Tana French: The Secret Place

Sun skidding across my face as I whipped around, and then: of course. I should’ve known the eyes. Wide, bright blue, and something about the delicate arc of the lids: a cat’s slant, a pale jewelled girl in an old painting, a secret. ‘Holly,’ I said, hand out. ‘Hiya. It’s been a long time.’

A second where those eyes didn’t blink, took in everything about me and gave back nothing. Then she stood up. She still shook hands like a little girl, pulling away too quick. ‘Hi, Stephen,’ she said.

Her voice was good. Clear and cool, not that cartoon squeal. The accent: high-end, but not the distorted ugly-posh. Her dad wouldn’t have let her away with that. Straight out of the blazer and into community school, if she’d brought that home.

‘What can I do for you?’

Lower: ‘I’ve got something to give you.’

That left me lost. Ten past nine in the morning, all uniformed up: she was mitching off, from a school that would notice; this wasn’t about a years-late thank-you card. ‘Yeah?’

‘Well, not here .’

The eye-tilt at our admin said privacy . A teenage girl, you watch yourself. A detective’s kid, you watch twice as hard. But Holly Mackey: bring in someone she doesn’t want, and you’re done for the day.

I said, ‘Let’s find somewhere we can talk.’

I work Cold Cases. When we bring witnesses in, they want to believe this doesn’t count: not really a murder investigation, not a proper one with guns and cuffs, nothing that’ll slam through your life like a tornado. Something old and soft, instead, worn fuzzy round the edges. We play along. Our main interview room looks like a nice dentist’s waiting room. Squashy sofas, Venetian blinds, glass table of dog-eared magazines. Crap tea and coffee. No need to notice the video camera in the corner or the one-way glass behind one set of blinds, not if you don’t want to, and they don’t. This won’t hurt a bit, sir, just a few little minutes and off you go home.

I took Holly there. Another kid would have been twitching all the way, playing head tennis, but none of this was new on Holly. She headed down the corridor like it was part of her gaff.

On the way I watched her. She was doing a grand job of growing up. Average height, or a little under. Slim, very slim, but it was natural: no starved look. Maybe halfway through getting her curves. No stunner, not yet anyway, but nothing ugly there – no spots, no braces, none of her face stuck on sideways – and the eyes made her more than another blonde clone, made you look twice.

A boyfriend who’d hit her? Groped her, raped her? Holly coming to me instead of to some stranger in Sex Crime?

Something to give you. Evidence?

She shut the interview-room door behind us, flick of her wrist and a slam. Looked around.

I switched on the camera, casual push of the switch. Said, ‘Have a seat.’

Holly stayed put. Ran a finger over the bald-patch green of the sofa. ‘This room’s nicer than the ones before.’

‘How’re you getting on?’

Still looking around the room, not at me. ‘OK. Fine.’

‘Will I get you a cup of tea? Coffee?’

Shake of her head.

I waited. Holly said, ‘You’ve got older. You used to look like a student.’

‘And you used to look like a little kid who brought her doll to interviews. Clara, wasn’t it?’ That turned her head my way. ‘I’d say we’ve both got older, here.’

For the first time, she smiled. Little crunch of a grin, the same one I remembered. It had had something pathetic in it, back then, it had caught at me every time. It did again.

She said, ‘It’s nice to see you.’

When Holly was nine, ten, she was a witness in a murder case. The case wasn’t mine, but I was the one she’d talk to. I took her statement; I prepped her to testify at the trial. She didn’t want to do it, did it anyway. Maybe her da the detective made her. Maybe. Even when she was nine, I never fooled myself I had the measure of her.

‘Same here,’ I said.

A quick breath that lifted her shoulders, a nod – to herself, like something had clicked. She dumped her schoolbag on the floor. Hooked a thumb under her lapel, to point the crest at me. Said, ‘I go to Kilda’s now.’ And watched me.

Just nodding made me feel cheeky. St Kilda’s: the kind of school the likes of me aren’t supposed to have heard of. Never would have heard of, if it wasn’t for a dead young fella.

Girls’ secondary, private, leafy suburb. Nuns. A year back, two of the nuns went for an early stroll and found a boy lying in a grove of trees, in a back corner of the school grounds. At first they thought he was asleep, drunk maybe. Revved up to give him seven shades of shite, find out whose precious virtue he’d been corrupting. The full-on nun-voice thunder: Young man! But he didn’t move.

Christopher Harper, sixteen, from the boys’ school one road and two extra-high walls away. Sometime during the night, someone had bashed his head in.

Enough manpower to build an office block, enough overtime to pay off mortgages, enough paper to dam a river. A dodgy janitor, handyman, something: eliminated. A classmate who’d had a punch-up with the victim: eliminated. Local scary non-nationals seen being locally scary: eliminated.

Then nothing. No more suspects, no reason why Christopher was on St Kilda’s grounds. Then less overtime, and fewer men, and more nothing. You can’t say it, not with a kid for a victim, but the case was done. By this time, all that paper was in Murder’s basement. Sooner or later the brass would catch some hassle from the media and it would show up on our doorstep, addressed to the Last Chance Saloon.

Holly pulled her lapel straight again. ‘You know about Chris Harper,’ she said. ‘Right?’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Were you at St Kilda’s back then?’

‘Yeah. I’ve been there since first year. I’m in fourth year now.’

And left it at that, making me work for every step. One wrong question and she’d be gone, I’d be thrown away: got too old, another useless adult who didn’t understand. I picked carefully.

‘Are you a boarder?’

‘The last two years, yeah. Only Monday to Friday. I go home for weekends.’

I couldn’t remember the day. ‘Were you there the night it happened?’

‘The night Chris got killed.’

Blue flash of annoyance. Daddy’s kid: no patience for pussyfooting, or anyway not from other people.

‘The night Chris got killed,’ I said. ‘Were you there?’

‘I wasn’t there there. Obviously. But I was in school, yeah.’

‘Did you see something? Hear something?’

Annoyance again, sparking hotter this time. ‘They already asked me that. The Murder detectives. They asked all of us, like, a thousand times .’

I said, ‘But you could have remembered something since. Or changed your mind about keeping something quiet.’

‘I’m not stupid . I know how this stuff works. Remember?’ She was on her toes, ready to head for the door.

Change of tack. ‘Did you know Chris?’

Holly quieted. ‘Just from around. Our schools do stuff together; you get to know people. We weren’t close, or anything, but our gangs had hung out together a bunch of times.’

‘What was he like?’

Shrug. ‘A guy.’

‘Did you like him?’

Shrug again. ‘He was there.’

I know Holly’s da, a bit. Frank Mackey, Undercover. You go at him straight, he’ll dodge and come in sideways; you go at him sideways, he’ll charge head down. I said, ‘You came here because there’s something you want me to know. I’m not going to play guessing games I can’t win. If you’re not sure you want to tell me, then go away and have a think till you are. If you’re sure now, then spit it out.’