The Secret Place

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?’