Reilly woke suddenly, instantly awake even though it was the middle of the night. Her eyes flicked quickly to the alarm clock. The red digits glared back at her: 3.27. Three and a half hours until the alarm blared into life, starting another day. So what had woken her? A noise of some kind? She listened carefully. Was there something happening next door ... or outside?
Lying completely still, she strained her ears to hear the faintest sound, but she could make out nothing but the steady beat of her own pulse. She lifted her head off the pillow – still nothing. The street was quiet, peaceful – the reason she had moved to Ranelagh in the first place. That and the fact that it was the nicest area in the city she’d been able to afford the rent.. Though only a couple of miles from the center, it had a villagey feel to it that really appealed to her, with a multitude of restaurants, cafés and cute little shops that weren’t yet suffering the effects of the ongoing economic recession.
Now, she focused her attention on the rooms around her – not a sound from the living room, no creaking floorboards, not even a radiator ticking quietly as it cooled.
She settled her head back on her pillow, sighed deeply, and tried to relax, tried to let herself unwind and go back to sleep, but the harder she tried, the more sleep eluded her. Something was lurking there, hiding in a quiet corner of her mind, waiting to ambush her as soon as she started to drift off.
She turned over again, seeking that perfect position that would help her to relax. What was playing on her mind? Was it the Coffey case? She would have the ME’s report in the morning, and the lab were analyzing the samples they had collected. Sure, it was a weird situation, but at this early stage, and with so little evidence uncovered, it wasn't at the point where it preyed on her mind.
That would happen soon enough, Reilly knew, but not until later, not until she had enough pieces of the jigsaw to see if there was a pattern. Then her brain would go into overdrive, trying to fit the pieces into coherent order, and striving for that elusive part, the keystone, the one that would make sense of everything. Then she would work days, nights – and barely sleep while she drove herself crazy trying to make sense of it.
Reilly rolled over, and pulled the covers tightly around her. She had been in Ireland for over a year now, but she still hadn’t got used to the biting cold. While she’d thought that winter back home in San Francisco could be chilly, really she’d had no idea. Two blankets and a duvet covered her, but still her toes felt like blocks of ice. She curled her legs up to bring them into the warmer part of the bed and slowly began to relax.
The climate was something she hadn’t really considered when, the previous year, she’d got an invitation from the Irish Police Commissioner offering her the job of bringing the new Garda Forensic Unit up to date.
With her Quantico qualifications and her law enforcement experience, Reilly knew there was a lot she could bring to the job, but another reason she’d accepted the position was to keep tabs on her father, who in the hope of starting afresh after family life had been shattered, had moved from San Francisco back to Ireland, the land of his birth. At the time of Reilly’s arrival in Dublin, Mike Steel was living in a scummy city center flat, drinking himself into oblivion.
Recently, though, he’d cleaned himself up, was staying off the bottle, and had even found himself a lady friend in one of his neighbours. Reilly was glad; after all the shit that had gone down in their family, he deserved to be happy.
But it also meant that there were fewer opportunities to spend time with him now, and Reilly missed checking in on him, missed taking care of him. Mike had moved on and it was almost as if he didn’t need her anymore. She shook her head, annoyed with herself. Her dad was a grown man – of course he didn’t need her. Still, his new relationship was a sure sign that his relocation from the US had been a success, whereas Reilly still wasn’t certain if the same could be said for her own move ...
Finally her breathing began to even out, and she felt a ripple of calm wash over her. Her eyes gradually felt heavier as sleep began to creep in.
She was almost gone, right at that delicious point where you know you are about to sleep and you can luxuriate in it when – bam – it hit her again.
Like an icy grip the dream grabbed her mind, started to play itself out, started to move towards its inexorable conclusion. It had visited her many times before, always when she was at her most vulnerable, when she had something else on her mind. There it was, coming out of the mist of her subconscious, a reminder of past defeats, a reminder that if you don’t figure things out in time, you have failed.
Reilly was running – running as fast as she could – but getting nowhere.
Ghostly images floated around her, trees like sticks appearing in the mist ... tiny snippets of conversation with Chris and Kennedy ... Reilly’s feet moved as though she were struggling through thick treacle, each step taking an agonizing minute, each minute bringing death one step closer.
She tried to run faster, strained, cursed the air, ripped at it with her hands as though it were a physical thing that she could tear aside by sheer willpower, but at the same time she already knew that she was doomed to fail.
Just as she had failed with her sister.
––––––––
Hours later, an exhausted Reilly was at the lab to begin analysis of the samples they’d taken from the Coffey scene. There would be no weekend breaks while this investigation was going on.
The first sample was from one of the footprint indentations around the opening of the tank, and it was of interest because she’d noticed a slight glistening in the soil at the bottom of one of the soleprints around the heel area.
Something the killer may have walked in on the base of his shoe? She couldn’t be sure but it was worth a look.
Reilly approached the mass spectrometer, placed the swab of soil into a sample cup, and fed it into the input slot at the base of the machine. After a brief irradiation and some molecular weight calculations, the machine spat out an answer.
Water, caramelized sugar, vinegar, sodium chloride and capsicum.
Reilly frowned. A soft drink perhaps? Strike that; no soft drink would use vinegar as one of its ingredients. So it had to be savory, maybe some kind of cooking sauce?
She racked her brains for a cooking sauce that might consist of such ingredients, and immediately came up with several: chili, taco, sweet and sour, Tabasco ... She’d get Julius to track it down, crosscheck all the major brands available commercially to see if he could pinpoint it to something specific. The older lab tech was like a dog with a bone when it came to things like that.
Still, the type of sauce was perhaps less important than where it had come from. Had the killer walked it in from his own kitchen? Perhaps he’d made himself a bite to eat before taking poor Tony Coffey off to stew in his own filth.
Or perhaps it had been on the bottom of Coffey’s shoes, and had slipped off onto the mud he was being dragged to the opening? She made a mental note to get Chris and Kennedy to ask Mrs Coffey what her husband’s eating habits and preferences had been, although the ME’s analysis of Coffey’s stomach contents during autopsy should determine if he’d eaten anything savory beforehand.
Water, sugar, vinegar, salt and capsicum ...
As with all unidentified trace, Reilly found that this simple piece of evidence threw up more questions than answers.
‘Hey.’ Later that morning, Chris stood in the doorway of Reilly’s office. It was a fair reflection of herself: small, meticulously organized, with minimal personal touches.
She was reading a file and was so engrossed she hadn't even heard him approach.
‘Hey there. Thanks for coming by. I’ve got the ME’s report, and I’m going over it for the second time to see if there’s anything I missed on the first reading.’
He came in, and slumped down into a chair in front of her desk, his dark hair flopping over one side of his forehead. ‘You look a bit gray today,’ he said. ‘Did you sleep?’
She pushed the file aside, and looked at him properly. ‘Gee, thanks, you sure know how to make a girl feel good,’ she joked. She leaned back in her chair. ‘I slept some. How about you?’
Chris shook his head. ‘Not great, to be honest.’
‘Oh?’ she gave him a questioning look. But before she could say anything more, Kennedy barged in, holding three paper coffee cups.
‘Ah, quit your whingeing, lightweights,’ he said, ‘Has the bogyman been haunting ye with nasty nighttime visions?’ He handed out the coffees, hitched up his trousers and flopped down into a vacant chair beside Chris. It creaked a little under the strain.
Reilly grabbed the cup, lifted the lid and blew at the steam. ‘Let me guess, you slept like a baby?’
He nodded. ‘Just like every night.’
‘The joys of a happy marriage,’ Chris said with a wry smile, winking at Reilly.
‘Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. But I am happily married, something at least one of you might consider trying before you’re too old and cynical.’ He looked back and forth between their amused faces. ‘Laugh all you want. You might think it’s sad, but every day when I get home from work, Josie’s there waiting for me with a kind word and some good grub. Can’t argue with that – or a sound night’s sleep.’ He stirred his coffee with a slim plastic stirrer, and flipped it into the nearby rubbish bin.
‘So anyway, Reilly, much as we love you, we didn’t drive all the way over here to chat about my home life. Do we have anything?’
‘Well, here’s Karen Thompson’s report, for starters.’ Reilly duly slid the document across her desk towards the two detectives.
Kennedy waved dismissively at the paperwork, and sipped his coffee. ‘Save us the time – just give us the edited highlights. And no fancy medical talk either – you know I’m a meat-and-spuds man.’
She suppressed a smile. Kennedy liked to wind her up about her use of technical jargon, but she’d come to know that underneath all the bluster, the guy was a lot smarter than he let on. After all, she had him to thank for pinpointing her location and coming to her rescue on a previous case when things went bad. Nope, there were no flies on Pet Kennedy.
‘All right, seeing as you asked ... Autopsy for Dummies, page one.’ She flipped open the report. ‘First of all, the doc confirms Coffey had been in the tank for at least forty-eight hours.’
‘That would make it Wednesday when he was put in there?’ Kennedy clarified.
‘Yeah.’
‘When Mrs Coffey would have been at her weekly bridge club meeting,’ Chris put in, looking at his own notes. ‘Sounds like the killer had some idea of their schedule.’
‘Right. And like you said yesterday, he was indeed alive when he was put in the tank.’
‘Ugh, the thoughts of that ...’ Kennedy grimaced.
Chris looked pensive. ‘So what was the actual cause of death? Drowning, ... sewage poisoning?’
‘Those fumes would have asphyxiated him pretty quickly,’ Reilly agreed, ‘but yes, actual cause of death was drowning.’
‘Oh Christ ...’ Kennedy said wincing. ‘You’re saying the guy drowned in his own shit? The press are going to have a field day with that one.’ As it was, media interest was already heightened in the case, given that the victim was a fellow journalist. Reilly cocked her head to one side. ‘Actually, I would never say anything that inelegant, Detective Kennedy, and neither would Dr Thompson. As the report says, Mr Coffey drowned in human excrement – you’re the one saying he drowned in his own shit.’
Kennedy waved a hand. ‘OK, I get it – but stop saying it. It’s making my breakfast rise up in rebellion.’
Chris smiled at their banter, but remained focused on the details. ‘All of this suggests a high degree of planning and premeditation. This was very definitely no accident. We’re interviewing Coffey’s secretary this morning to see if she can shed any light on why the poor guy ended up like that. Anything else to go on before we talk to her?’ He looked hopefully at Reilly. ‘Did your guys turn up much since?’
‘Well, we’ve really only just gotten started but ...’ She went on to tell them about that morning’s sauce discovery. ‘Going by his stomach contents at autopsy, apparently Coffey was like Kennedy, a meat-and-potatoes man, so it’s unlikely the sample came from him.’
‘What about the plumber?’ Chris asked.
‘He was wearing boots, and this was definitely a shoeprint. Size ten, which suggests our killer would be of average height and build.’
‘Aren’t they always?’ Kennedy grumbled. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a shoeprint that, for once, gives us a guy that’s eight foot tall and twenty stone. Would be easy to pick him out in a crowd.’
‘Like I said, we’ve just gotten started, and there’s quite a bit of isolation to do first. I may have picked up some potentially interesting trace from the limestone inside the tank opening – lab’s working on that as we speak – but the sewage would have obliterated any trace around the body.’
Chris nodded as if expecting as much.
‘So all we know for the moment is that someone average, who may or may not enjoy a spot of Chinese food, wanted Coffey dead,’ Kennedy said, sighing.
‘I never said anything about Chinese—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know, some kind of sticky sauce. Doesn’t much matter either way, does it?’
‘Actually—’
‘OK, I get it, it’s a start. But until you can tell us what this stuff is, it’s no good in helping us catch our killer.’
‘It may be no good anyway, but we still have to check it out.’ Despite the huge strides in forensic science and its application to police work, Kennedy was dubious, and much more of a fan of the old-fashioned methods.
‘I’ve sent the manhole cover to the specialized tool marks lab in Edinburgh,’ Reilly continued. ‘Results will take some time, but this might help us identify how the culprit got it off, and that in turn may yield something helpful in itself.’ She picked up a sheaf of papers from her desk. ‘I was also interested in the construction history of the tank – you saw yourselves how old it looks – so I called the plumber and asked him about it.’
Paddy Murphy had still been pretty shaken up by his unexpected discovery, but when Reilly asked him about the specifics of the tank, he’d quickly perked up.
‘It’s a completely natural system,’ he’d told her. ‘And when I say it’s old, I mean ancient. I always figured it operated so well because it was fed from an underground spring of some sort. Maybe it was a kind of sacred cave before the monks claimed it for the friary sewer. Regardless, it doesn’t need any chemical assistance and is by any standard a remarkable feat of septic engineering,’ he’d added with an enthusiasm that only a specialist in waste management could muster. ‘It quickly digests any organic material it’s fed, and distributes the resulting nutrients out under the orchard and into the garden.’
‘So what’s a history lesson on the tank going to tell you?’ Kennedy sounded skeptical.
‘Well, I wondered if there was anything significant in the tank itself as the manner of death.’
‘Ah, I was thinking you’d start soon on that ... erm ... shite,’ he muttered irritably. Reilly’s tendency to look at not only the physical elements of a murder scene, but also any potentially metaphorical significance in how it was executed got on his nerves. It was difficult not to, when one of their previous investigations had been determinedly metaphorical in tone. It also stemmed from Reilly’s behavioral psychology training at the FBI Academy.
‘Well, I suppose a lot of journalists are considered to be full of shit,’ Chris said, nodding in agreement. ‘And someone certainly wanted to deliver a strong message, killing Coffey the way they did. Maybe that’s what he’s hoping to get across.’
‘That’s pretty much what I was thinking,’ Reilly said. ‘Might be worth going through Coffey’s most recent articles, see if he’s annoyed anyone badly enough to do something like this. No harm in cross-referencing the cause of death with other cases either.’
Kennedy stood up, headed for the door. ‘Cheers, we’ll be sure to let you know when we graduate from homicide high school too,’ he said sardonically, but Reilly knew him well enough by now to realize it was merely banter. ‘God knows what we’d do without the FBI’s finest to show us how to run a case, eh? Speaking of which, how’s our old buddy Agent Forrest?’
‘Retiring, actually,’ Reilly replied, referring to her friend and former mentor Daniel Forrest, with whom the detectives had consulted on a previous case involving Reilly’s sister.
It had been a surprise to her to hear that he was hanging up his boots. Reilly had expected the man to be buried clutching a half-completed profile in his hands, so dedicated was he to unravelling the most twisted of human minds.
‘He’s continuing his lectures at Quantico but staying out of the field, apparently.’
‘I reckon he has the right idea,’ Kennedy said, and both Reilly and Chris looked at him in surprise. If anything Reilly had expected the older cop to greet the news with derision.
‘Workload getting you down, Detective?’ she queried, arching an eyebrow.
Kennedy shook his head, looking uncharacteristically defeated. ‘Last week, one of our boys is turned into a human Popsicle,’ he said, referring to the murder of a former colleague. ‘This week, guy drowns in his own shite, and in both cases we’ve got no clues, suspects, or motive not to mention having the press all over it.’ He shrugged. ‘What’s not to love?’