Tana French - The Secret Place

‘Costello, I do. He’s no genius, but he’s sound enough, gets the job done. Your woman Conway, I only know what I’ve heard. She sounds OK. No idiot, anyway.’

‘Were you talking to them?’

‘Checked in with Costello on my way up. Just to make it clear that I won’t be stepping on their toes. I’m here as a dad, not a detective.’

Holly asks, ‘What’d they say?’

Dad takes the stairs at an easy jog. He says, ‘You know the drill. Anything they tell me, I can’t tell you.’

He can be a dad all he wants; he’s always a detective too. ‘Why? I’m not a witness.’

This time, says the space in the air when she stops.

‘We don’t know that yet. Neither do you.’

‘Yeah, I do.’

Dad lets that lie. He holds the front door open for her. The air spreading its arms to them is soft, stroking their cheeks with sweet greens and golds; the sky is holiday-blue.

When they’re down the steps and crunching across the white pebbles, Dad says, ‘I’d like to believe that if you knew anything – anything at all, even something that was probably nothing – you’d tell me.’

Holly rolls her eyes. ‘I’m not stupid .’

‘Farthest thing from it. But at your age, going by what I remember from a few hundred years ago, keeping your mouth shut around adults is a reflex. A good one – nothing wrong with learning to sort stuff out by yourselves – but it’s one that can go too far. Murder isn’t something you and your mates can sort. That’s the detectives’ job.’

Holly knows it already. Her bones know it: they feel slight and bendy as grass stalks, no core to them. She thinks of Selena, rag-dolled in that chair. Things need doing, things she can’t even get hold of. She wants to lift Selena up, put her in Dad’s arms and say Take good care of her.

She feels Joanne behind her, high in the library window. Her stare zipping through the sunlit air to fingernail-pinch the back of Holly’s neck, twisting.

She says, ‘I’ve actually known that for a while. Remember?’

She can tell by Dad’s head rearing back that she’s taken him off guard. They never talk about that time when she was a kid.

‘OK,’ he says, a second later. Whether he believes her or not, he’s not going any farther down that trail. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. In that case, I’ll have a word with Costello, ask him to interview you now, get it out of the way. Then you can pack up your stuff, nice and discreetly, and come home with me.’

Holly was expecting this, but she still feels her legs go rigid against it. ‘No. I’m not going home.’

And Dad was expecting that; his stride doesn’t change. ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. And it’s not forever. Just for a few days, till the lads get this sorted.’

‘What if they don’t? Then what?’

‘If they don’t have their man locked up by Monday, we’ll review the situation. It shouldn’t come to that, though. From what I hear, they’re pretty close to an arrest.’

Their man. Not Joanne. Whatever the detectives have against this guy, sooner or later it’s going to crumble in their hands, and they’re going to go hunting again.

‘OK,’ Holly says, turning docile. ‘Lenie and Becs can come with me, right?’

That gets Dad’s attention. ‘Say what?’

‘Their parents are away. They can come home with us, right?’

‘Um,’ Dad says, rubbing the back of his head. ‘I’m not sure we’re equipped for that, sweetheart.’

‘You said it’s only for a couple of days. What’s the big deal?’

‘I think it’s only for a few days, but this gig doesn’t come with guarantees. And I don’t have their parents’ permission to haul them away for the duration. I don’t fancy being had up for kidnapping.’

Holly doesn’t smile. ‘If it’s too dangerous for me to stay here, it’s too dangerous for them.’

‘I don’t think it’s dangerous at all. I think I’m a paranoid bastard. Professional deformation, they call it. I want you at home so that any time I start getting panicky, I can stick my head in and look at you and take a few deep breaths. It’s for my sake, not yours.’

His smile down at her and the weight of his hand on her head make Holly want to let every muscle go floppy: shove her face back into his shoulder, fill herself up with his smell of leather and smoke and soap, daydream there sucking her hair and say yes to whatever he tells her. She’d do it, except for the things Selena’s got stashed in her head, ready to spill out ping-ponging all over the floor if Holly isn’t there to keep them battened down.

She says, ‘If you take me home, everyone’s going to think it’s because you know something. I’m not leaving Selena and Becca here thinking a murderer could come after them any time and there’s nowhere they can get away. If they’re stuck here, they need to know it’s safe. And the only way they’re going to know that is if you say it’s safe enough for me.’

Dad’s head goes back and he snaps a chunk off a laugh. ‘I like the way you work, chickadee. And I’ll happily sit your mates down and tell them I’d bet a lot of money they’re safe as houses, if you want me to. But much as I like Selena and Becca, they’re their own parents’ responsibility, not mine.’

He means it: he doesn’t think anyone’s in danger. He wants Holly home, not in case she gets murdered, but in case being around another murder traumatises her poor fragile ickle mind all over again.

Holly doesn’t want a lovely Daddy-cuddle any more. She wants blood.

She says, firing it at him, ‘They’re my responsibility. They’re my family .’

Score: Dad’s not laughing any more. ‘Maybe. I’d like to think I am too.’

‘You’re a grown-up. If you’re paranoid for no reason, that’s your problem to deal with. Not mine.’

The tightened muscle in his cheek tells her she might be winning. The thought scares her so she wants to take it all back, swallow it down in a great gulp and go running into the school to pack her things. She stays silent and stretches her steps to match his. Pebbles grind together.

‘Sometimes I think your ma’s right,’ Dad says, on a wry one-sided grin. ‘You’re my comeuppance.’

Holly says, ‘So I can stay?’

‘I’m not happy about it.’

‘Yeah, hello? Nobody’s happy about any of this?’

That brings up the other side of the grin. ‘OK. I’ll make you a deal. You can stay, if you give me your word that you’ll tell me or the investigating officers anything that could conceivably be relevant. Even if you’re positive it isn’t. Anything you know, anything you notice, anything that just happens to occur to you as a vague possibility. Can you live with that?’

It occurs to Holly that this might be what he was after all along, or at least his backup plan. He’s practical. If he doesn’t get his dad wish, at least he can get his detective one.

‘Yeah,’ she says, giving him all the straight look he could want. ‘I promise.’

Selena’s in the bedroom and Becca wants to give her this red phone. It comes with a long explanation that Selena can’t keep hold of, but it lights a grave holy shine all round Becca and almost lifts her off her toes, so probably it’s good. ‘Thanks,’ Selena says, and puts the phone down the side of her bed since that’s where a secret phone belongs, except her own one isn’t there any more. She wonders if maybe Chris came and took it, and left this red one with Becca so he can text her later when he gets a chance because right now he has to be busy, only then that sounds wrong but she can’t track down why because Becca is looking at her, this look that dives down inside Selena and lands right on the place that’s trying hard to hurt. So she just says ‘Thanks’ again and then she can’t remember what they came up here for. Becca gets her flute out of the wardrobe and puts it into her hands and asks, ‘What music do you need?’ and for a moment Selena wants to laugh because Becca looks so calm and grown-up, riffling through her music case neat as a nurse. She wants to say That’s what you should be after school, you should be a nurse, but the thought of the look Becca would give her makes the knot of laughter swell bigger and harder at the bottom of her throat. ‘The Telemann,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’