Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (12 page)

‘You do know the tree’s not poisonous, right?’ Reilly replied.

‘Yeah, but I know evil when I see it.’ 

Looking back up at the tree, Reilly shivered slightly as she realized that perhaps he was right.

She was also somewhat dubious about the platform operator’s ability to bring her up into the branches intact, so thick was the enveloping canopy. She needn’t have worried, though, as he seemed to have taken great pains to position the apparatus in the precise location necessary to extend unobstructed to within a foot and a half of the crooked branch where the body had been hung. 

While Reilly waited, he fiddled with the lift’s control panel, which was mounted atop a sturdy steel box affixed to the rail enclosing the machine’s operating deck. Raising the panel's protective Plexiglas rain cover with one hand, he stuck the other in his pocket and retrieved the keys.

Reilly was impressed by how his fingers instinctively found the right one without his so much as glancing at the fob; her wide range of responsibilities at the GFU required her carrying multiple keys of all types, which, try as she might, she could never identify instantly. Inserting the key into the ignition slot, the operator gave it a quick clockwise turn, and the gas motor that powered the lift’s hydraulic articulation sputtered to life.

Then, opening a hatch on the front of the box below the control panel, he retrieved two bright red safety harnesses made of a heavy polyester webbing and secured to heavy lanyards by spliced loops ending in large carabiners.

‘You’d better put this on before you go near those branches,’ he said, handing her one of the harnesses and proceeding to illustrate how to put it on. ‘Safety first, that’s the company motto. It goes over your head and around the back, fastening in front, like this.’ Reilly copied his movements, securing her frame in the loose but reassuring embrace of the safety equipment. ‘OK, now pass the end of your lanyard back to me.’

Using the carabiners, he secured both their lanyards to the bottom rail of the safety railing. ‘Ready to go then?’

‘Yes, let’s do this.’

The guy kept up a steady stream of chatter as they ascended. ‘I suppose you’ve seen a lot of horrible things, doing what you do, but I thought I was pretty tough, and well, when I saw that poor divil, I was rightly shocked. I mean, I’ve seen dead bodies before, at funerals and that, but I didn’t realize that they could be so ... well, so sad, I suppose. The guy looks so sad that it made me feel sick.’

Reilly nodded, thinking that it was largely a good thing that most people never got to experience first-hand how horrible and ignoble death could be.

Using his palm, the operator depressed the large green button with an arrow pointing upwards, and the interlaced steel members accordioned up out of the mechanism’s base, shuddering under their combined weight. Doing Archimedes proud, they cleverly levered the earth away from them while providing a place to stand.

As the lift platform drew level with where the body had been positioned, the operator released the button, bringing them to a stop. Up close, the tree appeared many times more menacing, covered as it was in inch-long pin-sharp splinters.

Reilly duly handed the man the lengthy cord now securely fastened to her form, and, opening her forensic kitbag, set about her examination of the victim’s final resting place.

From below, she’d spotted some markings on one of the branches that looked out of place – it was as if part of the bark had been worn away. Now she realized that she was right.

She took out her camera and snapped a couple of shots of the marks close up, and from various angles. It looked like the killer had used an industrial hoist or pulley of some kind. He’d definitely used something to get the body up here, that was for sure, in order to bear not only the victim’s, but his own weight, once they were both amidst the branches.

If they could track down the type of hoist, and perhaps narrow it down to make and model, it might be helpful in finding out who had taken upon themselves to crucify the poor as-yet unnamed man, and leave him to the mercy of the elements and the scavengers.

Back on the ground, she quickly flicked through the digital shots of the body in the tree she’d taken from the tower.

Since her descent she’d been grappling with the thought that there was something familiar about this entire scenario, something oddly reminiscent.

It was almost like a real-life version of a Renaissance painting, a medieval torture scene. Was that what was going on – a re-enactment of some kind?

Jack Gorman would go bananas if he could hear her thoughts. He was forever accusing her of making wild leaps, and forging connections where there appeared to be none. But it was how Reilly had always worked, and indeed, such odd disparate thoughts often helped her make her breakthroughs, so she couldn’t ignore them.

There was without doubt something familiar, something recognizable about the setup.

She looked again at the image of the victim in the tree. But what? And what kind of person could orchestrate something so grotesque, so evil?

A magpie squawked loudly in the distance and Reilly felt a fresh chill run up her spine.

T
he following morning, Reilly, Chris and Kennedy assembled in the incident room at Harcourt Street Station, where they were scheduled to meet with Inspector O’Brien.

The disembowelled man in the tree had made front-page news, and the garda chief superintendent had ordered an immediate autopsy and more manpower for the investigation.

‘Last Rites – Police Baffled by Church Killing’ one of the more restrained headlines screamed, and outside the station Reilly had to battle through a media scrum demanding answers, their cameras and microphones recording everything.

As it was, the team were only beginning to try to put things together.

Through a dental match, Karen Thompson had by now identified that the dead man was 58-year-old Dr George Jennings, a well-respected Dublin GP who had been reported missing a week ago.

The ME had suggested that, based on the severe deterioration of his biological tissue due to prolonged weather exposure, he had most likely been up in the tree for most of that time, More disconcertingly, she ascertained that when strung up there, Dr Jennings had been very much alive, and was vivisected as a feast for the scavenging birds.

Upon Reilly’s instructions, Julius was currently seeking out various makes and models of mechanical hoists, and their suppliers or hirers, trying to ascertain how easily the killer might have got hold of one. Such a task was always difficult, though. The killer may have been in possession of such an item for years, and a supplier search would likely be fruitless. But with someone as dogged as Julius on the case, you just never knew ...

‘Three men dead, and all in the weirdest circumstances I’ve ever come across in my time!’ O’Brien thundered.

The team (as well as the media) had little choice but to contemplate that the recent murders, all so macabre in nature, should no longer be viewed in isolation. The elaborate manner of all three deaths was just too coincidental.

Reilly guessed that O’Brien was rattled, not only by the murders, but by the intensifying media demands. To try to keep them at bay, at least temporarily, he’d scheduled a press conference, and she guessed he was hoping this meeting would give him something to help calm the situation and reassure the public that the authorities were in control.

‘One drowned in his own shite, another frozen in a block of ice, and now some poor creature strung up with his guts hanging out! What the hell is going on in this country? Is it gangs, huh? Is that what it’s all about? Are they trying to outdo each other by seeing which one can come up with the freakiest?’

‘We don’t think it’s gangs,’ Chris put in quietly. ‘With the exception of Crowe, the victims had no connection to gangland crime that we know of.’

Tony Coffey had rarely tackled national crime issues in his newspaper column, and Jennings, who had lived in leafy Killiney, was as far away from the city’s seedy underbelly as you could get.

‘Well I’m delighted you
are
thinking, Detective Delaney,’ O’Brien snapped. ‘But thinking alone won’t get this thing stopped.’

‘The victims are all middle-class professionals from the same social spectrum,’ Kennedy put in. ‘We’re working on a possible link, we suspect they knew each other ... met up socially, members of the same golf club, that kind of thing.’

‘God bless us and save us,’ O’Brien muttered. ‘You think they might have been knocked off over a game of golf – from a sore loser or something?’ His eyes bulged. ‘Jesus, Kennedy, I’ve been in this job a long time and I’ve never,
ever
seen anything like this. It’s a spectacle of the most horrific order! And to think there are sick fuckers out there with minds like that. I mean, where the hell do they get these ideas?  Is it from the television, the internet—’

‘Actually, I think it might be deeper than that,’ Reilly said, speaking for the first time since the meeting began.

They all turned to look at her.

‘This isn’t some guy stealing ideas from a TV program,’ she continued. ‘There’s a real medieval brutality to the stagings and tortures employed. Old Testament, almost wrath-of-God-type stuff, with overtones of Christianity. The man in the tree ... well, it could be considered a crucifixion of sorts, couldn’t it?’ 

She’d been thinking about it all night, suspicious now, like the others, that the horrific and theatrical manner of the recent murders were just too similiar to be coincidental. With the discovery of the third victim, it seemed that there was some form of symbolism attached to the manner of each death. Given that their most recent victim was found in a church, she wondered if there was a biblical element.

‘My guess is that we’re dealing not with some low-life gang lord,’ she continued, ‘but someone with a classical education, who is being very definite about the message he wants to get across.’

‘What kind of message?’ Chris asked.

‘I’m not sure. Clearly there’s a personal element to the killings, with all the trouble he goes to. But perhaps with the ice, the sewer and now the tree, I wonder if we might be dealing with somebody environmentally sensitive?’

‘A tree-hugger? For the love of God, Steel, what kind of sick bastard loves trees enough that they’d hang some poor bugger alive on one and leave him for the birds to feed on?’

She sat back. ‘I don’t know, sir. It’s just a theory.’

‘Jesus, I hate this job sometimes. Right, enough talk, there’s no time for hanging around. You two,’ O’Brien stabbed a finger at the two detectives, ‘talk to Johnny Crowe’s wife, and see if she knows anything about golf buddies, or if he knew either of the other two victims. Steel, I take it you’ve got plenty to occupy yourself with from that tree yesterday?’

‘Yes, sir, but taking into account the harsh elements—’

‘I don’t want to hear it. Just work your mumbo-jumbo magic and find me something amongst it all that’ll help us find this madman, or at least figure out what he’s up to before he does it again. And seeing as Johnny Crowe’s killing looks to be connected to the other two under your remit, it makes sense for you to oversee that one too.’

Reilly winced. Her older colleague, Gorman, would no doubt go ballistic at the idea of her taking over one of his open files. But it was nothing personal, and in reality another file was no great bonus to Reilly, who now was likely slap-bang in the middle of a serial killer investigation.

‘Jesus Christ, I can’t keep up with criminals in this godforsaken country anymore,’ O’Brien was muttering. ‘And what am I going to say at the press conference later, huh? That a bunch of crusty hippies are responsible? They’ll eat me alive!’

‘Sir, the environmental angle was merely a theory. I wasn’t suggesting—’

‘I don’t want theories, Steel, I want answers. Now the whole lot of you, get the hell out of here and find me some.’

‘You don’t really think this is someone trying to make a political statement, do you?’ Chris asked her afterwards, when they were heading back to their respective offices.

‘I have no idea. Like I said, there’s a definite metaphorical overtone to the manner of death, and the posing of the bodies ... well, there’s something to that too, something we’re not seeing.’

‘God, I hate these mindfuck investigations,’ Kennedy grumbled. ‘Yeah, all the murders are weird, but is there actually anything in the evidence to connect them?’

‘Nothing other than Crowe’s phone number in Coffey’s pocket, and we’re still going through yesterday’s evidence. Of course I didn’t run Crowe’s location – that was Gorman’s.’ She bit her lip. ‘He won’t be happy, but now I’m going to have to go down to the factory and start afresh.’

As they were no longer running each case in isolation Reilly knew she needed to look at the entire investigation from a broader point of view. Although he was a competent investigator, she couldn’t take Jack Gorman’s crime scene findings on trust. It was only through immersing herself in the Crowe scene, essentially walking in the murderer’s shoes, that she’d be able to get a proper sense of it.

‘Good idea,’ Chris said. ‘We’re going to re-interview the wives, see if the three victims knew each other.’

Kennedy grimaced. ‘I don’t think O’Brien went for the golf club angle somehow.’

Reilly smiled. ‘It was loose, but you’re right: they’re each middle-aged, upper to middle class, and by all accounts well-respected professionals. It wouldn’t be at all surprising to find that they mixed in similar social circles or had some involvement with one another, however patchy.’

‘Well, to our killer, they’re very closely involved – with his plans at least,’ Chris said. ‘Could be that’s he’s punishing them for something.’

Reilly pictured afresh Tony Coffey’s sewage-steeped corpse, Crowe’s frozen form, and Dr Jennings with his innards spilling out on the tree.

She exhaled heavily. ‘If punishment is his motive, he sure has a unique way of dispensing it.’

I
t was a crisp, dry day, a touch of frost still clinging on the ground, the sky overhead the pale blue of coming winter.