‘Yeah. She’s not sure, but she thinks so, yeah.’ This time Conway wasn’t pacing: slumped against the corridor wall instead, head back, trying to rub the day out of her neck. ‘Which means she’s out. Not officially, but out.’
I said, ‘She’s not
Talking like an eejit, and in front of one of the Murder squad, but Conway wasn’t sneering. Nodding. ‘If she’s right and one of her mates did the job, it was because of Chris and Selena. One way or another.’
‘That’s what she thinks, too. At least one of the mates knew all about her and Chris, and didn’t like it. And Selena knew they wouldn’t; that’s why she didn’t tell them to start with.’ I leaned on the wall beside Conway. Fatigue kicking in, me too, the wall felt like it was swaying. ‘Maybe they knew he was a player, thought he’d end up hurting Selena. Maybe he’d done something shite on one of them – just casually, like what Holly told us about – and he was the enemy. Maybe one of them was into him. Maybe one of them had already been with him, earlier in the year.’
‘OK,’ Conway said. Rolled her neck, winced. ‘Say we pull them back in, one by one. Tell them we think Selena did it, we’re getting ready to arrest her. That should shake them loose.’
‘You think if one of them’s our girl, she’ll come clean to get Selena off the hook?’
‘She might. That age, self-preservation isn’t high on their list. Like we were saying before: nothing matters as much as your friends. Not even your life. You’re practically
Beat of pain at the base of my throat and in the crooks of my elbows, places where veins run near the surface. I said, ‘That cuts two ways. If one of them confesses, doesn’t mean she did it.’
‘If they all go bloody Spartacus, I swear I’ll take them up on it. Arrest the fucking lot, let the prosecutors sort it out.’ Conway pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, like she didn’t want to see the corridor any more. We’d been there long enough that the place was starting to look familiar, in a glitchy way, something you saw in a stuttering DVD or when you were too hammered to see straight. She said, ‘We’ll go at the three of them as soon as we get those full texts. I want some clue what went down between Chris and Selena – the breakup, and after. See her face, when she looked at those records? The ones for just before the murder?’
I said, ‘Startled. Looked like the real thing to me.’
‘You think everything’s the real thing. How you got this far…’ She didn’t have the energy. ‘It did, but. She didn’t expect to see all those texts. She might’ve just flaked out and forgotten them; she’s spacy enough to start with, and she says herself she’s not too clear on those couple of weeks. Or else…’
‘Or else someone else knew about her phone. Used it to send some of those texts.’
Conway said, ‘Yeah. Joanne must’ve figured that Selena had a special Chris phone, same as she did. Julia must’ve, too, since she knew about Joanne’s. And did you see Selena clam up when I asked about finding the phone in the wrong position? Someone was at it, all right.’
I said, ‘We need those texts. Even if they’re not signed-’
‘They won’t be.’
‘Yeah, probably not. But there might be something that gives us a hint who wrote them.’
‘Yeah. And I want to ID the other girls Chris was texting, before he hooked up with Selena. If another one of our eight was in there, things are gonna get interesting – specially if she’s the one he was juggling with Joanne. Bet you anything the special phones were never registered, but we could get lucky, find a name somewhere in the texts – or there could be something in the photos they sent, if we can get them. Any girl with the brains of pet food would’ve cropped out her face, but I’m gonna bet on at least one idiot. And someone might have a mole on her tit, a scar, something identifiable.’
I said, ‘OK if I leave that part to you?’
Conway still had her hands on her eyes, but I saw the twitch of her mouth, what might have been a grin if she’d been less wrecked. ‘I’ll look at the girls’ pics, you look at Chris’s. No one needs brain bleach.’
‘We hope.’
‘Yeah.’ The grin was gone. ‘OK: I’ll go ask McKenna to let that lot outside for a while. Seeing as I promised Selena.’ I’d forgotten. ‘Then we’ll head down to the canteen, see if we can find something to eat while we wait for Sophie’s guy to pull his finger out. I could murder a dirty great burger.’
‘Two.’
‘Two. And chips.’
We were straightening up, smoothing down, when it came: buzz from Conway’s pocket.
She grabbed for the phone. ‘The texts.’ She was straight-backed and alert as morning, fatigue tossed away like a wet jacket. ‘Ah, yeah. Here we go. Swear to God, I’d marry Sophie.’
