by Tana French
Not Ronan the groundskeeper. People are twisting to see if they can spot anyone missing. Lauren Mulvihill isn’t in ohmyGod I heard she was going to fail her exams I heard she got dumped ohmyGod—
‘Girls,’ McKenna says. ‘I have some tragic news to share with you. You will be shocked and grieved, but I expect you to behave with the good sense and dignity that are part of the St Kilda’s tradition.’
Straining silence. ‘Someone found a used condom,’ Julia guesses, on a breath too low for anyone but the four of them to hear.
‘Shh,’ Holly says, without looking at her. She’s sitting up high and straight, staring at McKenna and wrapping a tissue around and around her hand. Selena wants to ask if she’s OK, but Holly might kick her.
‘I am sorry to tell you that this morning a student from St Colm’s was found dead on our grounds. Christopher Harper—’
Selena thinks her chair’s spun over backwards, into nothing. McKenna’s gone. The hall has turned grey and misty, tilting, clanging with bells and squeals and distorted scraps of music left over from the Valentine’s dance.
Selena understands, way too late and completely, why she wasn’t punished after that first night. She had some nerve, back then, thinking she had any right to hope for that mercy.
Something hurts, a long way away. When she looks down she sees Julia’s hand on her upper arm; to anyone watching it would look like a shock-grab, but Julia’s fingers are digging in hard. She says, low, ‘Don’t fucking faint.’
The pain is good; it pushes the mist back a little. Selena says, ‘OK.’
‘Just don’t break down, and keep your mouth shut. Can you do that?’
Selena nods. She’s not sure what Julia’s talking about, but she can remember it anyway; it helps, having two solid things to hold on to, one in each hand. Behind her someone is sobbing, loud and fake. When Julia lets go of her arm she misses the pain.
She should have seen this coming, after that first night. She should have spotted it seething in every shadow, red-mouthed and ravenous, waiting for a great golden voice to give it the word to leap.
She thought she was the one who would be punished. She let him keep coming back. She asked him to.
The splinters of music won’t stop scraping at her.
Becca watches the assembly through the clearest coldest water in the world, mountain water full of movement and quirky little questions. She can’t remember if she expected this part to be difficult; she thinks probably she never thought about it. As far as she can tell she’s having the easiest time of anyone in the whole room.
McKenna tells them not to be afraid because the police have everything under control. She tells them to be very careful, in any telephone calls to their parents, not to cause needless worry with foolish hysteria. There will be group counselling sessions for all classes. There will be individual counselling sessions for anyone who feels she may need it. Remember that you can talk to your class teacher or to Sister Ignatius at any time. At the end she tells them to return to their homerooms, where their class teachers will join them to answer any questions they may have.
They foam out of the gym into the entrance hall. Teachers are positioned ready to herd them and hush them, but the jabber and the sobs can’t be tamped down any longer; they surge up, careening around the high ceiling-space and up the stairwell. Becca feels like she’s taken her feet off the ground and she’s being carried along effortlessly, floated from shoulder to shoulder, all down the long corridors.
The second they’re through the homeroom door, Holly has a hand clamped round Selena’s wrist and she’s force-fielding the whole four of them past sobbing hugging clumps, into a back corner by the window. She grabs them into a fake hug and says, hard, ‘They’re going to be talking to everyone, the Murder detectives are. Don’t tell them anything. No matter what. Specially don’t tell them we can get out. Do you get that?’
‘OhmyGod, look,’ Julia says, holding up a cupped palm, ‘it’s a great big handful of duhhhh. Is it all for us?’
Holly hisses into her face, ‘I’m not joking. OK? This is real. Someone’s going to actual jail, for life.’
‘No, seriously, are they? Do I look handicapped?’
Becca smells the acrid electrical-short urgency. ‘Hol,’ she says. Holly’s all jammed-out angles and staticky hair; Becca wants to stroke her soft and smooth again. ‘We know. We won’t tell them anything. Honestly.’
‘Right, that’s what you think now. You don’t know what it’s like. This isn’t going to be like Houlihan going, “Ooh dear, I smell tobacco, have you girls been smoking cigarettes?” and if you look innocent enough she believes you. These are detectives. If they get one clue that you know anything about anything, they’re like pit bulls. Like, eight hours in an interview room with them interrogating you and your parents going apeshit, does that sound like fun? That’s what’ll happen if you even pause before you answer a question.’
Holly’s forearm is steel, pressing down across Becca’s shoulders. ‘And the other thing is: they lie. OK? Detectives make stuff up all the time. So if they’re all, “We know you were getting out at night, someone saw you,” don’t fall for it. They don’t actually know anything; they’re just hoping you’ll get freaked out and give them something. You have to look stupid and go, “Nuh-uh, they must’ve got mixed up, it wasn’t us.”’
Someone behind them sobs, ‘He was sooo full of life,’ and a wavering wail rises above the fug of the room. ‘Jesus Christ, someone shut those dumb bitches up,’ Julia snaps, shouldering Holly’s arm away. ‘Fucking ow, Holly, that hurts.’
Holly jams her arm back where it was, clamping Jules in place. ‘Listen. They’ll make up mental stuff. They’ll be like, “We know you were going out with Chris, we’ve got proof—”’
Becca’s eyes snap wide open. Holly is looking straight at Selena, but Becca can’t tell why, if it’s just because they’re opposite each other or if it’s because much more. Selena doesn’t feel staticky. She feels too soft, bruised to jelly.
Julia’s face has gone sharp. ‘They can do that?’
‘OhmyGod, here, have some more duh. They can say whatever they want. They can say they’ve got proof that you killed him, if they want, just to see what you do.’
Julia says, ‘I have to talk to someone.’ She shrugs Holly’s arm off and heads across the classroom. Becca watches. There’s a high-pitched huddle around Joanne Heffernan, who’s draped artistically over a chair with her head back and her eyes half-shut. Gemma Harding is in the huddle, but Julia says something close to her and they move a step away. Becca can tell by the angles of their heads that they’re keeping their voices down.
Holly says, ‘Please tell me you get that.’
She’s still looking at Selena, who, without the tight brace of the fake hug on both sides, rocks a little and comes down on someone’s desk. Becca’s pretty sure she hasn’t heard any of it. She wishes she could tell Lenie how utterly OK everything is, shake out a great soft blanket of OK and wrap it round Lenie’s shoulders. Things will run their own slow dark ways, down their old underground channels, and heal in their own time. You just have to wait, till you wake up one morning perfect again.
‘I got it,’ she says to Holly, comfortingly, instead.
‘Lenie.’
Lenie says obligingly, from somewhere way off outside the window, ‘OK.’
‘No. Listen. If they say to you, “We’ve got total proof that you were with Chris,” you just say, “No I wasn’t,” and then you shut up. If they show you an actual video, you just say, “That’s not me.” Do you get it?’
Selena gazes at Holly. Eventually she asks, ‘What?’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Holly says up to the ceiling, hands in her hair. ‘I guess that could work. It’d better.’
Then Mr Smythe comes in and stands in the doorway looking skinny and petrified at the soggy heaving hugging mess in front of him, and starts flapping his hands and bleating, and gradually everyone unweaves themselves and br
ings the sobs down to sniffles, and Smythe takes a deep breath and starts in on the speech that McKenna made him memorise.
Probably Holly is right; what with her dad and everything else, she would know. Becca figures she should really be terrified. She can see the terror right there, like a big pale wobbly lump plonked down on her desk, that she’s supposed to hold on to and learn by heart and maybe write an essay about. It’s a little bit interesting, but not enough that she can be bothered picking it up. She pokes it off the edge of her mind and enjoys the squelchy cartoon splat it makes hitting the floor.
By mid-afternoon the parents start showing up. Alison’s mum is first, throwing herself out of a mammoth black SUV and running up the front steps in spike heels that send her feet flying out at spastic angles. Alison’s mum has had a lot of plastic surgery and she wears fake eyelashes the size of hairbrushes. She looks sort of like a person but not really, like someone explained to aliens what a person is and they did their best to make one of their own.
Holly watches her from the library window. Behind her the trees are empty, no flashes of white or fluttering crime-scene tape. Chris is out at the back, somewhere, with efficient gloved people picking over every inch of him.
They’re in the library because nobody knows what to do with anybody. A couple of the tougher teachers have managed to get the first- and second- years under control enough to do some kind of classes, but the third-years have outgrown their little-kid obedience and they actually knew Chris. Every time anyone tried to jam them down under a lid of algebra or Irish verbs, they boiled up and burst out at the cracks: someone started crying and couldn’t stop, someone else fainted, four people got into a shrieking row over who owned a Biro. When Kerry-Anne Rice saw demon eyes in the chem supplies cupboard, they were basically done. The third-years got sent to the library, where they’ve reached an unspoken agreement with the two teachers supervising them: they manage not to lose it, and the teachers don’t make them pretend to study. A thick layer of whispering has spread over the tables and shelves, pressing down.
‘Awww,’ Joanne says, low, next to Holly’s ear. She’s big-eyed and pout-lipped, head to one side. ‘Is she OK?’
She means Selena. Who is skew-shouldered in a chair like she was tossed there, hands dumped palms up in her lap, staring at an empty patch of table.
‘She’s fine,’ Holly says.
‘Really? Because it just totally breaks my heart to think about what she must be going through.’
Joanne has one hand over her heart, to demonstrate. ‘They were over ages ago, remember?’ Holly says. ‘But thanks.’
Joanne crumples up her sympathy face and tosses it away. Underneath is a sneer. ‘OhmyGod, are you literally retarded? I’m never going to care about anything any of you feel. Just please tell me she’s not going to start acting like she just lost her true love. Because that would be so pathetic I might have to puke, and bulimia is so over.’
‘Tell you what,’ Holly says. ‘Give me your mobile number. The second you get any say about how Selena acts, I’ll give you a text and let you know.’
Joanne examines her, flat eyes that suck in everything and put nothing back out. She says, ‘Wow. You actually are retarded.’
Holly sighs noisily and waits. Being this close to Joanne is trickling cold oil down her skin. She wonders what Joanne’s face would do if she asked, Did you do it yourself, or did you make someone do it for you?
‘If the cops find out what Selena was doing with Chris, she’ll be a total suspect. And if she goes around acting like some big tragedy queen, then they’re going to find out. One way or another.’
Since Holly is not in fact retarded, she knows exactly what Joanne means. Joanne can’t take the Chief Mourner seat that she’d love, because she can’t afford to have the cops start paying special attention to her, but no one else is getting it either. If Selena acts too upset, then Joanne will upload that phone video online and make sure the cops get a link.
Holly knows Selena didn’t kill Chris. She knows that killing a person does almost-invisible things to you; it leaves you arm-linked with death, your head tilted just a degree that way, so that for the rest of your life your shadows mix together. Holly knows Selena down to her bones, she’s been watching Selena all day, and if that tilt had happened since yesterday she would have seen it. But she doesn’t expect the detectives to know Selena that way, or to believe her if she tells them.
Holly won’t be asking whether Joanne did it herself. She’s never going to be able to give Joanne, or anyone else, one hint that the thought has crossed her mind.
Instead she says, ‘Like you know so much about how detectives work? They’re not going to suspect Selena. They’ve probably arrested someone by now.’
They both hear it in her voice: Joanne’s won. ‘Oh, that’s right,’ Joanne says, flicking one last sneer at her and turning away. ‘I forgot your dad’s a Guard.’ She makes it sound like a sewage sorter. Joanne’s dad is a banker.
Speaking of whom. Dealing with Joanne has taken Holly’s attention off the window; the first she knows about Dad arriving is when there’s a tap on the door and his head pokes round it. For one second the rush of helpless gladness blows away everything else, even embarrassment: Dad will fix it all. Then she remembers all the reasons why he won’t.
Alison’s mum must have got snared by McKenna for a de-panicking session, but Dad doesn’t get snared unless he wants to be. ‘Miss Houlihan,’ he says. ‘I’m just borrowing Holly for a minute. I’ll bring her back safe and sound, cross my heart.’ And gives Houlihan a smile like she’s a movie star. She never thinks of saying no. The fog-layer of whispers stops moving to let Holly pass underneath, watched.
‘Hiya, chickadee,’ Dad says, in the corridor. The hug is one-armed, casual as any weekend hello, except for the convulsive gripe of his hand pressing her head into his shoulder. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ Holly says. ‘You didn’t need to come.’
‘I wasn’t doing anything else, figured I might as well.’ Dad is never doing nothing else. ‘Did you know this young fella?’
Holly shrugs. ‘I’ve seen him around. We talked a couple of times. He wasn’t my friend. Just some guy from Colm’s.’
Dad holds her away and scans her, blue eyes lasering right through hers to scour the inside of her skull for scraps. Holly sighs and stares back. ‘I’m not devastated. Swear to God. Satisfied?’
He grins. ‘Smart-arsed little madam. Come on; let’s go for a walk.’ He links her arm through his and strolls her down the corridor like they’re headed for a picnic. ‘How about your pals? Did they know him?’
‘Same as me,’ Holly says. ‘Just from around. We saw the detectives during the assembly. Do you know them?’
‘Costello, I do. He’s no genius, but he’s sound enough, gets the job done. Your woman Conway, I only know what I’ve heard. She sounds OK. No idiot, anyway.’
‘Were you talking to them?’
‘Checked in with Costello on my way up. Just to make it clear that I won’t be stepping on their toes. I’m here as a dad, not a detective.’
Holly asks, ‘What’d they say?’
Dad takes the stairs at an easy jog. He says, ‘You know the drill. Anything they tell me, I can’t tell you.’
He can be a dad all he wants; he’s always a detective too. ‘Why? I’m not a witness.’
This time, says the space in the air when she stops.
‘We don’t know that yet. Neither do you.’
‘Yeah, I do.’
Dad lets that lie. He holds the front door open for her. The air spreading its arms to them is soft, stroking their cheeks with sweet greens and golds; the sky is holiday-blue.
When they’re down the steps and crunching across the white pebbles, Dad says, ‘I’d like to believe that if you knew anything – anything at all, even something that was probably nothing – you’d tell me.’
Holly rolls her eyes. ‘I’m not stupid.’
‘Farthes
t thing from it. But at your age, going by what I remember from a few hundred years ago, keeping your mouth shut around adults is a reflex. A good one – nothing wrong with learning to sort stuff out by yourselves – but it’s one that can go too far. Murder isn’t something you and your mates can sort. That’s the detectives’ job.’
Holly knows it already. Her bones know it: they feel slight and bendy as grass stalks, no core to them. She thinks of Selena, rag-dolled in that chair. Things need doing, things she can’t even get hold of. She wants to lift Selena up, put her in Dad’s arms and say Take good care of her.
She feels Joanne behind her, high in the library window. Her stare zipping through the sunlit air to fingernail-pinch the back of Holly’s neck, twisting.
She says, ‘I’ve actually known that for a while. Remember?’
She can tell by Dad’s head rearing back that she’s taken him off guard. They never talk about that time when she was a kid.
‘OK,’ he says, a second later. Whether he believes her or not, he’s not going any farther down that trail. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. In that case, I’ll have a word with Costello, ask him to interview you now, get it out of the way. Then you can pack up your stuff, nice and discreetly, and come home with me.’
Holly was expecting this, but she still feels her legs go rigid against it. ‘No. I’m not going home.’
And Dad was expecting that; his stride doesn’t change. ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. And it’s not forever. Just for a few days, till the lads get this sorted.’
‘What if they don’t? Then what?’
‘If they don’t have their man locked up by Monday, we’ll review the situation. It shouldn’t come to that, though. From what I hear, they’re pretty close to an arrest.’
Their man. Not Joanne. Whatever the detectives have against this guy, sooner or later it’s going to crumble in their hands, and they’re going to go hunting again.
