Alison said, ‘The lost-and-found bin’s in the foyer, right at the door of reception. It’s this big black bin with a hole at the top, so you can put things in but you can’t get them out? You have to go to Miss O’Dowd or Miss Arnold and they have the key. We were going past reception, and Holly kind of ran her hand across the bin – like she was just doing it for no reason, she didn’t even look at it, but then the phone wasn’t in her hand any more. Just the tissue.’
I saw Conway’s eyes close for a second on the Should’ve searched. She said, from her corner, ‘How come you didn’t say this to me last year?’
Alison flinched. ‘I didn’t know it had anything to do with Chris! I never thought—’
‘Course you didn’t,’ I said soothingly. ‘You’re grand. When did you start to wonder?’
‘Just a couple of months ago. Joanne was . . . I’d done something she didn’t like, and she said, “I should call the detectives and tell them your phone used to text with Chris Harper. You’d get in sooo much trouble.” I mean, she was just saying it, she wouldn’t have actually done it?’
Alison was looking anxious. ‘Course not,’ I said, all understanding. Joanne would’ve dropped Alison in a shredder feet first, if it had suited her.
‘But I started thinking. Like, “OhmyGod, what if they actually did look at my phone, they’d totally think I’d been with Chris!” And then I thought about that phone I saw Holly with. And I went, like, “What if she was getting rid of it because she was scared of the same thing?” And then I was like, “OhmyGod, what if she actually was with Chris?”’
I said, ‘Did you talk about it to Holly? Or anyone else?’
‘OhmyGod, no way, not to Holly! I said it to Gemma. I thought she’d know what to do.’
‘Gemma’s smart, all right.’ Which she was. Alison hadn’t worked out that the phone might have been Selena’s. Gemma would have. ‘What’d she say?’
Alison squirmed. Down to her lap: ‘She said it was none of our business. To just shut up and forget the whole thing.’
Conway shaking her head, jaw clenched. I said, ‘And you tried. But you couldn’t manage.’
Head-shake.
I said, ‘So you made that card. Put it up on the Secret Place.’
Alison stared, bewildered. Shook her head.
‘Nothing wrong with that. It was a good idea.’
‘But I didn’t! I swear to God, I didn’t!’
I believed her. No reason she would lie, not now. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK.’
Conway said, ‘Well done, Alison. Probably you were right to begin with and it’s nothing to do with Chris, but Detective Moran and I will have a chat with Holly, clear it up. First we’ll take you back down to Miss Arnold. You’re looking a bit pale.’
Keep her isolated, so she couldn’t spread the story. I stood up, kept my smile nailed in place. One of my feet had gone to sleep.
Alison pulled herself up by the banister rail, but she stayed there, holding onto it with both thin hands. In the white air her face looked greenish. She said, to Conway, ‘Orla told us about that case you did. With the—’ A shudder twisted her. ‘The, the dog. The ghost dog.’
‘Yeah,’ Conway said. More hair had come out of her bun. ‘Nasty one, that was.’
‘Once the guy confessed. Did the dog – did it keep coming back for him?’
Conway examined her. Said, ‘Why?’
Alison’s face looked bonier, fallen in. ‘Chris,’ she said. ‘In there, in the common room. He was there. In the window.’
Her certainty hooked me in the spine, pulled a shiver. The hysteria rising up again, somewhere behind the air: gone for now, not for good.
‘Yeah,’ Conway said. ‘I got that.’
‘Yeah, but . . . he was there because of me. Earlier, too, out here in the corridor. He came to get me, because I hadn’t told you about Holly with the phone. In the common room’ – she swallowed – ‘he was looking right at me. Grinning at—’ Another shudder, rougher, wrenching at her breath. ‘If you hadn’t come in then, if you hadn’t . . . Is he . . . is he going to come back for me?’
Conway said, stern, ‘Have you told us everything? Every single thing you know?’
‘I swear. I swear.’
‘Then Chris won’t be coming back for you. He might hang around the school, all right, because there’s plenty of other people keeping secrets that he wants them to tell us. But he won’t be back for you. You probably won’t even be able to see him any more.’
Alison’s mouth opened and a little rush of breath came out. She looked relieved, right to the bone, and she looked disappointed.
Far away down the corridor, through the silence, a long soft wail. For a second I thought it was coming from a girl, or something worse, but it was only the creak of the common-room door opening.
McKenna said, and I know a deeply fucked-off woman when I hear one, ‘Detectives. If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to speak with you. Now.’
‘We’ll be there in ten minutes,’ Conway said. To McKenna, but she was looking at me. Those dark eyes, and the silence falling like snow between us, so thick I couldn’t read them.
To me: ‘Time to go.’