Free The Secret Place by Tana French Page B

Moooore scooore! – Go for it,  Andy, the ugly ones give the best head – Pity fuck! Pity fuck! And, nearer, the high insane screams of laughter from Joanne and Gemma and Alison.
    ‘I’ll have my fiver now,’ Julia says.
    Becca looks up at the top floor, at the corner where the car-park pay-stations are hidden away. Next to them is a thin slice of daylight. She hopes a couple of first-years are up there, craning their necks out of the window, all of this greasy mess windblown out of their minds by the sweet wide world rolled out below them. She hopes they don’t get kicked out. She hopes as they’re leaving they light a piece of paper on fire, toss it in the bin and burn the Court to the ground.

Chapter 5
     
    The front door was heavy wood, dark and battered. For a second after Conway pushed it open, the deserted stillness stayed. Empty dark-wood staircase sweeping upwards. Sun across worn chequerboard tiles.
    Then a bell went off, everywhere. Doors flew open and feet came drumming out, floods of girls in that same navy-and-green uniform, all talking at once. ‘Fucking hell ,’ said Conway, raising her voice so I could hear her. ‘Timing. Come on.’
    She headed up the stairs, shouldering through the wave of bodies and books. Her back was set like a boxer’s. She looked like this was Internal Affairs and root canal rolled into one.
    I went after her, up those stairs. Girls poured round me, flying hair and flying laughs. The air felt full and glossy, felt high, felt shot through with sun at mad-dash angles; sun swirling along the banisters like water, snatching colours and spinning them in the air; lifting me, catching me everywhere and rising. I felt different, changing. Like today was my day, if I could just figure out how. Like danger, but my danger, conjured up by a high-tower wizard specially for me; like my luck, sweet tricky urgent luck, tumbling through the air, heads or tails?
    I’d never been anywhere like this before, but it felt like it took me back. It had that pull, all down the length of your bones. It made me think words I hadn’t thought since I was a young fella reading my way through the Ilac Centre library, thinking that would get me in between walls like these. Deliquescent. Numinous. Halcyon. Me, long-legged and clumsy and daydreaming, far off my patch so no one would see me, giddy with thrill like I was doing something bold.
    ‘We’ll start with the headmistress,’ Conway said, on the landing, when we could get side by side again. ‘McKenna. She’s a cow. First thing she asked me and Costello, when we got on the scene? Could we stop the media naming the school. Do you believe that? Fuck the dead kid, fuck gathering info to catch whoever did it: all she cared about was that this made her school look bad .’
    Girls dodging past us, ‘’Scuse me!’ high and breathless. A couple of them threw looks back over their shoulders at one of us, or both; most were moving too fast to care. Lockers banging open. Even the corridors were lovely, high ceilings and plaster mouldings, soft green and paintings on the walls.
    ‘Here,’ Conway said, nodding at a door. ‘Put your game face on.’ And pushed the door open.
    A curly blonde turned around from a filing cabinet, hitting the big-smile button, but Conway said, ‘Howya,’ and kept walking, past her and through the inner door. She closed it behind us.
    Quiet, in there. Thick carpet. The room had been done up with plenty of time and money, to look like someone’s old-fashioned study: antique desk with green leather on top, full bookshelves everywhere, heavy-framed oil painting of a nun who was no oil painting. Only the fancy executive chair and the sleek laptop said office .
    The woman behind the desk put down a pen and stood up. ‘Detective Conway,’ she said. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’
    ‘No flies on you,’ Conway said, tapping her temple. She picked up two straight chairs from against a wall, spun them both to the desk and sat