The Secret Place

by Tana French

  ‘You picked the place. Lucky they didn’t make it out of beansprouts.’

  She almost smiled, clamped it back. ‘They did. Bin it. Both of them; I don’t want that stink in my car.’

  The bin was across the road. Out, dodge traffic, bin, dodge traffic, back into the car, starting to see why Conway was still flying solo. She hit the pedal before I had my leg in the door.

  ‘So,’ she said. A little thawed out, but only a little. ‘You know the case, yeah? The basics?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dogs on the street knew the basics.

  ‘You know we got no one. Grapevine say anything about why?’

  The grapevine said plenty. Me, I said, ‘Some cases go that way.’

  ‘We hit a wall, is why. You know how it works: you’ve got the scene, you’ve got whatever witnesses you can pick up, and you’ve got the victim’s life, and one of those better give you something. They gave us a fuckton of nothing.’ Conway spotted a bike-sized gap in the lane she wanted, manoeuvred us in with a spin of the wheel. ‘Basically, there was no reason anyone would want to kill Chris Harper. He was a good kid, by all accounts. People say that anyway, but this time they might’ve actually meant it. Sixteen, in fourth year at St Colm’s, boarder – he’s from down the road, practically, but his da figured he wouldn’t get the full benefit of the Colm’s experience unless he boarded. Places like that, they’re all about the contacts; make the right friends at Colm’s, and you’ll never have to work for less than a hundred K a year.’ The twist to Conway’s mouth said what she thought about that.

  I said, ‘Kids cooped up together, you can get bad situations. Bullying. Nothing like that on the radar, no?’

  Over the canal, into Rathmines. ‘Nada. Chris was popular at school, plenty of mates, no enemies. The odd fight, but boys that age, that’s what they do; nothing major, nothing that took us anywhere. No girlfriend, not officially anyway. Three exes – they start young, nowadays – but we’re not talking true love, we’re talking a couple of snogs at the cinema and then everyone moves on; all the breakups were more than a year back and no hard feelings, as far as we could find out. He got on fine with the teachers – they said he got rowdy sometimes, but it was just too much energy, not badness. Average brains, no genius, no idiot; average worker. Got on fine with his parents, the little he saw of them. One sister, a lot younger, got on well with her. We pushed all of them – not because we thought there was anything there; because they were all we’d got. Nothing. Not a sniff of anything.’

  ‘Any bad habits?’

  Conway shook her head. ‘Not even. Mates said he’d had the odd smoke at parties, both kinds, and he got pissed every now and then when they could get their hands on drink, but there was no alcohol in him when he died. No drugs in his system, either, and none in his stuff. No links to gambling. A couple of porn sites in his computer history, at his parents’ gaff, but what do you expect? That’s the worst he ever did, far as we could establish: few puffs of spliff and a bit of online minge.’

  The side of her face was calm. Eyebrows a little down, focused on the driving. You’d have said, anyway, she was fine with her fuckton of nothing: just the way the dice roll, nothing to take to heart.

  ‘No motive, no leads, no witnesses; after a while we were chasing our tails. Interviewing the same people over and over. Getting the same answers. We had other cases; we couldn’t afford to spend another few months hitting ourselves over the head with this one. In the end I called it quits. Stuck it on the back burner and hoped something like this would turn up.’

  I said, ‘How’d you end up as the primary?’

  Conway’s foot went down on the pedal. ‘You mean, how’d a little girlie end up with a big case like this. I should’ve stuck to domestics. Yeah?’

  ‘No. I mean you were a newbie.’

  ‘So what? You saying that’s why we got nowhere?’

  Not fine with it. Covering well enough to keep the squad lads off her back, but a long way from fine. ‘No, I’m not. I’m saying—’

  ‘Because fuck you. You can get out right here, get the fucking bus back to Cold Cases.’

  If she hadn’t been driving, she’d have had a finger in my face. ‘No. I’m saying a case like this, a kid, a posh school: yous had to know it’d be a big one. Costello had seniority. How come he didn’t put his name on top?’

  ‘Because I’d earned it. Because he knew I’m a fucking good detective. You got that?’

  Needle still sliding up, over the limit. ‘Got it,’ I said.

  Bit of quiet. Conway eased off the pedal, but not a lot. We had hit the Terenure Road; once the MG got some space, it started showing what it could do. I said, once I’d left enough silence, ‘The car’s a beauty.’

  ‘Ever drive it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Backwards nod, like that matched what she already thought of me. ‘A place like St Kilda’s, you have to come in up here.’ Hand higher than her head. ‘Get the respect.’

  That told me something about Antoinette Conway. Me, I’d have picked out an old Polo, too many miles, too many layers of paint not quite hiding the dings. You come in playing low man on the totem, you get people off guard.

  ‘That kind of place, yeah?’

  Her lip pulled up. ‘Jesus fuck. I thought they were gonna put me through a decontamination chamber, get rid of my accent. Or throw me a cleaner’s uniform and point me at the tradesmen’s entrance. You know what the fees are? They start at eight grand a year. That’s if you’re not boarding, or taking any extracurricular activities. Choir, piano, drama. You have any of that, in school?’

  ‘We had a football in the yard.’

  Conway liked that. ‘One little geebag: I go into the holding room and call out her name for interview, and she goes, “Em, I can’t exactly go now, I’ve got my clarinet lesson in five?”’ That curl rising at the corner of her mouth again. Whatever she’d said to the girl, she’d enjoyed it. ‘Her interview lasted an hour. Hate that.’

  ‘The school,’ I said. ‘Snobby and good, or just snobby?’

  ‘I could win the Lotto, still wouldn’t send my kid there. But . . .’ One-shouldered shrug. ‘Small classes. Young Scientist awards everywhere. Everyone’s got perfect teeth, no one ever gets up the duff, and all the shiny little pedigree bitches go on to college. I guess it’s good, if you’re OK with your kid turning out a snobby shite.’

  I said, ‘Holly’s da’s a cop. A Dub. From the Liberties.’

  ‘I know that. You think I missed that?’

  ‘He wouldn’t send her there if she was turning into a snobby shite.’

  Conway edged the MG’s nose past a red light. Green: she floored it. Said, ‘She fancy you?’

  I almost laughed. ‘She was just a kid: nine when we met, ten when it went to trial. I didn’t see her after that, till today.’

  Conway shot me a look that said I was the kid here. ‘You’d be surprised. She a liar?’

  I thought back. ‘She didn’t lie to me. Not that I caught, anyway. She was a good kid, back then.’

  Conway said, ‘She’s a liar.’

  ‘What’d she say?’

  ‘Dunno. I didn’t catch her out either. Maybe she didn’t lie to me. But girls that age, they’re liars. All of them.’

  I thought about saying, Next time you’ve got a trick question, save it for a suspect. Said, instead, ‘I don’t give a damn who’s a liar, as long as she’s not lying to me.’

  Conway shifted up a gear. The MG loved it. ‘Tell us,’ she said. ‘What did your little pal Holly say about Chris Harper?’

  ‘Not a lot. He was just a guy. She knew him from around.’

  ‘Right. You think she was telling the truth?’

  ‘I haven’t worked that out yet.’

  ‘You go ahead and let me know when you do. Here’s why we paid special attention to Holly and her mates. There’s four of them that hang out together, or did back then: Holly Mackey, Selena Wynne, Julia Harte and Rebecca O’Mara. They’re like that.’ Cro
ssed fingers. ‘Another girl in their class, Joanne Heffernan, she said the vic had been going out with Selena Wynne.’

  ‘So you figure that’s what he was doing in St Kilda’s. Snuck in to meet her.’

  ‘Yeah. Here’s something we didn’t release, so try not to blab it in interview: he had a condom in his pocket. Fuck-all else, no wallet, no phone – those were back in his room – just a condom.’ Conway craned her neck, spun the wheel, whipped us round a VW snail and out of the way of a lorry just in time. The lorry wasn’t happy. ‘Fuck you, you want to start with me? . . . And there were flowers on the body – that wasn’t released either. Hyacinths – those blue curly ones, real strong sweet smell? Four stems of them. They came from a flowerbed on the school grounds, not far from the scene, so the killer could’ve put them there, but . . .’ Shrug. ‘Guy in his girlfriend’s school after midnight, with a condom and flowers? I’m gonna say he was on a promise.’

  ‘The school was definitely the primary scene, yeah? He wasn’t dumped there after he died?’

  ‘Nah. The blow split his head right open, shitloads of blood. The way it flowed, the Tech Bureau worked out he stayed still after he was hit. No dump job, no trying to crawl for help, he didn’t even reach up and touch the wound – no blood on his hands. Just bang’ – she snapped her fingers – ‘and down he went.’

  I said, ‘I’m betting Selena Wynne said she’d had no plans to meet him that night.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. The three mates said the same. Selena wasn’t meeting him, she wasn’t going out with him, she only knew him from around. Shocked, they were, that I’d suggest anything like that.’ A dry edge on Conway’s voice. Not convinced.

  ‘What did Chris Harper’s mates say?’

  Snort. ‘“Urgh, dunno,” mostly. Sixteen-year-old boys, you’d get more sense going down the zoo and interviewing the chimp cage. There was one that could make sentences – Finn Carroll – but it’s not like he had much to tell us. They’re not staying up all night having heart-to-hearts, the way the girls are. They said yeah, Chris fancied Selena, but he fancied a lot of girls, and a lot of girls fancied him. As far as the guys knew, him and Selena never went further than that.’

  ‘Anything to contradict that? Contact on their phones, on Facebook?’

  Conway shook her head. ‘No calls or texts between them, nothing on Facebook. These kids all have Facebook accounts, but the boarders mostly only use them during the holidays; both the schools block social networking sites on their computers, don’t allow smartphones. God forbid little Philippa runs off with some internet pervert she met on school time. Or even worse, little Philip. Imagine the lawsuit.’

  ‘So it’s just Joanne Heffernan’s evidence.’

  ‘Heffernan didn’t have evidence. All she had was “And then I saw him look at her, and then I saw her look at him, and then he said something to her this other time, so they were definitely shagging.” Her mates all swore they thought the same, but they would. She’s a poison bitch, Heffernan is. Her gang, they’re the cool crowd, and she’s the queen bee. The rest are petrified of her. Any of them blink without her say-so, they’ll be out in the cold, taking nonstop shit from her and the posse till they leave school. They say what they’re told.’

  I said, ‘Holly and her lot. Cool crowd or not?’

  Conway watched another red light and tapped two fingers on the steering wheel, in time to her blinker. ‘Odd crowd,’ she said, in the end. ‘Not the boss bitches; not part of Heffernan’s gang. But I wouldn’t say Heffernan gives them any hassle, either. She dropped Selena in the shit when she got the chance, nearly wet her knickers with the thrill, but she wouldn’t take them on face to face. They’re not the top of the totem pole, but they’re high enough.’

  Something in my face, start of a grin.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re talking like these are girl gangs from East LA. Razor blades in their hair.’

  ‘Close,’ said Conway, and swung the MG off the main road. ‘Close enough.’

  The houses turned bigger, set farther back off the street. Big cars, sparkly new ones; not a lot of those about, these days. Electric gates everywhere. One front garden had a statue thing made of polished concrete, looked like a five-foot mug handle.

  I said, ‘So you fancied Selena for it? Or someone who was jealous of her going out with Chris, on one side or the other?’

  Conway slowed down – not a lot, for a residential area. Thought.

  ‘I’m not saying I fancied Selena. You’ll see her; I wouldn’t’ve said she could get the job done, not right. Heffernan was jealous as fuck – Selena’s twice the looker Heffernan is – but I’m not saying I fancied her either. Not even saying I believed her. I’m just saying there was something. Just something.’

  And there it was, probably: the reason she had let me come along. Something in the corner of her eye, gone when she looked at it straight. Costello hadn’t been able to pin it down either. Conway thought maybe a fresh pair of eyes; maybe me.

  I said, ‘Could a teenage girl have done the job? Physically, like?’

  ‘Yeah. No problem. The weapon – and this wasn’t released either – the weapon was a hoe out of the groundskeepers’ shed. One blow, right through Chris Harper’s skull and into his brain. The Bureau said, with the long handle and the sharp blade, it wouldn’t have taken a lot of strength. A kid could’ve done it, easy, if she got a good swing.’

  I started to ask something, but Conway spun the car into a turn – so sudden, no blinker, I almost missed the moment we crossed over: high black-iron gates, stone guardhouse, iron arch with ‘St Kilda’s College’ picked out in gold. Inside the gates she braked. Let me take a good look.

  The drive swung a semicircle of white pebbles around a gentle slope of clipped green grass that went on forever. At the top of that slope was the school.

  Someone’s ancestral home, once, someone’s mansion with grooms holding dancing carriage horses, with tiny-waisted ladies drifting arm in arm across the grass. Two hundred years old, more? A long building, soft grey stone, three tall windows up and more than a dozen across. A portico held up by slim curl-topped columns; a rooftop balustrade, pillars curved delicate as vases. Perfect, it was; perfect, everything balanced, every inch. Sun melting over it, slow as butter on toast.

  Maybe I should have hated it. Community-school me, classes in run-down prefabs; keep your coat on when the heating went every winter, arrange the geography posters to cover the mould patches, dare each other to touch the dead rat in the jacks. Maybe I should have looked at that school and wanted to take a shite in the portico.

  It was beautiful. I love beautiful; always have. I never saw why I should hate what I wish I had. Love it harder. Work your way closer. Clasp your hands around it tighter. Till you find a way to make it yours.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Conway. Leaning back in her seat, eyes narrow. ‘This is the only time I’m sorry I’m a cop. When I see a shitpile like this and I can’t petrol-bomb it to fuck.’

  Watching me, for my reaction. A test.

  I could’ve passed, easy. Could’ve given out some stink about spoilt rich brats and my corpo-house life. Mostly I would’ve. Why not? I’d been wishing for the Murder squad for a long time. Work your way closer, make it yours.

  Conway wasn’t someone I wanted to bond with.

  I said, ‘It’s beautiful.’

  Her head going back, mouth twisting sideways, what could have been a grin if it hadn’t been something else. Disappointment?

  ‘They’re gonna love you in here,’ she said. ‘Come on; let’s find you some West Brit arse to lick.’ She gunned it and we went shooting up the drive, pebbles flying out from under the wheels.

  The car park was round to the right, screened off by tall dark-green trees – cypress, I was pretty sure; wished I knew trees better. No sparkly Mercs here, but no wrecks, either; the teachers could afford to drive something decent. Conway parked in a ‘Reserved’ space.

  Odds were, no one at St Kilda’s
was going to see the MG, not unless they’d been looking out of a front window when we came in the gate. Conway had picked it for herself; for how she wanted to go in, not how she wanted people to see her go in. I rewrote what I thought of her, again.

  She swung herself out of the car, threw her bag over her shoulder – nothing girly, black leather satchel, more butch than most of the Murder lads’ briefcases. ‘I’ll take you round the scene first. Let you get your bearings. Come on.’

  Through the cool curtain of shade under the screening trees. A sound like a sigh, above us; Conway’s head snapped up, but it was just wind nosing through the dense branches. On our left, when we came out into the sun again: the back of the school. Right: another great down-slope of grass, bordered by a low hedge.

  The main building had wings, one stretching out to the rear from each end. Built on later, maybe, but built to match. Same grey stone, same light hand on the ornaments; someone going for line, not for frills.

  Conway said, ‘Classrooms, hall, offices, all the school stuff, they’re in the main building. That’ – the near wing – ‘that’s the nuns’ gaff. Separate entrance, no connecting door to the school; the wing’s locked up at night, but all the nuns have keys, and they’ve got their own rooms. Any of them could’ve snuck out and bashed Chris Harper. There’s only a dozen of them left, most of them are about a hundred and none of them’s under fifty; but like I said before, it didn’t take a bodybuilder.’

  ‘Any motive?’

  She squinted up at the windows. Sun flashed off them into our eyes. ‘Nuns are fucked up. Maybe one of them saw him stick his hand up some girl’s jumper, figured he was a minion of Satan, corrupting the innocent.’

  She headed across the smooth lawn at a diagonal, away from the building. Nothing said keep off the grass, but it looked it. Two heads like us in a place like this: I was waiting for a gamekeeper to burst out of the trees and chase us off the grounds, attack dogs chewing the arses out of our trousers.

  ‘The other wing, that’s the boarders. Locked down tight as a nun’s gee at night; the girls don’t have keys. Bars on the ground-floor windows. Door at the back there, but it’s alarmed at night. Connecting door to the school on the ground floor, and that’s where it gets interesting. The school windows don’t have bars. And they’re not alarmed.’