‘But he never said anything about, like, having an enemy or anything. And he would’ve told me. Like you said, we were really close.’
‘Is that what you used that key for?’ I asked. ‘Going out at night to meet Chris, yeah?’
Joanne shook her head. ‘I only got the key after we split up. And anyway, he couldn’t get out at night either. I mean, obviously he found some way later, because he was meeting that fat cow, but he couldn’t when we were together.’
‘And he had a secret phone specially for texting you, as well?’
‘Yeah. He said the guys at Colm’s went through each other’s phones all the time, looking for sexts or photos – you know, photos? From girls?’ Meaningful stare. I nodded. ‘Chris said the priests did it too – some of them are such perverts, it’s just eww. I was like, “Hello, if you think you’re getting pictures of my la-la, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to work a little harder than that?” But it wasn’t like that; Chris just wasn’t going to have anyone reading my texts. Anything I said meant too much to him to have some D-head leching over them.’
I caught a glance off Conway. Chris had been good, all right. ‘What kind of phone was it?’ I asked. ‘Did you ever see it?’
Misty smile, reminiscent. ‘Exactly like my one, only red. “A matching pair,” that’s what Chris said. “Like us.”’
Conway’s eye said Puke. ‘How come all the secrecy?’ I asked. ‘Why not just tell everyone you were together?’
That made Joanne move, a defensive jerk: the secret hadn’t been her idea. She took a breath and got back in character. ‘I mean, this wasn’t just some stupid shallow teenage thing. We had something special, me and Chris. It was so intense, it was like, ohmyGod, something out of a song? People wouldn’t have understood; they literally wouldn’t have been able to get it. I mean, obviously we were going to tell them anyway, in a while. Just not yet.’
Coming out too pat and brittle, learned off by heart. The lines Chris had given her, that she’d told herself over and over to make it feel OK.
I asked, ‘It wasn’t because there was someone specific who Chris didn’t want finding out? A jealous ex, something like that?’
‘No. I mean . . .’ Joanne thought about that, liked it. ‘There could’ve been. I mean, lots of people would’ve been so jel if they’d known. But he never mentioned anyone.’
‘How’d you manage to meet up in secret, if you couldn’t get out at night?’
‘At the weekends, mostly. Sometimes in the afternoons, between classes and study period, but it was hard finding a place where we wouldn’t get spotted. This one time, you know the little park down past the Court? It was November, so it was dark early and the park was closed, but me and Chris climbed over the railings. There’s this little roundabout, for kids; we sat on that and . . .’
Joanne was half-smiling, unconsciously, remembering. ‘I was there, “OhmyGod, I can’t believe I’m doing this, climbing around in the dark like some skanger; you’d better buy me something nice after this,” but I was just joking. It was actually . . . fun. We were laughing so hard. We had fun, that day.’
A wisp of a laugh. A frail thing, lost, drifting between the slick posters and the makeup-smeared tissues. Not a laugh she’d learned off some reality star and practised; just her, missing that day.
Here was why she had needed to see Selena and Chris through a dirty snicker and a gagging noise. That was the only way she could stand to look.
I said, ‘So what happened? You were together a couple of months, you said. Why’d you split up?’
That slammed Joanne shut again. Fake stare clanging into place, vein of hurt vanished behind it. ‘I broke up with him. I feel sooo terrible about it now—’
‘Ah-ah,’ Conway said, waving the bag again. ‘That’s not what this says.’
‘You kept texting him and ringing him after he stopped answering,’ I explained. Joanne’s mouth thinned. ‘What happened?’
She got on top of that one faster than I expected. With another sigh: ‘Well. Chris got frightened of his feelings. I mean, like I already told you, what we had was totally special? Like really intense?’ Wide earnest eyes, parted lips, voice pitched high. She was being someone off the telly; I hadn’t a clue who, don’t watch the right stuff. ‘And a lot of guys can’t cope with that. I think Chris was just kind of immature. If he was alive, then probably by now we’d be . . .’ Another sigh. Gaze drifting off, at a picturesque angle, into the might-have-beens.
‘You must’ve been well annoyed with him,’ I said.
Joanne flicked hair. With an edge to her voice: ‘Um, I so didn’t care?’
I went puzzled. ‘Seriously? I wouldn’t’ve thought you were used to being dumped. You are, yeah?’
More edge. The wide-eyed thing was wearing off fast. ‘No, I’m not. Nobody’s ever dumped me.’
‘Except Chris.’
‘Well, I was about to dump him anyway. That’s why I said—’
‘How come? I thought the relationship was great, he just got overloaded ’cause he was immature. But you’re not immature, are you?’
‘No. I just—’ Joanne was thinking fast. Hand going to her heart: ‘I knew it was more than he could handle. I was going to set him free. “If you love something—”’
‘Then why’d you keep texting him after he stopped texting you?’
‘I was just telling him. That I understood, you know, how it was too intense? That, I mean, I wasn’t going to wait for him or anything, but I hoped we could be friends. Stuff like that. I can’t remember.’
‘Not giving out to him, no? Because we’ve got someone pulling the actual texts. We’ll be able to read them any minute.’
‘I don’t remember. I guess I could’ve been a teeny bit startled, but I wasn’t angry or anything.’
Conway shifted her back against the wall. Warning me: if I pushed this any harder, we were over that line and into inadmissible.
‘I understand,’ I said. Leaned in, hands clasped. ‘Joanne. Listen to me.’ I put that epic ring back into my voice: a speech to inspire the brave young heroine. ‘You had the key. You believed your relationship with Chris wasn’t over. You kept an eye on Chris when he came into the grounds at night. Do you see where I’m going with this?’
That flat stare turned wary. Joanne shrugged.
‘I think you were out there the night he died, and I think you saw something. No’ – I raised a hand, masterful – ‘let me finish. Maybe you’re protecting someone. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you don’t want to believe what you saw. I’m sure you’ve got a good reason for saying you weren’t there.’
Conway, in the corner of my eye, giving me a sliver of a nod. We were back on safe ground. If Joanne repeated that speech to her counsel someday, it said witness, loud and clear. But if it worked, if she admitted to being at the scene, she crossed over the line to suspect, no leeway left.
‘But I’m also sure, Joanne, I’m just as sure that you saw something, or heard something. You know who killed Chris Harper.’ I let my voice rise. ‘Time to stop hiding it. You heard what Detective Conway said, earlier. It’s time to tell us – before we find out on our own, or someone else does. Now.’
Joanne wailed, ‘But I don’t! Honest to God, I swear, I didn’t go out that night! I hadn’t been out in weeks.’
‘You’re trying to tell me you didn’t have anyone to meet? Almost six months after Chris dumped you, you were still single?’
‘Not still – I went out with Oisín O’Donovan for a while, you can ask anyone, but I dumped him weeks before Chris happened! Ask him. I wasn’t out that night. I don’t know anything. I swear!’
Huge-eyed, hand-wringing, all the trimmings: the way she’d learnt that innocent looked, off the telly or wherever. Truth or lie, it would look exactly the same.
Another minute and she’d be scrunching up her face, trying to cry. Conway’s eye said Kill it.
I eased back, on the soft intimate squash of Gemma’s bed. Joanne
drew a long shaky breath, snatched a sideways glance at me to make sure I’d caught it.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK, Joanne. Thank you.’
Joanne and her shorts headed back to the common room. Her arse watched us watching her, same as Julia’s, only not the same at all.
‘That’s one pissed-off little geebag,’ Conway said, tinge of enjoyment. She was leaning a shoulder against the wall of the corridor, hands in her pockets. ‘She can spin it however she wants: she was well fucked off with Chris Harper.’
‘Fucked off enough to kill him?’
‘Sure. She’d’ve loved to. But . . .’
Silence. Neither of us wanted to say it.
‘If she could’ve pushed a button,’ I said. ‘Stuck a pin in a voodoo doll. Then yeah.’
‘Yeah. Like that.’ Finger-snap. ‘But heading out there in the dark, smacking him in the head with a hoe . . . I can’t see Joanne taking that kind of risk. She wouldn’t even go after Selena without dragging Gemma along. Very careful of herself, our Joanne. And she doesn’t step outside her comfort zone. Fuck.’
‘The card could still be her.’ I heard the silver-lining note in my voice, waited for another Pollyanna jab. Didn’t get it.
‘If it is, she’s trying to steer us towards Selena. Now there’s revenge. You rob my fella, I’ll frame you for murder.’
‘Or towards Julia,’ I said. ‘She made sure to tell us Julia was sneaking out right up until the murder, did you notice?’
‘Julia and Finn,’ Conway said. Forehead-smack. ‘I knew there had to be a reason why Finn decided to hotwire the fire door all of a sudden. He wouldn’t say. I should’ve known. Same as everything fucking else today.’
I said, ‘Why was everyone keeping their love lives secret, but? When I was a young fella, if you had a girlfriend, you told the world. Did girls keep this stuff under wraps, when you were that age?’
‘Fuck, no. That was half the point of going out with someone to begin with: show everyone that you had a fella. That meant you were a success, not some pathetic single loser. You’d shout it from the rooftops.’
‘And this generation, they care a lot less about privacy than we did. Everything goes online, unless it’s embarrassing or it’ll get them in trouble.’
A kid came out of the third-year common room and headed towards the jacks, frantically trying to check us out without looking at us. Conway swung back into Joanne and Company’s room, kicked the door shut. ‘Even then. My cousin’s kid had a pregnancy scare; what’s the first thing she did? Put it on Facebook. Then got pissed off with her ma for finding out.’
‘And they weren’t shy about telling us who they’re going out with now,’ I said. ‘Joanne gave us the bit of hassle, but that was just to be a bitch to you, not because she actually wanted to keep it secret. So what was different last year?’
Conway had started pacing circles around the room again. Whatever poor bastard ended up partnered with her, he was going to spend a lot of his time dizzy. ‘That crap Joanne gave us, about her and Chris keeping it to themselves because they were sooo intense or whatever the fuck. You believe that?’
‘Nah. Load of bollix.’ I leaned against the wall, one-shouldered so I could keep an eye on that line of light around the door. ‘I don’t know about Julia and Finn, but the others: Chris was the one that wanted things on the down-low. I’d bet it was so he could keep a few girls on the go at once. Joanne started pressuring him to go public, he dumped her.’
Nod. She nodded sideways, on a twist, street style. ‘Looks like your Holly might’ve been right about Chris. Not the sweetheart everyone said.’
He only cared about what he wanted, Holly had said.
The face on Chris, looking at Selena. But that age: wanting beats loyalty so easily. Doesn’t mean the loyalty isn’t real. You know what you’ve got, but you know what you want, too. So you go after it. You see your chance, and you take it. Tell yourself it’ll be grand in the end.
I said, ‘If he kept up the two-timing, and one of the girls found out . . .’
‘If Selena found out, you mean.’
‘Probably not her. Selena and Chris were over, weeks before he died. If you’re gonna smash your fella’s head in for cheating, you do it when you find out, not weeks later. Could’ve been why she broke it off, though.’
‘Maybe.’ Conway kicked someone’s clumpy uniform shoe out of her way. She didn’t sound convinced. ‘That didn’t go down the way Joanne said, anyway. She told Julia to get Selena away from Chris, Julia went, “Yes, ma’am, straight away, ma’am,” and ran right off to do what she was told? You think Julia takes orders on her mates’ love lives from Joanne?’
‘She’d tell her to go fuck herself. Unless Joanne had something major on her.’
‘That video’s major enough: could’ve got Julia and all her mates expelled. But Joanne didn’t need to use it. Chris and Selena split up first.’
‘You believe her?’
‘On that, I do.’
I thought back. Realised I’d already forgotten Joanne’s face. Hard to tell, but: ‘Yeah. I think I do too.’
‘Right. So maybe Selena did dump him because she caught him two-timing.’ Conway swept up Gemma’s hair-straightener on her way past, gave it a what-the-fuck grimace, tossed it on Orla’s bed. ‘Or maybe it was something else.’
‘They just fizzled out?’ I didn’t believe it, not after that footage. But, trying it on for size: ‘That age, even a month or two is a long time to be with someone. That’s when Chris got bored of Joanne. He could’ve got restless again, started feeling like it was too much commitment. Or Selena wanted to go public, same as Joanne did.’
Conway had stopped moving. The sun was lowering; it came in through the window arrow-straight and level, turned her face into a light-and-shadow mask. ‘I’ll tell you what else a month or two is, at that age. It’s when guys start turning up the pressure. Put out or get out.’
I waited. Silence, and the thick flower-chemical smell of body sprays burning the inside of my nose.
Conway said, ‘Someone did something to Selena that fucked up her mind and put all four of them off guys. And right around the same time, Selena and Chris broke up.’
I said, ‘You think Chris raped her.’
‘I think we need to check out the possibility. Yeah.’
‘Running into temptation and two-timing a girl you really like, that’s one thing. Raping her’s another. That video: on there, he looks like . . .’ Conway was withering me. I finished anyway. ‘He looks like he was mad about her.’
‘Course he does. So does any teenage guy who thinks he’s got a shot at a shag. They’ll be whatever they think the girl wants to see. Right up until they realise it’s not getting them into her knickers.’
‘That looked like the real thing to me.’
‘You an expert, yeah?’
‘Are you?’
Conway upped the stare. Couple of hours earlier, I would’ve blinked. I stared right back.
She left it. ‘Even if it was real,’ she said. ‘Even if he was genuinely mad about her. He could’ve raped her anyway. Grown adults don’t do something that’s obviously gonna hurt someone they love, not if they can help it, but that age; remember that age? They’re not the same. They don’t put things together. That’s why half of what they do looks full-on certifiable, to you or me or any sane adult. Things don’t make sense, when you’re that age; you don’t make sense. You stop expecting to.’
A second of silence. Her being right, me wishing she was wrong.
When he wanted something and he couldn’t get it, Holly had said. Not so nice.
‘That night,’ I said. ‘The night Joanne videoed. That was the last time Chris and Selena met up. If he did something to her . . .’
‘Yeah. It was that night.’
Silence, again. Under the body spray, I thought I caught a whiff of hyacinths.
‘What now?’ I asked.
‘Now we wait for Sophie to get us Chris’s phone record
s. I’m not talking to anyone else till I see what he was at last spring. Meanwhile, we do a proper search in here.’
In the corner of my eye: a flutter of darkness, behind the door-crack.
I had the door flung open before I knew I was moving. Alison squealed and leaped back, hands flapping wildly. In the background, McKenna took a protective pace forward.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked. My heart was going harder than it should have been. Conway eased away from the wall on the other side of the doorway – I hadn’t even seen her go for it. Even with no clue what I was at, she’d been straight in there, ready to back me up.
Alison stared. Said, like someone had taught her the line, ‘I need to get my books to do my homework please.’
‘No problem,’ I said. I felt like an eejit. ‘In you come.’
She sidled in like we might hit her, started pulling stuff out of her bag – her hands looked frail as water spiders, skittering over the books. McKenna stood in the doorway, being massive. Not liking us one little bit.
‘How’s the arm?’ I asked.
Alison shifted it away from me. ‘It’s OK. Thanks.’
‘Let’s see,’ Conway said.
Alison shot a glance at McKenna: she’d been told not to show it. McKenna nodded, reluctantly.
Alison pulled up her sleeve. The blisters were gone, but the skin where they’d been still had a bumpy look to it. The handprint had faded to pink. Alison had her head turned away.
‘Nasty,’ I said sympathetically. ‘My sister used to get allergies. Up her face and all, once. Turned out it was the washing powder our mammy was using. Did you figure out what did that, no?’
‘The cleaners must have switched to a new brand of hand soap.’ Another glance at McKenna. Another line learned off by heart.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Must’ve done.’ Shared a look with Conway, let Alison catch it.
Alison tugged down her sleeve and started scooping up her books. Glanced once round the room, big-eyed, like we’d turned it into somewhere strange and untrustworthy, before she scuttled out.