The Secret Place

Us, leaving St Kilda’s. The banister-rail arching warm under my hand. The entrance hall, slants of white spilling through the fanlight onto the chequered tiles. Our footsteps, the clear bell-jingle of Conway’s car keys hanging off her finger, the faint slow toll of a great clock striking midnight somewhere, all spiralling up through still air to the invisible ceiling. For one last second, the place we’d come to that morning materialised out of the dark for me: beautiful; whorled and spired of mother-of-pearl and mist; unreachable.

The walk to the car lasted forever. The night was wide open, full to dripping with itself, it smelled of hungry tropical flowers and animal scat and running water. The grounds had gone rogue: every flash of moonlight off a leaf looked like bared white teeth, the tree over the car looked dense with shadow-things hanging ready to drop. Every sound had me leaping around, but there was never anything to see. The place was only mocking or warning, showing me who was boss.

By the time I slammed myself inside the car I was sweating. I thought Conway hadn’t noticed, till she said, ‘I’m only fucking delighted to get out of here.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Same.’

We should’ve been high-fiving, high-stepping, high as kites. I didn’t know how to find that. All I could find was the look on Holly’s face and Julia’s, watching the last shadow of something craved and lost; the distant blue of Selena’s eyes, watching things I couldn’t see; Rebecca’s laugh, too clear to be human. The car was cold.

Conway turned the key, reversed out fast and hard. Pebbles flew up as she hit the drive. She said, ‘I’ll be starting the interview at nine. In Murder. I’d rather have you for backup than one of those dickheads off the squad.’

Roche and the rest of them, putting an extra spike in their jabs now that Conway had got her big solve after all. Ought to be back-slaps and free pints, fair play to you and welcome to the club. It wouldn’t be. If I wanted to be part of the Murder guy-love someday, my best bet was to leg it back to Cold Cases as fast as my tiny toesies would carry me.

I said, ‘I’ll be there.’

‘You’ve earned it. I guess.’

‘Thanks a bunch.’

‘You managed a whole day without fucking up big-time. What do you want, a medal?’

‘I said thanks. What do you want, flowers?’

The gates were closed. The night watchman had missed the long sweep of our headlights all the way down the drive; when Conway beeped, he did a double-take up from his laptop. ‘Useless bollix,’ Conway and I said, in unison.

The gates opened on one long slow creak. The second there was an inch to spare on either side, Conway floored it, nearly took off the MG’s wing mirror. And Kilda’s was gone.

Conway felt in her jacket pocket, tossed something on my lap. The photo of the card. Chris smiling, golden leaves. I know who killed him.

She said, ‘Who’s your money on?’

Even in the dimness, every line of him was packed electric enough with life that he could’ve leapt off the paper. I tilted the photo to the dashboard light, tried to read his face. Tried to see if that smile blazed with the reflection of the girl he was looking at; if it said love

, brand-new and brand-fiery. It kept its secrets.

I said, ‘Selena.’

‘Yeah. Same here.’

‘She knew it was Rebecca, from when Rebecca brought her Chris’s phone. She managed to keep it to herself for a year, but in the end it was wrecking her head so badly she couldn’t take it any more, had to get it out.’

Conway nodded. ‘But she wasn’t about to squeal on her mate. The Secret Place was perfect: get it out of your system, blow off the pressure, without telling anyone anything that mattered. And Selena’s flaky enough, she never realised it’d bring us in. She thought it’d be a day’s worth of gossip, then gone.’

Street lights came and went, flickered Chris in and out of existence. I said, ‘Maybe now she’ll stop seeing him.’

I wanted to hear Conway say it. He’s gone. We dissolved him right out of her mind. Left them both free.

‘Nah,’ Conway said. Hand over hand on the wheel, strong and smooth, arcing us round a corner. ‘The state of her? She’s stuck with him for good.’

The gardens we’d passed that morning were empty, deep under a thick fall of silence. We were metres from a main road, but among all that careful graceful leafiness we were the only thing moving. The MG’s smooth engine sounded rude as a raspberry.

‘Costello,’ Conway said, and left it, like she was deciding whether to keep talking. The people with the five-foot concrete mug-handle had it floodlit; make sure we could all appreciate it twenty-four-seven, or make sure no one nicked it to go with his eight-foot concrete mug.

Conway said, ‘They haven’t replaced him yet.’

‘Yeah. I know.’

‘O’Kelly was talking about July; something about after the mid-year budget. Unless this goes tits-up, I should still be in the good books then. If you were thinking of applying, I could put in a word.’