I balanced the evidence bag on one end, caught it when it fell. ‘So by noon, Chris’s immediate family would’ve been notified, but we wouldn’t have released his name to the media, not till the family got the chance to tell everyone who needed to know. You couldn’t have heard it on the radio. The assembly had to be the first time you heard what had happened, and who the victim was.’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘So how did you know this phone could get Selena in trouble, in time to go get it before the assembly?’
Holly didn’t miss a beat. ‘We were all watching out the windows, every chance we got – the teachers kept telling us not to, but yeah, right. We saw uniforms and Technical Bureau guys, so I knew there’d been a crime, and then we saw Father Niall from Colm’s – he’s like eight feet tall and he looks like Voldemort and he wears the robe, so it’s not like you could get him mixed up for anyone else. So obviously something had to have happened to a Colm’s boy. And Chris was the only one who I knew had been wandering around the grounds at night. So I guessed it had to be him.’
Little cock of her eyebrow to me, as she finished up. Like a middle finger.
I said, ‘But you thought he and Selena had broken up. And you say you knew she hadn’t been out that night, so it’s not like you thought they’d got back together. What would Chris have been doing at Kilda’s?’
‘He could’ve got together with someone else. He wasn’t exactly the deep type who’d spend months pining away for his lost true love. Him and Selena had been broken up for at
‘What did you figure would happen when Selena noticed it was gone? Specially if it turned out you were wrong, and Chris wasn’t dead after all?’
Holly shrugged. ‘I figured I’d deal with that if it happened.’
‘At that point, you were just focusing on protecting your mate.’
‘Yeah.’
I said, ‘How far would you go to protect your mates?’
Mackey moved. He said, ‘That’s gibberish. She can’t answer a question unless it means something.’
Conway said, not invisible any more, ‘We’re interviewing her. Not you.’
‘You’re getting two for the price of one. You don’t like it, tough shit. No one’s under arrest; piss either of us off, and we’ll walk.’
‘Dad,’ Holly said. ‘I’m OK.’
‘I know you are. That’s why we’re still here. Detective Moran, if you’ve got a specific question in there, ask it. If all you’ve got is the tag line for some teenybopper summer film, let’s move on.’
I said, ‘Specifically, Holly: Selena didn’t tell the rest of yous that she was seeing Chris. Why do you think that was?’
Holly said coolly, ‘Because we didn’t like him. I mean, Becca would’ve probably been fine with it – she thought Chris was OK; like I said, she’s innocent. But Julia and I would’ve been like, “Are you
Something off there, just a notch. I wasn’t one of Selena’s best mates, what did I know, but all the same: the flinch, when she remembered leaving her best mates behind, sleeping and lied-to. That had hurt. She didn’t seem like the type to do it for half a reason. Weather the argument and wait, gazing peacefully, let Julia storm herself out and Holly roll her eyes. Not squirm away, slice the others out of that crucial piece of her, just because they didn’t fancy hers much.
Why lie about that?
I said, ‘So you figure she didn’t tell you because she knew you’d want to protect her.’
‘If that’s how you want to say it. Whatever.’
Mackey, still pinching that clay about, still lounging, but watching me now, eyes hooded. I said, ‘But she was wrong. When you actually found out, you didn’t feel any need to protect her after all, no?’
Holly shrugged. ‘From what? They were over. Happy ending.’
‘Happy ending,’ I said. ‘Only then Chris died. And you still didn’t tell Selena you knew. Why not? You had to figure she was devastated. You didn’t think she could use a bit of protecting then? A shoulder to cry on, maybe?’
