Secret Place (9780698170285)

by French, Tana

  Selena raised her fingers to Chris’s cheek, and his eyes closed. Moonlight ran down her arm like water. They moved closer, faces tilting together, lips opening.

  Beep, end of the video.

  “So,” Joanne said. “Is that, like, enough evidence that Selena and all of them had a key? And that she was doing it with Chris?”

  Conway took the phone off me and messed with it, hitting buttons. Joanne flipped out a palm. “Excuse me, that’s mine?”

  “You’ll get it back when I’m done.” Joanne tsked and threw herself back against the wall. Conway ignored her. To me: “Twenty-third of April. Ten to one in the morning.”

  Three and a half weeks before Chris died. I said, “So you and Gemma saw Selena leaving her room, and you followed her?”

  “Gemma saw them out in the grounds by accident the first time, like a week before—she was meeting some guy, I don’t even remember who. After that, we took turns watching the corridor at night.” Grim project-manager voice on Joanne; I could picture her going for the jugular if one of the others had the nerve to doze off at her post. “This night, Alison saw Selena sneak out of their room, so she woke me up and I followed Selena.”

  “You brought Gemma along?”

  “Um, I wasn’t exactly about to go out there by myself? And anyway, I needed Gemma to show me where they were having their little make-out sessions. By the time we got dressed, Selena was well gone. She couldn’t wait to get the action started. Some people are just sluts.”

  More midnight traffic than a train station, these grounds. McKenna was in for a coronary if she ever heard this. “So you tracked them down,” I said, “and you filmed this clip. Just the one?”

  “Yeah. That’s not enough for you?”

  “What happened after you stopped filming?”

  Joanne prissed up her mouth. “We went back in. I wasn’t going to stand there and watch them do it. I’m not a perv.”

  Conway’s phone buzzed. “Sent myself the video,” she told me. To Joanne: “Here.” She tossed the mobile over.

  Joanne made a big deal of wiping off the working-class germs on her duvet. I asked, “What were you planning to do with this clip?”

  Shrug. “I hadn’t decided yet.”

  Conway said, “Wild guess. You used it to blackmail Selena into dumping Chris. ‘Stay away from him, or this goes to McKenna.’”

  Joanne’s top lip pulled up, that near-animal snarl. “Um, excuse me, no I didn’t?”

  I said—leaning forward, move her off Conway—“It would’ve been for Selena’s own good if you had. That there, that wasn’t the healthiest way for her to be spending her nights.”

  Joanne thought that over, decided she liked it. Did something with her face that was meant to look virtuous, came out looking stuffed. “Well. I would’ve if I’d had to. But I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “That”—Joanne flicked a finger at the phone—“that was the last time Selena and Chris met up. I’d already had a chat with Julia, and after this she sorted it out. End of.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Well, I didn’t, like, take Julia’s word for it, if that’s what you mean. I’m not stupid. That’s why I got the video: just in case she needed a little nudgie. We watched the corridor for weeks after, and Selena never went out on her own. The four of them still went out together, to do whatever they did out there—I heard they’re witches, so maybe they were like sacrificing a cat or something, I literally don’t even want to know?” Exaggerated wiggle of disgust. “And Julia went out a couple of times—she had this thing with Finn Carroll, which, I mean, nobody actually wants to be with a ginger but I guess if you look like Julia you take whatever you can get. But Selena had stopped going. So obviously her and Chris had broken up. Like, surprise?”

  “Any idea who did the breaking?”

  Shrug. “Do I look like I care? I mean, obviously I hoped for Chris’s sake that he’d suddenly got some standards, but . . . Guys: they only care about one thing. If Chris was getting it off Selena, and he didn’t have to, like, be seen with her, why would he dump her? So I figure it had to be Selena. Either Julia knocked some sense into her, or else Selena copped that, hello, Chris was only using her for an easy you-know-what and a pig like her was never going to be his actual girlfriend.”

  Chris’s face bent over Selena’s, holy with wonder. He’d been good, but that good?

  “Why didn’t you want them going out together?” I asked.

  Joanne said coolly, “I don’t like her. OK? I don’t like any of them. They’re a bunch of freaks, and they act like that’s totally OK; like they’re so special, they can just do whatever they want. I thought Selena should find out that it doesn’t work like that. Like you said, I was actually doing her a favor.”

  I did puzzled. “You were fine with Julia and Finn, but. Any particular reason why Selena and Chris was a problem?”

  Shrug. “Finn was OK, if you go for that kind of thing, but he wasn’t a big deal. Chris was. Everyone was into him. I wasn’t going to let Selena think someone like her had a right to get someone like that. Hello, Earth calling whale: just because you do whatever disgusting stuff you did to even get Chris to look at you, that doesn’t mean you get to keep him.”

  I said, “It wasn’t because you’d been going out with Chris, just a few months earlier.”

  Joanne didn’t miss a beat. Gusty sigh, eye-roll. “Hello, haven’t we been over this already? Am I imagining things? Am I out of my mind? I never went out with Chris. Only in his dreams.”

  Conway lifted the evidence bag with Alison’s phone, waggled it at Joanne. “Try again.”

  Half a second where Joanne went rigid. Then she turned her head away from Conway, folded her arms deliberately.

  “Oh, ouch,” Conway said, hand to her heart. “That’s put me in my place.”

  “Joanne,” I said, leaning in. “I know this is none of our business, or anyway it wouldn’t be normally. But if you were close enough to Chris that he might have told you anything that could be important, then we need to know. Make sense?”

  Joanne thought. I could see her trying out the star-witness seat, liking the feel.

  I said, “That phone that my partner’s got, that was yours till you sold it to Alison. And we’ve got records of a million texts back and forth between that number and Chris’s secret phone.”

  Joanne sighed. “OK,” she said. “All right.”

  She rearranged herself on the edge of the bed. Hands folded, ankles crossed, eyes down. She was getting into character: bereaved girlfriend. “Chris and I were together. For a couple of months, the autumn before last.”

  It practically exploded out of her. She’d been only dying to tell, for a year now. Held it in because it might get her suspected, because she didn’t want to admit she’d been dumped, because we were adults and the enemy, who knew. Finally, we’d given her the excuse to talk.

  “But he never said anything about, like, having an enemy or anything. And he would’ve told me. Like you said, we were really close.”

  “Is that what you used that key for?” I asked. “Going out at night to meet Chris, yeah?”

  Joanne shook her head. “I only got the key after we split up. And anyway, he couldn’t get out at night either. I mean, obviously he found some way later, because he was meeting that fat cow, but he couldn’t when we were together.”

  “And he had a secret phone specially for texting you, as well?”

  “Yeah. He said the guys at Colm’s went through each other’s phones all the time, looking for sexts or photos—you know, photos? From girls?” Meaningful stare. I nodded. “Chris said the priests did it too—some of them are such perverts, it’s just eww. I was like, ‘Hello, if you think you’re getting pictures of my la-la, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to work a little harder than that?’ But it wasn’t
like that; Chris just wasn’t going to have anyone reading my texts. Anything I said meant too much to him to have some D-head leching over them.”

  I caught a glance off Conway. Chris had been good, all right. “What kind of phone was it?” I asked. “Did you ever see it?”

  Misty smile, reminiscent. “Exactly like my one, only red. ‘A matching pair,’ that’s what Chris said. ‘Like us.’”

  Conway’s eye said Puke. “How come all the secrecy?” I asked. “Why not just tell everyone you were together?”

  That made Joanne move, a defensive jerk: the secret hadn’t been her idea. She took a breath and got back in character. “I mean, this wasn’t just some stupid shallow teenage thing. We had something special, me and Chris. It was so intense, it was like, ohmyGod, something out of a song? People wouldn’t have understood; they literally wouldn’t have been able to get it. I mean, obviously we were going to tell them anyway, in a while. Just not yet.”

  Coming out too pat and brittle, learned off by heart. The lines Chris had given her, that she’d told herself over and over to make it feel OK.

  I asked, “It wasn’t because there was someone specific who Chris didn’t want finding out? A jealous ex, something like that?”

  “No. I mean . . .” Joanne thought about that, liked it. “There could’ve been. I mean, lots of people would’ve been so jel if they’d known. But he never mentioned anyone.”

  “How’d you manage to meet up in secret, if you couldn’t get out at night?”

  “At the weekends, mostly. Sometimes in the afternoons, between classes and study period, but it was hard finding a place where we wouldn’t get spotted. This one time, you know the little park down past the Court? It was November, so it was dark early and the park was closed, but me and Chris climbed over the railings. There’s this little roundabout, for kids; we sat on that and . . .”

  Joanne was half smiling, unconsciously, remembering. “I was there, ‘OhmyGod, I can’t believe I’m doing this, climbing around in the dark like some skanger; you’d better buy me something nice after this,’ but I was just joking. It was actually . . . fun. We were laughing so hard. We had fun, that day.”

  A wisp of a laugh. A frail thing, lost, drifting between the slick posters and the makeup-smeared tissues. Not a laugh she’d learned off some reality star and practiced; just her, missing that day.

  Here was why she had needed to see Selena and Chris through a dirty snicker and a gagging noise. That was the only way she could stand to look.

  I said, “So what happened? You were together a couple of months, you said. Why’d you split up?”

  That slammed Joanne shut again. Fake stare clanging into place, vein of hurt vanished behind it. “I broke up with him. I feel sooo terrible about it now—”

  “Ah-ah,” Conway said, waving the bag again. “That’s not what this says.”

  “You kept texting him and ringing him after he stopped answering,” I explained. Joanne’s mouth thinned. “What happened?”

  She got on top of that one faster than I expected. With another sigh: “Well. Chris got frightened of his feelings. I mean, like I already told you, what we had was totally special? Like really intense?” Wide earnest eyes, parted lips, voice pitched high. She was being someone off the telly; I hadn’t a clue who, don’t watch the right stuff. “And a lot of guys can’t cope with that. I think Chris was just kind of immature. If he was alive, then probably by now we’d be . . .” Another sigh. Gaze drifting off, at a picturesque angle, into the might-have-beens.

  “You must’ve been well annoyed with him,” I said.

  Joanne flicked hair. With an edge to her voice: “Um, I so didn’t care?”

  I went puzzled. “Seriously? I wouldn’t’ve thought you were used to being dumped. You are, yeah?”

  More edge. The wide-eyed thing was wearing off fast. “No, I’m not. Nobody’s ever dumped me.”

  “Except Chris.”

  “Well, I was about to dump him anyway. That’s why I said—”

  “How come? I thought the relationship was great, he just got overloaded ’cause he was immature. But you’re not immature, are you?”

  “No. I just—” Joanne was thinking fast. Hand going to her heart: “I knew it was more than he could handle. I was going to set him free. ‘If you love something—’”

  “Then why’d you keep texting him after he stopped texting you?”

  “I was just telling him. That I understood, you know, how it was too intense? That, I mean, I wasn’t going to wait for him or anything, but I hoped we could be friends. Stuff like that. I can’t remember.”

  “Not giving out to him, no? Because we’ve got someone pulling the actual texts. We’ll be able to read them any minute.”

  “I don’t remember. I guess I could’ve been a teeny bit startled, but I wasn’t angry or anything.”

  Conway shifted her back against the wall. Warning me: if I pushed this any harder, we were over that line and into inadmissible.

  “I understand,” I said. Leaned in, hands clasped. “Joanne. Listen to me.” I put that epic ring back into my voice: a speech to inspire the brave young heroine. “You had the key. You believed your relationship with Chris wasn’t over. You kept an eye on Chris when he came into the grounds at night. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  That flat stare turned wary. Joanne shrugged.

  “I think you were out there the night he died, and I think you saw something. No”—I raised a hand, masterful—“let me finish. Maybe you’re protecting someone. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you don’t want to believe what you saw. I’m sure you’ve got a good reason for saying you weren’t there.”

  Conway, in the corner of my eye, giving me a sliver of a nod. We were back on safe ground. If Joanne repeated that speech to her counsel someday, it said witness, loud and clear. But if it worked, if she admitted to being at the scene, she crossed over the line to suspect, no leeway left.

  “But I’m also sure, Joanne, I’m just as sure that you saw something, or heard something. You know who killed Chris Harper.” I let my voice rise. “Time to stop hiding it. You heard what Detective Conway said, earlier. It’s time to tell us—before we find out on our own, or someone else does. Now.”

  Joanne wailed, “But I don’t! Honest to God, I swear, I didn’t go out that night! I hadn’t been out in weeks.”

  “You’re trying to tell me you didn’t have anyone to meet? Almost six months after Chris dumped you, you were still single?”

  “Not still—I went out with Oisín O’Donovan for a while, you can ask anyone, but I dumped him weeks before Chris happened! Ask him. I wasn’t out that night. I don’t know anything. I swear!”

  Huge-eyed, hand-wringing, all the trimmings: the way she’d learned that innocent looked, off the telly or wherever. Truth or lie, it would look exactly the same.

  Another minute and she’d be scrunching up her face, trying to cry. Conway’s eye said Kill it.

  I eased back, on the soft intimate squash of Gemma’s bed. Joanne drew a long shaky breath, snatched a sideways glance at me to make sure I’d caught it.

  “OK,” I said. “OK, Joanne. Thank you.”

  Joanne and her shorts headed back to the common room. Her arse watched us watching her, same as Julia’s, only not the same at all.

  “That’s one pissed-off little geebag,” Conway said, tinge of enjoyment. She was leaning a shoulder against the wall of the corridor, hands in her pockets. “She can spin it however she wants: she was well fucked off with Chris Harper.”

  “Fucked off enough to kill him?”

  “Sure. She’d’ve loved to. But . . .”

  Silence. Neither of us wanted to say it.

  “If she could’ve pushed a button,” I said. “Stuck a pin in a voodoo doll. Then yeah.”

  “Yeah. Like that.” Finger-snap. “But heading o
ut there in the dark, smacking him in the head with a hoe . . . I can’t see Joanne taking that kind of risk. She wouldn’t even go after Selena without dragging Gemma along. Very careful of herself, our Joanne. And she doesn’t step outside her comfort zone. Fuck.”

  “The card could still be her.” I heard the silver-lining note in my voice, waited for another Pollyanna jab. Didn’t get it.

  “If it is, she’s trying to steer us towards Selena. Now there’s revenge. You rob my fella, I’ll frame you for murder.”

  “Or towards Julia,” I said. “She made sure to tell us Julia was sneaking out right up until the murder, did you notice?”

  “Julia and Finn,” Conway said. Forehead-smack. “I knew there had to be a reason why Finn decided to hotwire the fire door all of a sudden. He wouldn’t say. I should’ve known. Same as everything fucking else today.”

  I said, “Why was everyone keeping their love lives secret, but? When I was a young fella, if you had a girlfriend, you told the world. Did girls keep this stuff under wraps, when you were that age?”

  “Fuck, no. That was half the point of going out with someone to begin with: show everyone that you had a fella. That meant you were a success, not some pathetic single loser. You’d shout it from the rooftops.”

  “And this generation, they care a lot less about privacy than we did. Everything goes online, unless it’s embarrassing or it’ll get them in trouble.”

  A kid came out of the third-year common room and headed towards the jacks, frantically trying to check us out without looking at us. Conway swung back into Joanne and Company’s room, kicked the door shut. “Even then. My cousin’s kid had a pregnancy scare; what’s the first thing she did? Put it on Facebook. Then got pissed off with her ma for finding out.”

  “And they weren’t shy about telling us who they’re going out with now,” I said. “Joanne gave us the bit of hassle, but that was just to be a bitch to you, not because she actually wanted to keep it secret. So what was different last year?”

  Conway had started pacing circles around the room again. Whatever poor bastard ended up partnered with her, he was going to spend a lot of his time dizzy. “That crap Joanne gave us, about her and Chris keeping it to themselves because they were sooo intense or whatever the fuck. You believe that?”