The Secret Place Page 9

  So Julia not liking James Gillen is beside the point. The point out here is the hard handsome curve of his lips, the flecks of stubble along his jaw; the tingle sparking down her wrist veins when their fingers touch on the bottle. She holds his eye and licks a leftover drop off the rim of the bottle, with the tip of her tongue, and grins when his eyes widen.

  ‘Do we get some of that?’ Holly wants to know. Julia passes her the bottle without looking at her. Holly rolls her eyes and takes a good swig before she passes it on to Selena.

  ‘Want a smoke?’ James asks Julia.

  ‘Why not.’

  ‘Oops,’ says James – he doesn’t even bother patting his pockets first. ‘I must’ve dropped my smokes over there. My bad.’ He stands up and holds out his hand to Julia.

  ‘Well,’ Julia says, only a tenth of a breath of hesitation. ‘Then I’ll just have to come help you find them.’ And she catches James’s hand and lets him pull her up. She takes the cider bottle off Becca and winks while she’s got her back to James, and they walk away side by side, into the tall bobbing weeds.

  The sunlight opens to receive them and blinks closed again behind them; they’re lost in its dazzle, vanished. Something between loss and pure panic shoots through Becca. She almost screams after them to come back, before it’s too late.

  ‘James Gillen,’ Holly says, half-wry, half-impressed. ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘If she starts going out with him,’ Becca says, ‘we’ll never see her again. Like Marian Maher: she doesn’t even talk to her friends any more. She just sits there texting Whatshisname.’

  ‘Jules isn’t going to go out with him,’ Holly says. ‘With James Gillen? Are you joking?’

  ‘But what . . . ? Then what . . . ?’

  Holly shrugs, one-shouldered: too complicated to explain. ‘Don’t worry. She’s just snogging him.’

  Becca says, ‘I’m never doing that. I’m not getting off with some guy unless I actually care about him.’

  There’s a silence. A shriek and an explosion of laughter, somewhere down the Field, and a girl from fifth year leaps up to chase after a guy waving her sunglasses over his head; a victory howl as someone gets a bullseye on the graffiti face.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Holly says suddenly, ‘I actually wish it was still like it used to be fifty years ago. Like, no one shagged anyone till they got married, and it was this huge big deal if you even kissed a guy.’

  Selena is lying back with her head on her jacket, scrolling through her photos. She says, ‘And if you did shag a guy, or even if you just acted like you might someday think about it, you could end up locked in a Magdalen laundry for the rest of your life.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was so totally perfect. I just said at least everyone knew what they were supposed to do. They didn’t have to figure it out.’

  ‘Then just decide you’re not going to shag anyone till you get married,’ Becca says. Usually she likes cider, but this time it’s left her tongue coated in a thick stale layer. ‘And then you’ll know, and you won’t have to figure it out.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ Selena says. ‘At least we’ve got the choice. If you want to be with someone, you can. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Holly says. She doesn’t sound convinced. ‘I guess.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Right. Except if you don’t, hello, you’re a total frigid freak.’

  Becca says, ‘I’m not a total frigid freak.’

  ‘I know you’re not. I didn’t say that.’ Holly is stripping the lobes off a ragwort leaf, carefully, one by one. ‘Just . . . why not do it, you know? When it’s hassle if you don’t, and there’s no reason why not? Back then, people didn’t because they thought it was wrong. I don’t think it’s wrong. I just wish . . .’

  The ragwort leaf is coming apart; she rips it in half and tosses the pieces into the undergrowth. ‘Forget it,’ she says. ‘And that dick James Gillen could’ve at least left us the cider. It’s not like they’re going to be drinking it.’

  Selena and Becca don’t answer. The silence settles and thickens. ‘I dare you,’ Aileen Russell’s high overexcited voice yelps behind them, ‘I so dare you,’ but it skims off the surface of the silence and fizzles away into the sunlight. Becca feels like she can still smell Lynx Sperminator or whatever it’s called.

  ‘Hi,’ says a voice beside her. She looks around.

  This little spotty kid has edged up next to her in the weeds. He needs a haircut and he looks about eleven, both of which Becca knows she does too, but she’s pretty sure this kid actually is in second year, maybe even first. She decides this is OK: he’s presumably not looking for a snog, and he might even be all right with the two of them getting some rocks and joining the guys throwing stuff at the graffiti face.

  ‘Hi,’ he says again. His voice hasn’t broken.

  ‘Hi,’ Becca says.

  ‘Was your dad a thief?’ he asks.

  Becca says, ‘What?’

  The kid says, in one fast gabble, ‘Then who stole the stars and put them in your eyes?’

  He looks at Becca hopefully. She looks back; she can’t think of a single thing to say. The kid decides to take this as encouragement. He scoots closer and tries to find her hand among the weeds.

  Becca takes her hand away. She says, ‘Has that ever worked for you?’

  The kid looks injured. He says, ‘It works for my brother.’

  It hits Becca: he thinks she’s the only girl out here who might be desperate enough to snog him. He’s decided she’s the only one on his level.

  She wants to leap up and do a handstand, or get someone to race her fast and far enough to wreck them both: anything that will turn her body back into something that’s about what it can do, not all about how it looks. She’s fast, she’s always been fast, she can cartwheel and backflip and climb anything; that used to be good, but now all that matters is that she has no tits. Her legs stretched out in front of her look limp and meaningless, made out of a bunch of lines that add up to exactly nothing.

  Suddenly the spotty kid leans in. It takes Becca a second to realise he’s trying to snog her; she turns just in time to give him a mouthful of hair. ‘No,’ she says.

  He sits back, looking crestfallen. ‘Ahhh,’ he says. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the kid says. He’s gone scarlet.

  ‘I think your brother was taking the piss out of you,’ Holly tells him, not being mean. ‘I don’t think that line’s ever worked for anyone. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I guess,’ the kid says miserably. He’s obviously still there only because the walk of shame back to his mates is too horrible to contemplate. Becca wants to curl up like a bug and pull weeds over herself till she disappears. The makeup feels like someone held her down and painted HAHAHAHA across her face.

  ‘Here,’ Selena says. She hands the kid her phone. ‘Take a photo of us. Then you can head back to your friends, and it’ll look like you were just here doing us a favour. OK?’

  The kid shoots her a look of pure animal gratitude. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘OK.’

  ‘Becs,’ Selena says, and holds out an arm. ‘Come here.’

  After a second Becca shuffles herself closer. Lenie’s arm wraps tight around her, Holly leans in against her other shoulder; she feels the warmth of their skin straight through tops and hoodies, the solidity of them. Her body breathes it in like it’s oxygen.

  ‘Say cheese,’ says the spotty little kid, kneeling up. He sounds a lot more cheerful.

  ‘Hang on,’ Becca says. She drags the back of her hand across her mouth, hard, smearing Fierce Fox super-matte long-lasting lipstick across her face in a wide war-paint streak. ‘OK,’ she says with a great big smile, ‘cheese,’ and hears the fake click-whirr of the phone as the kid presses the button.

  Behind them, Chris Harper shouts out, ‘OK, here I go!’ To the soundtrack of Aileen Russell’s squeal he straightens, high on the breeze blocks, a
nd launches himself up and over in a backflip against the sky. He lands staggering; his momentum takes him skidding through ragwort, onto his back in a patch of shuddering green and gold. He lies there, splayed and breathless, looking up at the cheating blue sky and laughing his heart out.

  Chapter 7

  The between-classes rush was different, this time round. Huddles against walls, shiny heads tucked close. Low thrumming of a hundred top-speed whispers going at once. Buzz sliced off and girls scurrying when they whipped round and saw us coming. Word had got around.

  We caught a bunch of teachers on the early lunch in the staff room – nice staff room, espresso machine and Matisse posters, bit of niceness to keep the mood happy. The PE teacher had been on board-check duty the day before, and she swore she’d checked straight after classes and checked right. Two new cards, she’d spotted, the black Labrador and one about some girl saving her pocket money towards a boob job. Par for the course, she said: back when the board first went up it had been hopping, dozens of new cards a day, but the rush had died down. If there’d been a third new one, she would have noticed.

  Wary eyes following us out of the staff room; wary eyes and cosy beef-stew smell, and just too soon, one step before we got out of earshot, a surge of low voices and shushing.

  ‘Thank Jesus,’ Conway said, ignoring. ‘That ought to narrow it down.’

  I said, ‘She could’ve put it up herself.’

  Conway took the stairs two at a time, back up towards McKenna’s office. ‘The teacher? Not unless she’s an idiot. Why get herself on the list? Throw the card up there someday when you’re not on duty, let someone else find it: no connection to you. She’s out, or as near as it gets.’

  McKenna’s curly secretary had the list ready for us, all typed up and printed off, service with a smile. Orla Burgess, Gemma Harding, Joanne Heffernan, Alison Muldoon – given permission to spend first evening study period in art room (6.00–7.15 p.m.). Julia Harte, Holly Mackey, Rebecca O’Mara, Selena Wynne – given permission to spend second evening study period in art room (7.45–9.00 p.m.).

  ‘Huh,’ Conway said, taking the list back off me and leaning one thigh against the secretary’s desk to have another read. ‘Who woulda thought. I’ll need to talk to the eight of them, separately. And I want them all pulled out of class right now and supervised, nonstop, till I’m done.’ No point in letting them match up stories or move evidence, on the off-chance they hadn’t already. ‘I’ll have the art room, and a teacher to sit in with us. Whatshername, teaches French: Houlihan.’

  The art room was free and Houlihan would be with us momentarily, as soon as someone was found to take over her class. McKenna had given orders: what the cops want, the cops get.

  We didn’t need Houlihan. You want to interview an underage suspect, you need an appropriate adult present; you want to interview an underage witness, it’s your call. If you can skip the extra, then you do: there are things kids might tell you that they won’t say in front of Mammy, or in front of a teacher.

  If you get in an appropriate adult, then it’s for reasons. I got the social worker in with Holly because I was on my own with a teenage girl, and because of her da. Conway wanted Houlihan for reasons.

  Wanted the art room for reasons, too. ‘That,’ she said, at the door, jerking her chin at the Secret Place across the corridor. ‘When our girl walks past that, she’s gonna look.’

  I said, ‘Unless she’s got serious self-control.’

  ‘If she did, she wouldn’t’ve put up that card to begin with.’

  ‘She had enough self-control to wait a year.’

  ‘Yeah. And now it’s cracking.’ Conway pushed open the art-room door.

  The art room was cleaner-fresh, blackboard and long green tables washed bare. Gleaming sinks, two potter’s wheels. Easels, wooden frames stacked in a corner; smell of paint and clay. The back of the room was tall windows, looking out over the lawn and the grounds. I felt Conway remembering art class, one roll of paper and a handful of hairy paints.

  She spun three chairs into an aisle, in a rough circle. Pulled a handful of pastels out of a drawer and went between tables scattering them, shoving chairs off kilter with her hip. Sun turned the air bright and hot-still.

  I stayed by the door, watching. She said, like I’d asked, ‘I fucked up, last time. We did the interviews in McKenna’s office, had McKenna be the appropriate adult. Three of us sitting in a row behind her desk like a parole board, staring some kid out of it.’

  A last glance down the aisles. She turned to the blackboard, found a piece of yellow chalk and started scribbling nothing.

  ‘Costello’s idea. Make it formal, he said, make it like being called in to the headmistress, only way worse. Put the fear of God into them, he said. Sounded right, made sense – just kids, just little girls, used to doing what they’re told, crank up the authority high enough and they’ll crack, right?’

  She tossed the chalk on the teacher’s desk and rubbed out the scribbles, leaving snippets and swipe-marks. Specks of chalk-dust whirled in the sun all round her. ‘Even then, I knew it was wrong. Me sitting there like I’d a poker up my arse, knowing every second a little more of our chance was going out the window. But it went fast, I couldn’t put my finger on how to do it any different, then it was too late. And Costello . . . even if it was my name on the case, wasn’t like I could tell him to shove it.’

  She ripped bits off a roll of blank paper, crumpled them, threw them without checking where they landed. ‘In here, they’re on their own turf. Nice and chilled, nothing formal, no need to get the guard up. And Houlihan’s the type, kids spend the whole class asking her the French for “testicle” to make her blush – that’s if they can be arsed noticing she’s there. She’s not gonna put the fear of God into anyone.’

  Conway tugged open a window with a thump, let in a smooth sweep of cool and mown grass.

  ‘This time,’ she said, ‘I fuck up, I’m fucking up my way.’

  There was my shot, lined up all ready to pot. I said, ‘If you want them relaxed, let me do the talking.’

  That got me a stare. I didn’t blink.

  Conway leaned her arse on the windowsill. Chewed her cheek, looked me over from hair to shoes. Behind her, faint urgent calls from the playing field, football flying high.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You talk. I open my mouth, you shut yours till I’m done. I tell you to close the window, that means you’re out, I’ll take it from there, and you don’t say Word One till I tell you to. Got it?’

  Click, and into the pocket. ‘Got it,’ I said. Felt the soft gold air move up the back of my neck and wondered if this was it, this room riddled with echoes and shining with old wood: if this was the place where, finally, I got the chance to fight that door unlocked again. I wanted to memorise the room. Salute someone.

  ‘I want their accounts of yesterday evening. And then I want them hit with the card, out of nowhere, so we can see their reactions. If they say, “Wasn’t me,” I want to know who they think it was. Can you do that?’

  ‘I’d say I can just about handle it, yeah.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Conway said, shaking her head like she couldn’t believe herself. ‘Just try not to get down on the floor and start licking anyone’s boots.’

  I said, ‘We hit them with the card, it’ll be all round the school before home-time.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that? I want that.’

  ‘You’re not worried?’

  ‘That our killer’ll get spooked and come after the card girl.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Conway tapped the edge of the window blind, light one-fingered tap, sent a shake and a sway running down the slats. She said, ‘I want something to happen. This is gonna get things happening.’ She pushed herself off the windowsill. Went to the three chairs in the aisle, turned one of them back to its table. ‘You’re worried about the card girl? Find her before someone else does.’

  There was a one-knuckle knock at the door, and had-to-be-Hou
lihan stuck a worried rabbity face round the edge and lisped, ‘Detectives, you wanted to see me?’

  Joanne Heffernan’s lot had been the first ones buzzing around the Secret Place: we started with them. Orla Burgess, we kicked off with. ‘That’ll put Joanne’s designer knickers in a twist,’ Conway said, when Houlihan had gone to find her, ‘not getting top billing. If she’s pissed off enough, she’ll get sloppy. And Orla’s got the brains of roadkill. We catch her off guard, we lean on her: if she’s got anything, she’ll spill. What?’

  She’d snared me trying not to smile. ‘Thought this time we were going for relaxation. Not intimidation.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Conway said, but there was the corner of a grin there too, bitten back. ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m a hard bitch. Be glad. If I was a sweetheart, you’d be out of a gig.’

  ‘I’m not complaining.’

  ‘Better not,’ Conway said, ‘or I bet there’s some no-hoper case from the seventies that could use your relaxation techniques. You want to do the talking, take a seat. I’ll watch Orla coming in, see if she looks for her card.’

  I settled myself on one of the chairs in the aisle, nice and casual. Conway went to the door.

  Fast double trip-trap of steps down the corridor, and Orla was in the doorway, wiggling, trying not to giggle. No beauty – no height, no neck and no waist, plenty of nose to make up for it – but she tried. Hard-work straight blond hair, fake tan. Something done to her eyebrows.

  Conway’s quick fraction of a head-shake, behind her back, said Orla hadn’t clocked the Secret Place. ‘Thanks for that,’ she told Houlihan. ‘Why don’t you have a seat over here,’ and she had Houlihan swept to the back of the room and planted in a corner before Houlihan could manage more than a gasp.

  ‘Orla,’ I said, ‘I’m Detective Stephen Moran.’ That made a bit of the giggle burst out. Comic genius, me. ‘Have a seat.’ I stretched out a hand to the chair opposite me.