Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (37 page)

‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’

‘Of course. Don’t worry about me. Anyway,’ she joked coquettishly, ‘who’s gonna mess with the fiancée of a cop?’

Melanie stepped out of Shankill DART station, and wrapped her coat around her. It was mid-February, and temperatures had been barely been above freezing in the past few days. She looked left and right, and stepped out briskly towards home. Unfortunately Fiona had neglected to mention that she was staying the night at Steve, her boyfriend’s, place in the city centre, which meant that Melanie had had to take the DART home by herself.

The streets were quiet – it was just after eleven – and she soon left the bright lights of the station behind her.

As she walked along she thought about Chris, wondering how he was getting on at the hospital.  She turned onto the main road, her heels clicking in the still night air.

Halfway down she turned and glanced behind her – she’d thought for a moment that she had heard footsteps, but all she saw was the dark street, the parked cars gleaming beneath the streetlights.

At the end of the street she slowed a little. Take the long way round, three blocks down, or the shortcut down the alleyway?  She paused, pulled the collar of her denim jacket up around her neck. She really should have worn a much heavier coat tonight.

She peered down the alleyway – it had been the subject of much mythologizing and scary stories when she was a kid. Bogymen lurked down there, the ghost of old Mr Jacobs, who had broken his neck when he fell from his apple tree and whose spirit haunted the alleyway ...  Melanie had walked down there hundreds of times during the day, but at night it looked different, more menacing.

She thought of what Chris always told her: ‘Walk with confidence, look around you, meet people’s gaze full on and they won’t mess with you.’

She was tired from the excitement of the celebrations, her feet were killing her and she was feeling the cold – she just wanted to be home. Quick as a flash, Melanie turned and headed into the darkness.

She was only about fifty yards along the narrow pathway when she heard footsteps behind her.  There was no doubt about it this time, someone was back there.  Following her, or just walking home from the station? 

She picked up her pace a little, and listened to the footsteps – they definitely increased speed too.

Her breath quickening, she passed under the big oak tree, out into the open section of the path – the tree loomed large on her left-hand side, the open park behind it, an inky pool of blackness under the dark night sky.

Melanie glanced back, feeling very afraid now – a shadowy shape was definitely moving quickly behind her, no more than ten yards away. Was she imagining things? It could just as easily be someone else coming home after a night out. Still, despite her attempts at rationale, some deep primal instinct was warning her that danger was imminent. She thought about running, but knew that in her high heels, and on this broken pathway, she would almost certainly stumble and fall.

A shiver of icy fear raced down her back. Why had she come this way?  Why hadn’t she accepted Chris’s offer of a lift home? The footsteps were close behind her, strong, steady.

Don’t run, Mel, stay calm, she told herself. In all fairness, it was probably nothing, probably just someone else who was feeling the cold and in a hurry to get home...

The assault was so sudden that Melanie didn’t have time to scream.  Her attacker closed on her quickly, fast and silent – one hand grabbed her tight around the waist while the other clamped itself over her mouth.

They tumbled to the ground together, strong hands holding her firm, making sure Melanie landed first, with his weight on top of her, driving the air from her lungs. 

Before she could react she was down on her back on the cold ground. She looked up into the darkness – she couldn’t see the face clearly, but could smell the tobacco on his breath.

With his free hand he brought a knife up in front of her face. It glinted in the faint light of the distant houses. Melanie thought about how close she was, how close to people who could help her...

The rough face was closer, though; she could feel his hot breath on her cheek.  ‘You make one sound, one squeak, I’ll slice you. You got it?’

She nodded, struggling to breathe with the rough hand over her mouth.

Slowly, one finger at a time, he lifted his hand from her face. ‘That’s a good girl.’  He was breathing hard.  ‘We’re gonna have fun ...’

Melanie could see his eyes glistening in the dark. She stayed silent, hardly daring to breathe.

‘You know what I want?’ It was a rhetorical question – he was already pawing at her, pulling her jacket open, his breathing growing rapid in his excitement. ‘You do what I ask – everything, exactly the way I want – and I’ll let you go free? Got me?’

She nodded, and squeezed her eyes shut as he ripped open her clothes.

K
ennedy pushed open the door of the barn, Chris on his heels. They had no difficulty knowing which way to go – the sound of the barking dogs came clear through the door on the far side of the room.

He stopped, one hand on the door handle. ‘You sure you want to do this before the big guns get here?’

Chris nodded. ‘I don’t think we can afford to wait.’

‘OK.’

Kennedy pushed at the far door, and a grim tableau revealed itself – a bloody Ricky Webb on his knees in the horse stall, the three savage dogs straining every sinew to reach him with their slavering jaws. Luke Darcy in the next stall, his hand hovering over the catches that held them.

As the door opened Luke paused, momentarily surprised.

‘Oh thank God ...’ Ricky Webb blubbered. ‘Help me ... please!’

Chris went to take a step forward, then stopped suddenly.

Kennedy showed no such hesitation, and pushed past Chris into the room.  ‘Stop,’ he ordered Darcy. ‘You don’t have to do this, we can ensure that justice is served.’

Luke paused, looked at the two of them. ‘You think that sending someone like him to jail makes any difference? He hasn’t changed at all.’ He gave Webb a look of absolute disgust. ‘Do you know where I found him? Do you?’

Chris edged closer – maybe if he could get a little closer ...

‘With another girl,’ Luke went on. ‘He’d been out of prison for only a few hours, and I caught him, about to rape another poor defenceless girl ...’

At these words, Chris froze.

‘It wasn’t like that, I swear!’ Webb cried out.

‘Whatever he’s done, it’s still not our place to dispense justice,’ Kennedy pleaded, glancing towards Chris. They were trained for this; had been in similar situations a few times before, and Chris knew by Kennedy’s tone that he was hoping to distract Darcy by talking to him, while Chris himself tried to take him down.

Luke looked up, and met Kennedy’s gaze. ‘No,’ he said, his voice becoming frantic. ‘The authorities had their chance and you failed. Now it’s my turn.’

‘No, stop him please! Help me!’ Webb wailed.

Casting his eyes about the gloom, Chris found more details springing up at him. There was a large easel in one corner of the room, a gargantuan heavy art board affixed to it.

It bore a life-like image of the present scene, reinforcing the severity of the punishment as Luke (or indeed Dante) had imagined it, the twisted and screaming figure of the rapist depicted as suffering his torment through the viciousness of the three dogs.

As he stared at the realistic rendering, Chris thought about Melanie, about all that she’d gone through, all
they’d
gone through.

‘You don’t have to do this Darcy ...’ Kennedy stared back at Chris as if to ask why the hell wasn’t he doing something.

But Chris couldn’t move. Still taking in the gross power of the painting, a rough and vitriolic anger reared its head, and flooded forth into his being as if from some primal well.

‘Chris ...’

‘Jesus, man ... help me!’ Webb cried.

Luke shook his head, a look of inestimable sadness on his face. ‘You’re wrong,’ he told Kennedy. ‘I do.’

As he said it, his hand popped the clasps that held the dog’s chains. The Rottweilers burst forward, their powerful muscles rippling beneath their glistening black coats.

‘Chris!’ Kennedy roared, as Ricky Webb screamed out in terror. ‘Do something, for fuck’s sake!’

But Chris stood rooted the spot, unable to do anything else but watch.

The fury of the assault was astonishing – the three dogs tore into Webb, their powerful jaws snapping and tearing. He shrieked in anguish, once, twice, before one of the dogs locked its massive jaws on his thigh, shook and ripped, tearing at his flesh. It was as if they’d been starved for months.

‘Chris, what the fuck  ...?’ Kennedy hurried round the side of the stall, grabbed Luke and threw him to the floor. The young man didn’t even resist; the menacing smile never left his face.

The blood splattered the dogs, sprayed up against the wooden sides of the barn, and left a streak across Luke Darcy’s face. The young man barely noticed.  As he watched the carnage, he had an expression of calm contentment.  Finally, after so much planning, so much torment, he had his moment, and it was worth it.

Chris stood there, paralyzed, completely immobile. Kennedy stared at him mystified at his partner’s inaction. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

‘You get it, don’t you?’ Luke called out, and with considerable effort, Chris slowly turned to look at him. The loose-fitting white cotton of the younger man’s clothes was splattered with flecks of blood, the two colors intermingled in a ghoulish marbling that gave added weight to his chilling words. ‘You can feel it, yes? You understand that I’m right. This is the only true justice.’

Kennedy grimaced in confusion. ‘What the hell ...Chris ...?’

‘I—’

Suddenly a single shot rang out, sending the entire room speechless apart from Webb, still screaming as he lay on the ground, his body torn to pieces by the hungry pack.

It was the last sound Chris heard before he slumped to the floor.

R
eilly stood by Chris’s hospital bed, her thoughts going a hundred miles a minute as he lay there immobile. A nurse stood at the head of the bed, the white of her uniform stark against the crimson syringe she’d used to extract his blood.

‘How long has he been out?’ she asked Kennedy, when the nurse, having finished tending to Chris, had left the room.

‘It’s a couple of hours since we left Kildare.’ He ran a hand through his hair exasperated. ‘Jesus, Reilly, I don’t know what the hell happened back there.’

According to him, Chris had been edgy and distracted on the way to the farmhouse, but seemed to regain focus by the time they were ready to enter the building for the takedown.

‘He completely froze, Reilly,’ Kennedy continued. ‘Darcy was just about to release the dogs ... I was trying to talk him out of it, trying to distract him so that Chris could get to Webb. But Chris just stood there, doing nothing. It was almost as if ... almost as if he didn’t care if the dogs got to the guy. Then all of a sudden he just collapsed in a heap.’ He shook his head. ‘Thank fuck the cavalry arrived when they did.’

He went on to explain how, fortunately for Webb, the response team had arrived just in time, their gunshot frightening the vicious Rottweilers into a retreat.

Webb was now laid up in another hospital, still alive but in a bad way from his injuries.

Luke Darcy was under arrest for a catalogue of charges: the murders of Coffey, Crowe, Jennings, Fitzpatrick and Morgan, and the attempted murder of Ricky Webb.

Reilly struggled to figure out what had happened based on Kennedy’s outline of events. Had Chris been rendered immobile by a moral dilemma about rescuing the rapist because of Melanie’s experience?

The thought was deeply unsettling. Chris Delaney was one of the good guys, she’d always been certain about that, and whatever his misgivings about Webb (projected or otherwise) she just couldn’t imagine that he would stand back and condemn the man to such a horrible fate.

Then again, didn’t Reilly know better than most the terrible things people were capable of – irrespective of how well you knew them, or how much they were loved ...

Kennedy seemed to be struggling with a similar notion. ‘In all my time working with the guy I’ve never seen that side to him. But thinking about it now, all throughout the case he was acting weird. You saw the way he was with Reuben. It’s my job to be cranky  Chris is usually good cop.’ He looked sideways at Reilly. ‘Did he say anything to you? Was there something going on with him that I don’t know about?’

She swallowed hard, not sure what to say. She couldn’t very well tell Kennedy about her discovery concerning Melanie, when it was pretty obvious that Chris had never confided in his partner about it. ‘Well, he never actually mentioned anything but reading between the lines ...’ she took a deep breath, ‘... I do know he was having some personal issues lately.’

‘Personal issues?’ Kennedy frowned. ‘What kind of issues? He isn’t seeing anyone as far as I—  Oh ...’ His voice trailed off and he looked at her questioningly.  Reilly was quick to assure him that Chris’s issues had nothing whatsoever to do with her.

‘His ex-girlfriend got married this week,’ she said. ‘I get the impression it was something he was still dealing with.’

‘His ex?’ Kennedy made a face. ‘What ex? Only one I’ve ever heard about is some crackpot he dumped years ago.’

‘Well, maybe there’s a little more to that story than meets the eye – who knows?’ Reilly replied diplomatically. ‘In any case, I doubt it has anything to do with what happened earlier,’ she finished quickly, just as Reuben  fresh from a questioning session with Luke Darcy  came into the room.

His eyes widened. ‘What’s this? I would have thought that by now our Prince Charming would have been awoken by a kiss from the Fairy Princess,’ he said in his usual mocking tone, but Reilly could hear genuine surprise in his voice that Chris was still out.

‘Shut it, Knight,’ Kennedy spat. ‘That’s our mate you’re talking about.’

‘Indeed. I’m rather sorry I missed all the drama earlier,’ Reuben continued, referring to his arrival at the farmhouse just after Darcy had been apprehended. He looked at Reilly. ‘However, seems like I was right about our good detective’s personal stake in this unhappy story. Why else would he have faltered?’