The Secret Place Read online

  Also by Tana French

  In the Woods

  The Likeness

  Faithful Place

  Broken Harbour

  The Secret Place

  Tana French

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  The right of Tana French to be identified as the Author of the Work

  has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 444 75559 6

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Dana, Elena, Marianne and Quynh Giao,

  who luckily were nothing like this

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  There’s this song that keeps coming on the radio, but Holly can only ever catch bits of it. Remember oh remember back when we were, a girl’s voice clear and urgent, the fast light beat lifting you up off your toes and speeding your heart to keep up, and then it’s gone. She keeps trying to ask the others What is it? but she never catches enough to ask about. It’s always slipping in through the cracks, when they’re in the middle of talking about something important or when they have to run for the bus; by the time things go quiet again it’s gone, there’s just silence, or Rihanna or Nicki Minaj pounding silence away.

  It comes out of a car, this time, a car with the top down to dragnet all the sunshine it can get, in the sudden explosion of summer that could be gone tomorrow. It comes over the hedge into the park playground, where they’re holding melting ice creams away from their back-to-school shopping. Holly – on the swing, head tipped back to squint up at the sky, watching the sunlight pendulum across her eyelashes – straightens up to listen. ‘That song,’ she says, ‘what’s—’ but just then Julia drops a glob of ice cream in her hair and shoots up on the roundabout yelling ‘Fuck!’, and by the time she’s got a tissue off Becca and borrowed Selena’s water bottle to wet it and cleaned the sticky off her hair, bitching the whole time – to make Becca blush, mostly, says the wicked sideways glance at Holly – about how she looks like she gave a blowjob to someone with bad aim, the car’s gone.

  Holly finishes her ice cream and hangs backwards by the swing chains, just keeping the ends of her hair from brushing the dirt, watching the others upside down and sideways. Julia has lain back on the roundabout and is turning it slowly with her feet; the roundabout squeaks, a lazy regular sound, soothing. Next to her Selena sprawls on her stomach, stirring idly through her shopping bag, letting Jules do the work. Becca is threaded through the climbing frame, dabbing at her ice cream with the tip of her tongue, seeing how long she can make it last. Traffic-noises and guys’ shouts seep over the hedge, sweetened by sun and distance.

  ‘Twelve days left,’ Becca says, and checks to see if the rest of them are happy about that. Julia raises her cone like a toast; Selena clinks it with a maths notebook.

  The huge paper bag by the swing-set frame hangs in the corner of Holly’s mind, a pleasure even when she’s not thinking about it. You want to drop your face and both hands into it, get that pristine newness on your fingertips and deep into your nose: glossy ring binder with unbumped corners, matched graceful pencils with long points sharp enough to draw blood, geometry set with every tiny measuring-line clean and unworn. And other stuff, this year: yellow towels, ribbon-wrapped and fluffy; a duvet cover, striped in wide yellow and white, slick in its plastic.

  Chip-chip-chip-churr, says a loud little bird out of the heat. The air is white and burns things away from the edges in. Selena, glancing up, is only a slow toss of hair and an opening smile.

  ‘Net bags!’ Julia says suddenly, up to the sizzling sky.

  ‘Hmmm?’ Selena asks, into her fanned handful of paintbrushes.

  ‘On the boarders’ equipment list. “Two net bags for in-house laundry service.” Like, where do you get them? And what do you do with them? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a net bag.’

  ‘They’re to keep your stuff together in the wash,’ Becca says. Becca and Selena have been boarding since the start, back when they were all twelve. ‘So you don’t end up with someone else’s disgusting knickers.’

  ‘Mum got mine last week,’ Holly says, sitting up. ‘I can ask her where,’ and as the words come out she smells laundry at home rising warm from the dryer, her and Mum shaking out a sheet to fold between them, Vivaldi bouncing in the background. Out of nowhere for one hideous swooping moment the thought of boarding turns into a vacuum inside her, sucking till her chest’s caving in on itself. She wants to scream for Mum and Dad, fling herself on them and beg to stay at home forever.

  ‘Hol,’ Selena says gently, smiling up as the roundabout takes her past. ‘It’s going to be great.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Holly says. Becca is watching her, clutching the bar of the climbing frame, instantly spiky with worry. ‘I know.’

  And it’s gone. There’s just a residue left, graining the air and gritting the inside of her chest: still time to change your mind, do it fast before it’s too late, run run run all the way home and bury your head. Chip-chip-churr, says the loud little bird, mocking and invisible.

  ‘I dibs a window bed,’ Selena says.

  ‘Uh-uh, you do not,’ says Julia. ‘No fair dibsing now, when me and Hol don’t even know what the rooms are like. You have to wait till we get there.’

  Selena laughs at her, as they turn slowly through hot blurred leaf-shadows. ‘You know what a window’s like. Dibs it or don’t.’

  ‘I’ll decide when I get there. Deal with it.’

  Becca is still watching Holly under pulled-down eyebrows, rabbit-gnawing absently on her cone. ‘I dibs the bed farthest from Julia,’ Holly says. Third-years share four to a room: it’ll be the four of them, together. ‘She snores like a buffalo drowning.’

  ‘Bite my big one, I totally do not. I sleep like a dainty fairy princess.’

  ‘You do too, sometimes,’ Becca says, turning red at her own daring. ‘Last time I stayed over at yours I could actually feel it, like vibrating the entire room,’ and Julia gives her the finger and Selena laughs, and Holly grins at her
and can’t wait for Sunday week again.

  Chip-chip-churr, the bird says one more time, lazy now, blurred with doziness. And fades.

  Chapter 1

  She came looking for me. Most people stay arm’s length away. A patchy murmur on the tip-line, Back in ’95 I saw, no name, click if you ask. A letter printed out and posted from the wrong town, paper and envelope dusted clean. If we want them, we have to go hunting. But her: she was the one who came for me.

  I didn’t recognise her. I was up the stairs and heading for the squad room at a bounce. May morning that felt like summer, juicy sun spilling through the reception windows, lighting the whole cracked-plaster room. A tune playing in my head, me humming along.

  I saw her, course I did. On the scraped-up leather sofa in the corner, arms folded, crossed ankle swinging. Long platinum ponytail; sharp school uniform, green-and-navy kilt, navy blazer. Someone’s kid, I figured, waiting for Daddy to bring her to the dentist. The superintendent’s kid, maybe. Someone on better money than me, anyway. Not just the crest on the blazer; the graceful slouch, the cock of her chin like the place was hers if she could be arsed with the paperwork. Then I was past her – quick nod, in case she was the gaffer’s – and reaching for the squad-room door.

  I don’t know if she recognised me. Maybe not. It had been six years, she’d been just a little kid, nothing about me stands out except the red hair. She could have forgotten. Or she could have known me right off, kept quiet for her own reasons.

  She let our admin say, ‘Detective Moran, there’s someone to see you,’ pen pointing at the sofa. ‘Miss Holly Mackey.’

  Sun skidding across my face as I whipped around, and then: of course. I should’ve known the eyes. Wide, bright blue, and something about the delicate arc of the lids: a cat’s slant, a pale jewelled girl in an old painting, a secret. ‘Holly,’ I said, hand out. ‘Hiya. It’s been a long time.’

  A second where those eyes didn’t blink, took in everything about me and gave back nothing. Then she stood up. She still shook hands like a little girl, pulling away too quick. ‘Hi, Stephen,’ she said.

  Her voice was good. Clear and cool, not that cartoon squeal. The accent: high-end, but not the distorted ugly-posh. Her dad wouldn’t have let her away with that. Straight out of the blazer and into community school, if she’d brought that home.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Lower: ‘I’ve got something to give you.’

  That left me lost. Ten past nine in the morning, all uniformed up: she was mitching off, from a school that would notice; this wasn’t about a years-late thank-you card. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, not here.’

  The eye-tilt at our admin said privacy. A teenage girl, you watch yourself. A detective’s kid, you watch twice as hard. But Holly Mackey: bring in someone she doesn’t want, and you’re done for the day.

  I said, ‘Let’s find somewhere we can talk.’

  I work Cold Cases. When we bring witnesses in, they want to believe this doesn’t count: not really a murder investigation, not a proper one with guns and cuffs, nothing that’ll slam through your life like a tornado. Something old and soft, instead, worn fuzzy round the edges. We play along. Our main interview room looks like a nice dentist’s waiting room. Squashy sofas, Venetian blinds, glass table of dog-eared magazines. Crap tea and coffee. No need to notice the video camera in the corner or the one-way glass behind one set of blinds, not if you don’t want to, and they don’t. This won’t hurt a bit, sir, just a few little minutes and off you go home.

  I took Holly there. Another kid would have been twitching all the way, playing head tennis, but none of this was new on Holly. She headed down the corridor like it was part of her gaff.

  On the way I watched her. She was doing a grand job of growing up. Average height, or a little under. Slim, very slim, but it was natural: no starved look. Maybe halfway through getting her curves. No stunner, not yet anyway, but nothing ugly there – no spots, no braces, none of her face stuck on sideways – and the eyes made her more than another blonde clone, made you look twice.

  A boyfriend who’d hit her? Groped her, raped her? Holly coming to me instead of to some stranger in Sex Crime?

  Something to give you. Evidence?

  She shut the interview-room door behind us, flick of her wrist and a slam. Looked around.

  I switched on the camera, casual push of the switch. Said, ‘Have a seat.’

  Holly stayed put. Ran a finger over the bald-patch green of the sofa. ‘This room’s nicer than the ones before.’

  ‘How’re you getting on?’

  Still looking around the room, not at me. ‘OK. Fine.’

  ‘Will I get you a cup of tea? Coffee?’

  Shake of her head.

  I waited. Holly said, ‘You’ve got older. You used to look like a student.’

  ‘And you used to look like a little kid who brought her doll to interviews. Clara, wasn’t it?’ That turned her head my way. ‘I’d say we’ve both got older, here.’

  For the first time, she smiled. Little crunch of a grin, the same one I remembered. It had had something pathetic in it, back then, it had caught at me every time. It did again.

  She said, ‘It’s nice to see you.’

  When Holly was nine, ten, she was a witness in a murder case. The case wasn’t mine, but I was the one she’d talk to. I took her statement; I prepped her to testify at the trial. She didn’t want to do it, did it anyway. Maybe her da the detective made her. Maybe. Even when she was nine, I never fooled myself I had the measure of her.

  ‘Same here,’ I said.

  A quick breath that lifted her shoulders, a nod – to herself, like something had clicked. She dumped her schoolbag on the floor. Hooked a thumb under her lapel, to point the crest at me. Said, ‘I go to Kilda’s now.’ And watched me.

  Just nodding made me feel cheeky. St Kilda’s: the kind of school the likes of me aren’t supposed to have heard of. Never would have heard of, if it wasn’t for a dead young fella.

  Girls’ secondary, private, leafy suburb. Nuns. A year back, two of the nuns went for an early stroll and found a boy lying in a grove of trees, in a back corner of the school grounds. At first they thought he was asleep, drunk maybe. Revved up to give him seven shades of shite, find out whose precious virtue he’d been corrupting. The full-on nun-voice thunder: Young man! But he didn’t move.

  Christopher Harper, sixteen, from the boys’ school one road and two extra-high walls away. Sometime during the night, someone had bashed his head in.

  Enough manpower to build an office block, enough overtime to pay off mortgages, enough paper to dam a river. A dodgy janitor, handyman, something: eliminated. A classmate who’d had a punch-up with the victim: eliminated. Local scary non-nationals seen being locally scary: eliminated.

  Then nothing. No more suspects, no reason why Christopher was on St Kilda’s grounds. Then less overtime, and fewer men, and more nothing. You can’t say it, not with a kid for a victim, but the case was done. By this time, all that paper was in Murder’s basement. Sooner or later the brass would catch some hassle from the media and it would show up on our doorstep, addressed to the Last Chance Saloon.

  Holly pulled her lapel straight again. ‘You know about Chris Harper,’ she said. ‘Right?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Were you at St Kilda’s back then?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve been there since first year. I’m in fourth year now.’

  And left it at that, making me work for every step. One wrong question and she’d be gone, I’d be thrown away: got too old, another useless adult who didn’t understand. I picked carefully.

  ‘Are you a boarder?’

  ‘The last two years, yeah. Only Monday to Friday. I go home for weekends.’

  I couldn’t remember the day. ‘Were you there the night it happened?’

  ‘The night Chris got killed.’

  Blue flash of annoyance. Daddy’s kid: no patience for pussyfooting, or anyway not from other people.
<
br />   ‘The night Chris got killed,’ I said. ‘Were you there?’

  ‘I wasn’t there there. Obviously. But I was in school, yeah.’

  ‘Did you see something? Hear something?’

  Annoyance again, sparking hotter this time. ‘They already asked me that. The Murder detectives. They asked all of us, like, a thousand times.’

  I said, ‘But you could have remembered something since. Or changed your mind about keeping something quiet.’

  ‘I’m not stupid. I know how this stuff works. Remember?’ She was on her toes, ready to head for the door.

  Change of tack. ‘Did you know Chris?’

  Holly quieted. ‘Just from around. Our schools do stuff together; you get to know people. We weren’t close, or anything, but our gangs had hung out together a bunch of times.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  Shrug. ‘A guy.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  Shrug again. ‘He was there.’

  I know Holly’s da, a bit. Frank Mackey, Undercover. You go at him straight, he’ll dodge and come in sideways; you go at him sideways, he’ll charge head down. I said, ‘You came here because there’s something you want me to know. I’m not going to play guessing games I can’t win. If you’re not sure you want to tell me, then go away and have a think till you are. If you’re sure now, then spit it out.’

  Holly approved of that. Almost smiled again; nodded instead.

  ‘There’s this board,’ she said. ‘In school. A noticeboard. It’s on the top floor, across from the art room. It’s called the Secret Place. If you’ve got a secret, like if you hate your parents or you like a guy or whatever, you can put it on a card and stick it up there.’

  No point asking why anyone would want to. Teenage girls: you’ll never understand. I’ve got sisters. I learned to just leave it.

  ‘Yesterday evening, me and my friends were up in the art room – we’re working on this project. I forgot my phone up there when we left, but I didn’t notice till lights-out, so I couldn’t get it then. I went up for it first thing this morning, before breakfast.’