The Secret Place

Chapter 23

The art room was turning chilly. Conway had pulled her chair up the table, next to mine. Bad Cop in the house.

This time she didn’t turn round when Mackey and I came in. Neither did Holly, just kept gouging deep fingernail-curves in her ball of clay and thinking her own things. They hadn’t been listening to each other, not this time; they’d been checking their armour, their weapons, preparing for the moment when we walked back in. Over by the window, the copper-wire school bloomed with a cold shimmer. The moon was high, staring in at us all.

Mackey leaned back on his table again. Every time he shifted, I twitched. All I could think about: what it was, that he was waiting to do. His look, cold and amused, said he hadn’t missed it.

Conway caught my eye, as I sat down beside her. Hers said: Ready. Steady. Go.

She didn’t rewind to where we’d been, to how Holly had to have hated Chris. No point: Mackey had wrecked that moment, nice and thorough. Instead she said, ‘You were right: we’ve narrowed the card down to the eight of you. One of the other seven knows who killed Chris.’

Holly rolled the clay along the table, from hand to hand. ‘Yeah, well. Or at least she says she does.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

Incredulous face. ‘How do I feel? What is this, Guidance? You want me to draw a picture of my feelings in coloured pencil?’

‘Are you worried?’

‘If I was worried, I wouldn’t have brought you the card to begin with. Duh.’

Too brazen, that hair-flick. Holly was putting it on.

That morning, she’d been grand with the card. Since then, something had happened.

I said, ‘That just means you weren’t worried this morning. How about now?’

‘What would I worry about?’

Conway said, ‘That one of your friends knows something that could put her in danger. Or that someone knows something that you might not want us to find out.’

Holly threw herself back in her chair, hands flying up. ‘Oh my God, look. Nobody in school knows what happened to Chris. Joanne invented the card because she was looking for attention. OK?’

Conway lifted an eyebrow. ‘How come you didn’t say this to Detective Moran when you brought him the card? “Here you go, and by the way, it’s a load of bollix, this girl Joanne Heffernan made it up.” Or did something happen since this morning, to make Joanne into your favourite theory?’

‘Joanne keeps trying to get us into shit, is what’s happened. When you guys showed up, obviously she totally freaked out – she probably wasn’t expecting actual police, because she’s an actual idiot. So she’s spent all day frantically trying to make you look at us, so you won’t figure out what she did and she won’t get in trouble for wasting your time. Why would she be arsed, unless she had something she didn’t want you noticing?’

Conway said, ‘If she wanted to make us look at you and your mates, she’s done a good job.’

‘Yeah, obviously. Or I wouldn’t be sitting here. It never even occurred to you that she might be a huge liar?’

‘I’d say she is, all right. But we don’t need to take her word for anything. Selena meeting Chris, for example: when all we had was Joanne’s word for it, we weren’t too impressed. But then she showed us video. Of the two of them together.’

Something skidding across Holly’s face. Not surprise.

That video was how Holly had known about Chris and Selena.

She said, coolly, ‘What a pervert. I’m not even surprised.’

Conway said, and I felt her mind right there next to mine, ‘Did she show it to you?’

Snort. ‘Yeah, no. Joanne and I don’t share stuff.’

Conway shook her head. ‘I wasn’t thinking about sharing and caring. I was thinking about blackmail.’

Blank. ‘Like how?’

‘Joanne went out with Chris for a while. Before he was with Selena.’

Holly’s eyebrows went up. ‘Yeah? Shame it didn’t work out.’

Still no surprise. I asked, ‘You think Joanne was happy that he dumped her for Selena?’

‘I doubt it. I hope it gave her a brain aneurysm.’

‘Just about,’ Conway said. ‘You know Joanne better than I do. You think it would piss her off enough that she’d want him dead?’

‘Oh yeah. Definitely. Can I go now, and you can bother her instead?’

‘Thing is,’ I said, ‘we’re pretty sure Joanne didn’t actually kill Chris. We’re wondering if she got someone to do it for her.’

‘Orla,’ Holly said promptly. ‘Any dirty work Joanne wants done, she gets Orla to do it.’

Conway was shaking her head. ‘Nah. We’ve got solid evidence that it was one of your four.’

Still nothing out of Mackey, not yet, but his eyes were fixed on Conway. Holly had the same look on her. No more messing with the clay, that was over. She knew: this was the heart of it. She said, ‘Evidence like what?’

‘We’ll get to that. We think maybe Joanne showed that video to one of you four. Told her, “Get rid of Chris for me, or this goes to McKenna and you all get expelled.”’

Conway was leaning in, picking up the rhythm. I eased back, put my head down over my notebook. Left her to it.

Holly’s eyebrows were up. ‘And we just went, “Uhhh, OK, anything you say”? Seriously? If we were that terrified of being expelled, we wouldn’t’ve snuck out to begin with. We’d’ve stayed inside like good little girls.’

‘Not just because you were scared of being expelled. Joanne picked carefully. She picked someone who’d do a lot to protect her mates, who was already frantic about the damage Chris was doing, already hated his guts–’

Conway was ticking off finger after finger, relentless. Holly snapped, ‘I’m not stupid – Dad, leave me alone, I want to say this! If I was going to kill someone, which I didn’t, no way would I do it in some kind of conspiracy with Joanne Heffernan. And be stuck for the rest of my life with that bitch holding that over my head? Do I look brain-dead? No fucking way. No matter what she had on video.’

‘Language,’ said Mackey lazily. Eyes still sparking alert, but there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. His kid was holding her own.

‘Whatever. And before you even start to say, oh, then it could’ve been Julia or Selena or Becca, the exact same thing goes for them. Did we do something to make you think we’re the biggest idiots you’ve ever met? Or what?’

Conway was giving Holly her head, let her get it out of her system. Mackey said, ‘And while we’re on the subject, ignore me if you want, but you’re making this Joanne out to be a pretty big idiot herself. She wants a murder committed, so she asks a cop’s kid? The person most likely to send her straight to jail, do not pass go? Holly: this Joanne, she have any head injuries?’

‘No. She’s a bitch, but she’s not stupid.’

Mackey spread his hands at us: There you go. Conway said, ‘We’re not married to the blackmail motive. There’s plenty of other possibilities.’

She left it till Holly rolled her eyes. ‘Like what?’

‘You told Detective Moran that when you found out what was wrong with Selena, you just stuck your head in the sand and hoped it’d go away. That rings my bullshit alarm. I don’t see you being that much of a wimp. Are you a wimp, yeah?’

‘No. I just didn’t know what to do. Sorry I’m not some kind of genius.’

I’d got to Holly before, from this angle; Conway was banking on getting to her again. Mackey was paying attention.

‘Like you just said, though, you’re not some kind of idiot, either. You wouldn’t freeze up just because you had to deal with something all by yourself. You’re not a baby. Are you?’ It was working. Holly had her arms folded, starting to knot into a furious ball. ‘I think you went to Selena, told her you knew about Chris. I think she told you she was planning on getting back with him. And I think you went, Fuck no. Made a chance to get hold of Selena’s phone, texted Chris to meet up. Probably you just wanted him to leave Selena alone, did you?’

Holly had her face turned away from Conway, staring out the window.

‘How’d you try to convince him? You said before, Chris wasn’t happy that he was never going to get anywhere with you. Did you offer him a swap: leave Selena alone, I’ll make up for it?’

That almost lifted her out of the chair. ‘I’d rather have my skin peeled off than do anything with Chris. Jesus!’

Nothing from Mackey. Holly hadn’t even clocked him on that, and she would have, if she’d hooked up with Chris: talking about your sex life in front of Daddy, that had to get some reaction. She was telling the truth: she’d never touched Chris.

Conway said, ‘Then how’d you go at him?’

Holly bit down on her lip, angry at herself: she’d been got. Turned her face away again, started the ignoring from scratch.

‘Whatever you tried, you gave it a few shots, it didn’t work. Finally you made one more appointment with him. For the sixteenth of May.’

Holly biting her lip harder, stop herself answering. Mackey didn’t move, but he was pulled like a crossbow on the edge of it.

‘This time you weren’t planning on any persuading. You got out early, you got your weapon ready, and when Chris showed up–’

Holly whipped round on Conway. ‘Are you stupid? I didn’t kill Chris. We can stay here all night and you can come up with four million different reasons I could’ve killed him, and I still won’t have done it. Do you actually think I’m going to get confused enough that in the end I’ll just be like, “OhmyGod, you know what, maybe I totally did climb up a tree and drop a piano on his head because I hated his poncy haircut”?’

Mackey was grinning. ‘Nicely put,’ he told her.

Holly and Conway didn’t even hear him, too focused on each other. ‘If you didn’t,’ Conway said, ‘then you know who did. Why did you hide that phone?’

‘I told you. I didn’t want Selena–’

‘You said she hadn’t been in touch with Chris for weeks before he died. The phone would’ve showed that. What’s incriminating there?’

‘I didn’t say it was incriminating, I said you’d have given her hassle. Which you would have.’

‘You’re a cop’s kid, you know better than to conceal evidence in a murder case, but you do it to save your mate a bit of hassle? Nah. No way.’ Holly tried to say something, but Conway’s voice came down hard on top of hers. ‘One of you four had been texting Chris from that phone, after he split up with Selena. Arranging meetings with him. One of you four had arranged to meet him the night he died. Now that’s incriminating, amn’t I right? That’s something you’d want to cover up.’

‘Whoa whoa whoa,’ Mackey said, lifting a hand. ‘Hang on a minute there. That’s your evidence? Texts sent from someone else’s phone?’

Conway said, to Holly, ‘A hidden phone, that you had access to. You and no one else that we know of, except Selena, and we’re satisfied Selena didn’t send the texts.’

Mackey said, ‘A phone kept in a room that four girls share. Are the texts signed in Holly’s handwriting, yeah? Got her prints on them?’

I copped, finally, why Mackey had told me that touching little tale about how Holly wound up boarding. He had been telling me how much she loved her friends. Anything we got out of her, there was how he was going to shoot it down: Holly’s protecting her friends. Prove she’s not.

Hard to be sure of anything, ever, with Mackey. I was sure of this: he would throw an innocent sixteen-year-old under a bus without thinking twice, if it would save his kid.

A hundred per cent positive of this: he’d throw me and Conway.

Conway kept ignoring him. Said to Holly, ‘You’re the one who knew the phone needed to disappear. None of the others: just you. And the killer had been deleting the meeting texts as she went; you’d never have known they existed, unless you were the one who sent them.’

Mackey said, ‘Or unless someone told her, or unless she guessed, or unless she overreacted to what she already knew – God forbid a teenage girl should overreact, am I right?’

Conway looked at him then. Said, ‘I’m done interviewing you. You answer one more question, we’re getting a different appropriate adult.’

Mackey thought her over. Glint in his eye, raking her, would’ve had me twitching; Conway didn’t notice or didn’t care. Just waited for him to finish up and answer her.

‘Seems to me,’ he said, and stood up, ‘that you and I both need a moment to clear our heads. I’m going out for a smoke. I think you should join me.’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘I’m not looking for a chance to give you shite about your attitude, Detective. That I could do right here. I’m suggesting that a deep breath and a bit of fresh air might do us both good; get us back on the right foot. When we come back, I promise not to answer any more questions for Holly. How’s that?’

I moved. This was it; I couldn’t tell what or how, but I could feel it, yelling warnings. Conway glanced at me; I thought Careful, loud as I could. She glanced at Mackey’s smile – open, straightforward, just the right bit sheepish.

Said, ‘Smoke fast.’

‘You’re the boss.’

I followed them to the doorway. When Mackey arched an eyebrow at me, I said, ‘I’ll wait out here.’

His grin said Good boy, you protect yourself from the scary little girl. I didn’t bite. He matched Conway’s pace down the corridor, so their steps fading away sounded like one person’s. Shoulder to shoulder, they looked like partners.

Holly hadn’t watched them go. Every muscle of her was still clamped tight; there was a ferocious crease between her eyebrows. She said, ‘Do you honest to God think I killed Chris?’

I stayed in the doorway. ‘What would you think, if you were me?’

‘I hope I’d be good enough at my job that I could tell when someone’s not a murderer. Jesus.’

Her adrenaline was firing, touch her and the electric zap would’ve kicked you across the room. I said, ‘You’re hiding something. That’s all I know. I’m not good enough to telepathically guess what it is. You need to tell us.’

Holly threw me a look I couldn’t read, maybe scorn. Jerked her ponytail tight, hard enough to hurt. Then she shoved back her chair and went over to the model school. Unwound a length, expertly, from a spool of fine copper wire; chopped it off with a little pair of wire cutters, snick in the bleached air.

She leaned one hip against the table, flipped tweezers out of an empty bedroom. Twirled the wire deftly around the end of a thin pencil, adjusted with the tip of a fingernail when it slid out of true. Her fingers moved like a dancer’s, tucking, swirling, weaving, like a spell-caster’s. The rhythm and the focus steadied her, smoothed that forehead crease away. Steadied me along with her, till part of me even forgot to tense against whatever Mackey was trying to do with Conway.

In the end Holly held out the pencil towards me. Perched on top of it: a hat, wide-brimmed, barely big enough for a fingertip, decorated with one copper-wire rose.

I said, ‘Beautiful.’

Holly smiled, a small detached smile, down at the hat. Spun it on the pencil.

She said, ‘I wish I’d never brought you that fucking postcard.’ Not angry, not wishing for an excuse to kick me in the nuts, not any more. Things that went too deep to leave room for that.

I said, ‘Why? You knew there’d be hassle; you had to expect all this. What’s changed?’

Holly said, ‘I’m not allowed to talk to you till my dad gets back.’ She slipped the hat off the pencil, edged it between wires and dropped it over a tiny bedpost. Then she went back to her chair and sat down. Pulled her hoodie sleeves down over her hands and watched the moon.

Fast feet on the stairs: Conway, stepping out of the layers of shadow down the corridor, cool evening caught on her clothes. She said to me, ‘Mackey’s hanging on for another smoke – in case it’s a while before his next chance, he says. He says you can join him if you want. You might as well; he’s not going to come in till you do.’

She wasn’t looking at me. Gave me a bad feeling, couldn’t put my finger on it. I waited a second, trying to catch her eye, but all I got was Holly alert and scanning back and forth between the two of us, trying to snatch something. I left.

The tree line had turned black, swooping and dipping like a bird’s flightline against deep blue sky. I’d never seen it in that light before, but it looked familiar all the same. The school was starting to feel like I’d been there forever, like I belonged.

Mackey was leaning against the wall. He lit his smoke, waggled it at me: Look, see, I really did need one!

‘So,’ he said. ‘Interesting strategy you’ve got going on here, young Stephen. Some might say downright insane, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

‘What strategy?’

Double-take, amused. ‘Hello? Remember me? We’ve met before. We’ve worked together. Your aw-shucks-little-old-me act won’t fly here.’

I said, ‘What strategy are we talking about?’

Mackey sighed. ‘OK. I’ll play. Hooking up with Antoinette Conway. I’d love to know: what’s your plan there?’

‘No plan. I got the chance to work a murder, I took it.’

Mackey’s eyebrow went up. ‘I hope for your sake you’re still playing innocent, kid. How much do you know about Conway?’

‘She’s a good D. Works hard. Going places, fast.’

He waited. When he realised I was done: ‘That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?’

I shrugged. Seven years on and Mackey’s eye could still make me squirm, still turn me into a kid gone insta-thick at an oral exam. ‘Up till today, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about her.’

‘There’s a grapevine. There’s always gossip. You’re above that kind of thing?’

‘Not above it. Just never picked up anything about Conway.’

Mackey sighed, shoulders sagging. Ran a hand through his hair, shook his head. ‘Kid. Stephen.’ His voice had gone gentle. ‘In this gig, you need to make friends. Have to. Otherwise you won’t last.’

‘I’m lasting grand. And I’ve got friends.’

‘Not the kind I’m talking about. You need real friends, kid. Friends who have your back. Who tell you the things you need to know. Who don’t let you prance straight into a shit tornado without even giving you a heads-up.’

‘Like you?’

‘I’ve done OK for you so far. Haven’t I?’

‘I said thanks.’

‘And I’d like to think you meant it. But I don’t know, Stephen. I’m not feeling the love.’

‘If you’re my best buddy,’ I said, ‘go ahead and tell me what you think I need to know about Conway.’

Mackey leaned back against the wall. He wasn’t bothering to smoke his fag; it had done its job. He said, ‘Conway’s a leper, kid. She didn’t mention that?’

‘Hasn’t come up.’ I didn’t ask why she was a leper. He was going to tell me anyway.

‘Well, she’s not a whiner, anyway. I suppose that’s one plus.’ He flicked ash. ‘You’re no thicko. You had to have some clue that Conway’s never going to win Miss Congeniality. You didn’t mind teaming up with that?’

‘Like I said. I’m not looking for a new best friend.’

‘I’m not talking about your social life. Conway: her first week on Murder, she’s bending over writing something on the whiteboard, and this idiot called Roche smacks her arse. Conway whips round, grabs his hand, bends one finger back till his eyes pop out. Tells him next time he touches her, she’ll break it. Roche calls her a bitch. Conway gives his finger one more jerk, Roche yells, Conway lets go of him and goes back to the whiteboard.’

‘I can see how that would make Roche into a leper. Not Conway.’

Mackey laughed out loud. ‘I missed you, kid. I really did. I’d forgotten how cute you are. You’re right: in a perfect squad, that’s how it should work. And in some squads, in some years, it actually would. But Murder’s not a cuddly place right now. They’re not bad lads, most of them, in their own way; just a bit rugby-club, bit in-crowd, bit no-neck. If Conway had said something smart, or laughed along, or grabbed Roche’s arse the next time she caught him bending, she’d’ve been grand. If she’d just made this much effort to fit in. But she didn’t, and now the rest of the squad thinks she’s an uppity ball-breaking humourless bitch.’

‘Sounds lovely in there. Are you trying to turn me off Murder?’

He spread his hands. ‘I’m not saying I approve; I’m just telling you the facts of life. Not that you need telling. That little speech about blaming the harasser and not the victim, that was pretty, but tell me the truth: say you walk into Murder tomorrow, someone calls you a ginger skanger, tells you to fuck off back onto the dole where you belong. You gonna break his fingers? Or are you gonna play along: have a laugh, call him a sheep-shagging bog-monster, do what it takes to get what you want out of the situation? The truth, now.’

Mackey’s eyes on mine, opaque and knowing in the last of the light, till I looked away. ‘I’m gonna play along.’

‘Yeah, you are. But don’t say that like it’s a bad thing, sunshine. I’d do exactly the same. That kind of accommodation, that’s what keeps the world turning. A little bit of give. When someone like Conway decides she doesn’t have to play along, that’s when things go to shite.’

I heard Joanne. They act like they can do whatever they want.It doesn’t work like that. Wondered what Mackey thought about his Holly and her friends giving the world the finger.

‘Their gaffer isn’t an idiot; when the atmosphere in his squad room turned to poison, he noticed. He pulls people in, asks them what’s the story; they all clam up, tell him everything’s just dandy and everyone’s the best of friends. Murder’s like that: bunch of schoolkids, no one wants to be the telltale. The gaffer doesn’t believe them, but he knows he’s never getting the real story. And he knows the day things went south is the day Conway walked in. So as far as he’s concerned, she’s the problem.’

‘So he’s going to drop her,’ I said. ‘First excuse he gets.’

‘Nah. They won’t boot her out of Murder, because she’s the type to sue for discrimination and they don’t want the publicity. But they can make damn sure she quits. She’ll never get a partner. She’ll never get a promotion. She’ll never get invited to join the lads for a pint after work. She’ll never get another good case; once she gives up on this, there’ll be nothing on her desk but D-list drug dealers till the day she hands in her papers.’ Smoke curling up between us from his hand, a warning taint on the sweet air. ‘That’ll wear you down, after a while. Conway’s got spine, she’ll last longer than most would, but she’ll crack in the end.’

I said, ‘Conway’s career is her problem. I’m here for mine. This is my shot at showing Murder what I can do.’

Mackey was shaking his head. ‘No it isn’t. It’s a six-bullet round of Russian roulette. If you don’t get on with Conway, you’re back to Cold Cases: bye-bye, see you ’round, everyone remembers that Moran couldn’t hack it in the big leagues even for one day. If you do get on with her, then you’re her bitch-boy. No one else on Murder, and that includes the gaffer, is ever going to touch you with a ten-foot pole. Shit rubs off, kid. If you honestly haven’t got a strategy, I suggest you get one. Fast.’

I said, ‘You’re trying to stir shite. You get me and Conway looking over our shoulders at each other, means we take our eyes off the ball. Next thing we know, our case’s got away from us.’

‘I might well be. It sounds like something I’d do. Ask yourself this, though: does that mean I’m wrong?’

The nettle edges to the air in the Murder squad room, fine and poisonous, when Conway walked in. Tiny barbs, sticky, working deep.

I said, ‘What’ve you been saying to Conway about me?’

Mackey grinned. ‘Same as I’ve been saying to you, sunshine: just the truth. And nothing but the truth. So help you God.’

And there it was. I could’ve kicked myself for asking. I knew what Mackey had told Conway. Didn’t need to hear it, from either of them.

Interesting strategy, letting young Stephen on board. Some might say downright insane, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt…

‘Ahhh,’ said Mackey, stretching. Glanced at his smoke, burned down to long ash. Tossed it on the ground. ‘I needed that. Shall we?’

Conway was leaning against the outside of the door, hands in her trouser pockets, not moving. Waiting for us. I knew then.

You’re no idiot, Detective Conway; I’m betting you know the story on how Holly and I met Moran. Some of it, anyway. Want to hear the rest?

She straightened up as we got close. Opened the door, held it for Mackey. Caught my eye. As she closed the door behind Mackey, he flicked a winner’s grin over his shoulder at me.

Conway said, ‘I’ll take it from here.’

Moran was brand-new out of uniform, doing floater work on a murder case. The D in charge was called Kennedy. Kennedy was good to young Stephen. Very good. Pulled him out of the deep end of the floater pool, gave him a shot at the big time. Most Ds wouldn’t’ve done it; most Ds would’ve stuck to tried and true, no newbies need apply. Bet Kennedy wishes he had…

I only did what Mackey wanted me to do, back then. It never hit me, and it should’ve, that he would keep it tucked away in his back pocket: something he could use against me someday, if he ever needed to.

I said – keeping it down: his ear was pressed to the back of that door – ‘Mackey’s trying to fuck with us.’

‘There’s no us. There’s me and my case, and then there’s some guy who’s been useful for the day and isn’t any more. Don’t worry: I’ll write your gaffer a nice note about what a good boy you were.’

Like a punch in the jaw. It shouldn’t’ve hit me; she was right, it had only been one day. Got me goodo.

It must’ve shown. The face on me pulled some fleck of guilt out of Conway. She said, ‘I’ll give you a lift back to HQ – give me your mobile number, I’ll text you when I’m done here. Till then, get a sandwich. Go for a nice walk, admire the grounds. See if you can get Chris’s ghost to pop up for you. Whatever.’

The second your boy Moran saw his chance, he shagged Kennedy up the arse with no Vaseline. Fuck loyalty, fuck gratitude, fuck doing the right thing: all young Stephen cared about was his glorious career.

I said, and I’d stopped caring about keeping it down, ‘You’re doing exactly what Mackey wants you to do. He wants me gone because he’s scared Holly’ll talk to me. You can’t see that?’ Nothing on Conway’s face. ‘He tried it on me, too: bitched about you, hoped I’d walk. You think I took any notice?’

‘Course you didn’t. You want to shake your booty in front of O’Kelly; doesn’t matter whose case you piggyback on to get there. Me, I’ve got something to lose here. And I’m not having you lose it for me.’

Kennedy never saw it coming. At least you won’t get blindsided like he did. If you honestly haven’t got a strategy, you might want to get one fast…

I gave Conway my phone number. She swung the door closed in my face.