The Secret Place by Tana French

on holiday and we kissed it was amazing we’re meeting again next summer.
    I said, ‘So where’s the percentage in that?’
    ‘That one there, I’d say your one’s dropping hints to all her mates every time they go past; that way everyone’s convinced it’s her, but she doesn’t have to come out with a bollix story upfront, so she can’t get called on it. Other stuff . . .’ Conway’s eyes moved across the board. She said, ‘If someone liked making trouble, some of these could make plenty.’
    The madrigal had come together, skipping along, clean and perfect. The spring, clad all in gladness, doth laugh at winter’s sadness, fa la la la la . . .
    ‘Even with the monitoring?’
    ‘Even with. The teachers can look all they want; they don’t know what to look for. Girls are smart: if they want to start trouble, they’ll find ways that adults can’t spot. A mate tells you a secret, you stick it up here. You don’t like someone, you make something up and put it up like it’s hers. That?’ Conway tapped the lipsticked mouth. ‘Quick shot of the mammy photo that someone keeps on her bedside locker, and away you go, you can tell her that her ma thinks she’s a pig and hates her for it. Bonus points if everyone else recognises the photo and thinks she’s spilling her guts.’
    ‘Nice,’ I said.
    ‘I warned you.’
    Fie, then, why sit we musing, youth’s sweet delight refusing, fa la la la la . . .
    I said, ‘Our card. What do you think are the odds there’s anything in it?’
    I’d wondered from the start. Didn’t want to say it; didn’t want to think about all this ending a couple of hours in, with some crying kid getting suspended and me getting sent back to Cold Cases with a pat on the head.
    ‘Fifty-fifty,’ Conway said. ‘Maybe. If someone wanted to make trouble, this is doing the job, all right. But we get to treat it like gospel anyway. You about done, yeah? Any second now that bleeding bell’s going to go again and we’ll be mobbed.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. I wanted to move. My feet hurt from standing in the one place. ‘I’m done.’
    We had two cards that needed keeping. Photo of a girl’s hand underwater, pale and blurred: I know what you did . Photo of bare ground under a cypress tree, deep-dug Biro X marking the spot, no caption.
    Conway dropped them into evidence envelopes out of her satchel, tucked them away. She said, ‘We’ll talk to whoever was meant to check this yesterday. Then we’ll get that list of the girls who were in here, have the chats. And the list better be ready, or there’s gonna be hassle.’
    When we turned to go the corridor looked a mile long, after that cramped alcove. Under the hum of classrooms and the trill of fa la la la la I thought I could hear the board behind us, boiling.

Chapter 6
     
    Out behind the Court there’s a field, or sort of; people call it that, at least, the Field, with a dab of snigger on top because of what goes on there. It’s where another wing of the Court was supposed to get built – there was going to be an Abercrombie & Fitch – but then the recession happened. Instead there’s a wire-fenced expanse of tall raggedy weeds, with raw patches of hard earth still showing through like scars where the bulldozers had started work; a couple of stacks of forgotten breeze blocks, sliding to heaps because people are always climbing them; a piece of mysterious machinery gone rusty. One corner of the wire fencing has been worked loose from its pole; bend it out of your way and you can slide through, if you’re not fat, and fat people mostly wouldn’t come here anyway.
    The Field is the Court’s shadow side, the place where all the stuff happens that can’t happen in the Court. Colm’s guys and Kilda’s girls wander round the side of the Court, so innocent they’re practically whistling, and slip in here. The emos who think they’re too deep for a shopping centre, mostly – there’s always a gang of them down by the back