The Secret Place

by Tana French

  The thing was it wasn’t true, the little insomnia story, or not all the truth. I couldn’t risk a glance at Conway to see if she’d spotted the lie. There had been no name attached to Chris’s number, in Selena’s phone; no names in the texts. No way a skim through the phone could have told Holly who Selena was texting.

  Maybe the lie was Mackey reflex, always keep some nugget to yourself in case it comes in useful later on. Maybe not.

  Holly moved like she felt that cold-rain something fingering the back of her neck, trailing across her shoulders. Said, ‘I wasn’t just ignoring the whole thing. Back then, I thought the same as Becca: everything would be OK as long as we had each other. I thought, if we just stuck close to Lenie . . .’

  ‘Did it work? Did she seem like she was snapping out of it?’

  Holly said, quietly, ‘No.’

  I said, ‘That had to be scary. You’re used to dealing with everything together with your friends, the four of yous: no secrets. All of a sudden, you’re stuck dealing with this all on your own.’

  Holly shrugged. ‘I survived.’

  Trying hard for ice-cool, but that veil had wrapped her round. Those few days last spring had set things shifting, in the way the world looked to her. Left her lost, stripped raw in cold wind and no one’s hands finding hers.

  That was when I knew: Conway wasn’t the only one who had Holly in her sights. Not any more.

  ‘Course you did,’ I said. ‘You’re well able; I know that from last time. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get scared. And being out on your own where your mates can’t help, that’s one of the scariest things around.’

  Slowly her eyes came up, met mine. Startled and clear, like this was more than she’d expected from me. A tiny nod.

  ‘Hate to break up the little chat when it’s going so nicely,’ Mackey said lazily, swinging himself off the windowsill, ‘but I’m gasping for a smoke.’

  ‘You told Mum you’d quit,’ Holly said.

  ‘It’s been a long time since I had your mum fooled about anything. See you in a few, chickadee. If these nice detectives say a word to you, you just stick your fingers in your ears and sing them something pretty.’ And he headed off, left the door swinging open behind him. We heard his footsteps down the corridor, him whistling a perky tune.

  Conway and I looked at each other. Holly watched us, under those enigmatic curves of eyelid.

  I said, ‘I could do with some fresh air.’

  In the foyer, the heavy wooden door was swinging wide. The rectangle of cold light spilling onto the chequerboard tiles was notched with a shadow that moved, one sharp flick, when my steps echoed. Mackey.

  He was at the top of the steps, leaning against a column, smoke unlit between his fingers. His back was to me and he didn’t turn. Above him, the sky was a blue aimed for night; it was gone quarter past eight. Faint and delicate, arcing somewhere in the great stretches of dimming air out there, bats’ intent shrills and girls’ intent chatter.

  When I came up beside Mackey he raised the smoke to his lips, glanced at me over the click of the lighter. ‘Since when do you smoke?’

  ‘Just needed some air.’ I loosened my collar, took a deep breath. The air tasted sweet and warm, night flowers opening.

  ‘And a chat.’

  ‘Long time no see.’

  ‘Kid. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not in the mood for small talk.’

  ‘Nah, I know. I just wanted to say . . .’ The squirm was real, and the red face. ‘I know you’ve been . . . you know. Putting in the odd good word for me, along the way. I just wanted a chance to say thanks.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Just don’t fuck up. I don’t like looking stupid.’

  ‘I’m not planning on fucking up.’

  Mackey nodded and turned his shoulder to me. Smoked like it was fuel and he was going to get every last inch to the gallon.

  I leaned against the wall, not too near. Tilted my face up to the sky, just chilling.

  Said, ‘I’m dying to ask, man. How’d you pick out St Kilda’s?’

  ‘You figured I’d have Holly down the local community school?’

  ‘Something like that, yeah.’

  ‘The tennis court wasn’t up to my standards.’

  Narrowing his eyes against the smoke. Only one corner of his mind was on me.

  ‘This place, but? When I saw it . . .’ I blew out a half-laugh. ‘Fuck me.’

  ‘It’s something, all right. You didn’t think I appreciated fine architecture?’

  ‘Just didn’t think it would be your scene. Rich kids. Holly living somewhere else most of the week.’

  I waited. Nothing, just the rise and fall of his cigarette. I said, ‘You wanted to get Holly away from home, yeah? Too much teen drama? Or you didn’t like her mates?’

  One corner of Mackey’s mind was more than enough. Wolf-curl to his mouth, slow click of his tongue. ‘Stephen, Stephen, Stephen. Here you were doing so well. All the working-man-to-working-man stuff, I was really feeling that. And then you went and got impatient, and you went straight back into cop mode. Is your daughter a problem teen, sir? Does your daughter have any undesirable associates, sir? Did you ever see any sign that your daughter was shaping up to be a cold-blooded killer, sir? And just like that, the nice little bond we were building up: gone. Rookie mistake, sunshine. You need to practise your patience.’

  He lounged against the column, grinning at me, waiting to see what I’d come out with next. His eyes had turned alive; I had his attention now.

  I said, ‘The school I can see, just about. Maybe Holly’s ma went here, or maybe your local community school’s a kip, Holly was getting bullied or offered drugs – most people’s principles go out the window when it’s their kid on the line. But boarding? Nah. I don’t see it.’

  ‘Always fuck with people’s expectations, sunshine. It’s good for their circulation.’

  ‘Last time we worked together, you and Holly’s ma were split up. Had been for a while, far as I could tell. You’ve already missed out on years of Holly, and now you send her off to boarding school so you can miss even more? It doesn’t fit.’

  Mackey pointed his smoke at me. ‘That was cute, kid. “Last time we worked together”; like we’re working together now. I like that.’

  ‘You and Holly’s ma are back together, that’s your chance at being a family again. You wouldn’t miss out on that unless there was a good reason. Either Holly was acting up and you needed her somewhere strict to straighten her out, or she was getting into bad company and you wanted her well away from that.’

  He was nodding away, doing a thinking face. ‘Not bad. It plays. Or maybe, just maybe, my wife and I felt we needed some time by ourselves to reconnect, after that whole nasty separation thing. Rekindle the romance. Us time, isn’t that what I’m meant to call it?’

  I said, ‘You worship the bones of that girl. You’ve never wanted less time with her in her life.’

  ‘My attitude to family is a little quirky, kid. I assumed you’d gathered that, last time we worked together.’ Mackey tossed his smoke onto the lawn. ‘Maybe the chance to be an adorable nuclear unit doesn’t mean the same to me as it would to you. So sue me.’

  I said, ‘If Holly was getting into trouble at home, we’ll find out.’

  ‘Good boy. I’d expect no less.’

  ‘I’m asking you to save us the time and hassle.’

  ‘No problem. The biggest trouble Holly ever got into was getting grounded for not tidying her room. Hope that helps.’

  We’d be checking. Mackey knew it. ‘Thanks,’ I said. Nodded.

  He was going in. I said, before his hand reached the door handle, ‘I’d still love to know. The boarding, man. Why? It doesn’t come cheap. Someone wanted it pretty bad.’

  Him watching me, amused, the way he used to seven years back, big dog watching feisty puppy. Seven years is a long time.

  ‘I know it’s nothing to do with our case, but it’s going to keep at me. So I’m asking.’


  Mackey said, ‘Out of curiosity. Man to man.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Bollix. You’re asking detective to suspect’s father.’

  Unblinking, daring me to deny it: God, no, she’s not a suspect . . . I said, ‘I’m asking.’

  Mackey examined me. Did some kind of maths behind his eyes.

  He found his smokes again. Flipped one into the side of his mouth.

  ‘Let me ask you this,’ he said, through it. Cupped his hand around the flame. ‘Just offhand, how much time would you guess Holly spends with my side of the family?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Good guess. She sees one of my sisters a couple of times a year. On Olivia’s side there’s a pair of Christmastime cousins, and there’s Olivia’s ma, who buys Holly designer shite and takes her to poncy restaurants. And, since Olivia and I were split up or splitting for most of the relevant time-frame, Holly’s an only child.’

  He leaned back in the doorway, flicked the lighter and watched the flame. He was smoking this one differently, taking his time on every drag.

  ‘You were right about how we picked St Kilda’s – well done there: Olivia’s alma mater. And you were right about me not being into the boarding idea. Holly asked at the beginning of second year, I said over my dead body. She kept begging, I kept saying hell no, but in the end I asked why she wanted it so badly. Holly said it was because of her mates – Becca and Selena were boarding already, Julia was running the same campaign on her folks. The four of them wanted to be together.’

  Flipped the lighter spinning into the air, caught it.

  ‘She’s smart, my girl Holly. The next few months, any day she had one of her mates over, she was a holy angel: helping around the house, doing her homework, never a complaint about anything, happy happy joy joy. When she wasn’t having a mate round, she was a raging pain in the hole. Trailing round the house like something out of an Italian opera, giving us these accusing lip-trembly stares; ask her to do anything and she’d burst into tears and fling herself into her room – don’t get overexcited there, Detective, they all throw drama fits, it’s not a sign of juvenile delinquency. But after a while, Liv and me were dreading the days it was just the three of us. Holly had us trained like a pair of German shepherds.’

  ‘Stubborn,’ I said. ‘Must get it from your wife.’

  Wry sideways look. ‘Stubborn would’ve got her nowhere. If it was just that, I would’ve kept taking the piss out of her till she dropped the act; would’ve been a pleasure. But one evening Holly’s throwing a full-on teen-queen strop – I can’t even remember why, I think we’d said she couldn’t go over to Julia’s – and she yells, “They’re the only people I trust to be there no matter what. They’re like my sisters! Because of you guys, they’re the only sisters I’m ever going to have! And you’re keeping me away from them!” And off she ran upstairs, to slam her door and sob into her pillow about how unfair it all was.’

  Another long drag on his ciggie. He tilted his head back, watched the stream of smoke spiral out between his teeth, up into the soft air.

  ‘But the thing was, the kid had a point. It’s a bitch when that happens. Family’s important. And Liv and I haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of providing Holly with one of those. If she’s doing a better job of making her own, who am I to stand in her way?’

  Fuck me. I would’ve bet a few pints that Frank Mackey only knew the meaning of guilt from the outside: something that came in useful for arm-twisting other people. Holly had him twisted into a reef knot.

  I said, ‘So you decided to let her go for it.’

  ‘So we decided she could try boarding during the week for one term, see how she got on. Now we’d have to hire a tow truck to drag her away. I don’t like it on principle, and I miss the little madam like hell, but like you said: when it’s your kid at stake, everything else goes out the window.’

  Mackey slid his lighter back in his jeans pocket. ‘And there you go. A heart-to-heart with Uncle Frankie. Wasn’t that fun?’

  It was true. Maybe the whole truth, maybe not, but true.

  ‘Does that answer all your questions?’

  I said, ‘One left. I don’t get why you’d tell me all that.’

  ‘I’m establishing interdepartmental cooperation, Detective. Showing the love, in a professional kind of way.’ Mackey flicked his smoke onto the ground, crushed it out in one heel-twist. ‘After all,’ he said over his shoulder with a great big grin, as he pushed the door open, ‘we’re working together.’

  Holly was sitting where we’d left her; Conway was at the window, hands in her pockets, looking down at the gardens. They hadn’t been talking. The air in the room, the fast turn from both of them when we came in, said they’d been listening hard to each other instead.

  Mackey shifted his spot, keep us on our toes: sat on a table behind Holly, found himself a stray chunk of modelling clay to play with. I pulled Selena’s phone towards me. Turned the evidence bag in circles on the table, between my fingertips.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘Let’s go back to this phone. You say you found it on the foyer floor, the morning after Chris died. Let’s stick with that for now. You’d seen Selena’s secret phone; you knew what it looked like. You had to know this was it.’

  Holly shook her head. ‘I thought it was Alison’s. Selena kept hers down the side of her bed; how would it get to the foyer?’

  ‘You didn’t even ask her?’

  ‘No way. Like I told you, I didn’t want to get into that with her. If I even thought about it – and I don’t remember if I did – I would’ve figured, if it was somehow Selena’s phone, then she’d rather go get it out of the lost-and-found than have to talk about how I knew it was hers and all that crap.’

  Smooth as butter. No one, not even Frank Mackey’s kid, comes up with that kind of good stuff off the top of her head. Holly had been thinking this through, stuck in that common room with wild things zapping the air. Methodically going through everything we could know, working out her answers.

  Some innocent people would do that. Not a lot.

  ‘Makes sense,’ I said. Behind Holly, Mackey had flattened the clay into a disc, was trying to spin it on his finger. ‘Here’s the thing, but. The way our witness tells the story, you didn’t find the phone in the foyer. You had it tucked down your waistband, wrapped in a tissue.’

  Holly’s eyebrows pulling together, baffled. ‘No I didn’t. I mean, I might’ve had a tissue in my hand, everyone was crying—’

  ‘You didn’t like Chris. And you’re not the type to fake a crying fit for someone you didn’t like.’

  ‘I never said I was crying. I wasn’t. I’m saying I might have been giving someone else a tissue, I don’t remember. But I do know the phone was on the floor.’

  I said, ‘I think you took Selena’s phone out from behind her bed and found a good way to ditch it. The lost-and-found bin, that was smart. It worked well. It almost worked for good.’

  Holly’s mouth opened, but I held up my hand. ‘Hang on a sec. Let me finish first, before you tell me if I’m right or wrong. You knew there was a chance we’d search the school. You knew if we found the phone, we’d be talking to Selena. You knew what police questioning is like; let’s face it, there’s better ways to spend your day. You didn’t want Selena put through that, not when she was already traumatised about Chris’s death. So you binned the phone. Does that sound about right?’

  It was an out: an innocent reason why she would have wanted the phone gone. Never take the out. It looks safe as houses. It takes you a step closer to where we want you.

  Mackey said, without glancing up from his new toy, ‘You don’t have to answer that.’

  I said, ‘No reason why you shouldn’t. You think we’re going to press charges against a minor for concealing something that might not even be evidence? We’ve got a lot more on our minds. Your da can tell you himself, Holly: if you’re after something big, you’re happy to let the small stuff slide. This is small stuff
. But we need to clear it up.’

  Holly watched me, not her dad. Thought, or I thought she did, about that moment when she had seen me understand.

  She said, ‘Selena didn’t kill Chris. No way. I never worried that she did, not even for a second. She doesn’t work like that.’ Straight-backed, straight-eyed, trying to shove it into my head. ‘I know you’re thinking Yeah, right. But I’m not just being naïve. I know with most people you don’t have a clue what they’re capable of. I know that.’

  Mackey’s piece of clay had gone still. It was true: Holly did know that.

  ‘But with Selena I do. She wouldn’t have hurt Chris. Ever. I swear to God, it’s totally impossible.’

  I said, ‘Probably you’d have sworn to God that she wouldn’t go out with Chris, either.’

  Twitch of impatience, I was losing cred again. ‘Like that’s the same thing? Come on. Anyway, I don’t expect you to just take my word about what kind of person she is. She actually physically couldn’t have done it. Like I told you, sometimes I can’t sleep. The night Chris died, I was having trouble sleeping. If Selena had gone out, I would’ve known.’

  It was a lie, but I left it. I said, ‘So you ditched the phone.’

  Not a blush on Holly, while she dumped the story she’d told me, all sincerity, about five minutes earlier; not a blink. Daddy’s girl. ‘Yeah. So? If you knew that your friend was about to get in trouble for something she definitely hadn’t even done, you mean you wouldn’t try and get her out of it?’

  I said, ‘I would, yeah. It’s only natural.’

  ‘Exactly. Anybody would, who has any kind of loyalty. So yeah, I did.’

  I said, ‘Thanks. That clears that up. Except for one thing. When did you get the phone out of your room?’

  Holly’s face went still. ‘What?’

  ‘The only thing that’s confusing me. Chris’s body was found at what time?’

  ‘Little after seven-thirty a.m.,’ Conway said. Quietly, staying invisible. I was doing all right.

  ‘And the assembly was when?’