The Secret Place Page 5

  I said, ‘The connecting door isn’t kept locked?’

  ‘Yeah, course it is. Day and night. But if there’s something important, like if some boarder forgets her homework in her room, or if she needs a book from the library to get some project done, she can ask for a key. The school secretary and the nurse and the matron – I’m not joking you, there’s a matron – they’ve got one each. And January last year, four months before Chris Harper, the nurse’s key went missing.’

  ‘They didn’t change the lock?’

  Conway rolled her eyes. Not just her face was on the edge of foreign; something in the way she moved, too, in the straight back and the swing of her shoulders, the quickfire expressions. ‘You’d think, right? Nah. The nurse kept the key on a shelf, right above her bin; she figured it’d just fallen off, got dumped with the rubbish. Got a new one cut and forgot the whole thing, tra-la-la, everything’s grand, till we came asking questions. Honest to Jaysus, I don’t know who’s the most naïve in this place, the kiddies or the staff. If a boarder had that key? She could go through the connecting door into the school any night, nip out a window, do whatever she wanted till she had to show for breakfast.’

  ‘There’s no security guard?’

  ‘There is, yeah. Night watchman, they call him; I think they think it sounds classier. He sits in that gatehouse we passed coming in, does the rounds every two hours. Dodging him wouldn’t be a problem, though. Wait’ll you see the size of the grounds. Over here.’

  A gate in the hedge, wrought-iron curlicues, long soft squeak when Conway swung it open. Beyond it was a tennis court, a playing field, and then: more green, this time carefully organised to look that bit less organised; not wild, just wild enough. Mishmash of trees that had taken centuries, birch, oak, sycamore. Little pebbled paths twisting between flowerbeds mounded with yellow and lavender. All the greens were spring ones, the ones so soft your hand would go right through.

  Conway snapped her fingers in my face. ‘Focus.’

  I said, ‘What do the boarders sleep in? Dorms or single rooms?’

  ‘First- and second-years, six to a dorm. Third- and fourth-years, four to a room. Fifth- and sixth-years, two to a room. So yeah, you’d have at least one roommate to worry about, if you were sneaking out. But here’s the thing: from third year up, you get to choose who you share with. So whoever’s in your room, chances are they’re already on your side.’

  Down the side of the tennis court – nets loose, couple of balls rolled into a corner. I still felt the school windows staring at my back. ‘How many boarders are there?’

  ‘Sixty-odd. But we narrowed it down. The nurse gave some kid the key on a Tuesday morning, kid brought it straight back. Friday lunchtime, someone else asks for it and it’s gone. The nurse’s office is locked when she’s not there – she swears she managed to get that right, at least, stop anyone from mainlining Benylin or whatever she keeps in there. So if someone nicked the key, it was someone who was in to the nurse between Tuesday and Friday.’

  Conway shoved a branch out of her way and headed down one of the little paths, deeper into the grounds. Bees working away at apple blossom. Birds up above, not rattly magpies, just little happy birds getting the gossip.

  ‘The nurse’s log said there were four of those. Kid called Emmeline Locke-Blaney, first-year, boarder; she was so petrified of us she practically wet herself, I don’t see her being able to keep anything back. Catríona Morgan, fifth-year, day girl – which doesn’t rule her out, she could’ve passed the key on to a mate who boarded, but they clique up pretty tight; day girls and boarders don’t really mix, don’tchaknow.’ A year on, every name off by heart, easy as that. Chris Harper had got to her, all right. ‘Alison Muldoon, third-year, boarder – one of Heffernan’s little bitches. And Rebecca O’Mara.’

  I said, ‘Holly Mackey’s gang again.’

  ‘Yeah. See why I’m not convinced your little buddy’s telling you everything?’

  ‘Their reasons for going to the nurse. Did they check out?’

  ‘Emmeline was the only one with a verifiable reason: sprained her ankle playing hockey or polo or whatever, needed it strapped. The other three had headaches or period cramps or dizzy fits or some bullshit. Could’ve been legit, or they could’ve just wanted to get out of class, or . . .’ A lift of Conway’s eyebrow. ‘They got a couple of painkillers and a nice lie-down, right by the shelf with the key.’

  ‘And they all said they didn’t touch it.’

  ‘Swore to Jesus. Like I said, I believed Emmeline. The rest . . .’ The eyebrow again. Sun through the leaves striped her cheeks like war paint. ‘The headmistress swore none of her girls would yada yada and the key had to have gone in the bin, but she changed the lock on the connecting door all the same. Better late than never.’ Conway stopped, pointed. ‘Look. See that over there?’

  Long low building, off to our right through the trees, with a bit of a yard in front. Pretty. Old, but all the faded brick was scrubbed clean.

  ‘That used to be the stables. For my lord and lady’s horses. Now it’s the shed for their highnesses’ groundskeepers – takes three of them, to keep this place up. In there’s where the hoe was.’

  No movement in the yard. I’d been wondering for a while now; wondering where everyone was. Few hundred people in this school, minimum, had to be, and: nothing. A thin tink tink tink somewhere far away, metal on metal. That was it.

  I said, ‘Is the shed kept locked?’

  ‘Nah. There’s a cupboard inside, where they keep the weedkiller and wasp poison and whatever; that’s locked, all right. But the actual stables? Walk right in, help yourself. Never occurred to this shower that practically everything in there is a weapon. Spades, hoes, shears, hedge trimmers; you could wipe out half a school with what’s in there. Or get good money from a fence.’ Conway jerked her head away from a cloud of midges, started moving again, down the path. ‘I said that to the headmistress. Know what she said? “We don’t attract the type who think in those terms, Detective.” With a face on her like I’d shat on her carpet. Fucking idiot. Kid’s lying out here, bashed to death, and she’s telling me their whole world’s made of frappuccinos and cello lessons and no one here ever has bad thoughts. See what I mean about naïve?’

  I said, ‘That’s not naïve. That’s deliberate. And a place like this, things come from the top down. If the headmistress says everything’s perfect, and no one’s allowed to say it’s not . . . That’s not good.’

  Conway’s head turning to look at me, full on and curious, like she was seeing something new. It felt good, walking side by side with a woman whose eyes met mine level, whose stride was the same length as mine. Felt easy. For a second I wished we liked each other.

  She said, ‘Not good for the investigation, you mean? Or just not good?’

  ‘Both, yeah. But I meant just not good. Dangerous.’

  I thought I had a slagging coming, for being dramatic. Instead she nodded. She said, ‘Something was that, all right.’

  Round a bend in the path, out from thick trees and into a dapple of sun. Conway said, ‘That over there. That’s where the flowers came from.’

  Blue, a blue that changed your eyes like you’d never seen blue before. Hyacinths: thousands of them, tumbling down a soft slope under trees, like they were being poured out of some great basket with no bottom. The smell could have set you seeing things.

  Conway said, ‘I put two uniforms on that flowerbed. Going through every stalk, looking for broken-off ones. Two hours, they were there. Probably they still hate my guts, but I don’t give a fuck, ’cause they found the stems. Four of them, right about there, near the edge. The Bureau matched the break patterns to the flowers on Chris’s body. Not a hundred per cent definite, but near enough.’

  That brought it home to me, that bed. Here, in this place that looked like nothing bad could ever happen in all the world: just last time those flowers bloomed, Chris Harper had come here looking for something. He must have smelled this, cleare
st thing in the dark around him. Last thing left, when everything else had dissolved away.

  I asked, ‘Where was he?’

  Conway said, ‘There.’ Pointed.

  Maybe thirty feet off the path, up the slope, across short grass and past bushes clipped into neat balls: a grove of those same tall maybe-cypress trees, dense, dark, circled round a clearing. The grass in the middle had been left to grow long and wild. Haze of seed-heads, floating over it.

  Conway took us around the side of the flowerbed and up. The slope pulled in my thighs. The air in the clearing was cooler. Deep.

  I said, ‘How dark was it?’

  ‘Not. Cooper – you know Cooper, yeah? the pathologist? – Cooper said he died around one in the morning, give or take an hour or two either way. It was a clear night, half-moon, and the moon would’ve been highest a little after one. Visibility was about as good as it gets, for the middle of the night.’

  Things moved in my head. Chris straightening with his hands full of blue, squinting to make out the quick shape in the moonlight glade, his girl, or . . . ? And side by side with that, slipsliding in and out, the opposite. Someone stock-still in a shadow with their feet among flowers, her feet? his feet?, watching Chris’s face turn from side to side in the white among the cypress trees, watching him wait, waiting for him to stop watching.

  Meanwhile, Conway was waiting and watching me. She reminded me of Holly. Neither of them would’ve liked that, but the narrowed slant to the eye, like a test, like a game of Snakes and Ladders: go careful: right move and you’ll be let in one more little step, wrong move and you’re back to square one.

  I said, ‘What angle did the hoe hit him at?’

  Right question. Conway took me by the arm, moved me a couple of yards nearer the middle of the clearing. Her hand was strong; not I’m-detaining-you cop, not I-fancy-you girl, just strong; well able to fix a car, or punch someone who needed punching. She turned me facing down to the flowers and the path, my back to the trees.

  ‘He was about here.’

  Something buzzed, a bumblebee or a faraway lawnmower, I couldn’t tell; the acoustics were all swirl and ricochet. Seed-heads waved around my shins.

  ‘Someone came up behind him, or got him to turn away. Someone standing about here.’

  Close behind me. I twisted my head around. She lifted the imaginary hoe over her left shoulder, two-handed. Brought it down, her whole body behind it. Somewhere behind the chirpy spring-sounds, the swish and thud shivered the air. Even though she was holding nothing, I flinched.

  The corner of Conway’s mouth went up. She held up her empty hands.

  I said, ‘And he went down.’

  ‘Got him here.’ She put the edge of her hand against the back of my skull, high up and to the left of the centre line, slanting up from left to right. ‘Chris was a couple of inches shorter than you: five foot ten. The killer wouldn’t’ve had to be tall. Over five foot, under six, was all Cooper could say from the angle of the wound. Probably right-handed.’

  Her feet rustling, as she moved back from me. ‘The grass,’ I said. ‘Was it like this back then?’

  Right question again, good boy. ‘Nah. They let it grow afterwards – some kind of memorial thing or the place spooks the groundskeepers, I don’t know. No one sees this part, so I guess it doesn’t ruin the school’s image. Back then, though, the grass was like the rest: short. If you had soft shoes, you could sneak across it without getting heard, no problem.’

  And without leaving shoeprints, or at least none that the Bureau could use. The paths were pebbled: no prints there, either.

  ‘Where’d you find the hoe?’

  ‘Back in the shed, where it belonged. We spotted it because it matched what Cooper said about the weapon. The Bureau took about five seconds to confirm it. She – he, she, whatever – she’d tried to clean off the blade, smacked it into the earth over there a couple of times’ – the ground under one of the cypresses – ‘rubbed it on the grass. Smart; smarter than wiping it down with a cloth, then you’ve got the cloth to get rid of. But there was still plenty of blood left.’

  ‘Any prints?’

  Conway shook her head. ‘The groundskeepers’. No one else’s epithelials, either, so no touch DNA. We figured she wore gloves.’

  ‘“She,”’ I said.

  Conway said, ‘That’s what I’ve got. A load of shes and not a lot of hes. Back last year, one theory was it was some pervert, snuck in here to crack one off watching the girls’ windows or playing with their tennis rackets or whatever; Chris came in to meet someone, caught the guy out. Doesn’t fit the evidence – what, the guy had his mickey in one hand and a hoe in the other? – but a lot of people liked it anyway. Better than thinking it was some cute little rich girl. From a beautiful school like this.’

  The slant to the eye again. Testing. A cross-beam of sun lightened her eyes to amber, like a wolf’s.

  I said, ‘It wasn’t an outsider. Not with that postcard. If it had been, why all the secrecy? Why wouldn’t the girl just ring you up and tell you what she knew? If she’s not making up the lot, then she knows something about someone inside the school. And she’s scared.’

  Conway said, ‘And we missed her first time round.’

  A grim layer stamped on her voice. Not just hard on other people, Conway.

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘They’re young, these girls. If one of them saw something, heard something, she might not have copped what it meant; not at the time. Specially if it had to do with sex, or relationships. This generation know all the facts, they’ve seen the porn sites, probably they know more positions than you and me put together; but when it comes to the real thing, they’re miles out of their depth. A kid could see something and know it was important, but not understand why. Now she’s a year older, she’s got a bit more of a clue; something makes her look back, and all of a sudden it clicks together.’

  Conway thought about that. ‘Maybe,’ she said. But the grim layer stayed put: not letting herself off that easy. ‘Doesn’t matter. Even if she didn’t know she had info, it’s our job to know for her. She was right in there’ – backwards flick of her head, to the school – ‘we sat there and interviewed her, and we let her walk away. And I’m not fucking happy about it.’

  It felt like the end of the conversation. When she didn’t say anything else I started to turn towards the path, but Conway wasn’t moving. Feet apart, hands in her pockets, staring into the trees. Chin out, like they were the enemy.

  She said, without looking at me, ‘I got to be the primary because we thought this was a slam-dunk. That first day, the morgue boys hadn’t even taken away the body, we found half a kilo of E in the stables, back of the poison cupboard. One of the groundskeepers came up on the system: prior for supply. And St Colm’s, back at the Christmas dance they’d caught a couple of kids with E; we never got the supplier, the kids never squelt. Chris wasn’t one of the ones who had the E, but still . . . We figured it was our lucky day: two solves for the price of one. Chris snuck out to buy drugs off the groundskeeper, some fight over money, bang.’

  That long sigh again, above us. This time I saw it, moving through the branches. Like the trees were listening; like they would’ve been sad about us, sad for us, only they’d heard it all so many thousand times before.

  ‘Costello . . . He was sound, Costello. The squad used to slag him off, call him a depressing fucker, but he was decent. He said, “You put your name on this one. Mark your card.” He must’ve known then, he was gonna put in his papers this year; he didn’t need a big solve. I did.’

  Her voice was indoors-quiet, small-room quiet, falling through the wide sunshine. I felt the size of the stillness and green all round us. The breadth of it; the height, trees taller than the school. Older.

  ‘The groundskeeper alibied out. He’d had mates round to his gaff for poker and a few cans; two of them kipped on his sofa. We got him for possession with intent, but the murder . . .’ Conway shook her head. ‘I should’ve known,�
�� she said. She didn’t explain. ‘I should’ve known it wasn’t gonna be that simple.’

  A bee thumped into the white of her shirt front; clung on, addled. Conway’s head snapped down and the rest of her went still. The bee crawled past the top button, reached over the edge of the cloth, feeling for skin. Conway breathed slow and shallow. I saw her hand come out of her pocket and rise.

  The bee got its head together and took off, into the sunlight. Conway flicked some speck off her shirt where it had been. Then she turned and headed down the slope, past the hyacinths and back to the path.

  Chapter 4

  The Court, the biggest and best shopping centre within walking distance of Kilda’s and Colm’s, the wrapping of every moment in the world that doesn’t have some sour-faced adult looming over it ready to pounce. The Court pulls like a towering magnet and everyone comes. Anything can happen here, in the sparkling slice of freedom between classes and teatime; your life could lift right off the ground and shimmer into something brand-new. In the dizzying white light all the faces glimmer, they mouth words and crack open in laughs you can almost catch through the cloud of sounds, and any one of them could be the heart-stopping one you’ve been waiting for; anything you can imagine could be waiting for you here, if you turn your head at just the right second, if you just catch the right eye, if the right song just comes spinning out of the speakers all around you. Sugar-smell of fresh doughnuts drifting out from the kiosk, lick it off your fingers.

  It’s the beginning of October. Chris Harper – scuffling with Oisín O’Donovan on the rim of the fountain in the middle of the Court, mouth wide in a laugh, the other Colm’s guys around them whooping them on – has a little over seven months left to live.

  Becca and Julia and Selena and Holly are on the opposite rim of the fountain, with four open packets of sweets in between them. Julia has one eye on the Colm’s guys and is talking fast and snappy, telling some possibly mostly true story about how this summer she and this English girl and a couple of French guys blagged their way into a super-fancy nightclub in Nice. Holly is eating Skittles and listening, with one eyebrow at an angle that says Yeah right; Selena is lying on the battered black-marble edge of the fountain with her chin propped on her hands, so that her hair drapes over her shoulder almost to the floor. Becca wants to lean over and cup it in her hands, before it touches the grime and the ground-in gum.