Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) by Casey Hill

girls in micro-miniskirts stood in a cluster drinking alcopops, exchanging flirtatious glances with a bunch of young guys who were cranking loose change into the machine. Ninety percent of the people in there were under twenty.
    Kennedy looked thoughtfully at his drink. ‘Ah, my friend in need ...’  He buried his face in stout, then looked around the pub as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Jesus, I’m getting old.  Look at this place. Remember when it had ratty old stags’ heads on the walls, and you got change back from a fiver when you bought a pint?’
    Chris grinned.  ‘No, Granddad, I don’t.’
    ‘Ah, feck off.’ Kennedy slumped back in his seat. ‘I am getting old, though. Days like today sort of bring that home to you.’ He stuck his head in the glass again.
    Chris wrapped his hands around his own pint, and took a long sip.
    Although the funeral of a fellow cop always got you in the gut, he’d hadn’t known John Crowe personally, unlike Kennedy, who’d graduated from training college at the same time as him. And there was no doubt that funerals forced you to think about your own mortality. Especially when you weren’t feeling a hundred percent.
    Chris swallowed hard, then raised his voice a little so as to be heard above the noise. ‘It’s never easy, is it? I always feel so sorry for the family in these situations. Sometimes I wonder if the whole guard of honour thing makes it even harder for them.’
    When Kennedy finally came up for air he looked a little happier. ‘I know it would break my Josie’s heart, definitely.’
    ‘Well, luckily you’re not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. Are you?’ Chris added jokingly, trying not to think about the irony of that with regard to himself.
    ‘Not if I can help it. But sometimes you wonder, with all the shit that’s going down these days.’
    ‘Speaking of, erm, shit ... where are we on the Coffey murder?’
    The smile quickly left his partner’s face. ‘Buggered if I know. Like I said, no clues, no suspects, no motive.’
    Chris nodded in agreement. It was four days since the discovery of Tony Coffey’s body, and they needed something to move the investigation forward soon, an opening, something to give them direction. He gazed at his half-empty pint glass. The stout wasn’t bad, and it was definitely relaxing him a little, relieving some of the tension and worry he’d been experiencing these last few days about the tremors. Maybe the odd Guinness was the answer?
    ‘With regard to motive, did the editor have much to say yesterday?’ Kennedy asked.
    Coffey’s editor at the Sunday Herald had shed little light on anything, other than to insist to Chris yet again that Tony was ‘a total arsehole, but he had a way with words. If you wanted someone to be provocative, to stir up a storm of controversy, then he was your man.’
    Chris shook his head. ‘Sounds like everyone hated Coffey – the left, the right, old people, young people. The guy lived to wind people up.’
    Kennedy sipped thoughtfully. ‘Did you ask the editor about death threats, irate call or letters in response to his articles, anything like that? Stalkers, even?’
    ‘He said there have been some inflammatory responses down the years, but no stalkers, no one who swore they’d kill him or whatever. What about the wife?’ he asked, referring to Kennedy’s second interview with Sandra Coffey in light of Kirsty Malone’s revelations.
    The detective looked grim. ‘I tried beating about the bush, but she knew where I was coming from.’
    Chris nodded sympathetically. There was no easy way to ask a woman about her dead husband’s affairs.
    The music seemed to grow even louder, battling the chirping of the crowd.  Kennedy leaned towards Chris to make himself heard. ‘She admitted knowing that Coffey had had several “secretaries” throughout the years. She gave me a couple of names  I’ll follow up on them tomorrow, see if there was anything unseemly,