Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) (9 page)

‘How’s everything going – with Josie, I mean?’ Chris asked gently, struck by the uncharacteristic display of sentimentality from the big man. But he was unsure as to whether or not to broach the subject of his wife’s health again when Kennedy had been so reticent about it before.

His partner’s face immediately closed. ‘Grand,’ he replied simply. ‘You want to take the lead on this first off and see how we go?’ he asked, nodding toward the door of the interview room. Once again the topic was strictly off limits.

The van owner had already been in the interview room for three quarters of an hour. Chris had asked one of the officers to turn up the heating earlier, a favorite tactic of his for making interviewees as uncomfortable as possible by legal means.

‘Good idea – see what we get before he clams up.’

Chris entered the room, followed by Kennedy. 

It was a typical office that you would expect an accountant or civil servant to work out of. The only difference was the lack of furniture and equipment: just a cheap wood veneer table and three uncomfortable chairs around the desk with two more stacked in the corner. The only other point of note was the white security meshing on the outside of the window, usually used to keep intruders out but in this case to keep people in. 

‘Mr Connolly, my name is Detective Chris Delaney. You spoke with my partner Detective Kennedy here on the phone yesterday.’

Chris and Kennedy assumed positions on the opposite side of the table to Shane Connolly. The courier sat across from them sporting the tired unshaven look of a man with much on his mind. In front of him sat an empty plastic cup.

‘Yes of course. Can you tell me what’s going on here, please? Nobody has said anything since the squad car called to my door this morning. Am I under arrest?’ His demeanor was non-threatening but he was obviously running out of patience.

‘Mr Connolly, we have asked you to come in this morning to answer some questions that may assist us in a serious incident we are investigating. You are not being formally charged of any wrongdoing as yet, but your assistance at this stage will be viewed favorably down the line,’ Chris said, trying to encourage as much cooperation as possible.

‘OK, but as I told the other officers earlier, I can’t tell you much about any accident my van was involved with because I wasn’t driving it.’

‘Who
was
driving, Mr Connolly?’

‘Based on the timeframe, it would have been my son William. He said he was helping a friend move house and he hit an animal. He didn’t know what it was because when he got out of the van it had disappeared so he assumed it wasn’t killed outright and had just run off into a ditch,’ the courier said as he shifted in his chair.

‘Have you spoken to your son recently, Mr Connolly?’ asked Kennedy.

‘I tried his mobile yesterday but there was no answer. He’d left a message on my phone on Friday saying his mate had got tickets to a football game and that he was going to London yesterday morning.’

‘We need to talk with him immediately, Mr Connolly. Your vehicle was involved with a fatal hit and run in Wicklow. A young girl is dead. Leaving the scene of an accident is a very serious charge, Mr. Connolly.’

The man’s face paled instantly. ‘A young girl … I heard it on the news. Are you sure?’

‘Very sure.’

‘But that’s impossible … and I can assure you my son would never leave anybody dying on the road.’ The man’s hands shook and he looked as though he was going to pass out.

‘We all make mistakes. Perhaps your son had had a couple of cans at his mate’s house, and he didn’t want to get in trouble,’ Chris suggested.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to think to be honest. But I swear, when he gets back I will get him to come in and talk to you straightaway. I’ll phone him again as soon as I get out of here.’ He looked worriedly at the detectives, the thought striking him. ‘I will be getting out of here, won’t I?’

Kennedy purposely didn’t answer.  Instead, he said, ‘
If
he comes back. At this point we will be seeking a warrant for your son’s arrest, and given the fact he may have absconded we might have to get Interpol involved.’

This was mostly showboating, but the man gasped. ‘Look, I’ve said I’ll personally escort him down here when he gets back. We have nothing to hide, this is just a simple misunderstanding. I’m sure of it,’ he added, trying to convince himself as much as anybody else.

‘We’ll see, but I must warn you again, these charges are very serious indeed. Someone has had their life wiped out, somebody’s daughter left to die on a cold dark road,’ Chris said.

‘If you have a way to contact William I suggest you do it immediately, and tell him to get his arse back here right away,’ Kennedy put in. ‘Mr Connolly, if you are trying to protect him in any way you need to tell us now. Because these charges will get more serious with every second that passes. The best option open to William now is one of full cooperation.’

Kennedy paused to let the  statement sink in and the room fell silent.

The courier swallowed hard. ‘OK, Detectives, I get the message. We’re a respectable family and I promise you, this is all a misunderstanding. William would never—’

‘Good,’ Chris cut him off. ‘For the moment then you are free to go, but we expect full lines of communication to be kept open. You’ll need to keep us updated regarding your son’s movements and whereabouts. Anything less will be viewed as obstructive.’

The courier stood up slowly and picked up his coat from the back of the chair.

‘One more thing’, Kennedy called out as Shane Connolly walked through the doorway. ‘Does your son have a solicitor?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Well if I were you,’ he added ominously, ‘it would be my second phone call when you leave here.’  

Chapter 11

Reilly parked her car on the grass verge and locked it with the remote while gazing around. The wind had died down overnight, and it was a perfect spring day – a pale blue sky, the overnight dew almost gone where the bright sun had hit it, the trees a blaze of green from the blossoming leaves and the riot of flowers about to bloom.

She climbed a wooden gate and followed a footpath towards a small hill about half a mile away to her left. The immediate area was covered in budding deciduous trees – oak and sycamore, sweet chestnut and whitebeam. It looked beautiful – but it was exactly here that a young girl’s body had been found nine years before.

Reilly stomped along the grassy path, grit crunching beneath her hiking boots, her faded jeans and a fleece making her look more at home on the trail than she did in the lab or in court.

In truth, Reilly was born to be outdoors even though she choose an occupation that involved her spending the majority of her time in windowless labs.

She never talked much about her past any more. The pain of her family tragedy was now something she tried to lock away in the back of her mind. Thankfully, it was never mentioned at work either. People often asked how Mike, her father, was getting on, but that was the extent of it – luckily all those skeletons had been shoved right back into the closet.

She guessed it was a good thing that for the most part she enjoyed solitude, always had, which meant that it was easier to keep her secrets hidden.

She reached a stile in a fence that seemed to have been put in place to protect an area of seedlings from rabbits and deer.  The low spring sunshine almost blinded her as she stopped for a moment, closed her eyes and held her face up toward the sun. She breathed deeply, realising that she really needed to do this more often.

Sometimes she felt split in two: who she really was, and who she’d needed to become. The move to Ireland hadn’t been much of an upheaval; crime and murder was for the most part the same everywhere in the world.

The other half of her though – the fun side, the person who loved the joys of nature, and enjoyed surfing a Pacific wave and the feel of the sun’s rays on her skin – was stifled, suffocating  and becoming lost. It was almost as if those pleasures had belonged to somebody else, such was the current imbalance in her life here.

Now, being in this place brought some of those pleasures flooding back. It reminded her of going on school trips to Muir Woods, the sprawling acres of Californian redwoods and giant sequoias just beyond Golden Gate Bridge overlooking the Bay.

Realising that the low throb of homesickness she carried was quickly starting to become an ache, she wondered if being a third wheel to her father and his partner for their jaunt back home next month might not be such a bad idea after all.

Temporarily putting the notion aside, she looked around and checked her location against the map. The footpath continued north around the foot of the hill, but according to the case file, the girl’s body had been found in the trees, almost at the top of the hill.

Reilly left the path, and marched across the damp grass towards the trees.  It was pock-marked with hoof prints, and liberally decorated with an assortment of deer and wild goat droppings, though the goats themselves were all over on the far side of the fence. Obviously there to try and keep them out, but judging by this side, it was having limited success.

As she entered  the tree line, she found  it was cool and shady under the canopy of the trees, and even though their leaves were sparse they still blocked out most of the sun.  She shivered and zipped up her fleece before beginning to climb.

What did she expect to find after nine years? 

Reilly had no idea, but right now she was willing to try almost anything to move the case forward. The fact that all those years ago another girl had been found with a similar tattoo demanded a second look.

She reached the top of the hill and looked around. Through the trees the Wicklow countryside could be seen fading towards the horizon, mostly flat, just the occasional hill to disturb the view. Why had the girl come up here in the first place?  Was she seeking shelter? Was she trying to get somewhere or perhaps, Reilly thought,
away
from somewhere? Or someone.

According to the file, the girl’s body had been found near the top of the hill, against a large oak tree. Reilly looked around – there was one massive oak tree about twenty yards away, its gnarled roots spreading out from the summit, its vast branches forming a roof overhead. If only trees could talk.

Reilly walked slowly towards the oak tree. The soft ground was uneven with the sheer quantity of decaying acorns it had dropped, intending to propagate, to spread its seed as far and wide as possible.

Why would the girl come here to such a remote, desolate place?

Reilly reached out and touched the thick bark. Then again, if she was lonely, or scared, she might have come here to rest against this tree. Its sheer size and majesty was somehow comforting.

She sat down, ignoring the damp, muddy ground.  It looked to be the highest spot on the hill – from here you could see for miles.  What was the girl looking for up
here all those years ago? Was her gaze drawn back to her home, the place she was from?  Maybe one of the nearby villages. Was it visible from here?

Or was it freedom that she saw? The lights of a village, a town, somewhere that looked tempting, interesting, somewhere to escape to. Reilly thought again about her theory that both girls seemed to originate from somewhere cut off from reality, away from the modern world.

Reilly stood up. Wherever they came from, the world that the girl could see from this hilltop must have looked vast, a whole world of opportunity, but she had simply curled up, cold and alone, and died.

Of natural exposure according to the file. But why wouldn’t have she have fought death? Could it have been suicide?

There was still so much they didn’t know about her. It was clear that back then (and before Karen Thompson’s arrival) things were less rigorous at the then Technical Bureau, long before the creation of the GFU. After the autopsy, the body had been buried in the strangers’ lot of St Mary’s Cemetery.

A basic toxic screen had been run – and come up negative – and there were no signs of a struggle, no unusual markings or wounds on her body, nothing in fact except a girl in a thin cotton dress and worn sandals who had died of exposure on a lonely hilltop.  If someone had wanted to devise a mystifying cold case, they could hardly have done better. A cause of death that could only be construed as accidental, no signs of murder or sexual assault. 

And of course, a large, very beautiful and very distinctive tattoo on the girl’s back. Reilly sighed. Whatever it took, she was going to find out who these girls were, where they came from, and why they had needed to die so young.

‘What’s that?’ Kennedy said looking at the piece of paper Chris had just pushed in front of him having walked up to his desk unannounced.

          ‘Recognize the name?’

‘Nope. Should I?’

‘Well, you’ve been around here since the Dark Ages so I thought it

might ring a bell. James MacDonald, retired detective. Sure you’ve never heard of him?’

‘I vaguely remember the name, where’s he stationed?’