Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (33 page)

Reilly looked inside, though it seemed somehow impolite, like spying on someone. The card read: ‘Merry Christmas – hope you’re very happy in our house. Love, David  Sally and Luke.’ She looked at the handwriting – it was elegant, but completely different from the writing on the package they’d received with the DVD.

Sarah smiled. ‘They wrote that last year, too, as though they’re going to come back some day, and despite the fact we bought the house from them.’ She sighed.

‘Do they ever visit?’

‘No.  It’s been almost two years since they left, and I’ve never heard anything about them having the slightest wish to come back, even for a visit. Too many painful memories, I’d imagine.’

Too many painful memories
, Reilly echoed.

A rape/suicide incident like this created painful memories for so many people, not just the family.

But who would have been so badly affected by such memories that they would feel compelled to take the law into their own hands – and in such a destructive and elaborate way?

Having thanked Sarah Miller for her time, Reilly drove slowly back through the showers to the GFU building. Visibility was poor, and not just from the rain - it was one of those dark winter days when it never truly seems to get light, when the sun never rises, never sets, just slopes along, low to the horizon, hidden behind a wall of thick gray cloud.

Once again, almost every aspect of this case was proving to be elusive.  Even when they got a break, thought they’d made some progress – they were still going round in circles.

With Ricky Webb now free from prison (ironically the one place where he’d be safe from the killer) – the clock was ticking.

And Reilly guessed they were fast running out of time.

L
ate that evening, little by little, Harcourt Street Station grew quieter, as the reunited investigative team struggled to find something, anything that might help them either identify the killer, or find his next victim.

‘So Webb’s just ... disappeared?’ Reilly perched on the edge of Chris’s desk after her return from the Miller residence. 

‘Vanished,’ he replied shortly.

Kennedy stood up and stretched. ‘Look, sorry to break up the party but I’ve really got to head away. It’s our anniversary and I promised Josie I’d take her out to dinner tonight,’ he muttered, reaching for his coat. ‘If anything happens—’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know,’ Chris replied.

He’d calmed down somewhat after his outburst earlier, but given Reuben’s assessment, Reilly was still worried that something was blurring his vision and obstructing his objectivity. She was in two minds as to whether to say something about it, but didn’t want to run the risk, and figured Chris wouldn’t appreciate such prying questions, especially at such a crucial point of the investigation. 

In any case, the guy was a professional, and Reilly was confident that if Chris did happen to have any ... preconceptions, he would be able to overcome them, and do whatever it took to get to the bottom of this case once and for all.

‘Speaking of dinner,’ she said, after Kennedy left, ‘if we’re planning on making this an all-nighter, we’d better load up on carbs. Anything good in the canteen?’

Chris checked his watch. ‘They closed an hour ago so it’ll have to be something from Crappy Sandwiches R Us. Fancy anything in particular from the vending machine?’

‘When you make it sound so tempting how can I refuse? Get me a ploughman’s.’

Reilly kept on reading, trying to view the entire investigation through fresh eyes: the GFU evidence reports her team had produced at each murder scene, the autopsy reports, the case files. Nothing. There was nothing at all that jumped out, nothing that revealed anything new.

She turned to the report on Amanda Harrington’s death.

The same pattern was repeated: coroner’s report, evidence, interviews. She looked again over the interviews ... the grief-stricken mother, Sally, the stoic father, David.

Suddenly Reilly froze. There on the page was a simple footnote, added almost as an afterthought ...

She looked up. Where the hell was Chris? She tried to engage her brain – where had he said he was going?  They were hungry – the canteen was closed. The vending machines ...

Reilly strode across the floor, and almost wiped out another officer as she flew through the double doors into the corridor. At the end of the hallway she could see Chris standing in front of the machine, counting out some change. He looked up as she approached.

‘You’re in one hell of a hurry. Did you change your mind?’

She looked confused. ‘Change my ...?’

Chris pointed to the sandwiches. ‘You said for me to get you a ploughman’s.’

Reilly waved his comments away. ‘Forget the damn sandwich, Chris. I think I know who our killer is.’

He just stared, waiting for her to come out with it.

‘Amanda’s parents, Sally and David—’

‘They’re in Australia, you said it yourself.’

‘Right. But David Harrington wasn’t her biological father. He was her stepfather ...’

Suddenly the hallway grew very quiet. 

‘Her real father still lives here in Dublin. But here’s why I know for sure that he’s our guy,’ she added, as the details of Reuben’s original profile came back to her. ‘Remember what Reuben said about this guy casting himself as the role of Minos?’

Chris nodded.

‘Rearrange the letters a little, for a more modern alternative.’

He seemed to think for a moment, then looked at Reilly, eyes widening. ‘Her father’s name is Simon?’

Reilly nodded. ‘Simon Darcy. And get this: he works as a court artist.’

Although the central criminal court was closed for the weekend, Chris managed to press the onsite security guard hard enough to give him the emergency phone numbers. If Simon Darcy worked there as a court artist, then he would have been issued a permit to do so, and they needed the details from that permit.

It took several calls, Chris gradually working his way up the food chain, before he had finally got hold of the head of Human Resources. The man was not pleased at being disturbed at home at seven o’clock on a Sunday evening, but when Chris explained their urgency, he finally agreed to meet him at his office.

Chris had talked the security guard into letting him back in, and was waiting in the lobby when Francis Dowling hurried up the steps and into the building.

The security guard watched carefully as they both passed through the scanner, then he dropped back into his chair and resumed his study of the
Sunday World.

‘Thanks for coming in,’ said Chris as they hurried down the corridor. Dowling was in his mid-forties, with gray flecks in his dark hair.  He was casually dressed in dark trousers and a navy sweater.

‘So you said on the phone that you think Simon Darcy is tied in to those horrible murders in some way?’

Chris nodded. ‘He may be in danger,’ he said cryptically, figuring this was the best way to get Dowling on side.

Dowling unlocked his office door, and motioned Chris in. ‘Well, I don’t know him personally, but all artists and photographers need a permit so of course he’ll be in the system.’ He dropped into his black leather chair, and flicked on the PC. ‘It’s a bit slow ...’

Chris stood behind Dowling, impatiently looking over his shoulder.

The screen eventually came to life and the man looked up at Chris. ‘I need to put in my password,’ he said pointedly.

‘Sure.’  He looked away while Dowling did the necessary.

‘OK, here we are.’  Within seconds, Simon Darcy’s court permit popped up and Chris turned back to the monitor. ‘Let’s see ...’  Dowling clicked through the pages. ‘Well, there’s his current address and phone number ...’

Chris scribbled a note. Darcy lived in Ringsend, not far from the city center. They could have a unit there within minutes.

But obviously, Darcy hadn’t been holding his victims there. He thought again about the other evidence, the horse feed ... the Kildare-based soil ...

Chris looked back at the screen. ‘Does he have any other addresses listed, one for next of kin ... anything?’

Dowling moved the page up screen. ‘Nope, nothing at all.’

Afterwards, outside the courthouse Chris met up with Kennedy, whom he guessed wasn’t too disappointed about having his romantic dinner interrupted. Josie’s opinion on it would be another matter.

‘Anything?’ his partner asked.

Chris nodded. ‘I got an address.’

He thought about what he’d just learned from Simon Darcy’s file and tried to measure it against not only the evidence, but Reuben Knight’s profile.

‘By all accounts the guy sounds like a real hermit,’ he told Kennedy. ‘I just called his contact at the
Clarion,
and he said that although he was a brilliant artist, and they run a lot of his sketches, he’s never met Darcy, has no idea what he’s like.’

‘Well then, I suppose it’s up to us to find out,’ Kennedy replied, throwing down his cigarette and stubbing it out with his foot. ‘Let’s go and pay this guy a visit.’

I
t was almost eight by the time the detectives pulled up in front of Simon Darcy’s house. As they approached the house itself, Chris grew even more confident that this really was their guy.

‘Look,’ he said, pointing out a restaurant on the approach to the street of red-brick terraced houses in which their suspect lived.

Kennedy followed his gaze to the Malaysian restaurant and its brightly colored sign. ‘I’m sure you are hungry, Chris, but maybe when we’ve finished—’

Chris rolled his eyes. ‘No, you eejit, I’m thinking of that sauce that kept popping up in the trace evidence. Malaysian food is spicy, isn’t it?’

‘Ah, now I get you.’ Kennedy looked sideways at him. ‘Looks like this thing is really starting to come together now. Are we heading for the endgame, do you think?’

Chris was feeling precisely the same way. They were indeed close. Simon Darcy had to be the guy. He had motive, opportunity, and access to all the players. Not to mention, given his profession, a first-hand knowledge of how the justice system worked.

Through their actions, Coffey and Crowe had each had a bearing on Webb’s case. Morgan had had the opportunity to do the right thing and give Webb the statutory sentence at trial, but because of the so-called ‘missing evidence’ he’d bottled it, and ordered a minimal jail term at best.

Then to add insult to injury, a government representative had influenced the parole board, ensuring that Webb had barely begun his sentence before he was once again a free man. This early parole must have been the trigger, or ‘stressor’ as Reuben Knight had described it, to set Darcy on his menacing revenge spree.

And then there was Jennings, the doctor who’d let Simon Darcy’s poor damaged daughter die in his care. It was one hell of a list of people to punish, but Darcy had managed it.

And now, at the very top of the list, was the man who had caused all the heartache in the first place, Ricky Webb. The rapist – destroyer of lives.

What would Chris have done were he in Simon Darcy’s shoes, and it was his daughter, his own flesh and blood, who had suffered at the hands of such an animal? Could he honestly say he would do any different?

Chris couldn’t be certain, and this was all forcing him into a corner. As a man who had sworn to uphold the law, of course he couldn’t condone Darcy’s actions, but there was little doubt he could identify with them.

Well, there was no time to think about that now, Chris told himself as he and Kennedy got out of the car, and rang the doorbell of the house listed as Simon Darcy’s last known address.

They needed to ring the bell twice before they heard a shuffling behind the door and finally a man opened it.

Chris and Kennedy exchanged a surreptitious glance as a slight, middle-aged man wearing glasses appeared at the door. What the hell ...?

‘We’re looking for Simon Darcy,’ Chris said, finding his voice before Kennedy did. ‘I believe he lives here.’

‘You’re looking at him,’ the man said softly as he looked from one to the other. Chris stared at him.

This couldn’t be their killer, it was impossible.

‘What can I do for you?’

Kennedy took out his badge. ‘I’m Detective Kennedy and this is Detective Delaney from Harcourt Street Station. Sir, are you the same Simon Darcy who is permitted to work in the Central Criminal Court as a sketch artist?’

‘That’s me,’ the man replied. ‘What is it? Have I done something wrong?’

He leaned forward through the open doorway and looked nervously up and down the road, as if worried about what the neighbours might think, and again Chris was flabbergasted. This man couldn’t possibly be ...
wasn’t
the killer.

‘Could we possibly come inside for a moment? We’d like to ask you a couple of questions.’

‘Of course. I really don’t know what this could be about but ...’

Simon Darcy moved back to make some room for them in the narrow hallway. From there, he directed them into a small living room.

Glancing around, Chris immediately noticed the prevalence of religious iconography – there was a large Sacred Heart painting over the mantelpiece, a child of Prague on a shelf in the far corner, as well as a photograph of Pope John Paul II hanging on a nearby wall.

The religious stuff certainly fit with the profile, but ...

‘Mr Darcy, we understand that a member of your family, namely your daughter, Amanda, was the victim of an unfortunate incident some years ago,’ Chris began.

‘An unfortunate incident, Detective?’ Simon Darcy said, his sad gray eyes boring into Chris’s, and immediately he regretted his choice of words, keenly aware of how understated they sounded. ‘I’ve never heard vicious rape and assault being described quite like that before, but if that’s what you want to call it ...’

‘I’m sorry you’re right, of course...’

‘Your daughter took her own life shortly afterwards,’ Kennedy cut in, also somewhat indelicately, Chris noticed, but he knew that they couldn’t assume anything. Darcy might look harmless, but he was the chief suspect in a murder investigation and they already knew that the perp was as cunning as they came. Who knew what kind of ruse the guy was prepared to use in order to manipulate the law yet again?