TORN (8 page)

‘Good, good,’ he rumbled. ‘Just watching TV or something, were you?’

‘About to have dinner, actually but it’s OK.’

‘Dinner, yes …’  He paused as if the very concept was alien to him. ‘Steel, I’ll get straight to the point.
I was wondering if you have any news on Crowe, preferably good news? I couldn’t contact Jack this evening, and as his number two …’

Reilly bristled. Technically, she and Jack Gorman, the older GFU investigator, were equal in rank, but as he was an encumbent of the previous forensic unit, old habits died hard.  .

She could hazard a guess that Gorman was uncontactable because he was currently on location or, unlike Reilly, he merely had the good sense to switch his phone off at dinnertime.

The investigation O’Brien was referring to was another the GFU Lab were immersed in at the moment, the death of a former cop John Crowe. The thinking was that the man been murdered by an ex-collar.  Crowe had come up through the ranks alongside the chief, so O’Brien had a personal interest in securing a speedy outcome.

Reilly took a deep breath. What to tell him? The case was one of Gorman’s and she’d had little involvement in it thus far.

‘Nothing substantial, as far as I know, sir. I’m sure Gorman’s got the Lab working on any trace he found. Of course, we’ve had to move some resources to the Coffey murder lately.’

‘That journalist? Of course, I understand that, yes.’ O’Brien paused. ‘And I completely understand that resources are stretched. I don’t want us to lose focus on Crowe, though. He was one of ours, and it sends a bad message if people think they can get away with killing members of the force. It’s the beginning of a slippery slope, if you get my meaning …’

‘Of course, sir. I’ll chase it up.’ Reilly understood completely; understood that for the next few days, sleep was likely to be something of a luxury. She walked into the kitchen and slid the now-cold remainder of her meal into the bin.

Sleep was already a luxury for Chris. For the third night in succession,
he was awoken in the early hours by crucifying pain. His body racked with tremors, his threadbare sheets were a tangled mess of cotton and wool soaked through with cold sweat.

He’d experienced something similar about a year ago, something that had worried him enough at the time to confide in Reilly about it, and ask her to investigate further. He didn’t want to risk anything popping up in his force medical. But the blood tests she’d run had turned up nothing untoward, and when in the meantime the symptoms had stopped, Chris had put it down to exhaustion or probably closer to the truth the onset of middle age.

But now the tremors and discomfort were back with a vengeance. He lay motionless for a while, letting the worst of the pain wash over him, trying to figure out just what the hell was going on.

Eventually, when the sun was finally up, he rolled gingerly out of bed and stood up, half expecting his legs to crumple under him. But no, for the moment at least he was still able to stand on his own two feet.

Striding determinedly into the bathroom, before his traitorous limbs changed their mind, he retrieved a small bottle of extra-strength ibuprofen from the cabinet and took two, crushing the pills between his molars and enjoying the brief, acrid taste before swilling them down with a gulp of water from the tap.

He stoppered the sink and drew a basinful of scalding hot water. Then folding a small cotton washcloth in half to produce a strip of fabric, he dropped it into the water, poking it with a comb to submerge it.

Once it was well and truly saturated, he gingerly grabbed it by the corner, pulled it from the basin’s watery embrace, and plastered it across the bottom of his jaw. A red-hot ripple of pain flushed through his face, momentarily distracting his embattled nervous system. He held the boiling-hot rag tight against his skin and slowly counted to sixty, allowing it to soften his facial stubble from the texture of dry pasta to that of
al dente
.

Next, lifting a small ivory-handled badger-hair shaving brush from the brass stand next to the sink, he dipped it into the hot water, using it to whip up a nice head of foamy lather from the bar of shaving soap he kept nearby. Applying the soothing balm to his engorged skin, he gave it a moment to set and cure. Then, with a few deft strokes he brought the razor to a fine edge and, turning to observe himself in the mirror, began slowly and methodically to scrape it across the planes of his jaw.

‘Damn!’ Chris cursed out loud as, out of nowhere, another rod of pain shot through his arm. He cursed a second time when he noticed the streak of dark crimson running down his jaw. Tearing off a strip of toilet paper, he laid a thin piece on the cut, and waited for the bleeding to subside.

It took him about five minutes to complete the rest of the shave, and when he was finished he spritzed a little aftershave lotion into the palms of his hands and clapped both tight to his cheeks, reveling in the short, sharp sensation of the astringent tightening his pores.

If he didn’t feel like a dynamic detective at the peak of his health, the least he could do was try and look the part.

Pleased with his efforts, he shuffled out of the damp, clinging pyjamas and flung them in to the wicker clothes hamper next to the shower. Feeling too dizzy to risk a shower, instead he managed a brisk, thorough wash.

Ready to face the day, Chris walked back to the bedroom, where in the wardrobe a freshly laundered uniform awaited. He pulled off the plastic bag, trying to remember the last time he’d worn full blues – usually when working he got away with jeans and a succession of practically identical cotton shirts and a leather jacket. This morning was different, though: he was part of a guard of honour for Johnny Crowe’s final send-off, hence the formal threads.

With the uniform smartly enshrouding his tall frame, he went into the galley kitchen, which abutted his living room area. The linoleum floor hadn’t seen a mop in some time, and the counter tops were crowded with boxes, cartons and other remnants of too many takeaways.

He shook his head. He’d better be careful or he’d turn into one of those clichéd detectives that appeared in TV show
s
the alcoholic workaholic, who spent his evenings alone surrounded by takeaway boxes and whiskey bottles. He laughed. Not likely. For one thing, he rarely drank other than socially, and for another he was actually quite a decent cook when he could find the time.

Chris sighed. As for the workaholic part, well, in the murder business that was non-negotiable.

Chapter 9

The GFU building was almost deserted when at seven thirty Reilly arrived. She liked to get in early, and have some time to think in peace and quiet before the interdepartmental phone calls and questions started.

She settled in behind her desk with her coffee – black, no sugar. Today she’d decided to see if the iSPI software could reveal anything about the Coffey scene that the investigative team had missed.

Grabbing a cable with a mini-USB connector on the end, she plugged it into the recessed slot on the side of the iPhone, and the other into her PC.

The computer immediately sprang into life and displayed a password confirmation screen. Reilly keyed in ‘Cassandra’, her late mother’s first name, and the terminal hummed, a status bar indicating its progress as it downloaded the data from the iSPI app.

When that was complete, it displayed a second progress bar, under the words ‘aggregating image data’, and she waited patiently to see what would happen next.

Eventually the rendering engine displayed a ‘complete’ icon, and prompted her to enter a file name. Reilly saved it using the Coffey case file number and date, and then as directed, keyed in the command to begin a further render.

As the progress indicator began another maddeningly slow advance across the screen, Reilly went to the comfortable chair that sat next to a small table supporting two data gloves and a head-mounted display: the second piece of Jet Miller’s toy, and the stuff that really sent Gary into spasms of excitement. She’d let him try it out later, but first she wanted to see for herself how the software performed.

Relaxing back into the chair, she laced the display onto her brow like some sort of intricate hat. Two small viewing panels folded down over her eyes and reflected, through a series of prisms and mirrors, the visual output of two small high-resolution color LCD displays. Sliding the data gloves on to her arms, she made an ‘OK’ gesture with her right han
d
as Jet’s instructions directe
d
and the terminal flared to life.

The goggles displayed a boot menu, and using subtle movements of her right hand, she reached across the screen through the network, and grasped the freshly rendered scene from the storage attached to the rendering engine. Turning her palm face up, she clenched a tight fist and then splayed her hand out open. As if by some miracle, the machine responded by unfurling a finely stitched virtual reality mosaic of the Coffey septic tank.

Whoah…
Reilly  felt goosebumps.

Poking around at the edges of the illusion, she was amazed to find that for a first attempt she had actually followed the instructional protocol fairly well, and all the vital data needed to reconstruct the scene seemed to have been properly captured.

In fact, it was so close to the real thing it was scary. OK, so there was no way a machine could replicate the sounds … smells
… feel
of a crime scene for real, but in this situation that was a good thing. This time there was no stink, no toxic stew.

Nice work, Jet
.

Reilly smiled, ran her hands over the gloves and prepared to walk the Coffey scene for the second time, iSPI-style.

As she worked, the GFU building gradually came to life around her – footsteps in the corridor, voices and greetings, phones ringing, the buzz and the pace gradually picking up as people settled into their daily routine. 

Reilly ignored it all.  She had her door closed this morning, both to shut out sound and also discourage casual visitors.

‘Reilly?’ There was a brief knock before the door opened and she looked up to see Lucy leaning inside. Reilly glanced at the clock: it was after 10 a.m. and she had been working on the scene for over two hours. Lucy stared at her headgear. ‘Wow, that looks so … futuristic.’

‘I guess that’s exactly what it is.’ Removing the headset, Reilly rocked back in her chair and stretched. Her neck and shoulders were tense from sitting still for so long. She picked up the remains of her coffee, now stone cold.

‘Is that the Coffey scene from the other day?’ Lucy moved closer to the computer screen, immediately interested.  Reilly had placed a virtual placemarker inside the rendering of the tank, similar to the ones they used to mark something of potential interest at a real-life crime scene. Lucy screwed up her eyes. ‘What’s this?’

‘I’m not sure yet,’ Reilly replied truthfully, ‘but I think it might be some form of blockage, and the real reason the tank backed up.’

She was slightly reluctant to conjure a theory until the ‘real’ tank had been fully drained, and she was able to examine it physically, but iSP
I
through its molecular analysis of the tan
k
had identified an irregularity on one side of the pit about half a meter beneath the surface.

Had Coffey’s murderer purposely blocked up the offshoot pipe so that the tank would become backed up, and the journalist body would be found? The plumber had mentioned that the system automatically redistributed the effluent out beneath the orchard. If this had happened as it was supposed to, Tony Coffey’s body could have been stewing in the tank for weeks, even months before it was found. As it was, the corpse had been discovered within a couple of days.

Granted, it might be nothing, but Reilly was impressed at the software’s ability to pick up on potentially interesting evidence that might otherwise have taken considerable time to reveal itself, if at all.

‘Crikey, the software showed you that – deep down in the tank? That’s so cool.’  Now it was Lucy’s turned to be awed, making Reilly feel vaguely uncomfortable. If iSPI was that reliable, they could all be out of their jobs soon.

‘Like I said, I’m not sure what it is – it could be nothing. And it’s definitely nothing until we find physical evidence to support it. Anway,’ she turned her chair to Lucy, ‘what’s up?’

‘Well …’ The younger woman couldn’t keep the enthusiasm out of her voice, ‘… we think we might have something from one of the soil samples from this very scene.’

‘Great. And you obviously think it’s of interest.’

Reilly felt relieved; she wasn’t pessimistic by nature, but given what little trace evidence they’d collected, it was a pleasant surprise to think that her team might have been able to isolate something potentially helpful from the sewage-soaked sludge.

‘Come take a look and see what you think,’ Lucy said, and Reilly followed her down the hallway to the lab.

The GFU laboratory was a brightly lit open space. Two long benches of equipment ran the length of the room, and in the corner at the far end was a pair of small desks with computers and printers for the lab techs to share.