The following day, Reilly stood with her hands behind her back, and watched O’Brien carefully. The team had all been summoned to an early morning meeting. The Chief wasn't exactly reading the riot act – he had been in the force long enough to know that without solid leads and evidence there was little they could actually do – but he was venting his frustrations at them all the same.
Chris and Kennedy stood beside Reilly, while Reuben Knight lolled in a nearby chair, one leg hooked over the arm of it.
She looked closely at Chris, and watched him resolutely place his shaking hands in his pockets. She didn’t believe him when he’d mentioned something about missing the Morgan discovery yesterday afternoon because he’d been following up on some mysterious lead.
His eyes were bloodshot, his shirt wrinkled and his tie askew, as if he’d slept in his clothes. To someone like Reilly (who, with an alcoholic father, knew the signs all too well) Chris looked like he’d spent most of the day at the bottle.
What the hell? So much for being happy for Melanie and wishing her well. For a guy who didn’t drink all that much this was a worrying development. Reilly sorely hoped this whole thing with the ex-fiancée, coupled with the pressures of the workload, wasn’t the start of a slippery slope for Chris, and she resolved to confront him about it as soon as she got the chance.
‘Five murders!’ O’Brien thundered. He held up a national paper for emphasis, a huge headline emblazoned across it: ‘Punisher Claims Fifth Victim’. ‘Are we any nearer to finding this madman?’
‘He’s not really a madman,’ Reuben drawled, fiddling with his precious Mont Blanc pen. ‘That’s the problem, really.’
O’Brien shot him a furious glare, but the profiler seemed impervious.
‘So do we have anything? Anything at all?’
They glanced at each other like unruly kids hauled up before the headmaster, as if trying to decide how to tell their side of the story without getting anyone else in trouble.
‘I’m afraid Reuben is right,’ Reilly finally replied. ‘It seems pretty clear that our killer had all this planned out long before he committed the first murder. So far he’s made few mistakes, or has given us little that moves us forward.’
‘Except,’ Kennedy added, glancing at the others, ‘now that we’ve found the judge, we might have a good chance of connecting the dots and finding a link between all five victims, and maybe figure out the original crime that it’s all related to.’
O’Brien now had his back to them, and was gazing out the window. ‘You mean the justice angle?’ He turned round suddenly. ‘Assuming it’s related to an actual crime ...’
‘There is little question that all these murders these punishments stem from a single transgression,’ Reuben said. ‘As I outlined in my profile, what we have is an angry vigilante who is intimately familiar with the failings of the modern courts system, and determined to extract what vicious justice he can from those he thinks were complicit.’
‘All very well and good, but how does it help us find the maniac?’ O’Brien demanded.
‘We’re going to cross-reference any cases that Morgan sat on, where Crowe gave evidence, what Coffey wrote about, and so on,’ Kennedy went on. ‘We’ve been having trouble with the warrant for Dr Jennings’ files. Identifying the suicide victim in his care could well be the key to all of this.’
Reilly couldn’t help but think how the delay was a perfect example of how frustrating the law – and how slow the wheels of justice could be.
‘Well, do whatever it takes to get that, for fuck’s sake!’ For a moment it looked as though O’Brien was going to combust, but instead he turned and addressed Reuben again. ‘So you think there’s just the one more victim – “the primary perpetrator”, as you referred to him in your profile?’
Knight nodded. ‘Assuming he’s telling the truth.’
O’Brien glowered at him. ‘We’re not paying you to assume – does it fit the profile or doesn’t it?’
Reuben gave an easy smile. ‘Based on the rigorous planning, the exaggerated theatricality of it all? Absolutely. He had a well-thought-out plan that he has executed to perfection. Dante’s Inferno is his blueprint. There’s no reason to think that he would deviate from his cause now.’
‘Right. Well, let’s see if we can find the bugger before he claims his last victim. That would be some degree of consolation at least ...’
Later that morning, Chris returned to the large conference room, his head feeling like it was on fire. The long wooden table was covered in boxes of files. An administrative assistant wheeled a trolley in, laden with yet more files and folders.
He glanced around. ‘Where do you want them?’
Chris looked up – in truth he couldn’t care less. He pointed to the far side of the room. ‘Just stack them against the wall over there.’
The assistant dutifully rolled his trolley over, and unloaded the boxes one by one.
‘Is that the last one?’ Chris asked.
‘Yep, that’s your lot.’
‘Thank God for that.’
As the assistant rolled his trolley out, Kennedy strode in, his hands full with a cardboard tray of coffees and a Starbucks bag. ‘Here we go,’ he said brightly, ‘some half-decent coffee.’ He looked at the heavily laden table and his face fell. ‘Bloody hell! Please tell me that’s all of it.’
Chris nodded. ‘Yep, this should be fun.’
There was no room on the table, so Kennedy dumped the coffees on a small filing cabinet, and dropped down into a chair. He held out the bag to Chris. ‘How about a bit of sugar to get your engine started? It’s going to be a long bloody day.’ He bit a huge chunk out of his muffin, and slurped on his coffee. ‘I got you some kind of fruity one.’
Chris almost retched at even the thought of food. ‘Do you have any idea how many calories are in those things?’ he said, hoping that Kennedy would think he was just worried about his health, rather than his hungover stomach.
His partner was busily cramming pieces into his mouth. ‘Do you have any idea how little I care?’ he spluttered through a mouthful of crumbs.
Chris cast a glance at his partner’s bulging waistline and raised a smile. ‘I could hazard a guess.’
Kennedy looked down at his belly, and gave it a gentle pat. ‘Hey, go easy on this fella – it takes a lot of work to get a body like this.’ He indicated the mountain of files. ‘So where do we start on this lot?’
Chris took a mouthful of coffee, and picked up a list. ‘These are all the major cases that Crowe and Judge Morgan had in common.’
‘How many?’
He glanced at the bottom of the list. ‘One hundred and twenty-seven.’ Kennedy shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘Let’s sort through them first,’ Chris suggested, ‘get the minor cases set aside, then have a look at each of the biggies. We can make a list of those and then cross-reference them against any articles that Coffey wrote.’
Taking the new victim and the killer’s motive into account, they needed to go through Coffey’s articles again with a fine-tooth comb.
Reilly had agreed to take on this part of the workload, and had also suggested Rory from her office, who was a speed-reader, by all accounts, and good at seeking out info relevant to an investigation. Much to Reuben’s consternation, he had also been roped-in to help with the search under strict orders from O’Brien.
Kennedy wasn’t looking at all happy. ‘Bloody hell, what a chore ...’
Chris looked at the list, and then at the case number on the nearest box. ‘Right, this one is shoplifting. I think we can forget that.’ He pointed to one corner of the room. ‘Why not put the misdemeanors over there? The sooner we create some space on this table the better.’
By midday, the task was starting to take shape: all boxes for the minor cases had been removed and stacked at the far end of the room. The remaining ones – the forty-seven more serious cases common to Crowe and Judge Morgan – formed their own pile at the end of the table.
Chris checked the list again and looked up. ‘I think that’s it.’
‘Great.’ Kennedy pulled the closest box towards his feet. ‘Then let’s grab a box each and dig in. What are we supposed to be looking for again?’ He opened the nearest box and looked inside at the densely packed files.
‘Anything out of kilter,’ Chris replied. ‘Something to suggest that maybe Crowe “lost” evidence, or any possible link to Coffey or Jennings ...’
The afternoon passed slowly, each of them poring over one case file after another, looking for links, connections, and making notes that might tie in with some article of Coffey’s. Kennedy remained reasonably cheerful, but after a few hours even his enthusiasm was starting to wane.
Chris looked up from the case he was reading. This was pretty depressing stuff – case after case that was either dismissed on a technicality, or where a clearly guilty suspect was given a minimal sentence after the police had spent a huge amount of time gathering evidence.
He had learned long ago that it was best not to pay attention to what happened once the prosecution service got involved – it tended to lead to disappointment and frustration for the police and the investigators, seeing suspects they knew to be guilty either not being charged, getting acquitted, or receiving a minimal sentence.
At times like this he was half able to understand the motives of someone like their killer. After all, and despite his job, Chris knew perhaps better than most that justice was rarely served.