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

Masterton allowed himself a smile. ‘Thank you, Ms Steel.’  He turned to the defense. ‘Your witness.’

The defense lawyer wore a tired, defeated look. In his late fifties, with a thousand tough cases behind him, Michael Liston knew when to attack, or when to regroup and look for a weak point elsewhere.

Reilly Steel, GFU investigator, had revealed no chinks in her armor.  She had a rock-solid chain of evidence, unimpeachable scientific credibility, unshakeable conclusions, and a manner that spoke of unquestionable competence. Experience told him there was no value in pursuing her – what he needed was to get her off the witness stand as quickly as possible. Liston shook his head. ‘No further questions, Your Honor.’

The judge nodded to Reilly. ‘Thank you, Ms Steel, that will be all.’

As the GFU investigator stood and walked quickly back to her seat, the artist noticed that all eyes were on her. She had delivered her evidence with such certainty, such an air of confidence, that it was hard not to feel admiration for her.

Even as the next witness was called to the stand, he began a second sketch of her, his quick strokes filling in the details that had been hidden while Steel sat in the witness stand – her slim figure, long legs, elegant way of walking ...

It was on days like this that he loved his job.

As she exited the courthouse, Reilly exhaled, finally able to release some of the tension, the strain of being the key witness. The entire trial hinged upon her evidence, and she had come through.

With Doyle’s denial of guilt blown out of the water, the case should proceed smoothly towards a conviction.

Did the system always convict the right person? Of course not – Reilly wasn’t naïve enough to believe that – but she did believe that most of the time, if there was sufficient incontrovertible evidence, the correct decision would be reached.

In this instance it had all come together. Doyle had pleaded not guilty, and had denied even knowing Elizabeth Walker, but Reilly’s evidence – the evidence so carefully collected and analyzed by her team at the GFU – had placed him at the scene of the murder, in Elizabeth Walker’s bed.

Justice was about to be served.

Making a mental note to thank her team for their Trojan work in preparing for the case, Reilly pulled out her iPhone to type a reminder to herself, and also to check her messages. There were a few, but one in particular caught her attention: a text message from Detective Chris Delaney. He rarely texted unless it was important. Reilly opened the message.

‘
Hope the trial’s going well and you nail Doyle to the wall. Call when you’re finished? We’ve got a weird one.
’

Reilly arched an eyebrow. A weird one? 

Exactly how she liked them.

D
etective Chris Delaney climbed from his car and looked up at the Coffey house. His partner, Pete Kennedy, hauled himself out of the other side and followed Chris’s gaze. ‘Didn’t realize tabloid journalists made that much money.’

Chris slammed the door of the Ford closed. ‘They don’t. According to the file, Tony Coffey married well.’

Kennedy glanced around and straightened up, trying to hitch his trousers up over his beer belly. It was a hopeless task, but one he nonetheless repeated constantly. ‘Who’s the missus, then?’

Chris ran his dark eyes over the house. A former Franciscan friary, the imposing sandstone building was three stories tall and solidly built, mostly large assemblies of intricately cut masonry, and decorated with delicate filigree woodwork.

‘Webb. Big local family, construction money. They’re part of the horsy set.’

Kennedy vainly hitched up his trousers again. ‘I don’t get it. Isn’t Coffey a bit of a radical?’

Chris bent down to look in the wing mirror, straightened his tie and ran a hand through his dark hair. He nodded. ‘Yep – every Sunday he writes a column in the
Herald
supporting this or, more often than not, denouncing that. But he’s probably best known for his attacks on animal cruelty and foxhunting, that type of thing.’

Kennedy raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll bet that goes down a treat at family get-togethers.’

They headed across the gravel towards the rear of the house. Chris glanced around the graveled parking area. There were several garda cars, a couple of white vans, and a battered black Volvo estate.

The autumn leaves blew round his feet in hurried swirls, as though they were looking for a way to escape from the garden.  It was mid-afternoon, but the gray bruise of rainclouds covering the sky from horizon to horizon made it feel later.

‘I see the doc is here already – have you managed to get hold of blondie yet?’ Kennedy asked.

Chris shook his head. ‘She’s in court today, remember? The Walker murder. And she’d have your balls for breakfast if she heard you call her that.’

No better woman than Reilly Steel to put Kennedy in his place, Chris thought wryly, and it was something she did repeatedly. He was glad for more reasons than one that it was she, and not grouchy old Jack Gorman, that was the GFU investigator handling this particular crime scene. She and Chris had become close since teaming up on an investigation earlier in the year that had involved Reilly’s family, during which he had almost been killed

He was pretty certain that, unlike the older investigator, Reilly Steel wouldn’t bat an eyelid at the rather ‘difficult’ circumstances they were facing today. Fearless and unflappable, he knew that some members of the force thought her standoffish. ‘Steel by name, steel by nature,’ he’d heard said about her.

Chris knew however, that behind the cool façade was a woman who’d spent much of her life trying to overcome major demons in her past.

During their first investigation together, he’d discovered a side to her that others rarely saw: fun-loving, warm and sometimes vulnerable. She was a demon on a surfboard (and with a gun), and her driving scared the life out of him. She ate like a horse, yet could barely cook.

And she had a devilishly croaky laugh that made his skin prickle.

Chris and Kennedy pushed through a gate set in a high sandstone wall into a large back garden. A group of uniforms stood nearby, two forensic techs in their protective suits and booties were checking the ground around it, while Karen Thompson, the medical examiner, could be seen kneeling in the grass. Chris’s gaze ran over the area. The house was beautifully kept – double French doors opened onto a tiled terrace, and another door led out onto the garden from what he guessed was the kitchen.

The inspection pipe stood in the grass, half hidden behind shrubbery on the left-hand side of the house; nobody wanted to be looking at the mechanics of human waste removal while they sat on the terrace with their gin and tonic, so the tank must have been strategically placed to be almost invisible from the house. Easily achieved here, as the grounds were extensive.

The detectives nodded briefly towards the uniforms and the lab techs, then approached the doctor. Karen was bent over an exposed manhole cover, a breathing mask covering the lower half of her face, but still barely protecting her protruding nose.

In his four years working city homicide, Chris had experienced some acutely nasty odors, but the location of this particular corpse exacerbated the pungent stench of death with the ripe aroma of human excrement.

Suppressing his urge to gag, he automatically stepped back from the septic tank hatch. The manhole cover still lay a few feet away, where it had evidently rolled after the poor bastard who’d discovered the body had dropped it in shock.

The corpse was vertical, submerged up to the neck in sewage, and bore a horrible, twisted expression, a grimace of deep, soul-crushing despair.

Chris heard Kennedy emit a low curse. ‘Christ, that’s rank!’ he said, putting a hand over his nose and mouth.

Having seen enough, they both retreated hastily from the opening. Quick as a flash, Kennedy reached into his pocket and brought out a packet of JP Blue.

Chris looked at him speculatively. ‘Thought we’d finally agreed that that stuff will kill you,’ he said.

Lighting up, Kennedy glanced back at the tank and shuddered visibly. ‘Looks like there are worse ways to go.’

A couple of minutes later, the medical examiner stood up. Peeling off her slime-covered latex gloves, she slipped the mask away and moved over to where the detectives stood. She coughed, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘This one’s a real mess.’

‘Bit of an understatement ...’ Kennedy muttered.

‘Anything to go on?’ Chris asked, trying his utmost to keep his nostrils closed.

There was no question that foul play had been involved here; the manhole cover had been replaced and closed over, which wouldn’t have been the case if Tony Coffey had fallen into the tank by accident.  He was already trying to picture the scenario of someone dragging a heavy body across the grounds to dump it into the manhole. The only access to the garden was via the gate they had come through; the wall, seven foot high, blocked any other access from the front of the house, and it was unlikely that anyone had come over that with a body.

Chris turned towards the rear. The back garden was huge – about half an acre, he guessed – and was either walled or fenced on all sides. To the north was a small patch of orchard, to the east a wooded area, and to the west the road, separated from the garden by a tall hedge. Whoever brought Tony Coffey here had most likely come via the house, or through the gate from the gravel driveway.  ‘How long’s the body been down there?’

Karen shrugged. ‘I won’t know for sure till I get him cleaned up and take a proper look, but I’d guess he’s been dead for two or three days at least.’

‘Someone certainly worked really hard to put him down there,’ Kennedy said.

She turned her huge saucer-like eyes on him. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘How’s that?’ Chris asked.

The ME grimaced.  ‘Well, I’m almost positive that the poor man was submerged alive .’

Reilly shifted down through the gears, revved hard, and moved the GFU van out into the opposite lane and past two slow-moving cars. The spray from their tires temporarily blinded her, but she knew she had time to make the maneuver.

She kept her foot to the floor, and enjoyed the muted roar of the engine, the low rumble as the acceleration kicked in. Despite a rocky beginning, driving on the left – the opposite of back home in California  was now becoming second nature to her.

She zoomed past another car, cut back into her lane, then slowed just a little for a sweeping left-hand bend. She felt the van’s grip transmit through the firm leather seat as she took the curve at speed, the g-force keeping her pressed firmly against the seat.

Part of her knew that driving like this was childish, but it put a smile on her face, and reminded her that there was more to life than peering down a microscope and speculating on the motives and methods of criminals.

Given the nature of the job, it was essential that she found some down time when she could live for the moment, forget the job, and allow her brain simply to relax. Surfing was how she used to get her kicks, but there wasn’t much opportunity for that around Dublin, so fast driving had naturally become a substitute adrenaline rush. For Reilly, California was now figuratively, if not literally, a thousand miles away, and Dublin was gradually becoming home.

She glanced at the sat nav – the house was just ahead – and wished guiltily that the journey could take just a little longer, and include a couple more tight bends.

The police at the gate of the house waved Reilly in, and she pulled up beside the detectives’ silver Ford. She glanced round and nodded in satisfaction. Everyone was already there – she had called ahead, and her team from the GFU was expecting her.

She slipped a contamination suit over her clothes – she was by now an expert at getting changed in the narrow confines of the van and could do it in 30 seconds flat – and having traded her heels for trainers, she grabbed her forensic kit and climbed out.

A uniform waved her over to the walled back garden, and immediately Reilly began assessing the environment; asking questions, narrowing options, and beginning the process of analysis.

Kennedy and Chris looked up as she appeared. 

‘Hey, Miss Baywatch is here!’ the older detective joked.

From anyone else it might have come across as sexist and derogatory, but Reilly knew Kennedy well enough by now to understand that the teasing was good-natured, and he’d say anything to wind her up.

She didn’t mind in the slightest and, in truth, was just glad that the detectives she worked with were supportive of her. It had taken a while, particularly with the older guys on the force including Kennedy, but Reilly figured she’d done enough to prove her worth in her first year at the helm of the GFU. 

Besides, she flat-out refused to waste energy on a battle of the sexes, having seen many of her female Quantico buddies back home crash and burn trying to overcome the inevitable prejudice that existed in such a male-dominated field.

They were guys, she was a woman – deal with it.

She always enjoyed working side by side with Chris; to her he was the best kind of investigator: logical, open-minded and willing to approach a case from any angle, however unlikely it might seem. Unusually for a detective, he had little ego, and possessed a calm, quiet strength that always managed to put those around him  particularly witnesses  instantly at ease. She guessed his dark good looks probably played a part in that, too. In short, Chris Delaney was the kind of guy you could trust with your life, and Reilly hadn’t met too many of those.

Kennedy glanced at her contamination suit. ‘I thought you were giving evidence this morning – tell me you didn’t wear that to court?’

Reilly winked at him. ‘Haven’t you learned yet?  I always wear this – even to bed.’

Chris guffawed and Kennedy hitched up his trousers. ‘Helluva of an image,’ he muttered to himself, but at least it had the desired effect of shutting him up.

Reilly looked around, her eyes taking in the scene. ‘So what do we know?’ she asked. ‘Anything helpful?’