had credit left on it, like the one Joanne sold Alison.’

Conway nodded. ‘OK. That’ll work with Theory Two. I don’t see how it works with One or Three. Which means the girl who texted you isn’t the killer.’

I said, ‘That says the killer’s got plenty of nerve. Handing Chris’s phone off to someone else, instead of binning it, when it could put her in jail.’

‘Plenty of nerve, plenty of arrogance, plenty of stupid, take your pick. Or she didn’t hand it off on purpose; she ditched it somewhere, the texter found it.’

Voices, seeping down the corridor with the chicken-and-mushroom smell: the fourth-years talking over their dinner. Not happy girly chitchat. This was a low, flattened-out buzz, got into your ear and turned you edgy.

I said, ‘Did Sophie say when we’ll get the records off it?’

‘Soon. Her contact’s working on it. I’ll e-mail her now, tell her we need the actual texts, not just the numbers. We could be out of luck – some of the networks dump that stuff after a year – but we’ll give it a shot.’ Conway was typing fast. ‘Meanwhile,’ she said.

It was gone five o’clock. Meanwhile we go back to HQ, sort our paperwork, sign out. Meanwhile we get something to eat, get some kip, nice work today Detective Moran see you bright and early in the morning.

No way we could leave Kilda’s, not now. Inside, all those girls, all jittering to start swapping stories and matching up lies the second our shadow lifted. Outside, the Murder lads, jaws ready to snap shut on this case the minute O’Kelly heard it was live again. In the middle, us.

If we walked out of Kilda’s empty-handed, we’d never come back or we’d come back to a blank wall.

But:

I said, ‘We stick around much longer, McKenna’s going to get onto your gaffer.’

Conway didn’t look up from her phone. ‘I know, yeah. She said that to me, down in Arnold’s room. Didn’t even bother being subtle: told me if we weren’t out by dinnertime, she’d ring O’Kelly and tell him we bullied her students into fits.’

‘It’s dinnertime now.’

‘Chillax. I wasn’t subtle either. I told her if she tries to throw us out before we’re good and ready, I’ll ring my journalist pal and tell him we’ve spent the day interviewing Kilda’s students about Chris Harper.’ Conway shoved her phone into her pocket. ‘We’re going nowhere.’

I could’ve backslapped her, hugged her, something. I didn’t want my nads kicked in. ‘Fair play to you,’ I said, instead.

‘What, you thought McKenna was gonna make me her bitch? Thanks a bunch.’ But the big grin on me pulled one out of her, too. ‘So. Meanwhile…’

I said, ‘Joanne?’

Conway took a breath. Behind her, the curtains stirred; the cutlery mobile made a faint high ringing, soft and faraway.

She nodded, once. ‘Joanne,’ she said.

I said, ‘Witness or suspect?’

A suspect, you need to caution her, get her to sign a rights sheet, before you go asking any questions. A suspect, you take her down to HQ, get everything on video. A suspect, if she wants a solicitor, she gets one. An underage suspect, you have an appropriate adult present; you don’t even think about dodging.

Just now and again, we fudge it. No one can prove what you’re thinking inside your own mind. Once in a long while you keep it casual, just a chat with a witness, till your suspect gets in too deep for you, or him, to deny.

If you get caught out, if the judge gives you a filthy look and says any officer with half a brain would’ve suspected this person, then you’re done. Everything you got, gone: thrown out.

We were on the line. Plenty of reasons to think it might be Joanne; not enough to believe it was.

‘Witness,’ Conway said. ‘Be careful.’

I said, ‘You too. Joanne’s not about to forget that you took her down a peg in front of the rest.’

‘Ah, for fuck.’ Conway’s head tossing up with irritation: she’d forgotten. ‘That’s me stuck in the back seat again. Next time we need to piss someone off, I’m gonna make you do it.’

‘Ah, no,’ I said. ‘You do it. You’ve got a gift.’ The face she made at me looked like a friend’s.

In the common room the girls were neat around tables, heads bent over plates, homey rhythm of clinking cutlery. The nun had one eye on her food and one on them.

Lovely and peaceful, till you looked hard. Then you saw. Runners jittering under tables, bared teeth gnawing at the edge of a juice glass. Orla curling in tight on herself, trying not to take up space. A heavy girl with her back to me looked like she was lashing into her food, but over her shoulder I caught a full plate of chicken pie chopped into tiny perfect squares, getting tinier with each vicious cut.

‘Joanne,’ Conway said.

Joanne threw a tsk and a disgusted eye-roll at the ceiling, but she came. She was wearing the same outfit as Orla, give or take: short jeans shorts, tights, pink hoodie, Converse. On Orla they looked like she’d been dressed by someone with a grudge; on Joanne they looked like she’d been made that way, all in one mould.

We went back to her room. ‘Have a seat,’ I said, held out a hand to her bed. ‘Sorry we’ve no chair, but we’ll only be a few minutes.’

Joanne stayed standing, arms folded. ‘I’m actually eating dinner?’

In a bit of a fouler, our Joanne. Orla was in big trouble. ‘I know,’ I said, nice and humble. ‘I won’t keep you. I have to tell you, I’ve got a couple of questions that you might not like, but I need answers, and I’m not sure anyone’s got them but you.’

That caught her in the curiosity, or in the vanity. Long-suffering sigh, and she dropped onto her bed. ‘OK. I guess.’

‘I appreciate it,’ I said. Sat down on Gemma’s bed, facing Joanne, staying well away from the thrown-off clothes. Conway melted off into the background, leaning against the door. ‘First off, and I know Orla’s already told you this: we’ve found your key to the connecting door between here and the main building. Yous were sneaking out at night.’

Joanne had her mouth half-open to deny it and her outraged face half-on – autopilot – when Conway held up the Thérèse book. ‘Covered in fingerprints,’ she said.

Joanne put the outraged look away for later. ‘So?’ she said.

I said, ‘So this is confidential. We’re not about to pass it on to McKenna, get you in trouble. We’re just sorting what’s important from what’s not. OK?’

‘Whatever.’

‘Lovely. So what’d yous do, when you snuck out?’

A little reminiscent smirk, slackening Joanne’s mouth. After a moment she said, ‘Some of the Colm’s day boys came in over the back wall. I mean, I don’t normally hang out with day boys, but Garret Neligan knew where his parents kept their drinks and… stuff, so whatever. We did that a couple of times, but then Garret’s mum caught him and she started locking stuff up, so we didn’t bother any more.’

Stuff. Garret had been getting into Mammy’s meds. ‘When was this?’

‘Like last March? After that, we didn’t actually use the key that much. At Easter Gemma met this student guy at a club, so she went out to hook up with him a bunch of times – she thought she was totes amazeballs because she’d caught someone who was in OMG college, but of course he dumped her the second he found out how old she actually was? And obviously after Chris they changed the lock, so it wasn’t even any use any more.’

I said, ‘You have to realise that this puts you and your mates front and centre for having put up that card on the Secret Place. Any of you could have been out in the grounds when Chris was killed. Any of you could have seen something. Seen it happen, even.’

Joanne’s hands shot up. ‘Excuse me, whoa? Can we put the brakes on here? We weren’t the only ones who had a key. We got ours from Julia Harte.’

I did dubious. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So where would we find hers?’

‘Like I’d know? Even if I had a clue where they kept it, which I don’t actually pay attention to what those weirdos do, this was a year ago. They probably threw it away once the locks got changed. That’s what I told Orla to do, except she’s too useless to even get that right.’

‘Julia says they never had a key.’

Joanne’s face was starting to pinch in, turn vicious. ‘Um, hello, she would, wouldn’t she? That’s total crap.’

‘Could be,’ I admitted, shrugging. ‘But we can’t prove it. We’ve got proof that you and your mates had one, no proof that Julia and hers did. When it’s one person’s word against another’s, we’ve got to go with the evidence.’

‘Same as with Chris and Selena,’ Conway said. ‘You lot say they were going out, she says they weren’t, not one speck of evidence says they ever went near each other. What do you expect us to believe?’

The viciousness congealed into something solid, a decision. ‘OK. Fine.’

Joanne pulled out her phone, pushed buttons. Thrust it at me, arm’s length.

‘Is this proof?’

I took it. It felt hot from her hand, clammy.

A video. Dark; the rustle and bump of footsteps through grass. Someone whispering; a tiny snort of laughter, a hissed Shut up!

‘Who’s with you?’ I asked.

‘Gemma.’ Joanne was sitting back, arms folded, swinging her crossed foot and watching us. Anticipating.

Faint grey shapes, jiggling as Joanne’s movement jolted the phone. Bushes in moonlight. Clumps of small whitish flowers, folded up for the night.

Another whisper. The footsteps stopped; the phone stilled. Shapes came into focus.

Tall trees, black around a pale clearing. Even in blurry dark, I recognised the place. The cypress grove where Chris Harper had died.

In the moonlit heart of it, two figures, pressed so close they looked like one. Dark jumpers, dark jeans. Brown head bent over a flood of fair hair.

A branch bobbed across the screen. Joanne shifted the phone out of its way, zoomed in tight.

Night smudged the faces. I glanced at Conway; tiny dip of her chin. Chris and Selena.

They moved apart like they could hardly bear to move at all. Pressed their palms together, shoulders rising and falling with their quick breathing. They were amazed by each other, stunned silent, all in the circle of stirring cypresses and night wind. The world outside was gone, nothing. Inside that circle the air was unfurling new colours, it was changing to something that cascaded and fountained pure gold and dazzle, and every breath changed them too.

I used to dream of that, when I was a young fella. Never had it. Even when I was sixteen years old and ninety per cent dick, I kept away from the girls in my school; scared that if I went beyond the odd snog and grope, I’d wake up the next morning a daddy in a council flat, stuck to the sticky linoleum forever. Dreamed of it instead. Dreams I can still taste.

By the time I got away and found other girls, it was too late. When you stop being a kid, you lose your one chance at that too-tender-to-touch gold, that breathtaken everything and forever. Once you start growing up and getting sense, the outside world turns real, and your own private world is never everything again.

Chris wove his fingers in Selena’s hair, lifted it so that it fell strand by strand. She turned her head to touch her lips to his arm. They were like underwater dancers, like time was holding still just for them and every minute gave them a million years. They were beautiful.

Close to the phone, Joanne or Gemma snickered. The other one made a tiny gagging noise. Something like that in front of them, feet away, the real thing, and they couldn’t even see it.

Selena raised her fingers to Chris’s cheek, and his eyes closed. Moonlight ran down her arm like water. They moved closer, faces tilting together, lips opening.

Beep, end of the video.

‘So,’ Joanne said. ‘Is that, like, enough evidence that Selena and all of them had a key? And that she was doing it with Chris?’

Conway took the phone off me and messed with it, hitting buttons. Joanne flipped out a palm. ‘Excuse me, that’s mine?’

‘You’ll get it back when I’m done.’ Joanne tsked and threw herself back against the wall. Conway ignored her. To me: ‘Twenty-third of April. Ten to one in the morning.’

Three and a half weeks before Chris died. I said, ‘So you and Gemma saw Selena leaving her room, and you followed her?’

‘Gemma saw them out in the grounds by accident the first time, like a week before – she was meeting some guy, I don’t even remember who. After that, we took turns watching the corridor at night.’ Grim project-manager voice on Joanne; I could picture her going for the jugular if one of the others had the nerve to doze off at her post. ‘This night, Alison saw Selena sneak out of their room, so she woke me up and I followed Selena.’

‘You brought Gemma along?’

‘Um, I wasn’t exactly about to go out there by myself? And anyway, I needed Gemma to show me where they were having their little makeout sessions. By the time we got dressed, Selena was well gone. She couldn’t wait to get the action started. Some people are just sluts.’

More midnight traffic than a train station, these grounds. McKenna was in for a coronary if she ever heard this. ‘So you tracked them down,’ I said, ‘and you filmed this clip. Just the one?’

‘Yeah. That’s not enough for you?’

‘What happened after you stopped filming?’

Joanne prissed up her mouth. ‘We went back in. I wasn’t going to stand there and watch them do it. I’m not a perv.’

Conway’s phone buzzed. ‘Sent myself the video,’ she told me. To Joanne: ‘Here.’ She tossed the mobile over.

Joanne made a big deal of wiping off the working-class germs on her duvet. I asked, ‘What were you planning to do with this clip?’

Shrug. ‘I hadn’t decided yet.’

Conway said, ‘Wild guess. You used it to blackmail Selena into dumping Chris. “Stay away from him, or this goes to McKenna.”’

Joanne’s top lip pulled up, that near-animal snarl. ‘Um, excuse me, no I didn’t?’

I said – leaning forward, move her off Conway – ‘It would’ve been for Selena’s own good if you had. That there, that wasn’t the healthiest way for her to be spending her nights.’

Joanne thought that over, decided she liked it. Did something with her face that was meant to look virtuous, came out looking stuffed. ‘Well. I would’ve if I’d had to. But I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’ – Joanne flicked a finger at the phone – ‘that was the last time Selena and Chris met up. I’d already had a chat with Julia, and after this she sorted it out. End of.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Well, I didn’t, like, take Julia’s word for it, if that’s what you mean. I’m not stupid. That’s why I got the video: just in case she needed a little nudgie. We watched the corridor for weeks after, and Selena never went out on her own. The four of them still went out together, to do whatever they did out there – I heard they’re witches, so maybe they were like sacrificing a cat or something, I literally don’t even want to know?’ Exaggerated wiggle of disgust. ‘And Julia went out a couple of times – she had this thing with Finn Carroll, which, I mean, nobody actually wants to be with a ginger but I guess if you look like Julia you take whatever you can get. But Selena had stopped going. So obviously her and Chris had broken up. Like, surprise?’

‘Any idea who did the breaking?’

Shrug. ‘Do I look like I care? I mean, obviously I hoped for Chris’s sake that he’d suddenly got some standards, but… Guys: they only care about one thing. If Chris was getting it off Selena, and he didn’t have to, like, be seen with her, why would he dump her? So I figure it had to be Selena. Either Julia knocked some sense into her, or else Selena copped that, hello, Chris was only using her for an easy you-know-what and a pig like her was never going to be his actual girlfriend.’

Chris’s face bent over Selena’s, holy with wonder. He’d been good, but that good?

‘Why didn’t you want them going out together?’ I asked.

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…’

Joanne was half-smiling, unconsciously, remembering. ‘I was there, “OhmyGod, I can’t believe I’m doing this, climbing around in the dark like some skanger; you’d better buy me something nice after this,” but I was just joking. It was actually… fun. We were laughing so hard. We had fun, that day.’

A wisp of a laugh. A frail thing, lost, drifting between the slick posters and the makeup-smeared tissues. Not a laugh she’d learned off some reality star and practised; just her, missing that day.

Here was why she had needed to see Selena and Chris through a dirty snicker and a gagging noise. That was the only way she could stand to look.

I said, ‘So what happened? You were together a couple of months, you said. Why’d you split up?’

That slammed Joanne shut again. Fake stare clanging into place, vein of hurt vanished behind it. ‘I broke up with him. I feel sooo terrible about it now–’

‘Ah-ah,’ Conway said, waving the bag again. ‘That’s not what this says.’

‘You kept texting him and ringing him after he stopped answering,’ I explained. Joanne’s mouth thinned. ‘What happened?’

She got on top of that one faster than I expected. With another sigh: ‘Well. Chris got frightened of his feelings. I mean, like I already told you, what we had was totally special? Like really intense?’ Wide earnest eyes, parted lips, voice pitched high. She was being someone off the telly; I hadn’t a clue who, don’t watch the right stuff. ‘And a lot of guys can’t cope with that. I think Chris was just kind of immature. If he was alive, then probably by now we’d be…’ Another sigh. Gaze drifting off, at a picturesque angle, into the might-have-beens.

‘You must’ve been well annoyed with him,’ I said.

Joanne flicked hair. With an edge to her voice: ‘Um, I so didn’t care?’

I went puzzled. ‘Seriously? I wouldn’t’ve thought you were used to being dumped. You are, yeah?’

More edge. The wide-eyed thing was wearing off fast. ‘No, I’m not. Nobody’s ever dumped me.’

‘Except Chris.’

‘Well, I was about to dump him anyway. That’s why I said–’

‘How come? I thought the relationship was great, he just got overloaded ’cause he was immature. But you’re not immature, are you?’

‘No. I just–’ Joanne was thinking fast. Hand going to her heart: ‘I knew it was more than he could handle. I was going to set him free. “If you love something-”’

‘Then why’d you keep texting him after he stopped texting you?’

‘I was just telling him. That I understood, you know, how it was too intense? That, I mean, I wasn’t going to wait for him or anything, but I hoped we could be friends. Stuff like that. I can’t remember.’

‘Not giving out to him, no? Because we’ve got someone pulling the actual texts. We’ll be able to read them any minute.’

‘I don’t remember. I guess I could’ve been a teeny bit startled, but I wasn’t angry or anything.’

Conway shifted her back against the wall. Warning me: if I pushed this any harder, we were over that line and into inadmissible.

‘I understand,’ I said. Leaned in, hands clasped. ‘Joanne. Listen to me.’ I put that epic ring back into my voice: a speech to inspire the brave young heroine. ‘You had the key. You believed your relationship with Chris wasn’t over. You kept an eye on Chris when he came into the grounds at night. Do you see where I’m going with this?’

That flat stare turned wary. Joanne shrugged.

‘I think you were out there the night he died, and I think you saw something. No’ – I raised a hand, masterful – ‘let me finish. Maybe you’re protecting someone. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you don’t want to believe what you saw. I’m sure you’ve got a good reason for saying you weren’t there.’

Conway, in the corner of my eye, giving me a sliver of a nod. We were back on safe ground. If Joanne repeated that speech to her counsel someday, it said witness, loud and clear. But if it worked, if she admitted to being at the scene, she crossed over the line to suspect, no leeway left.

‘But I’m also sure, Joanne, I’m just as sure that you saw something, or heard something. You know who killed Chris Harper.’ I let my voice rise. ‘Time to stop hiding it. You heard what Detective Conway said, earlier. It’s time to tell us – before we find out on our own, or someone else does. Now.’

Joanne wailed, ‘But I don’t! Honest to God, I swear, I didn’t go out that night! I hadn’t been out in weeks.’

‘You’re trying to tell me you didn’t have anyone to meet? Almost six months after Chris dumped you, you were still single?’

‘Not still – I went out with Oisín O’Donovan for a while, you can ask anyone, but I dumped him weeks before Chris happened! Ask him. I wasn’t out that night. I don’t know anything. I swear!’

Huge-eyed, hand-wringing, all the trimmings: the way she’d learnt that innocent looked, off the telly or wherever. Truth or lie, it would look exactly the same.

Another minute and she’d be scrunching up her face, trying to cry. Conway’s eye said Kill it.

I eased back, on the soft intimate squash of Gemma’s bed. Joanne drew a long shaky breath, snatched a sideways glance at me to make sure I’d caught it.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK, Joanne. Thank you.’

Joanne and her shorts headed back to the common room. Her arse watched us watching her, same as Julia’s, only not the same at all.

‘That’s one pissed-off little geebag,’ Conway said, tinge of enjoyment. She was leaning a shoulder against the wall of the corridor, hands in her pockets. ‘She can spin it however she wants: she was well fucked off with Chris Harper.’

‘Fucked off enough to kill him?’

‘Sure. She’d’ve loved to. But…’

Silence. Neither of us wanted to say it.

‘If she could’ve pushed a button,’ I said. ‘Stuck a pin in a voodoo doll. Then yeah.’

‘Yeah. Like that.’ Finger-snap. ‘But heading out there in the dark, smacking him in the head with a hoe… I can’t see Joanne taking that kind of risk. She wouldn’t even go after Selena without dragging Gemma along. Very careful of herself, our Joanne. And she doesn’t step outside her comfort zone. Fuck.’

‘The card could still be her.’ I heard the silver-lining note in my voice, waited for another Pollyanna jab. Didn’t get it.

‘If it is, she’s trying to steer us towards Selena. Now there’s revenge. You rob my fella, I’ll frame you for murder.’

‘Or towards Julia,’ I said. ‘She made sure to tell us Julia was sneaking out right up until the murder, did you notice?’

‘Julia and Finn,’ Conway said. Forehead-smack. ‘I knew there had to be a reason why Finn decided to hotwire the fire door all of a sudden. He wouldn’t say. I should’ve known. Same as everything fucking else today.’

I said, ‘Why was everyone keeping their love lives secret, but? When I was a young fella, if you had a girlfriend, you told the world. Did girls keep this stuff under wraps, when you were that age?’

‘Fuck, no. That was half the point of going out with someone to begin with: show everyone that you had a fella. That meant you were a success, not some pathetic single loser. You’d shout it from the rooftops.’

‘And this generation, they care a lot less about privacy than we did. Everything goes online, unless it’s embarrassing or it’ll get them in trouble.’

A kid came out of the third-year common room and headed towards the jacks, frantically trying to check us out without looking at us. Conway swung back into Joanne and Company’s room, kicked the door shut. ‘Even then. My cousin’s kid had a pregnancy scare; what’s the first thing she did? Put it on Facebook. Then got pissed off with her ma for finding out.’

‘And they weren’t shy about telling us who they’re going out with now,’ I said. ‘Joanne gave us the bit of hassle, but that was just to be a bitch to you, not because she actually wanted to keep it secret. So what was different last year?’

Conway had started pacing circles around the room again. Whatever poor bastard ended up partnered with her, he was going to spend a lot of his time dizzy. ‘That crap Joanne gave us, about her and Chris keeping it to themselves because they were sooo intense or whatever the fuck. You believe that?’

‘Nah. Load of bollix.’ I leaned against the wall, one-shouldered so I could keep an eye on that line of light around the door. ‘I don’t know about Julia and Finn, but the others: Chris was the one that wanted things on the down-low. I’d bet it was so he could keep a few girls on the go at once. Joanne started pressuring him to go public, he dumped her.’

Nod. She nodded sideways, on a twist, street style. ‘Looks like your Holly might’ve been right about Chris. Not the sweetheart everyone said.’

He only cared about what he wanted, Holly had said.

The face on Chris, looking at Selena. But that age: wanting beats loyalty so easily. Doesn’t mean the loyalty isn’t real. You know what you’ve got, but you know what you want, too. So you go after it. You see your chance, and you take it. Tell yourself it’ll be grand in the end.

I said, ‘If he kept up the two-timing, and one of the girls found out…’

‘If Selena found out, you mean.’

‘Probably not her. Selena and Chris were over, weeks before he died. If you’re gonna smash your fella’s head in for cheating, you do it when you find out, not weeks later. Could’ve been why she broke it off, though.’

‘Maybe.’ Conway kicked someone’s clumpy uniform shoe out of her way. She didn’t sound convinced. ‘That didn’t go down the way Joanne said, anyway. She told Julia to get Selena away from Chris, Julia went, “Yes, ma’am, straight away, ma’am,” and ran right off to do what she was told? You think Julia takes orders on her mates’ love lives from Joanne?’

‘She’d tell her to go fuck herself. Unless Joanne had something major on her.’

‘That video’s major enough: could’ve got Julia and all her mates expelled. But Joanne didn’t need to use it. Chris and Selena split up first.’

‘You believe her?’

‘On that, I do.’

I thought back. Realised I’d already forgotten Joanne’s face. Hard to tell, but: ‘Yeah. I think I do too.’

‘Right. So maybe Selena did dump him because she caught him two-timing.’ Conway swept up Gemma’s hair-straightener on her way past, gave it a what-the-fuck grimace, tossed it on Orla’s bed. ‘Or maybe it was something else.’

‘They just fizzled out?’ I didn’t believe it, not after that footage. But, trying it on for size: ‘That age, even a month or two is a long time to be with someone. That’s when Chris got bored of Joanne. He could’ve got restless again, started feeling like it was too much commitment. Or Selena wanted to go public, same as Joanne did.’

Conway had stopped moving. The sun was lowering; it came in through the window arrow-straight and level, turned her face into a light-and-shadow mask. ‘I’ll tell you what else a month or two is, at that age. It’s when guys start turning up the pressure. Put out or get out.’

I waited. Silence, and the thick flower-chemical smell of body sprays burning the inside of my nose.

Conway said, ‘Someone did something to Selena that fucked up her mind and put all four of them off guys. And right around the same time, Selena and Chris broke up.’

I said, ‘You think Chris raped her.’

‘I think we need to check out the possibility. Yeah.’

‘Running into temptation and two-timing a girl you really like, that’s one thing. Raping her’s another. That video: on there, he looks like…’ Conway was withering me. I finished anyway. ‘He looks like he was mad about her.’

‘Course he does. So does any teenage guy who thinks he’s got a shot at a shag. They’ll be whatever they think the girl wants to see. Right up until they realise it’s not getting them into her knickers.’

‘That looked like the real thing to me.’

‘You an expert, yeah?’

‘Are you?’

Conway upped the stare. Couple of hours earlier, I would’ve blinked. I stared right back.

She left it. ‘Even if it was real,’ she said. ‘Even if he was genuinely mad about her. He could’ve raped her anyway. Grown adults don’t do something that’s obviously gonna hurt someone they love, not if they can help it, but that age; remember that age? They’re not the same. They don’t put things together. That’s why half of what they do looks full-on certifiable, to you or me or any sane adult. Things don’t make sense, when you’re that age; you don’t make sense. You stop expecting to.’

A second of silence. Her being right, me wishing she was wrong.

When he wanted something and he couldn’t get it, Holly had said. Not so nice.

‘That night,’ I said. ‘The night Joanne videoed. That was the last time Chris and Selena met up. If he did something to her…’

‘Yeah. It was that night.’

Silence, again. Under the body spray, I thought I caught a whiff of hyacinths.

‘What now?’ I asked.

‘Now we wait for Sophie to get us Chris’s phone records. I’m not talking to anyone else till I see what he was at last spring. Meanwhile, we do a proper search in here.’

In the corner of my eye: a flutter of darkness, behind the door-crack.

I had the door flung open before I knew I was moving. Alison squealed and leaped back, hands flapping wildly. In the background, McKenna took a protective pace forward.

‘Can I help you?’ I asked. My heart was going harder than it should have been. Conway eased away from the wall on the other side of the doorway – I hadn’t even seen her go for it. Even with no clue what I was at, she’d been straight in there, ready to back me up.

Alison stared. Said, like someone had taught her the line, ‘I need to get my books to do my homework please.’

‘No problem,’ I said. I felt like an eejit. ‘In you come.’

She sidled in like we might hit her, started pulling stuff out of her bag – her hands looked frail as water spiders, skittering over the books. McKenna stood in the doorway, being massive. Not liking us one little bit.

‘How’s the arm?’ I asked.

Alison shifted it away from me. ‘It’s OK. Thanks.’

‘Let’s see,’ Conway said.

Alison shot a glance at McKenna: she’d been told not to show it. McKenna nodded, reluctantly.

Alison pulled up her sleeve. The blisters were gone, but the skin where they’d been still had a bumpy look to it. The handprint had faded to pink. Alison had her head turned away.

‘Nasty,’ I said sympathetically. ‘My sister used to get allergies. Up her face and all, once. Turned out it was the washing powder our mammy was using. Did you figure out what did that, no?’

‘The cleaners must have switched to a new brand of hand soap.’ Another glance at McKenna. Another line learned off by heart.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Must’ve done.’ Shared a look with Conway, let Alison catch it.

Alison tugged down her sleeve and started scooping up her books. Glanced once round the room, big-eyed, like we’d turned it into somewhere strange and untrustworthy, before she scuttled out.

McKenna said, ‘If you should wish to speak to me, Detectives – or to any more of the fourth-years – you will find us in the common room.’

Meaning the nun had ratted us out. McKenna was taking over the fourth-years, damage control or no, and we were getting no more interviews without an appropriate adult.

‘Miss McKenna,’ I said. Held out a hand to keep her back, while Alison straggled down the corridor towards the common room. Even on her own, the kid walked like she was trailing after someone. ‘We’ll need to speak to some of the girls without a teacher present. There are elements of this case that they wouldn’t be comfortable discussing in front of school staff. It’s only background to the investigation, but we need them to speak freely.’

McKenna was opening her mouth on Absolutely not. I said, ‘If unsupervised interviews are a problem, obviously, we can have the girls’ parents come in.’

And start last year’s flap again, parents outraged, panicking, threatening to pull their daughters out of Kilda’s. McKenna swallowed the No. I added, for good measure, ‘It would mean we’d have to wait till the parents can get here, but it might be a good compromise solution. The girls would probably be more comfortable discussing breaches of school rules in front of their parents than in front of a teacher.’

McKenna shot me a look that said You don’t fool me, you little bastard. Said, salvaging, ‘Very well. I will allow unsupervised interviews, within reason. If any girl becomes distressed, however, or if you receive any information that affects the school in any way, I expect to be informed immediately.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’ As she turned away, I heard the surge of voices from the common room, hammering around Alison.

‘That arm’s gone down some more,’ Conway said. She tapped Joanne’s bedside locker. ‘Fake tan in there.’

I said, ‘Joanne didn’t have any reason to create a diversion to get us out of the common room. She thought Orla had ditched the key a year ago.’

It had only hit me when I looked at the arm again. ‘Huh,’ Conway said. Thought that over. ‘Coincidence and imagination, after all.’ She didn’t look as pleased as she should’ve been. Neither was I.

It does that to you, being a detective. You look at blank space and see gears turning, motives and cunning; nothing looks innocent any more. Most times, when you prove away the gears, the blank space looks lovely; peaceful. But that arm: innocent, it looked just as dangerous.