Twitch of impatience, I was losing cred again. ‘Like that’s the same thing? Come on. Anyway, I don’t expect you to just take my word about what kind of person she is. She actually physically couldn’t have done it. Like I told you, sometimes I can’t sleep. The night Chris died, I was having trouble sleeping. If Selena had gone out, I would’ve known.’

It was a lie, but I left it. I said, ‘So you ditched the phone.’

Not a blush on Holly, while she dumped the story she’d told me, all sincerity, about five minutes earlier; not a blink. Daddy’s girl. ‘Yeah. So? If you knew that your friend was about to get in trouble for something she definitely hadn’t even done, you mean you wouldn’t try and get her out of it?’

I said, ‘I would, yeah. It’s only natural.’

‘Exactly. Anybody would, who has any kind of loyalty. So yeah, I did.’

I said, ‘Thanks. That clears that up. Except for one thing. When did you get the phone out of your room?’

Holly’s face went still. ‘What?’

‘The only thing that’s confusing me. Chris’s body was found at what time?’

‘Little after seven-thirty a.m.,’ Conway said. Quietly, staying invisible. I was doing all right.

‘And the assembly was when?’

Holly shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. Before lunch. Noon?’

I said, ‘Did you have morning classes? Or did you get sent back to your rooms?’

‘Classes. Well. Sort of. No one was paying any attention, even the teachers, but we still had to sit in the classrooms and act like we cared.’

‘So maybe you started hearing rumours around breakfast,’ I said. ‘At that stage it would’ve been just general stuff, police on the grounds; probably everyone thought it was about the groundskeeper who was dealing. Maybe a bit later, if someone saw the morgue van arriving and knew what it was, there might’ve been some talk about a dead person, but there’s no way yous could’ve known who it was. When was Chris ID’d?’

‘Half-eightish,’ Conway said. ‘McKenna thought he looked familiar, rang up Colm’s to see if they were missing anyone.’

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?’