Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (7 page)

Kirsty carefully set the photo down, and turned to face Kennedy. She took a drag on her cigarette, and sent a cloud of smoke up towards the high ceiling.

‘I don’t know, hard to put a finger on it really. I suppose he had a way of making me feel needed.’ She paused, teary-eyed once again. ‘We all want to be needed, don’t we?’

Chris looked briefly at Kennedy – their eyes met, a faint nod.  The door had opened, now was the time to push through.

‘You weren’t the first, were you, Kirsty?’ Chris probed softly.

She gave a bitter smile. ‘His first assistant or first affair?’

‘You tell me. Were they one and the same thing?’

Kirsty gave him a sharp look, but said nothing. She walked slowly across the room, and sat down on the sofa.

An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Chris let it sit. It was easy to talk too much, to fire one question after another at people. The trick was not to say anything, to let the pauses and the silences do their work. Let Kirsty think about what she’d said, wonder if she’d said too much, worry what they might be thinking of her ...

Kennedy was now standing by the desk, checking it over as if he was no longer interested in what was being said. Chris looked slowly back and forth between the photo collection and Kirsty. She was obviously uncomfortable, flicking nervously at her cigarette while repeatedly glancing towards the detectives waiting for one or other of them to say something. The only sound in the room was the hum from Tony Coffey’s computer screen.

‘Any idea who would want Tony dead?’ Chris asked finally. ‘Want him to suffer by stuffing him alive in a septic tank, buried in his own filth and left to die?’

Kirsty shot Chris a look of utter horror. ‘What? He was alive when they ...’ She hugged her arms close to her chest. ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting ... it’s sick!’ 

‘It is,’ Chris agreed quietly, going to stand in front of her.  ‘That’s why we want to catch the bastard who did it.’

Kirsty fiddled again with her cigarette and looked down at her brightly painted nails, studiously avoiding Chris’s piercing gaze. ‘Look, I’m not suggesting in a million years that something like that was justified, but Tony was a hard man to like. He was harsh in his opinions, said exactly what he thought, even though a lot of people thought he was full of ... Oh God!’ she said, putting a hand to her face. ‘Is that what this was all about? Someone trying to imply he was full of shit? But why? Who?’

‘You’re saying he had a lot of enemies?’ Kennedy asked quickly, unwilling to let her become distracted.

She took a last hard drag on her cigarette, before stubbing it out roughly in a cut-glass ashtray nearby. ‘You name it, he’d pissed someone off over it. You only have to read last week’s column to know what he’s all about.’

Chris had; it was a nasty, sneering piece about same-sex marriage and what he called ‘the gay abomination’.

He glanced again at Kennedy, then turned his focus back on Kirsty. ‘So from what you’ve said, we should be looking at anyone from an angry husband to an irate fox hunter to a pissed-off homosexual?’

‘That’s Tony.’  Kirsty gave a sad laugh. ‘To know him was to hate him.’

And Chris thought, frustrated, it seemed there were many who did just that.

R
eilly was running. She liked to do so when her brain was overloaded by work, and nothing was making sense. Sometimes the change in brain chemicals seemed to help her think more clearly, and rearranged her pattern of thoughts in a way that made what had previously seemed to  be random bits and pieces suddenly click into place.

The cool evening breeze on her face felt good.  It had rained earlier in the day, but now the air was fresh, clean, and the late autumn leaves were thick on the grass as she ran past Herbert Park. She was tempted to cut through it and savor the feel of soft grass under her feet, but even in this leafy suburb it was too risky for a woman to go alone there after dark.

She contented herself with the quiet streets, almost deserted now that the rush hour was over. She glanced at the brightly lit houses, each one a small oasis of light and warmth and safety, televisions casting ghostly blue light on the ceilings and curtains.  No doubt filled with happy loving families, the way hers used to be back home in California before ...everything.

Her footsteps tapped out a steady rhythm, her blond ponytail bobbing in time against her neck, muscles moving fluidly, comfortably, on autopilot, allowing her brain to run free. She had spent that afternoon researching old case files, trying to find another incident of the mode of killing – drowned in a septic tank – without success.  Though there were hundreds of such incidents as a result of accidental drownings, as far as she could tell there was none suggesting murder. 

She turned a corner, and startled a cat lurking in the shadows beneath a parked car. It scooted out and across her path, almost causing her to stumble, then across the road. It paused on the far side and shot her a fearful glance before finally disappearing into a dark patch of shrubs on the far side of the road.

Reilly quickly found her rhythm again, willing her mind to relax as her feet beat out a hypnotic beat.

Later, back home, she showered and towelled her hair dry as she stepped into her living room. She had brought a couple of lab reports home from the office to read, but wasn’t in the mood to start on them just yet.

She sat down on the couch, idly turned on the TV, and tried to concentrate on what was showing, but nothing could capture her attention. She surfed through the channels for a few minutes more before finally switching off.

Reilly sat for a moment in the silence of her small one-bed apartment.  Kennedy was right – loneliness could be a bitch sometimes. It was fine when she wanted to be alone, but there were also times when she longed for company, for a hug when she walked through the door, for someone to be there, waiting for her. They would talk about something inconsequential, cook dinner together, maybe exchange foot massages ...

Of course she wasn’t completely alone in Dublin.  Her father lived a few miles away in the inner city, but that wasn’t the same, and anyway, by all accounts Mike Steel had a hectic social life these days, whereas Reilly was feeling increasingly lonely in this strange, and sometimes inhospitable city. While people were for the most part friendly, she could sense an undercurrent of frustration about the collapse of what had once been a vibrant, thriving economy.

She and Chris had spent a lot of time together last summer, during her temporary suspension from the GFU following an issue surrounding their first investigation, and while he was recovering from shooting injuries related to the same case. She’d tried (without success) to teach him how to surf, and he’d shown her around the city, and made her dinner once or twice in his apartment. But since her reinstatement, and the increase in their respective workloads, the opportunities for these occasions had been few and far between. It was a pity, as she’d enjoyed chilling out with someone who understood the pressures of the job, but ironically it was those very pressures that had been keeping them apart lately.

The thought of those lazy dinners at Chris’s place and the rumbling of her stomach reminded Reilly that she hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime, and the run had only made her more hungry.

Pulling open the door of her fridge, she looked dejectedly at the miserly contents for a few moments, before a flash of inspiration hit.

Taking down a large cast-iron skillet from the hook beside the stove, Reilly sparked up one of the gas burners and melted a little butter in the pan.

She grabbed three corn tortillas that remained from a pack of eight in the fridge, and tossed them into the now bubbling butter. Selecting two brown eggs from their box and a small jar of tomato salsa, she shut the fridge door and deposited all three items on the counter top. With a wooden spatula, she slid the sizzling tortillas into a stack at one side of the pan and then, cracking open the eggs on the skillet’s edge, she added them to the butter.

Placing a large lid atop the pan, she turned to her fruit basket and selected a large avocado that was slightly overripe but it would have to do. As the eggs basted, she halved and stoned the fruit, slicing the flesh then arranging the thin wedges on a plate.

By now the egg yolks had developed an opaque white film so she dished the crispy tortillas on the plate next to the avocado wedges and carefully topped them with the eggs. This short stack was topped with a dollop of the tomato salsa and –  ta-dah – Reilly had, in the heart of Dublin, recreated heuvos rancheros, an old student favorite from her Quantico days. It was actually a Mexican dish, and technically breakfast, but it had always been a major comfort food for her, and tonight she figured that was exactly what she needed.

Returning to the fridge once more, she poured herself a healthy serving of orange juice, and was just about to settle down to eating when her cellphone rang.

Checking the screen, her face fell.  This was not a call she wanted to take, but it wasn’t one she could really refuse either. ‘Reilly Steel speaking,’ she announced quietly into the mouthpiece. 

A booming voice with a strong Midlands accent filled her ear. ‘Steel, Inspector O’Brien here. I trust this is a good time?’

Reilly looked dejectedly at her heuvos rancheros. ‘It’s fine, sir,’ she lied. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘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.