Orla edged closer. ‘Have a seat,’ Conway said, patting the bed. After a second Orla moved Joanne’s skirt carefully out of the way and sat down.

I swung the wardrobe shut, leaned against it. Got out my notebook. Kept an eye on the door for flickers of shadow moving behind it, out in the hall.

Conway flipped open the satchel, whipped out the evidence bag and smacked it down on Orla’s lap, all before Orla had a chance to work out what was going on. Said, ‘You’ve seen this before.’

Orla took one look at the Thérèse book and bit down on both lips, hard. Hiss of in-breath through her nose.

Conway said, ‘Do us a favour. Don’t try to tell us you don’t know what’s in there.’

Orla tried to shake her head and shrug and look innocent, all at once. It came out like some kind of spasm.

‘Orla. Pay attention. I’m not asking you if this was yours. I’m telling you we already know. You try to lie about it, all that’ll happen is you’ll get us pissed off and you’ll get Chris pissed off. You want to do that?’

Trapped between thick and terrified, Orla dived for the only way out she could see. ‘It’s Joanne’s!’

‘What is?’

‘The key. That was Joanne’s. It wasn’t mine.’

And bingo. Straight in there, our Orla, dobbing her mates in as quick as she could. The flare of Conway’s nose said she smelled it too. ‘Same difference. Yous robbed it out of the nurse’s office.’

‘No! Swear to God, we never stole anything.’

‘Then how’d you get it? You telling me the nurse gave it to you ’cause she couldn’t resist your pretty faces?’

Orla’s face lit up with that thin malice. ‘Julia Harte had it. Probably she stole it, or one of them did. We got a copy off her – Joanne got it, I mean. Not me.’

Not bingo. All eight of them in the frame for the card, now all eight in the frame for eyewitnesses. And all eight in the frame, opportunity clicking into place, for the killer.

Conway’s eyebrow was up. ‘Right. Joanne asked nicely, Julia said, “No problem, anything for you, darling.”  Yeah? ’Cause you’re all best buddies?’

Orla shrugged. ‘I mean, I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

I hadn’t been there either, but I knew. Blackmail: Joanne had spotted Julia on her way in or out, Share or we tell.

‘When was that?’

‘Like, forever ago.’

‘When’s forever?’

‘After Christmas – last Christmas. I haven’t even, ohmyGod, thought about it all year?’

‘How many times did you use it?’

Orla remembered she could get in trouble here. ‘I didn’t. I swear. I totally swear.’

‘You gonna keep swearing when we find your prints all over it?’