TORN (15 page)

Kennedy fixed his best smile in place. ‘Hi, Maggie.’

Mrs Crowe squinted in confusion.

‘Pete. Pete Kennedy?’ he prompted her.

She reached the gate, and peered through the dark metal rails at him.  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

Chris smiled. It was the sort of greeting his partner usually commanded, but at least she remembered him.

‘Sorry to bother you, Maggie,’ Kennedy continued. ‘I wondered if we could have a few words.’ 

She peered past him at the car where Chris sat huddled up. She set her hands on her hips, exuding obvious suspicion. ‘Who’s in the car?’

‘That’s my partner, Detective Delaney. He’s a city boy, doesn’t like the countryside much.’

Maggie looked at the barren sky above, the rain clouds whipping past.  ‘Can’t say I blame him. I’m not terribly keen either.’ 

Bloody hell, Chris thought, this was like pulling teeth. He wished Kennedy would hurry up and get on with it. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind,’ he said, leaning out of the window. ‘Just a couple of loose ends to tie up about your husband’s death.’

Crowe’s wife looked back at him, noncommittal. ‘I’ve already answered a lot of questions. There’s nothing more to say.’

‘I understand, but—’

‘Do you?’ Her words were harsh, reflecting the heavy lines in her pinched face. ‘Do you understand what it’s like when your husband is found dead, frozen in a block of ice? And then everyone wants to know the most intimate details of your life, as if that’s going to help anything.’

She half turned away from them, and for a moment Chris thought she was about to leave, but she stayed still, gazing out past them at the fields that surrounded the house. A line of geese worked their way towards them, their powerful wings holding their perfect V formation as they passed overhead, honking intermittently.

Mrs Crowe suddenly turned back towards them, and now she seemed to have let her guard down a little. ‘I do remember you, Detective Kennedy. John always spoke well of you, said you were all right, one of the lads.’  She looked up and met his gaze. ‘I guess that’s a compliment, isn’t it?’

Kennedy shrugged. ‘I hope so. Who knows with John?’

‘It means he trusted you.’ She fell silent, her hands playing with something in the pocket of her jacket.

Kennedy reached into his own pocket, and pulled out his cigarettes. Her eyes followed him hungrily as he slipped a cigarette from the packet, lit it, and inhaled deeply.  He peered at her through the smoke. ‘Want one?’

Her gaze was still fixed on the cigarette. ‘I’ve given up,’ she said quickly.

‘Me too.  It’s a pain, isn’t it?’ Kennedy inhaled again, then held the cigarette out towards her.

For a second she hesitated, then suddenly her hand reached out through the gate, and took the cigarette. The first drag was slow, deep, almost ecstatic as she drew the smoke deep into her lungs.

‘God, I miss that,’ she said. She took another drag, and looked at the cigarette thoughtfully. ‘The doctor says I was slowly killing myself with these, but hey, with the way things have worked out, who cares?’

‘Yeah, my quack says the same thing, but the bastard smokes himself.’ Kennedy shrugged. ‘It’s the little things like this that make life worth living, isn’t it?’

Mrs Crowe said nothing, and simply savored the cigarette.

‘Who’s your doctor, by the way?’ Kennedy asked with a casual air that impressed Chris. His technique mightn’t be the smoothest, but he had his own ways all the same.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your doctor?  I was just wondering if you have one down here or use the same guy you went to back in Dublin.’

‘No, it’s a local. Jack Davis. Why do you ask?’

‘Just making conversation.’

Mrs Crowe looked skeptical. ‘Detective, please, I’ve spent most of my life married to a cop, and I know that when it comes to you lot, there’s no such thing.’

‘As I said we’re trying to tie up a couple of loose ends in the investigation and—’

‘What investigation? Into John’s death? Because I don’t remember either of you being involved in any of that at all until today.’

She was sharp, no doubting that, Chris thought. A by-product of years spent as a cop’s wife.

‘OK, Maggie, I’ll be straight up with you,’ Kennedy said sighing. ‘We’re not a hundred percent convinced that it was a payback murder and—’

‘Well, it’s about bloody time,’ she interjected, and the detectives exchanged looks. ‘I never once suspected that it was.’

Chris was watching her closely.

‘What was your husband into, Maggie?’ he asked suddenly.

She said nothing for a moment and Chris wondered if he’d jumped in too quickly, pushed his luck too soon.

She glanced back towards the house, thinking, deciding. ‘John was into a lot of things,’ she said eventually. ‘I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell …’

Chris nodded. ‘Best way. Any ideas?’ He fired the words at her, trying to force her to admit what it might be that her husband had got involved in, and how it might tie in with the other two victims.

Maggie wouldn’t meet his gaze. She sucked greedily on the cigarette, and let out a deep breath of smoke that was whipped away on the wind.  ‘People who cross the line always need someone to watch their back
s
be there if things go bad,’ she said finally. ‘John was good at that.’

Kennedy nodded. ‘He ran a security firm.’

‘He had a few contracts for local businesses, but some of the characters he met weren’t the kind who needed a night watchman for their office building, if you understand me,’ she said meaningfully. ‘People would come to the house late at night, dodgy-looking characters, I thought. They’d sit at the kitchen table talking …’ Now that she’d opened up, Chris thought, she seemed keen to get it all out. ‘I stayed out of the way, didn’t want to know what he was doing. I’d make them cups of tea and then go and watch TV, pretend they were talking about football or the dogs.’

‘But,’ Chris prompted her gently, ‘you knew something wasn’t right?’

‘John was always in a good mood afterwards – he’d have these big envelopes of cash, give me a couple of hundred to go shopping. “Treat yourself,” he’d say, and give me that smile of his …’  The sadness of her loss flashed across her face for a moment, but she quickly reeled it back in.

Kennedy nodded.  ‘He could be a real charmer when he wanted to be …  Do you have any names for us, Maggie?’

She shook her head. ‘Like I said, I stayed out of it.’

They’d got this far, and Chris wasn’t going to go away empty-handed. ‘What about a pub, or a bookie’s maybe, somewhere he might hang out and meet people?’

She nodded. ‘To be fair to him he kept most of his “business” away from home.  His office was Brown’s Bar on Sheriff Street.’

Kennedy gave a grunt of recognition. ‘That’s a rough spot.’

Maggie finished her cigarette, dropped the butt into a small puddle, and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment. It looked like their conversation was over.

Kennedy reached for his packet and held it out for her. ‘Want to keep them?’

She thought for a moment, her eyes not wavering.  Finally her hand shot out and grabbed the packet, like a child reaching for a bag of sweets. ‘What the heck. We all have to go sometime.’

Gorman looked less than pleased to see Reilly.  Indeed, he barely looked up when she met him at the entrance to the city morgu
e
a modern, purpose-built place on the opposite side of the city from the GFU.

‘The autopsy reports you asked for,’ he grunted, grudgingly handing her the files. ‘I’m sure they both say the same as they did last time you looked at them.’

Reilly took a deep breath, and forced herself to relax and not be wound up by him. Why was he always so uptight, so bitter?

Get what you need and get out of here, she told herself.  Humor him, do whatever it takes to get what you want … 

‘Jack, just to be clear, I'm not undermining the efficiency of your findings,’ she began. ‘And the reason I went over the Crowe scene again this afternoon is because we have strong reason to believe that this murder may relate to Tony Coffey and George Jennings.’

Gorman paused for a moment before carefully removing his glasses, folding them and slipping them into his jacket pocket.

‘I’m aware of that, Steel, yet you don’t see me questioning your own rather … slim findings at the site where the journalist was found.’

His tone was smug, and Reilly knew that the man must have been rubbing his hands with glee that he hadn’t been the one to have had to wade through the stinking mess that was the Coffey scene.

‘I’m not questioning anything, Jack, just trying to look at each murder with a fresh eye. The thinking before with Crowe was that it might be one of his old collars taking revenge, and with Coffey, someone or something he wrote about. Now, it looks as though there may be much more to it. The manner of their deaths—’

‘I agree that the manner of their demise was atypical, to say the least, as is this most recent incident,’ he admitted. He gave her a sharp look, and peered out from beneath his thick, gray eyebrows. ‘However, I remain unconvinced that there is anything to link these deaths, other than their bizarre execution. And unlike you, Ms Steel, I’ve been in this business long enough to have encountered just about everything, and try not to be swayed by an overwrought imagination.’

He scratched at his stubbled chin with his nicotine-stained fingers, while Reilly fought the urge to tell him to take a hike. This wasn’t a figment of her ‘overwrought imagination’, it was the direction the investigative team had been ordered to take.

She ran her fingers through her hair, and looked him straight in the eyes. ‘What do you want me to do – ignore Inspector O’Brien’s orders?’

‘Of course not. It’s the reason we’re both here, isn’t it? So are you going to enlighten me on why you want to see Mr Coffey’s body? I’m sure Dr Thompson will be pleased to learn you are questioning her professionalism as well as my own.’

Reilly sighed. This guy was seriously hard work. ‘I’m not questioning anyone’s professionalism, Jack,’ she said wearily. ‘There’s just something I need to check.’

Reilly didn’t know which she hated the most – the smell or the cold. Although the morgue building was brand new, the autopsy room itself was sparse, functional, and designed for only one purpose – the efficient examination of corpses.

A wall of huge steel doors on one side housed the bodies, keeping them cold until the ME was done with them. In the center of the room were two examination tables, cold stainless steel, with hoses and drains to wash away the blood and associated gore when the autopsy was complete.

The mortuary assistant in attendance just then was a former summer intern who had stayed on as a part-time volunteer when the college season started up again. He was still young, in his early twenties, but extremely well read and intelligent for his scant years, a nice young kid who was a favorite of Reilly’s, mostly because she could never be sure what sort of crazy getup he would be wearing.

Today he was dressed as a goth. His usually fair hair had been dyed black, and his face was powdered whiter than his bleached white lab coat. His hands coming out through the cuffs of the coat were covered in black fishnet fingerless gloves , and beneath his black jeans were a pair of brilliantly glossy black and white striped boots.

‘Doc told me you wanted to check out the journo?’ he said, handing them gowns, gloves and facemasks as they entered the autopsy suite.

Reilly nodded. ‘Yes, Luke. Thanks for coming out at such short notice.’

‘No problemo.’

Both suited up, Gorman and Reilly waited as Luke pulled open one of the large metal drawers, and rolled out the gurney before slamming the door shut with a heavy metallic thud that echoed round the cold room.

Coffey looked bad – he was a heavyset man, with pale, hairy skin and a huge protuding belly. Death had done him no favors, either. His skin was pasty white with an almost purple sheen, his chest a cross-work of stitching where his internal organs had been removed during autopsy.

Luke rolled him under a bright overhead light, and then left them to it.

Gorman looked at Reilly. ‘So what, specifically, are we looking for that you think might have been missed first time around?’

Reilly ran her gaze over the corpse. She collected her thoughts. ‘Remember we were speculating about how anyone would have gotten Crowe in the freezer or Coffey in the tank – alive, especially?’

Gorman nodded, and went to pull a packet of cigarettes out from beneath his gown before remembering himself. He tucked them away. ‘Neither is a small man, and nothing turned up on the tox screen, so no drugging.’

‘I think they were both bound, then not dragged, but
wheeled
onsite.’ Thinking back on those narrow impressions on the grass approaching the tree yesterday, Reilly was willing to bet money on it that Jennings had also been transported across the extensive grounds of the church by the same method.