Secret Place (9780698170285)

by French, Tana

  The look on Holly, that afternoon in the corridor when Alison lost the plot. Scanning faces. For a murderer, I’d thought then. For an informer had never crossed my mind.

  I said, “That’s a lot of balls for a sixteen-year-old.”

  “So? You don’t think she’s got them?”

  No answer to that. It hit me like a mouthful of ice: Conway had had Holly in her sights all along. The second I had shown up in her squad room, all eager, with my little card and my little story, she had started wondering.

  Conway said, “I’m not saying she definitely did the job all by herself. Like we said before, it could’ve been her and Julia and Rebecca together; could’ve been the whole four of them. But whatever went down, Holly was up to her tits in it.”

  “And I’m not saying she wasn’t. I’m just keeping an open mind.”

  Conway had finished labeling the envelope and straightened up, watching me. She said, “You think the same thing. You just don’t like that your Holly had you fooled.”

  “She’s not my Holly.”

  Conway didn’t answer that. She held out the envelope for me to drop in the phone. Let it swing between her fingers. “If this interview is gonna be a problem for you,” she said, “I need to know now.”

  I kept my voice even. “Why would it be a problem?”

  “We’re gonna have to get her da in.”

  No way to pretend Holly wasn’t a suspect. The stupidest detective alive wouldn’t bite on that. Holly’s da isn’t stupid.

  I said, “Yeah. And?”

  “Word on the street is that Mackey’s done you a few favors. I’m not giving you hassle for that; you do what you need to do. But if the two of you are all buddy-buddy, or if you owe him, then you’re not the guy to interrogate his kid for murder.”

  I said, “I don’t owe Mackey anything. And he’s not my buddy.”

  Conway watched me.

  “It’s been years since I even talked to the guy. I came in useful to him once, he’s made sure to be useful to me since—he wants everyone knowing that helping him out pays off. That’s it. End of.”

  “Huh,” Conway said. Maybe she looked satisfied; maybe she just looked like she had decided it might soften Mackey up, having an ally in the room. She sealed off the envelope, shoved it in her satchel with the rest. “I don’t know Mackey. Is he gonna give us hassle?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He will. I wouldn’t say he’ll whip Holly straight off home, tell us to talk to his solicitor; he’s not like that. He’ll fuck with us, but he’ll do it sideways, and he won’t leave unless it looks like we’re getting somewhere. He’ll want to keep us talking till he works out our theory, what we’ve got.”

  Conway nodded. Said, “Got his number?”

  “Yeah.”

  Next second I wished I’d said no, but all Conway said was, “Ring him.”

  Mackey picked up fast. “Stephen, my man! Long time no talk.”

  I said, “I’m at St. Kilda’s.”

  The air sharpened, instantly, to a knifepoint. “What’s happened.”

  “Holly’s fine,” I said, fast. “Totally fine. We just need to have a chat with her, and we figured you’d want to be there.”

  Silence. Then Mackey said, “You don’t say Word One to her till I get there. Not Word One. Have you got that?”

  “Got it.”

  “Don’t forget it. I’m nearby. I’ll be there in twenty.” He hung up.

  I put my phone away. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” I said. “We need to be ready.”

  Conway slammed the panel of the lost-and-found bin, hard. The deep clang shot off into the shadows, took its time dissolving.

  She said, loud, to the high darkness, “We’ll be ready.”

  McKenna launched herself out of the common room at Conway’s knock like she’d been waiting behind the door. The long day and the white light in the corridor weren’t good to her. Her hair was still set solid and the expensive suit hadn’t a crease, but the discreet makeup was wearing off, in clumps. Her wrinkles had got deeper since that morning; her pores looked the size of chicken-pox scars. She had her phone in her hand: still doing damage control, trying to patch leaking seams.

  She was raging. “I have no idea whether your standard procedures involve sending witnesses into hysterics—”

  “We weren’t the ones who kept a dozen teenage girls cooped up all day,” Conway said. Gave the common-room door a slap. “Lovely room and all, but after a few hours the most tasteful decor in the world won’t stop them going stir-crazy. If I were you, I’d make sure they get a chance to stretch their legs before bed, unless you want them going off again at midnight.”

  McKenna’s eyes closed for a second on the thought. “Thank you for your advice, Detective, but I think you’ve done enough already. The students have been cooped up in case you needed to speak with them, and that will no longer be an issue. I would like you to leave now.”

  “Can’t be done,” Conway said. “Sorry. We need a quick word with Holly Mackey. Just waiting for her da to get here.”

  That sent McKenna up another notch. “I gave you permission to speak to our students specifically so you would not need to request parental authorization. Involving the parents is completely unnecessary, it can only complicate the situation both for you and for the school—”

  “Holly’s da’s going to hear all about this anyway, soon as he shows up for work in the morning. Don’t worry: I wouldn’t say he’ll be straight on the phone to the mummy network to pass on the gossip.”

  “Is there any earthly reason why this needs to be done tonight? As you so cleverly pointed out, the students have already had more than enough of this pressure for one day. In the morning—”

  Conway said, “We can talk to Holly in the main school building. Get us out of your hair, let the rest of the girls go back to the normal routine. How’s the art room?”

  McKenna was all monobosom, no lips. “Lights-out is at a quarter to eleven. By that time I expect Holly—and all the other students—to be in their rooms and in bed. If you have further questions for any of them, I assume they can wait until tomorrow morning.” And the common-room door shut in our faces.

  “You have to love the attitude,” Conway said. “Doesn’t give a shite that we could arrest her for obstruction; this is her manor, she’s the boss.”

  I said, “Why the art room?”

  “Keep her thinking about that postcard, remembering there’s someone out there who knows.” Conway tugged the elastic out of what was left of her bun. Hair came down around her shoulders, straight and heavy. “You start us off. Good Cop, nice and gentle, don’t spook her and don’t spook Daddy. Just set up the facts: she was getting out at night, she knew about Chris and Selena, she didn’t like Chris. Try and fill in the details: why she didn’t like him, whether she discussed the relationship with the others. When you need Bad Cop, I’ll come in.”

  A couple of fast twists of her wrists, a snap of hairband, and the bun was in place, smooth and glossy as marble. Her shoulders had straightened; even the scoured look had fallen away from her face. Conway was ready.

  The common-room door opened. Holly in the doorway, with McKenna behind her. Ponytail, jeans, a turquoise hoodie with sleeves that hid her hands.

  I’d been thinking of her all snap and sheen, but that was gone. She was white and ten years older, daze-eyed, like someone had shaken her world like a snow globe and nothing was coming down in the same places. Like she had been so confident she was doing everything right, and all of a sudden nothing looked that simple any more.

  It turned me cold. I couldn’t look at Conway. Didn’t need to; I knew she’d seen it too.

  Holly said, “What’s going on?”

  I remembered her nine years old, so stiff with courage she would break your heart. I said, “Your dad’s on his way. I’d say he�
��d rather we don’t talk till he gets here.”

  That burned off the daze. Holly’s head went back in exasperation. “You called my dad? Come on!”

  I didn’t answer. Holly saw the look on me and closed her mouth. Disappeared behind the smoothness of her face, innocent and secretive all at once.

  “Thanks,” Conway said to McKenna. To me and Holly: “Let’s go.”

  The long corridor we’d walked down that morning, to find the Secret Place. Then it had been humming with sun and busyness; now—Conway passed the light switch without a glance—it was twilit and sizeless. Evening through the window behind us gave us faint shadows, me and Conway stretched even taller on either side of the straight slip of Holly, like guards with a hostage. Our steps echoed like marching boots.

  The Secret Place. In that light it looked like it was rippling, just off the corner of your vision, but it had lost that boil and jabber. All you could almost hear off it was a long murmur made of a thousand muffled whispers, all begging you to hear. A new postcard had a photo of one of those gold living statues you get on Grafton Street; the caption said, They terrify me!

  The art room. Not morning-fresh and rising with sunlight now. The overhead lights left murky corners; the green tables were smeared with shreds of clay, Conway’s balls of paper were still tumbled under chairs. McKenna must have canceled the cleaners. Battening down the school as tight as she could, everything under control.

  Outside the tall windows the moon was up, full and ripe against a dimming blue. On the table against them, that morning’s drop cloth had been pulled away, not put back. Where it had been was the whole school in miniature, in fairy-tale, in the finest curlicues of copper wire.

  I said, “That. Is that the project you were working on last night?”

  Holly said, “Yeah.”

  Close up, it looked too delicate to stay standing. The walls were barely sketched, just the odd line of wire; you could look straight through them, to wire desks, ragged cloth blackboards scribbled with words too small to read, high-backed wire armchairs cozy around a fire of tissue-paper coals. It was winter; snow was piled on the gables, around the bases of the columns and the wine-jar curves of the balustrade. Behind the building, a lawn of snowdrift trailed off the edge of the base board into nothing.

  I said, “That’s here, yeah?”

  Holly had moved in, hovering, like I might smash it. “It’s Kilda’s a hundred years ago. We researched what it used to be like—we got old photos and everything—and then we built it.”

  The bedrooms: tiny copper-wire beds, wisps of tissue paper for sheets. In the boarders’ wing and the nuns’, fingernail-length parchment scrolls swung in the windows, from threads fine as spider web. “What are the bits of paper?” I asked. My breath set them spinning.

  “The names of people who were listed living here in the 1911 census. We don’t actually know who had what room, obviously, but we went on what age they were and the order they were listed in—like probably friends would be one after the other, because they would’ve been sitting together. One girl was called Hepzibah Cloade.”

  Conway was spinning chairs into place around one of the long tables. One for Holly. One six feet down the table: Mackey. She brought them down hard, flat bangs on the lino.

  I said, “Whose idea was it?”

  Holly shrugged. “All of ours. We were talking about the girls who went to school here a hundred years ago—if they ever thought about the same things as us, stuff like that; what they did when they grew up. If any of their ghosts ever came back. Then we thought of this.”

  Chair across the table from Holly, for me. Bang. Chair opposite Mackey, for Conway. Bang.

  Four scrolls hanging in the air above the main staircase. I said, “Who’re those?”

  “Hepzibah and her friends. Elizabeth Brennan. Bridget Marley. Lillian O’Hara.”

  “Where are they going?”

  Holly reached between wires and touched the scrolls with the tip of her little finger, set them whirling. She said, “We don’t even know for sure they were friends. They could’ve all hated each other’s guts.”

  I said, “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah,” Conway said. Like a warning. “It is.”

  From behind us: “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Mackey, in the doorway. Leaning back on his heels, bright blue eyes scanning, hands in the pockets of his brown leather jacket. Barely changed from the first time I’d seen him; the long fluorescents picked out deeper crows’ feet, more gray mixed in with the brown, but that was all.

  “Hiya, chickadee,” he said. “How’s tricks?”

  “OK,” Holly said. She looked at least half glad to see him, which is pretty good for a sixteen-year-old’s daddy. Another thing that hadn’t changed much: Mackey and Holly made a good team.

  “What’ve you been chatting about?”

  “Our art project. Don’t worry, Dad.”

  “Just making sure you haven’t made mincemeat of these nice people while I wasn’t there to protect them.” Mackey switched to me. “Stephen. Too long no see.” He came forward, held out his hand. Firm handshake, friendly smile. At least to start with, we were going to play this like everything was hunky-dory, all friends together, all on the same side.

  I said, “Thanks for coming in. We’ll try not to keep you too long.”

  “And Detective Conway. Nice to meet you, after all the good things I’ve heard. Frank Mackey.” A smile that was used to getting a response, got none off her. “Let’s step outside while you brief me.”

  “You’re not here as a detective,” Conway said. “We’ve got that covered. Thanks.”

  Mackey tossed me an eyebrow-lift and grin: Who pissed in her cornflakes? I got caught, not sure whether to smile back or not—with Mackey, you never know what he could turn into ammo. The paralyzed gawp on me just made his grin get bigger.

  He said to Conway, “Then if I’m just here as a daddy, I’d like a quick chat with my daughter.”

  “We need to get started. You can have a chat when we take a break.”

  Mackey didn’t argue. Probably Conway thought that meant she’d won. He wandered off around the room, past the chair we’d set out for him, having a look at the art projects. Gave Holly’s hair a quick rub on his way. “Do us a favor, sweetheart. Before you answer any of the lovely detectives’ questions, give me a fast rundown of what we’re doing here.”

  Shutting her down would wreck the vibe right there. Conway’s look said she was starting to see what I meant about Mackey. Holly said, “This morning I found a card on the Secret Place. It had a photo of Chris Harper and it said, ‘I know who killed him.’ I took it to Stephen, and they’ve been hanging around here all day. They just keep interviewing all of us and all of Joanne Heffernan’s idiots, so I think they narrowed it down to one of us eight must’ve put the card up.”

  “Interesting,” Mackey said. Leaned over, examined the wire school from different angles. “That’s coming along nicely. Anyone else’s parents get brought in?”

  Holly shook her head.

  “Professional courtesy,” Conway said.

  “Makes me feel all warm and squishy,” Mackey said. He pulled himself up onto a windowsill, one foot swinging. “You remember the deal here, sweetheart, am I right? Answer what you want to, leave what you don’t. You want to discuss something with me before you answer it, we’ll do that. Anything upsets you or makes you uncomfortable, tell me and we’ll make tracks. That all sound OK?”

  “Dad,” Holly said. “I’m fine.”

  “I know you are. Just laying out the ground rules, so everyone’s clear.” He winked at me. “Keeps everything nice, amn’t I right?”

  Conway swung a leg over her chair. Said, to Holly, “You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidenc
e. Got it?”

  You try to keep it casual, the caution, but it changes the room. Mackey’s face giving away nothing. Holly’s eyebrows pulling together: this was new. “What . . . ?”

  Conway said, “You’ve been keeping stuff to yourself. That makes us get careful.”

  I took my seat, opposite Holly. Held out a hand to Conway. She sent the lost-and-found phone, in its evidence bag, shooting down the table.

  I passed it over to Holly. “Ever seen this before?”

  A puzzled second; then Holly’s face cleared. “Yeah. It’s Alison’s.”

  “No. She has one the same, but that’s not it.”

  Shrug. “Then I don’t know whose it is.”

  “That’s not what I need to know. I’m asking if you’ve seen it before.”

  Longer puzzled look, slow headshake. “Don’t think so.”

  I said, “We have a witness who saw you drop it in the lost-and-found bin, the day after Chris Harper died.”

  Total blank; then realization dawned across Holly’s face. “Oh my God, that! I’d totally forgotten that. Yeah. We had a special assembly that morning, so McKenna could give us this big speech about a tragedy and assisting the police and whatever.” Talky-mouth hand sign. “At the end we were all coming out of the hall into the foyer, and that phone was on the floor. I thought it was Alison’s, but I couldn’t see her; everything was a mess, everyone was talking and crying and hugging, the teachers were all trying to get us to shut up and go back to our classrooms . . . I just shoved the phone into the lost-and-found bin. I figured Alison could get it herself; not my problem. If it wasn’t hers, then whose was it?”

  Flawless, even better than the real thing. And—clever clever girl—her story kept the whole school in the frame for having owned the phone. Conway’s jaded look said she’d spotted the same thing.

  I took the phone back. Put it to one side, for later. Didn’t answer Holly’s question, but she didn’t push.

  I said, “Julia and Selena must’ve told you: we know you guys used to get out at night, last year.”

  Holly shot a fast glance at Mackey. “Don’t worry about me, chickadee,” he said, pleasant grin. “My statute of limitation’s run out on that one. You’re OK.”