Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (14 page)

She turned and looked back at the building, understanding the layout.  Deliveries and shipments would have come in and out through the front gate – where Reilly’s uniformed companion currently sat warm in his car – down the side of the building, to the loading dock at the rear.

A picture appeared in her mind of Crowe, bound, trussed and bundled like an oven-ready turkey, being wheeled inside, possibly on a handcart. Then Jennings, also bound before he was hoisted up into the tree. What about Coffey?

Reilly pulled her phone from her pocket, and quickly touched and scrolled.

From the GFU office, Jack Gorman’s deep tones filled her ear. ‘What can I do for you, Ms Steel?’

She spoke quickly, hoping she wasn’t already too late. ‘Tony Coffey’s body – is it still in our custody?’

‘Let me check.’ The older investigator sounded irritated, her questions clearly unwelcome to him. ‘It’s due to be shipped off this later this afternoon,’ he informed her after a few minutes’ wait. ‘Apparently the funeral is Wednesday.’

‘Can we delay it?’

‘And what would be the point in that? Oh, let me guess, off on yet another one of your cat and mouse games?’ Gorman’s tone barely disguised his contempt.

Reilly wished that for once he would take her seriously. She knew well how much Gorman disliked her, considered her an upstart – young and female as well as a scientist, not his favorite combination.

He’d been almost apoplectic this morning, upon learning that she planned to rerun the Crowe scene, one he insisted he’d combed to the last. But his report mentioned nothing about wheel tracks or an alkaline smell.

‘Humour me, Gorman. Can you meet me at the morgue with a copy of both Crowe and Coffey’s autopsy reports?’

He sighed wearily, annoyed by her intrusion into his orderly schedule. ‘I’m very busy today, Steel.  Unlike you, I really don’t have time to waste—’

‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ she interjected.  ‘Please. It’s important. ’

I
t was less than thirty minutes’ drive from the city out to rural Drogheda where Crowe had lived for the past few years, but seemed much further.

The landscape changed quickly as Chris and Kennedy headed north, becoming flatter and more windblown with each mile, the greens turning to a dull brown expanse. The winds whipped up and the sky closed in, a November shower falling from a leaden gray sky.

Chris gazed out across the windswept shore. A lone gull battled the wind, making almost no progress, before finally seeming to quit and dropping quickly down into the long grass. He shivered, and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. 

‘I think I’d go crazy living out here.’

Kennedy was perched on the bonnet of the car, his cigarette cupped in his hands as he tried to light it. The flame from his lighter flickered and danced before finally catching the end of the cigarette. He inhaled deeply as the red glow devoured the white paper. ‘I guess it’s like anything – you’d get used to it.’

Chris shook his head. ‘Not me. I’m too much of a townie.’ He turned to take in the dull brown riverbanks that extended in either direction, the only sound the mournful wail of the wind as it whipped past them. ‘Why would Crowe want to retire out here in the sticks?’  He looked at Kennedy, genuine bafflement on his face. ‘Wasn’t he a Dubliner?’

‘Born and bred.  Always used to boast about being a barrow boy in Moore Street when he was a kid.’

‘That’s what I mean.’ Chris turned back towards the car, pulling his coat collar up high around his ears. ‘Would you ever hurry up and finish that bloody thing?  We need to get moving.’

His partner took a deep drag. ‘Yeah, yeah, calm down. This isn’t going to be the easiest conversation, you know.’

Crowe had a place on a dead-end road out past the town, an old cottage he had fixed up. Kennedy eased the car down a narrow lane, splashing in and out of deep puddles and ruts, until they finally stopped in front of a large iron gate. A sign read, ‘Keep Out.  Beware of the Dogs’.

As Kennedy pulled up in front of the gate, Chris had glanced over at his partner.  ‘Friendly.’

Kennedy gave a hollow laugh. ‘Yep, this is Crowe’s place for sure.’

Even from inside the car they could hear the barking of the dogs, and the animals soon appeared, a pair of muscular German shepherds, hurling themselves against the gate, their teeth gleaming in the dull light as they charged and threatened the visitors.

Behind the gate was a low cottage, a squat bungalow that seemed perfectly suited to the desolate location. 

Now Kennedy finished his cigarette, and flicked the butt into a nearby puddle. The driveway was slick from the rain, dotted with small puddles, and the barking of the dogs grew even more insistent.  He straightened and stomped over to the gate.

Up close the dogs were even scarier, hurling themselves at the heavy metal gate with primal ferocity, their furry coats rippling with muscle. Kennedy stepped quickly forward, rang the bell, then stepped back from the gate. The dogs kept up their furious assault, spittle flying from their mouths as they roared at the intruder.

Suddenly they paused, and looked behind them. A voice cut through the air. ‘Brutus! Caesar! Away!’

The dogs gave the detectives one last look, then trotted silently away. A woman appeared from the side of the house, wearing wellingtons and a heavy, mud-stained rain jacket, her gray-peppered hair pulled back in a tight bun. She stopped about five yards from the gate, and eyed her visitors suspiciously. ‘What do you want?’

Kennedy fixed his best smile in place. ‘Hi, Maggie.’

Mrs Crowe squinted in confusion.

‘Pete. Pete Kennedy?’ he prompted her.

She reached the gate, and peered through the dark metal rails at him.  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

Chris smiled. It was the sort of greeting his partner usually commanded, but at least she remembered him.

‘Sorry to bother you, Maggie,’ Kennedy continued. ‘I wondered if we could have a few words.’ 

She peered past him at the car where Chris sat huddled up. She set her hands on her hips, exuding obvious suspicion. ‘Who’s in the car?’

‘That’s my partner, Detective Delaney. He’s a city boy, doesn’t like the countryside much.’

Maggie looked at the barren sky above, the rain clouds whipping past.  ‘Can’t say I blame him. I’m not terribly keen either.’ 

Bloody hell, Chris thought, this was like pulling teeth. He wished Kennedy would hurry up and get on with it. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind,’ he said, leaning out of the window. ‘Just a couple of loose ends to tie up about your husband’s death.’

Crowe’s wife looked back at him, noncommittal. ‘I’ve already answered a lot of questions. There’s nothing more to say.’

‘I understand, but—’

‘Do you?’ Her words were harsh, reflecting the heavy lines in her pinched face. ‘Do you understand what it’s like when your husband is found dead, frozen in a block of ice? And then everyone wants to know the most intimate details of your life, as if that’s going to help anything.’

She half turned away from them, and for a moment Chris thought she was about to leave, but she stayed still, gazing out past them at the fields that surrounded the house. A line of geese worked their way towards them, their powerful wings holding their perfect V formation as they passed overhead, honking intermittently.

Mrs Crowe suddenly turned back towards them, and now she seemed to have let her guard down a little. ‘I do remember you, Detective Kennedy. John always spoke well of you, said you were all right, one of the lads.’  She looked up and met his gaze. ‘I guess that’s a compliment, isn’t it?’

Kennedy shrugged. ‘I hope so. Who knows with John?’

‘It means he trusted you.’ She fell silent, her hands playing with something in the pocket of her jacket.

Kennedy reached into his own pocket, and pulled out his cigarettes. Her eyes followed him hungrily as he slipped a cigarette from the packet, lit it, and inhaled deeply.  He peered at her through the smoke. ‘Want one?’

Her gaze was still fixed on the cigarette. ‘I’ve given up,’ she said quickly.

‘Me too.  It’s a pain, isn’t it?’ Kennedy inhaled again, then held the cigarette out towards her.

For a second she hesitated, then suddenly her hand reached out through the gate, and took the cigarette. The first drag was slow, deep, almost ecstatic as she drew the smoke deep into her lungs.

‘God, I miss that,’ she said. She took another drag, and looked at the cigarette thoughtfully. ‘The doctor says I was slowly killing myself with these, but hey, with the way things have worked out, who cares?’

‘Yeah, my quack says the same thing, but the bastard smokes himself.’ Kennedy shrugged. ‘It’s the little things like this that make life worth living, isn’t it?’

Mrs Crowe said nothing, and simply savored the cigarette.

‘Who’s your doctor, by the way?’ Kennedy asked with a casual air that impressed Chris. His technique mightn’t be the smoothest, but he had his own ways all the same.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your doctor?  I was just wondering if you have one down here or use the same guy you went to back in Dublin.’

‘No, it’s a local. Jack Davis. Why do you ask?’

‘Just making conversation.’

Mrs Crowe looked skeptical. ‘Detective, please, I’ve spent most of my life married to a cop, and I know that when it comes to you lot, there’s no such thing.’

‘As I said we’re trying to tie up a couple of loose ends in the investigation and—’

‘What investigation? Into John’s death? Because I don’t remember either of you being involved in any of that at all until today.’

She was sharp, no doubting that, Chris thought. A by-product of years spent as a cop’s wife.

‘OK, Maggie, I’ll be straight up with you,’ Kennedy said sighing. ‘We’re not a hundred percent convinced that it was a payback murder and—’

‘Well, it’s about bloody time,’ she interjected, and the detectives exchanged looks. ‘I never once suspected that it was.’

Chris was watching her closely.

‘What was your husband into, Maggie?’ he asked suddenly.

She said nothing for a moment and Chris wondered if he’d jumped in too quickly, pushed his luck too soon.

She glanced back towards the house, thinking, deciding. ‘John was into a lot of things,’ she said eventually. ‘I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell ...’

Chris nodded. ‘Best way. Any ideas?’ He fired the words at her, trying to force her to admit what it might be that her husband had got involved in, and how it might tie in with the other two victims.

Maggie wouldn’t meet his gaze. She sucked greedily on the cigarette, and let out a deep breath of smoke that was whipped away on the wind.  ‘People who cross the line always need someone to watch their backs  be there if things go bad,’ she said finally. ‘John was good at that.’

Kennedy nodded. ‘He ran a security firm.’

‘He had a few contracts for local businesses, but some of the characters he met weren’t the kind who needed a night watchman for their office building, if you understand me,’ she said meaningfully. ‘People would come to the house late at night, dodgy-looking characters, I thought. They’d sit at the kitchen table talking ...’ Now that she’d opened up, Chris thought, she seemed keen to get it all out. ‘I stayed out of the way, didn’t want to know what he was doing. I’d make them cups of tea and then go and watch TV, pretend they were talking about football or the dogs.’

‘But,’ Chris prompted her gently, ‘you knew something wasn’t right?’

‘John was always in a good mood afterwards – he’d have these big envelopes of cash, give me a couple of hundred to go shopping. “Treat yourself,” he’d say, and give me that smile of his ...’  The sadness of her loss flashed across her face for a moment, but she quickly reeled it back in.

Kennedy nodded.  ‘He could be a real charmer when he wanted to be ...  Do you have any names for us, Maggie?’

She shook her head. ‘Like I said, I stayed out of it.’

They’d got this far, and Chris wasn’t going to go away empty-handed. ‘What about a pub, or a bookie’s maybe, somewhere he might hang out and meet people?’

She nodded. ‘To be fair to him he kept most of his “business” away from home.  His office was Brown’s Bar on Sheriff Street.’

Kennedy gave a grunt of recognition. ‘That’s a rough spot.’

Maggie finished her cigarette, dropped the butt into a small puddle, and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment. It looked like their conversation was over.

Kennedy reached for his packet and held it out for her. ‘Want to keep them?’

She thought for a moment, her eyes not wavering.  Finally her hand shot out and grabbed the packet, like a child reaching for a bag of sweets. ‘What the heck. We all have to go sometime.’

G
orman looked less than pleased to see Reilly.  Indeed, he barely looked up when she met him at the entrance to the city morgue  a modern, purpose-built place on the opposite side of the city from the GFU.

‘The autopsy reports you asked for,’ he grunted, grudgingly handing her the files. ‘I’m sure they both say the same as they did last time you looked at them.’

Reilly took a deep breath, and forced herself to relax and not be wound up by him. Why was he always so uptight, so bitter?

Get what you need and get out of here, she told herself.  Humor him, do whatever it takes to get what you want ... 

‘Jack, just to be clear, I'm not undermining the efficiency of your findings,’ she began. ‘And the reason I went over the Crowe scene again this afternoon is because we have strong reason to believe that this murder may relate to Tony Coffey and George Jennings.’

Gorman paused for a moment before carefully removing his glasses, folding them and slipping them into his jacket pocket.

‘I’m aware of that, Steel, yet you don’t see me questioning your own rather ... slim findings at the site where the journalist was found.’

His tone was smug, and Reilly knew that the man must have been rubbing his hands with glee that he hadn’t been the one to have had to wade through the stinking mess that was the Coffey scene.

‘I’m not questioning anything, Jack, just trying to look at each murder with a fresh eye. The thinking before with Crowe was that it might be one of his old collars taking revenge, and with Coffey, someone or something he wrote about. Now, it looks as though there may be much more to it. The manner of their deaths—’