Chapter 23
The art room was turning chilly. Conway had pulled her chair up the table, next to mine. Bad Cop in the house.
This time she didn’t turn round when Mackey and I came in. Neither did Holly, just kept gouging deep fingernail-curves in her ball of clay and thinking her own things. They hadn’t been listening to each other, not this time; they’d been checking their armour, their weapons, preparing for the moment when we walked back in. Over by the window, the copper-wire school bloomed with a cold shimmer. The moon was high, staring in at us all.
Mackey leaned back on his table again. Every time he shifted, I twitched. All I could think about: what it was, that he was waiting to do. His look, cold and amused, said he hadn’t missed it.
Conway caught my eye, as I sat down beside her. Hers said: Ready. Steady. Go.
She didn’t rewind to where we’d been, to how Holly had to have hated Chris. No point: Mackey had wrecked that moment, nice and thorough. Instead she said, ‘You were right: we’ve narrowed the card down to the eight of you. One of the other seven knows who killed Chris.’
Holly rolled the clay along the table, from hand to hand. ‘Yeah, well. Or at least she says she does.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
Incredulous face. ‘How do I feel ? What is this, Guidance? You want me to draw a picture of my feelings in coloured pencil?’
‘Are you worried?’
‘If I was worried, I wouldn’t have brought you the card to begin with. Duh.’
Too brazen, that hair-flick. Holly was putting it on.
That morning, she’d been grand with the card. Since then, something had happened.
I said, ‘That just means you weren’t worried this morning. How about now?’
‘What would I worry about?’
Conway said, ‘That one of your friends knows something that could put her in danger. Or that someone knows something that you might not want us to find out.’
Holly threw herself back in her chair, hands flying up. ‘Oh my God, look. Nobody in school knows what happened to Chris. Joanne invented the card because she was looking for attention. OK?’
Conway lifted an eyebrow. ‘How come you didn’t say this to Detective Moran when you brought him the card? “Here you go, and by the way, it’s a load of bollix, this girl Joanne Heffernan made it up.” Or did something happen since this morning, to make Joanne into your favourite theory?’
‘Joanne keeps trying to get us into shit, is what’s happened. When you guys showed up, obviously she totally freaked out – she probably wasn’t expecting actual police, because she’s an actual idiot. So she’s spent all day frantically trying to make you look at us, so you won’t figure out what she did and she won’t get in trouble for wasting your time. Why would she be arsed, unless she had something she didn’t want you noticing?’
Conway said, ‘If she wanted to make us look at you and your mates, she’s done a good job.’
‘Yeah, obviously. Or I wouldn’t be sitting here. It never even occurred to you that she might be a huge liar?’
‘I’d say she is, all right. But we don’t need to take her word for anything. Selena meeting Chris, for example: when all we had was Joanne’s word for it, we weren’t too impressed. But then she showed us video. Of the two of them together.’
Something skidding across Holly’s face. Not surprise.
That video was how Holly had known about Chris and Selena.
She said, coolly, ‘What a pervert. I’m not even surprised.’
Conway said, and I felt her mind right there next to mine, ‘Did she show it to you?’
Snort. ‘Yeah, no. Joanne and I don’t share stuff.’
Conway shook her head. ‘I wasn’t thinking about sharing and caring. I was thinking about blackmail.’
Blank. ‘Like how?’
‘Joanne went out with Chris for a while. Before he was with Selena.’
Holly’s eyebrows went up. ‘Yeah? Shame it didn’t work out.’
Still no surprise. I asked, ‘You think Joanne was happy that he dumped her for Selena?’
‘I doubt it. I hope it gave her a brain aneurysm.’
‘Just about,’ Conway said. ‘You know Joanne better than I do. You think it would piss her off enough that she’d want him dead?’
‘Oh yeah. Definitely. Can I go now, and you can bother her instead?’
‘Thing is,’ I said, ‘we’re pretty sure Joanne didn’t actually kill Chris. We’re wondering if she got someone to do it for her.’
‘Orla,’ Holly said promptly. ‘Any dirty work Joanne wants done, she gets Orla to do it.’
Conway was shaking her head. ‘Nah. We’ve got solid evidence that it was one of your four.’
Still nothing out of Mackey, not yet, but his eyes were fixed on Conway. Holly had the same look on her. No more messing with the clay, that was over. She knew: this was the heart of it. She said, ‘Evidence like what?’
‘We’ll get to that. We think maybe Joanne showed that video to one of you four. Told her, “Get rid of Chris for me, or this goes to McKenna and you all get expelled.”’
Conway was leaning in, picking up the rhythm. I eased back, put my head down over my notebook. Left her to it.
Holly’s eyebrows were up. ‘And we just went, “Uhhh, OK, anything you say”? Seriously? If we were that terrified of being expelled, we wouldn’t’ve snuck out to begin with. We’d’ve stayed inside like good little girls.’
‘Not just because you were scared of being expelled. Joanne picked carefully. She picked someone who’d do a lot to protect her mates, who was already frantic about the damage Chris was doing, already hated his guts—’
Conway was ticking off finger after finger, relentless. Holly snapped, ‘I’m not stupid – Dad, leave me alone, I want to say this! If I was going to kill someone, which I didn’t, no way would I do it in some kind of conspiracy with Joanne Heffernan. And be stuck for the rest of my life with that bitch holding that over my head? Do I look brain-dead? No fucking way. No matter what she had on video.’
‘Language,’ said Mackey lazily. Eyes still sparking alert, but there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. His kid was holding her own.
‘Whatever. And before you even start to say, oh, then it could’ve been Julia or Selena or Becca, the exact same thing goes for them. Did we do something to make you think we’re the biggest idiots you’ve ever met? Or what?’
Conway was giving Holly her head, let her get it out of her system. Mackey said, ‘And while we’re on the subject, ignore me if you want, but you’re making this Joanne out to be a pretty big idiot herself. She wants a murder committed, so she asks a cop’s kid? The person most likely to send her straight to jail, do not pass go? Holly: this Joanne, she have any head injuries?’
‘No. She’s a bitch, but she’s not stupid.’
Mackey spread his hands at us: There you go. Conway said, ‘We’re not married to the blackmail motive. There’s plenty of other possibilities.’
She left it till Holly rolled her eyes. ‘Like what?’
‘You told Detective Moran that when you found out what was wrong with Selena, you just stuck your head in the sand and hoped it’d go away. That rings my bullshit alarm. I don’t see you being that much of a wimp. Are you a wimp, yeah?’
‘No. I just didn’t know what to do. Sorry I’m not some kind of genius.’
I’d got to Holly before, from this angle; Conway was banking on getting to her again. Mackey was paying attention.
‘Like you just said, though, you’re not some kind of idiot, either. You wouldn’t freeze up just because you had to deal with something all by yourself. You’re not a baby. Are you?’ It was working. Holly had her arms folded, starting to knot into a furious ball. ‘I think you went to Selena, told her you knew about Chris. I think she told you she was planning on getting back with him. And I think you went, Fuck no. Made a chance to get hold of Selena’s phone, texted Chris to meet up. Probably you just wanted him to leave Selena alone, did you?’
Holly had her face turned away from Conway, staring out the window.
‘How’d you try to convince him? You said before, Chris wasn’t happy that he was never going to get anywhere with you. Did you offer him a swap: leave Selena alone, I’ll make up for it?’
That almost lifted her out of the chair. ‘I’d rather have my skin peeled off than do anything with Chris. Jesus!’
Nothing from Mackey. Holly hadn’t even clocked him on that, and she would have, if she’d hooked up with Chris: talking about your sex life in front of Daddy, that had to get some reaction. She was telling the truth: she’d never touched Chris.
Conway said, ‘Then how’d you go at him?’
Holly bit down on her lip, angry at herself: she’d been got. Turned her face away again, started the ignoring from scratch.
‘Whatever you tried, you gave it a few shots, it didn’t work. Finally you made one more appointment with him. For the sixteenth of May.’
Holly biting her lip harder, stop herself answering. Mackey didn’t move, but he was pulled like a crossbow on the edge of it.
‘This time you weren’t planning on any persuading. You got out early, you got your weapon ready, and when Chris showed up—’
Holly whipped round on Conway. ‘Are you stupid ? I didn’t kill Chris. We can stay here all night and you can come up with four million different reasons I could’ve killed him, and I still won’t have done it. Do you actually think I’m going to get confused enough that in the end I’ll just be like, “OhmyGod, you know what, maybe I totally did climb up a tree and drop a piano on his head because I hated his poncy haircut”?’
Mackey was grinning. ‘Nicely put,’ he told her.
Holly and Conway didn’t even hear him, too focused on each other. ‘If you didn’t,’ Conway said, ‘then you know who did. Why did you hide that phone?’
‘I told you. I didn’t want Selena—’