Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (16 page)

‘You implying he was taking kickbacks?’ Chris looked across at Kennedy, who shrugged.

Ivan shook his head. ‘He never say.’ He sat back, looked from one detective to the other. ‘But if I was you? That’s where I would look. Not dirty pub in Sheriff Street ...’ Ivan suddenly looked past Chris, and gave a slight shake of the head.

Chris followed his gaze – four large men stood by the door, watching carefully what was happening at the table. They were all well dressed, with dark looks that matched Ivan’s. At the big man’s gesture they seemed to relax.

‘So, you are busy men, yes? Busy being good cops,’ Ivan was suddenly jovial, but it was also a clear signal that the interview was over. He flicked his lighter open, and held it just in front of his cigarette. ‘Happy investigation, yes?’

Chris glanced at the four men, and back at Kennedy. ‘Right, happy investigation.’  He stood up, and his partner did the same. Then he held his card out to Ivan. ‘If you think of anything else that might be helpful ...’

Ivan looked at it for a moment, then nodded to McCarthy, who took the card.

The detectives turned and walked slowly out of the pub, passing the four men on the way. They were clustered by the door, and moved only slightly as he and Kennedy passed, forcing them to weave between all four – close enough to see their hard eyes, smell the beer and cigarettes and sweat.

Not until they were outside the pub, the fresh wind on their faces, did Kennedy let out a deep sigh of relief.  ‘Jesus Christ, I haven’t felt like that since my first week on the beat,’ he gasped. ‘What kind of shit was Crowe into?’

But the real question was, Chris thought, was it the man’s dodgy dealings or his law enforcement past that had landed him in ice?

R
eilly never felt comfortable going into bars by herself. Something about the way men leered, like there was this automatic assumption that a single woman in such a place was available. She tried to ignore the staring faces and looked around for Chris and Kennedy.  They were seated at a table in the corner, beers in hand, in animated discussion about something.

She had to admit she was a bit taken aback when earlier that evening she’d phoned Chris’s mobile to give him an update on yesterday’s sweep of the factory as well as her findings at the morgue, and he’d suggested she come down and meet him and Kennedy at a pub not far from the station.

It wouldn’t have been her choice of location for a work-related get-together, but they were all working crazy hours these days, and she figured it was better than going home to her empty flat. As it was, she didn’t get to experience enough of the local culture, and figured this as good an opportunity as any.to soak up the world-famous atmosphere of an Irish pub.

Reilly made her way through the crowd and slipped into an empty chair, shedding her coat as she sat. She looked back and forth between them.

‘What’s going on?’

Kennedy smiled at her. ‘O’Brien’s latest press conference – did you see it?’

She shook her head. ‘I try and avoid those things.’

‘It should be on YouTube,’ he informed her. ‘A comedy classic.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do tell.’

‘There’s really not much to tell, you just have to see it.’

‘Pure waffle,’ Chris  explained. ‘How to say nothing but look really important while you do it. O’Brien is an expert.’

‘What’s that phrase he always uses?’ Kennedy chuckled. ‘“Our enquiries are proceeding with the full co-operation of the public.”’ He snorted in derision. ‘Which really means we don’t have a fucking clue ...’

Reilly grimaced. ‘If this one was good, the next should be one of the don’t-miss events of the year.’

They both looked at her, intrigued. ‘You found something?’ Chris asked.

‘Well, there’s some interesting new evidence ...’ she began slowly.

‘“Interesting”,’ Kennedy repeated. ‘One little word that usually means a host of big problems.’ He grimaced. ‘Why do I have a bad feeling about what you’re going to say next? Anyway, hold your horses for a second.’ He stood up. ‘What are you drinking?’

‘Oh, I’m not staying—’

‘You can’t sit in an Irish pub without a drink in front of you – it’s the law.’

Chris nodded sagely. ‘Very true.’

Reilly looked from one to the other, stupidly unsure as to whether or not they were kidding. 

‘OK then ... I’ll have a soda.’

‘Grand job.’ Kennedy waddled off and she looked at Chris, who winked at her.

Feeling stupid, she colored. ‘Well, you Irish and your drinking ...’ she said sheepishly, ‘you just never know.’

‘Aren’t you here long enough now to have got over the stereotype?’ Chris jibed.

‘Honestly, I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface ...’

He laughed, and Kennedy duly returned with the drinks.

‘So – get it over with then, what’s the news?’ He sounded impatient as he put the drinks on the table.

She smiled and picked up her soda. ‘Matching trace samples from Crowe, Coffey
and
Jennings. Well, there are a couple of links, actually.’ She went on to tell them about the wheel tracks at the factory the day before, and her theory that all three victims had been bound and transported to each site on a handcart.

Kennedy nodded. ‘Makes sense, I suppose. I saw those tracks in the grass around the tree myself  crossed my mind that they looked like they came from a wheelchair or something.’ He chuckled. ‘Lucky I’m in this job and not yours, isn’t it?’

‘You got that from when you went back and redid Crowe’s location yesterday?’ Chris asked, and she nodded. ‘I’m sure Gorman is pleased.’

‘He wasn’t over the moon about it, but this time I was actively looking for a connection, rather than going in blind. Anyway, we got a result, that’s all that matters.’

‘So what’s the common trace?’ Chris asked.

‘Horse feed,’ she announced proudly.

‘Horse ... and that helps us how?’ Kennedy looked at her as if she was mad. ‘You want us to start looking for a bogyman who has a thing for horses?’ He grabbed his pint, and took several deep gulps. ‘Not forgetting the Chinese food too, which got us where, exactly?’

Reilly remained calm. Perhaps neither find gave them much to go on in terms of catching the murderer, but it was still something.

Chris seemed to be thinking hard. ‘Does it tell us anything new?’

She nodded. ‘Well, chances are our guy works in or lives near stables, or someplace that keeps horses on the property. Dust from pellet feed is exceptionally fine, so even though he’s going out of his way to be careful, he wouldn’t be able to budget for this stuff. He could be bringing in residue on his clothes, his hair ...

‘Lucy found it at the Coffey scene originally, but we didn’t jump on it because of Mrs Coffey’s hunting connection. It was also picked up from the ground surrounding Crowe’s bathtub, but the components were listed as unidentified on Gorman’s report. It was only today, when we compared the listings side by side, actively looking for a crossover, that we spotted it.’

‘Any sign of it on Jennings?’

Reilly frowned. ‘There may well have been, but thanks to that idiot groundsman, the area beneath the tree was a nightmare. Julius is working on it as we speak.’

‘Anything else interesting from that site?’

‘Not especially. The back door of the church showed signs of forced entry like you said – I’d guess a pry bar, something similar. Old lock, old wood, it would have opened pretty easily.’

Chris nodded.

‘And despite the risk of blowing the electrics, Gary checked to see if the lights worked – nothing.’

‘So Jennings’ killer must have come and gone during daylight hours?’

Reilly nodded. ‘It’s such a quiet area – well chosen, just like the others.’ 

Then she reached into her handbag, opened a file and slid it across the table, pointing to a small hand-drawn map. ‘There’s access there, so he could have driven up the side and parked almost outside the rear door.’

Kennedy looked up, optimistic. ‘Tire marks?’

‘Nope. The driveway is gravel, and it was raining the night before the body was found. And seeing as Jennings had been there a few days, anything would have been washed away.’

‘Christ, what do we have to do to catch a break on this thing?’ the older detective spat.

‘Anything new from your end?’ Reilly asked.

‘We followed up on Crowe yesterday,’ Chris told her, ‘checked up on some of the rumors.’

‘And?’

He chuckled. ‘Well, for starters, some big Russian bloke scared the life out of Kennedy.’

‘Hey!’

Reilly raised an amused eyebrow. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Crowe’s wife pointed us in the direction of one of his hangouts here in the city. He was definitely mixed up with some unsavory characters, there’s no doubt about that, but whether they had anything to do with his death ... My gut tells me no. Again, this whole thing is too elaborate a setup for a small-timer.’

‘The wife didn’t seem to know Jennings or Coffey either,’ Kennedy added. ‘She’d heard of Coffey, of course, but didn’t know him personally. Says Johnny didn’t know either of them.’

Reilly was thoughtful. ‘You mentioned something yesterday,’ she said to Chris, ‘about punishment. And I can’t help wondering if this is what it all comes down to. He is punishing them, and in a very specific way.  But for what? Never mind why such a manner.’

‘Well, Coffey’s wife is convinced that his death has something to do with his work, rather than his affairs. Maybe if Coffey was a gun for hire, ready to dish the dirt on anyone for the right price, and someone didn’t like what he wrote ...’ Kennedy slurped his pint. ‘We know the guy could be vicious, and he went after a lot of high-profile people. That’s an easy way to make enemies and piss people off.’

‘Still,’ Chris said, ‘it’s a big leap from making enemies to having someone stuff you in your own septic tank.’

‘And while both Crowe and Coffey clearly made enemies and plenty of them,’ Reilly continued, ‘the care and planning involved in these killings, these punishments—’

‘Not to mention the way they were killed,’ Chris interjected.

‘Yes – Jennings especially  all point to a more meticulous killer.’

Reilly looked at both of the detectives. ‘This couldn’t be someone who simply got the hump over an article in the newspaper, or a speeding ticket from Crowe.’

‘Or that Jennings charged him sixty euro for a prescription and told him to come back next week if he wasn’t feeling better,’ Kennedy added dourly.

‘There’s something more, something bigger,’ she said, trying to figure out what these men could have done to deserve such a graphic form of punishment. ‘There’s something familiar, symbolic even, about the posing, too. I just can’t figure out what.’

Reilly looked levelly at them, biding her time before she told them the rest. ‘Which brings to me to the next item on the agenda. I just had a meeting with Gorman.’  Despite his initial misgivings, the older GFU investigator was on side once Reilly had pointed out the common evidence, and he’d duly updated Inspector O’Brien on their findings. ‘He reckons the top brass are mulling over bringing a profiler in.’

‘For football’s sake ...!’ Kennedy was instantly on full alert, his fleshy face turning red. ‘Not your FBI mate again, flying in and flouncing around like he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Anyway, I thought he was retiring?’

Unable to resist a smile at Kennedy’s description of her former mentor who she was sure would be tickled pink by the observation, Reilly shook her head. ‘He is, and there’s no question of that. Daniel only came over last time to keep an eye on me, you know that now.’

‘Still ...’

‘Who’s O’Brien thinking of bringing in?’ Chris asked. ‘Someone from the UK?’ As the Irish force didn’t have a behavioral unit, they sometimes worked with psychology specialists from Scotland Yard if a case required such input.

‘Yes, and I told Gorman that I agreed. These murders are well beyond our range of expertise – the deliberate staging, religious overtones ...’

Kennedy was almost spitting blood. ‘Jesus, I hate those fuckers, always so smug, smarmy and up their own arses.’

Chris nodded thoughtfully. ‘I agree, though. This case is going to need that kind of intervention sooner or later.’

‘Yeah, well, I’d sooner it was later.’ His partner drained his pint, stood up, and hitched up his trousers. ‘I need another. Reilly, same again?’

‘I’m really not staying ...’

He gave her a look. ‘No way, missy. You don’t come in here, drop this bombshell, then just bloody walk out.’

She smiled. ‘OK, you win – on the drink at least.’

Kennedy waddled off to the bar, and Reilly turned to Chris. ‘What
are
those guys like? The ones from Scotland Yard, I mean?’

Chris raised an eyebrow. ‘Pretty much exactly how Kennedy just described them: smug, smarmy and—’

‘Up their own asses, I get it. Still, we need every bit of help we can get.’

A drink appeared on the table in front of her and Kennedy sat down heavily, handed Chris his pint, and set his own down on the stained wooden table. ‘Help, yes.  From those guys, no.’ He drank deeply from his beer.

Reilly could see she was at an impasse. She picked up her drink, rolled the ice cubes around. They clinked gently against the side of the glass as she raised it to her mouth. Then she gulped and immediately went to spit it out. ‘Hey, what the hell did you put in here? I thought I said just a soda.’ 

Kennedy shoved his pint against Reilly’s small glass. ‘You can’t sit in Irish pub and not drink alcohol.  It’s the law.’

T
wo days later, the task force consisting of Reilly from the GFU and Chris and Kennedy from Serious Crimes, assembled at Harcourt Street Station where Inspector O’Brien had scheduled another briefing.

Chris looked up wearily from his desk as Reilly approached with her quick, neat steps, her walk betraying much of her personality – controlled, disciplined, always slightly on her guard, aware that people were watching her.

Utterly different from the woman he’d seen ride a surfboard with wild abandon, her blond hair wet and plastered to her face as she attempted to conquer the kind of waves that would give the bravest man jitters. Despite Reilly’s best efforts, surfing still wasn’t one of Chris’s strengths, but he wouldn’t mind giving it another try when they both had some free time. The way things were going currently, this was unlikely.