The Secret Place

She nodded. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ She saw me shift, Easy for you to say. ‘Seriously. They won’t say anything. The amount we’ve got on them, they’d have to be mental to try and fuck with us. You think they want McKenna knowing about the diet pills? The sneaking out at night?’

‘They might not think that far.’

Conway snorted. ‘They’re experts on thinking that far. That’s what they do.’ More seriously, whatever she saw in my face: ‘They’re scary fuckers, but we’ve got them pinned down. OK?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. The way she said it – scary fuckers – like she knew, like she’d been there: that was what helped, more than the reassurance. ‘OK.’

‘Good.’ Conway clapped me on the shoulder. Awkward as a boy, but her hand felt strong and steady. ‘Fair play to you.’

I said, ‘It’s not enough. We’ve got enough to arrest Rebecca, but the DPP won’t charge her on this. If she doesn’t confess-’

Conway was shaking her head. ‘Not even enough for an arrest. If she was some skanger kid, then yeah, sure, haul her in and see how far we get. But a girl from Kilda’s? We arrest her, we have to be able to charge her. No ifs. Otherwise we’re fucked. O’Kelly’s gonna pop a vein, McKenna’s gonna pop a vein, the Commissioner’s phone’s gonna be ringing off the hook, the media’ll scream cover-up, and we’ll be sharing a desk in Records till we retire.’ That bitter curl to her mouth. ‘Unless you’ve got friends in high places.’

‘That was the best I’d got.’ I nodded upwards, towards the art room. ‘And I’d say that’s well scuppered now.’

That got part of a laugh. ‘Then we need more on Rebecca. And we need it fast. We have to get her in custody tonight, or we’re fucked. Julia and Holly, they’re both smart enough to figure out where this is going – if they don’t already know.’

I said, ‘Holly knows.’

‘Yeah. We leave the four of them together overnight, they’ll talk. We’ll come back tomorrow morning and they’ll have their stories all nice and matched up, butter won’t melt, they’ll have worked out exactly where to lie and where to keep their mouths shut. Not a chance in hell we’ll crack them.’

I said, ‘We won’t crack Holly now. She’s given us everything she’s going to.’

Conway was shaking her head again. ‘Forget her. And Selena. We need Julia.’

I remembered what she had said earlier: This year Julia’s watching us like we’re actual people, you and me. And then: I can’t work out if that’s gonna be a good thing or a bad one.

‘Mackey and Holly,’ I said. ‘Leave them where they are, yeah?’

‘Yeah. We might need them again, and we don’t want them running around getting in our way. If they don’t like it-’

This time we both froze. Only a few yards behind us, round the front of the boarders’ wing, someone’s foot had slid on pebbles.

Conway’s eyes met mine. She mouthed Mackey.

We moved fast and silent, swung round the corner together. The carriage sweep was wide and white, empty. The grass was bare. In the dark crack of the door, nothing moved.

Conway cupped a forearm round her eyes, blocking out the floodlights, and squinted into the trees. Nothing.

‘D’you know where Julia is?’

‘Didn’t see them. They’re not on the back lawn.’

She eased back into the shadow. Said, for no one farther than me, ‘They’ll be in that glade.’

We were both half-thinking about sneaking up on them, having a quick eavesdrop, see if they were talking hoes and texts and Chris. Not a hope. That pretty little woodlandy path, the one we’d walked that morning: the trees touching above it slashed the light to scraps, left us fumbling. We went crashing along like Land Rovers, twigs snapping, branches flapping, birds losing the head everywhere.

‘Jesus,’ Conway hissed, when I went in a bush up to my knee. ‘Did you never do Boy Scouts, no? Go camping?’

‘Where I’m from? No, I bleeding didn’t. You want me to hotwire a car, no problem.’

‘I can do that myself. I want some woodcraft.’

‘You want some posh bastard who went pheasant-shooting every-’ I caught my foot in something, shot forward flailing. Conway grabbed my elbow before I went on my snot. We snorted with giggles like a pair of kids, sleeves over our mouths, trying to glare each other silent.

‘Shut up-’

‘Fuck’s sake-’

Only made us worse. We’d gone giddy: the moon-stripes swirling the ground under our feet, the spin of rustles spreading out all around us; the hard weight of what we were going to have to do at the end of the path. I was only waiting to see Chris Harper leaping wide-mouthed like a wildcat off a branch in front of us, couldn’t tell if we’d scream like teenage girls or whip out our guns and blow his ghostly arse away-

‘State of you-’

‘Look who’s talking-’

Around a bend, out from under the trees.

Smell of hyacinths.