The following morning, Reilly was in her office, poring over Tony Coffey’s newspaper articles to help with the search for that elusive thread that bound all five killings together.
The answer was proving as difficult to find as anything else in the investigation. While Chris and Delaney had advised that there were plenty of cases involving Judge Morgan and Crowe, none of them seemed controversial enough to have attracted the journalistic attention of Coffey, or the influence of Fitzpatrick. And Jennings didn’t seem to fit in with anything at all.
The smell of old paper lodged in her nostrils, a musty aroma that made her think of old libraries, old offices.
‘You might have warned me ...’ Reuben stuck his head round the door, a cheeky grin on his chiseled face.
Reilly looked up, glad for any distraction from the tedium of reviewing the newspapers. ‘Warned you about what?’
He trotted in with a brisk step. ‘Coffey’s secretary.’
Reilly smiled, recalling Chris description of Kirsty Malone with her denim miniskirt and heavy eye make-up. O’Brien had requested that Reuben re-interview some of the key witnesses in order to help with the search for a link. True to form, he had chosen to begin with the most attractive one.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen so much of a woman’s cleavage since I was a baby.’
Reilly grinned. ‘So did you get anything out of her?’
He looked shocked. ‘Reilly Steel, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean—’
‘Any useful information then,’ she clarified, shaking her head indulgently.
‘Well, yes, as it happens.’ Reuben rummaged inside his manbag, and pulled out a stack of papers. ‘In addition to having a delectable bosom, Ms Malone is also rather well organized. It transpires that one of the things she did for Mr Coffey was catalog his articles all the way back to when he was writing for some socialist student rag ...’
Reilly picked up the top article. The title read: ‘Why Our Courts Are Broken, and How to Fix Them.’
‘He really was quite the populist,’ she commented, having briefly scanned the text.
Reuben nodded. ‘Not my reading choice. The man tends towards simplistic solutions to complex problems. I ignored all the earlier ones – they were more rants than anything else – but over the past ten years or so he’s written about the Irish courts, sentencing, justice, parole ... on a number of occasions.’ He patted the stack of articles. ‘Happy reading, my dear.’
She gave a wry smile, and indicated the massive piles of newspaper around her. ‘More reading, just what we need ...’
‘You can thank me later. Have fun!’ Reuben turned and headed for the door.
‘Well, I’m glad you made it out with your virtue intact at least,’ she called after him.
His head popped back inside the doorway and he grinned wickedly. ‘My darling, whoever said I did?’
Reilly thumbed idly through the articles Reuben had mentioned. If Coffey mentioned a particular case, it could shortcut the whole process of going through the case files.
She was halfway through reading them when Lucy showed up. It was her first time seeing the younger woman since her renegade trip the other day, and Reilly noted how she knocked politely on the door, waiting to be invited in.
She stood up and stretched, amazed at how much time had passed – it was almost ten a.m. already. ‘Hey there. Come on in.’
Lucy seemed reluctant to meet her gaze. ‘I just wanted to apologize ... about the other day.’
‘What were you thinking, Lucy?’ Reilly asked without preamble. ‘Going down there by yourself?’
‘I just wanted to try and pinpoint a location for the samples.’
Reilly ran a hand through her hair. ‘It was very irresponsible of you, sweetheart, not to mention above and beyond the call of duty. You can’t take chances like that. You should have told me; I could have arranged for a uniform to go down there with you; have gone myself, even.’
Lucy still didn’t look at her. ‘I know it was stupid, but I thought I’d just ask around, see if there were any abandoned barns nearby, any old stables, things like that. I wasn’t thinking ...’
‘And what would you have done if the killer had suddenly shown up while you were snooping around?’
‘That’s what my dad said. Look, I didn’t mean to get in trouble and I couldn’t believe it when the locals showed up. It was just supposed to be a fishing mission. There are dozens of similar farms out in that area. The chances of any of them being the right one—’
‘Yet Julian tells me that the samples you brought back are a match?’
Reilly had had mixed feelings when she heard about this. It seemed that Lucy had been a lot closer to the correct spot than she’d thought.
Fantastic if it helped them narrow down the doer’s location, but to think what could have happened if Lucy had stumbled across the right property ...
Lucy nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, a sample I took from one of the farms matches the others, but the same logic still applies. It just means I was in the right area.’
‘Well, there’s no denying that you got a result, but still ...’
‘I know, I know, I should have told somebody where I was going. But it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision, you know? We were getting so little in the case, and I thought if I could—’
‘I admire your initiative, but Dr Gorman, your dad ...’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Don’t mind him.’
‘Lucy, he’s your father. If anything happened to you—’
‘I know, but you don’t understand, he’s so bloody overprotective of me. As if what happened to Grace will happen to me too.’
Reilly looked up. ‘Grace?’
‘My older sister. She went missing fourteen years ago. When I was ten.’ Reilly’s face must have betrayed her surprise. ‘I’m sorry, I guess I thought everyone knew. Nobody mentions it any more really, but ...’ She shrugged and Reilly struggled to get her head around this.
And here she was, always wondering what made Jack Gorman so angry, so bitter ...
‘Your sister – she’s never been found?’
‘Not a sign,’ Lucy confirmed, her voice softening. ‘It’s silly really, but it’s sort of why I got into this job in the first place. I thought if I knew forensics I’d be able to follow the clues, and maybe find out what happened to her.’ She looked away. ‘Of course, it’s hard to follow clues when there aren’t any.’
‘It’s still an open case then,’ Reilly said.
Poor Lucy – and poor Jack. To think that she hadn’t been aware of such a pertinent piece of information about her colleagues ...
She resolved to dig out the missing persons file as soon as she had a free moment. A fresh eye might do some good; maybe pick up on something that had been missed?
‘Yeah,’ Lucy continued, ‘but I think everyone knows by now, the police included, that she isn’t coming back. The first twenty-four hours are crucial they say. It’s been fourteen years.’
It was true. Reilly knew from experience with missing children cases back home that sadly there was little chance the girl would ever be found. ‘She ...Grace was your older sister, you said?’
‘Yes. She was fourteen. Would have been twenty-eight this year.’ She swallowed hard, and Reilly could tell that despite Lucy’s young age when it happened, she was still very much affected by her sister’s disappearance. How could she not be, when something like that would have shaped the family dynamic ever since?
She, perhaps better than most, could understand what that was like.
Jack Gorman’s apparent overreaction about Lucy’s behavior the other day was suddenly making a whole lot of sense. Particularly the comment about an angry parent being preferable to a grieving one. Poor Jack Gorman was that grieving parent, and had no doubt suffered the loss of his eldest daughter every day ... that horrific limbo of not knowing if she were dead or alive.
‘I suppose now you have a better idea of why Dad is on my case so much about working here,’ Lucy continued drily. ‘He went crazy when he heard I wanted to study forensics – and then when the new lab positions opened up here ...’
Upon her arrival at the GFU, Reilly had indeed been taken aback by Jack Gorman’s dismissive attitude towards his daughter, particularly as Lucy was hugely diligent and very capable. But of course she hadn’t seen it for what it was – parental protectiveness.
‘I guess it must have been tough on you, growing up?’ she queried. ‘I can’t imagine your folks were happy about you staying out late dancing, or that kind of thing.’
Lucy smiled tightly. ‘It was ... different,’ she said, and Reilly figured that family life had been one of two ways. Either the parents, crippled with grief over their missing child had (unintentionally) ignored the one remaining, or alternatively, smothered her. It was usually the way with the families of missing kids and in truth it was remarkable that Lucy had ended up the confident, well-adjusted person she was.
‘It’s understandable,’ Lucy continued. ‘After what happened to Grace, Mum and Dad have always been been terrified of losing me too.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s why Dad was so mad at me for what I did the other day. But sometimes ... I suppose I just felt the need to breakaway a little and do something spontaneous, something useful.’
Thinking about her own family setup, Reilly looked at Lucy, realizing that the two of them had much in common. Professional lives driven by family tragedies, and perhaps in trying to overcome the helplessness of the past, they each felt the same strong desire to control the future.
Now Lucy was shifting from foot to foot, evidently anxious to end the topic of conversation. ‘Anyway, I get why you’re mad and I promise I won’t do anything like that again.’ She smiled guiltily. ‘So if you’re done reading me the riot act ...’
‘Of course,’ Reilly said, her thoughts still all over the place as she tried to process this new information.
Lucy held out two reports. ‘The labs findings from the Morgan scene, and Dr Thompson’s autopsy report.’
Reilly waved them away, trying to regain some focus. ‘I’ve done nothing but read all morning – tell me what we’ve got.’
Lucy perched on the edge of her desk. ‘Dr Thompson concludes that Morgan’s COD was blunt-force trauma to the head.’
Reilly pictured the poor naked man in the quarry. ‘Anything else of interest?’
‘No. He was naked, so nothing on the body, other than the holes those maggots left behind.’ She shuddered visibly. ‘Disgusting. We did get some more of that capsicum sauce in the sand, though.’
‘But nothing new otherwise?’
‘No.’ Lucy gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Seriously, what do we have to do to catch a break with this guy?’
‘I don’t know that we ever do,’ Reilly told her. ‘Most of the time, the only reason we catch these people is because of bad luck on their part, or because they do something stupid. This guy certainly isn’t stupid, and so far his luck has held.’
Lucy looked downbeat, frustrated.
‘Hey, don’t let it get to you,’ Reilly told her. ‘We’re doing the best we can, and despite the circumstances, you did good with the soil.’
She spread her arms to indicate the room full of files. ‘I’m just hoping that somewhere in here, amongst all this paperwork, is the key that unlocks this whole mystery.’
In the end it was indeed Coffey’s articles that gave Reilly the breakthrough she so desperately needed. She had waded through over twenty of his newspaper columns – he was a good writer, but his strident prose became a bit grating after reading several articles in a row – and she was starting to feel sleepy when a headline caught her eye: ‘The Curious Case of Missing Evidence’.
She read the article quickly, scanning for the key indicators that might tie all the victims together, and soon found what she was looking for.
Coffey was referring to a brutal rape case that had been heard by Judge Morgan three years ago, in which the main detective, Crowe, had apparently mislaid some key evidence.
So far, so good. A link between three of their victims. But what tied it to Fitzpatrick or Jennings?
Reilly read on – the journalist was suggesting that in a case like this, where the evidence was weak, the courts should be more lenient, and the defendant should be released.
A name in the article popped out, and something that Chris had mentioned leaped into her mind. He had told her that Coffey’s house – way too expensive for a humble journalist – was actually his wife’s. What had he said? Part of the hunting set.
Reilly pulled her phone from her pocket, and quickly dialled an extension. Nobody better than Julius to seek out this kind of information.
‘Hi, Reilly. What’s up?’
‘I need you to do some digging. Have you got a pen handy?’
‘One sec.’ There was a pause. ‘OK, shoot.’
‘I want you to check the connection between a few people for me. The first is Sandra Coffey—’
‘The journalist’s wife?’
‘Right. But her maiden name is Webb.’
‘Got it. Who else?’
‘A defendant in one of Morgan’s cases – Richard Webb. Call Detective Delaney for the docket number.’
‘Richard Webb,’ he repeated back to her. ‘That it?’
‘For the moment at least. Find out if they are connected, or if there are any family connections to either Judge Morgan or Alan Fitzpatrick.’
‘Will do.’
‘And, Julius? Call me back right away if you find anything.’
Reilly flipped her laptop open. Time for her to do some research of her own. A few minutes later, she called Chris at the station.
‘I’ve just had Julius on the phone. What’s all this about Richard Webb?’ he asked her before she could speak.
Reilly filled him in on the only link she’d found between Morgan, Coffey and Crowe. ‘Nothing to get excited just yet, but can you get me the docket number?’
‘Sure. Let me know if anything flies.’
‘Will do. How are you two getting on?’
‘Well, Kennedy seems to be enjoying himself. He’s using it as an excuse to overdose on muffins.’
‘Dangerous work as usual,’ she chuckled, glad that Chris sounded a lot more awake and upbeat than he had the day before. Promising him that she’d keep them updated, Reilly hung up. She then logged on to the criminal court system’s secure website and entered Ricky Webb’s docket number.
The case soon popped up. Richard ‘Ricky’ Webb had been convicted eighteen months before, and had been given a three-year sentence. She scanned down the file. He was currently being held at Mountjoy Prison and – her breath quickened – he’d been granted parole by a review board earlier in the year.
Webb’s conviction was for the rape and battery of a 17-year-old girl, yet his sentence was just three years?
A shiver ran down Reilly’s spine. She strongly believed in intuition and had studied enough psychology to know that such feelings were often the result of processing in the deep parts of the subconscious mind. We don’t know why we reach certain conclusions, and often dismiss them, but the truth is that they are correct most of the time. Now she felt, deep in her gut, that this was the case they were looking for.
She quickly opened another window on her laptop. The sentence was disturbingly lenient for such a grievous offence. And who had made the decision to parole Webb barely eighteen months into his prison term?
The names of the parole board popped up, but nothing significant jumped out.
Clicking open another window, Reilly did a search on the politician Alan Fitzpatrick. Who were his buddies, his associates, his cronies? Page after page flashed by – photos of Fitzpatrick mixing and meeting – and gradually a few names began to appear over and over again. She made a list, then checked back with the members of the parole board.
Bingo.
Two members of the same board were regulars in Fitzpatrick’s inner circle, Nigel Finnegan, and Ken Howard. Had he somehow influenced them to look favorably on Webb’s request for parole?
The ringing of her phone startled her. It was Julius.
‘What did you find?’ she asked.
He couldn’t keep the triumph from his voice. ‘You were right. Richard Webb is Sandra Coffey’s nephew.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘He’s her brother’s kid.’
‘And he is?’
‘Was. He died last year. Roger Webb – founder of Webb Construction.’
Reilly scribbled on her pad. ‘I think I’ve heard of them.’
‘I’m sure you have – they’re one of the biggest construction companies in the country. They’re based in Meath.’
The owner of a big construction company ... Reilly was thinking. ‘There wouldn’t have been a link between the father and Alan Fitzpatrick, would there?’
‘I thought you might ask that. Seems Webb was one of Fitzpatrick’s biggest supporters when he was an up-and-coming TD. There was speculation that he smoothed Fitzpatrick’s path into politics, as a reward for convincing the builders’ unions to accept some dodgy pay conditions in the mid-nineties.’
Reilly whistled. ‘Very cosy.’ She could feel her excitement rising. ‘Julius, you know that you have to keep all of this to yourself for the moment, yes?’
‘Goes without saying. Are we getting close?’
She could hear the enthusiasm in his voice. Everyone had worked so hard on this case, invested so much time, emotion and energy. ‘I don’t know, but what you’ve just told me is a very big piece in the jigsaw. Good work.’
Right away, she called the station again. ‘I think I’m starting to pull all of this together,’ she told Chris. ‘And if I’m right, I also know who the final victim will be.’