Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) by Casey Hill Page A

unpleasant, whatever.’  He sighed. ‘We’re pissing in the dark, Chris, and I’m not sure we’re hitting anything except our own shoes. Think about it, a provocative middle-aged journalist with a string of affairs, and by all accounts an arsehole too. The question isn’t who would want him dead – it’s more like who wouldn’t ?’
    Chris nodded tiredly. This was making him feel drained yet again. ‘My guess is it’s more than that,’ he said. ‘I reckon we can forget the girlfriends, or any wounded husbands, to be honest. It’s the whole setup of the killing. This isn’t a crime of passion – it’s a carefully planned, meticulous job, and it’s intended to make a point.’ He picked up his glass again. ‘Think about it – you’re a killer, you’ve got it in for a guy for whatever reason.  Fair enough, we know that happens.’
    ‘All too often, unfortunately,’ Kennedy grunted.
    Chris was warming to his theme. ‘But why do something so elaborate – sensational, even?’ he asked. ‘Stuffing a guy in a septic tank to drown in his own shit ... that’s pretty imaginative even by the standards of the low-lifes we come across.’
    Kennedy picked up his own pint and knocked it back. ‘Ah, what the hell. We aren’t going to solve anything on this one without a lot of work and a little bit of luck. Right,’ he licked froth off his lips, ‘I’d better go home to the wife.’
    ‘Do – while your dinner is still warm and you can still walk.’
    The older cop gave him a look. ‘Sneer all you like, but what do you go home to, eh? An empty flat and the Playboy channel?’
    Chris grinned. ‘Admit it, you miss the bachelor’s life sometimes.’ As he spoke, two attractive women passed their table – one of them looked over and gave Chris an appraising glance.
    Kennedy caught the look. ‘Some parts of it, yeah.’  His eyes followed the girls across the bar. ‘Trouble is, Romeo, I never got the kind of looks you just did.’ He stood up and shook his head. ‘Guess some women just have no taste.’
    At the GFU lab, Reilly spread Tony Coffey’s clothes out for examination, the dried sewage-encrusted garments looking incongruous against the gleaming white counter top. 
    Lucy and Rory, another lab tech, stood either side of her, face masks in place, although these weren’t much help in protecting them from the stink. Even a big strong rugby player like Rory, who was well used to getting down and dirty, was having trouble.
    Reilly wore a mask too, not for protection from the smell – she’d become accustomed to that by now  but because they were going to get up close and personal with the victim’s clothes in the hope of finding some crucial piece of evidence on them that might have been trapped beneath the layer of sewage.
    At the time of his death, the journalist had been wearing a dark blue shirt, a small-check-patterned tweed jacket, and gray woolen trousers. She slid the trousers towards Lucy and the jacket towards Rory.
    ‘So what are we looking for?’ Rory wore his usual slightly anxious look; he was aware of the increasing media coverage of the crime because of Coffey’s profession, and it was clearly weighing on him.
    Reilly smiled and tried to look reassuring. The last thing she wanted was uptight lab techs who had trouble focusing on the job. She needed the team sharp, paying attention to every detail. 
    ‘The usual,’ she told them. ‘Anything goes – lint, fluff, skin flecks.  Basically anything that’s out of place, we want it.’
    Rory nodded.  ‘So we’re focusing around the collar and cuffs to start with?’
    ‘Yes.’
    For a few moments the three of them worked in silence, each going over the clothes meticulously using a hand-held magnifying glass.
    This was one part of the job that Reilly loved. There was something soothing about focusing the mind on the most minute details, poring over a tiny area, searching in the nooks and crannies like a hunter creeping