TRACE - CSI Reilly Steel #5 (Forensic novel Police Procedural Series) (20 page)

Chapter 36

‘My times are really improving,’ Constance told Danny. ‘And you get the praise for that.’

‘Thanks,’ said Danny. ‘You were a pretty quick pupil.’

They ran for a while in silence. ‘So, how’s life?’ said Constance. She realized she knew very little about Danny, despite routinely blabbing to him about her own personal life.

He looked a little pained. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s kind of a weird time of year for me actually.’

‘Oh, really? Why’s that?’

‘My mother died around this time. Usually, next week, I would arrange dinner with a couple of friends, to remember her. Just something quiet. But this year everyone is away. And I’m just not sure how I’ll feel facing it alone.’

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s tough. I’m sorry.’

‘It’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll manage. Just cook up something nice and toast to her memory. She really liked to cook, I got that from her.’

‘Look, I know we don’t really know each other, but if you want company, I’d be more than happy to come around.’

‘Really?’ asked Danny. ‘That’s so nice of you. I just don’t really want to be alone. I’d make it worth your while and cook you something special, your favorite if you like.’

‘Believe it or not, my favorite is simple old macaroni and cheese,’ laughed Constance. ‘I feel like that might be a little below your skills.’

‘No way,’ said Danny. ‘One very special mac and cheese, coming up.’

‘I need something from you,’ said Reilly, sounding braver than she felt.

‘And what’s that,’ asked Jack Gorman.

‘I think I’ve got something… on Grace’s case, but I need you to pull some strings.’

‘I thought we discussed this. However I might wish otherwise, my hands are tied.’

‘It’s gone beyond that, Jack. I’m closing in on this, but I can’t do it alone.’

Jack Gorman wanted nothing more than to find out what had happened to his eldest daughter. He wanted it so that he and his wife could begin to recover from years of grief and doubt, and he wanted it so that Lucy could stop holding on to the past. He loved his youngest daughter more than anything, but he found that hard to show sometimes. He had been pushing his emotions away for so many years. But now he could see from the determined look on Reilly Steel’s face that she really had something. Could it even be possible, after all these years …?

‘What do you need?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t mean you’re going to get it, but what do you need?’

‘I want to do another sweep of the house where the necklace was found. And I need full access to the current task force files. And,’ she added gently. ‘I need for you and Lucy to speak openly with each other. Really put your heads together and see what you can remember. You can’t avoid this forever, Jack.’

If Jack Gorman was angry that she had spoken so harshly to him, he didn’t show it.

Maybe because he knew that she was right.

Things began to move after that. Jack tried to stop himself from hoping for a thing he thought was impossible. But he found, that despite himself, they might find out what had happened to Grace at last.

One night after work, he called his daughter into his office. ‘Steel thinks she’s close to something,’ he told her. ‘She’s asked me to pull some strings.’

Lucy stared. ‘Reilly wouldn’t ask for that unless there really was something, dad’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t get our hopes up for nothing.’

‘Well, I still believe that we shouldn’t get our hopes up,’ he insisted, despite the fact that his were. ‘But she wants us to go over some the witness reports one more time and try to remember anything that might help. Together.’

There was a moment’s silence. They both remembered what had happened the last time Lucy had tried to talk to him about Grace.

‘It’s very hard for me,’ he admitted. ‘For all these years, I’ve been tortured by thoughts of what happened to my little girl. It’s haunted me, Lucy, knowing what I know about this kind of thing. I knew as soon as it happened that we wouldn’t see her alive again, and that she had likely died in a terrible way.’

‘I know,’ said Lucy. ‘I understand that. ‘And Reilly feels like I might know something, something that I have been pushing away all these years. I want you to help me remember what I was like. What Grace and I were like, together.’

Jack thought for a moment, and his face softened in repose. ‘You were close,’ he said. ‘Two beautiful, happy little girls.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, I might be slightly biased. You were very protective of each other. Your mother and I didn’t stand a chance against the two of you. Grace began to develop her own tastes though. She went through quite a radical stage, influenced one minute by boy bands and the next by all the rock bands of the day, but we didn’t worry too much. It was normal. She put safety pins through all her clothes and some of yours, too, though you weren’t too impressed.’

‘Did we ever fight?’

‘My God, yes. You both had such strong opinions. You would scream at each other and half an hour all would be well again. Grace was a very sensitive person. She wanted to believe the best in people and that they always loved her. We worried that she was too sensitive sometimes. She felt so much for people and animals.’

‘I remember that,’ said Lucy. She was always bringing home hurt things, like a wounded bird, or a half-dead mouse.

‘Of course, we had our troubles with her as well. She began to get very rebellious, resenting us, telling us that we didn’t care about her.’

‘Did you know she was sneaking out at night?’

He sighed and nodded. ‘Of course. We tried to stop it, but short of locking her in, what could we do? Your mother thought that it was natural that she would try to test her boundaries. We had both done the same thing, but it is heart-stopping when it’s your own child.’

‘I liked Darren,’ said Lucy. ‘I know that he was older and you thought he might be a bad influence, but I did like him.’

‘We liked him too,’ said Jack. ‘He was a good boy when he first met Grace. We were concerned about the age but it all seemed innocent enough. But it got too serious, too fast.’

‘I remember her crying,’ said Lucy, eyes shining, ‘towards the end. She was so unhappy and I didn’t know how to make it better. She didn’t want me to tell you.’ She bit her lip, on the verge of crying, and Jack put his hand over his daughter’s.

‘We knew, pet, we knew that she was unhappy. It’s not your fault. We thought that it was a teenage thing and that it would blow over.’

‘Do you know why? I try to remember but I just can’t remember why. I thought she and Darren were fighting.’

He sighed again. ‘He had some bad family problems. It was starting to affect him too, and Grace was very upset. She felt like she didn’t know him anymore. A few days before she disappeared she came to me and asked if he could come and live with us. She felt, very strongly, that he needed to be out of that house. Of course I said no. It was impossible. I mean, what would his own family have to say about it? She said if I didn’t allow it, she would run away with Darren herself. She said she needed to “save” him.’

‘He’s in jail now, Gary told me.’

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Jack. ‘It kept me going for a while, the idea that she might have run away. That we might find her, angry and scared, but alive. But it soon became very clear that Darren didn’t know what had happened to her either.’

‘How can we be so sure?’ said Lucy. ‘How do we know that?’

‘He was questioned so many times,’ said Jack. ‘And he never changed his story. I just have to believe that there’s another explanation.’

After she left, Jack reflected that he and his daughter hadn’t talked so openly in a long time.

Whatever Steel was onto, it might not reveal what had happened to Grace, but it might just save his relationship with Lucy.

Chapter 37

I didn’t expect it to be so easy. All I needed to do was to tell the truth, really, about the sadness I carry inside me. And whoosh, just like that, she has played into my hands.

Now comes the time for preparation. This one is different. I will take her to restaurant. It’s the perfect setting for this one. Something dramatic, something big. And then I will simply disappear, leaving those stupid investigators scratching their heads.

The question is, what to use? I’m sick of mushrooms, of berries. The last of the antimine was planted on Peroni, and of course a good chef never uses the same menu twice. Something that tastes slightly sharp, I think. Something that will ensure the manner of death isn’t quite so peaceful as the others.

I have only days to perfect something. It shouldn’t be too hard. Without knowing it, I have been preparing for this for a very long time.

It’s hard to know where I will go, and what the manner of my life will be once I am finished. Of course, I will continue with my work, but somehow I think the flavor (pardon the pun) will have gone out of it. After you have fulfilled your greatest wish, there can be nothing to really live up to that. I must take as much joy from these last days as I can. The satisfaction from this will last me a long time, if only I can do it right.

It must be executed with merciless precision.

Reilly put her legs up and stared at the ceiling. She had never thought she would be in this position, such a vulnerable, helpless pose.

She didn’t know what she hoped for. Part of her wished it was all a terrible mistake: that she wasn’t pregnant and could just continue on with her life the way it was before. It would make everything so much less complicated. There wouldn’t be the awful tension between her and Chris, the weight of the secret she was keeping was everyone else. She could forge ahead with her career without any distractions. She wouldn’t have to have that unbelievably hard conversation with Todd, or Daniel. Again, it was odd to think that her old friend would be her baby’s grandfather.

She didn’t know if any of them were quite ready for that kind of relationship.

On the other hand, if her early pregnancy indications turned out not to be viable after all, might she be a little disappointed? Apart from all the obvious complications it would bring to her life, didn’t a tiny part of her want to know what it was like to present her father with a grandchild? To bring a little bit of family joy back into Mike’s life?

Reilly would never get to know how she would feel if she wasn’t pregnant though, because the gynecologist moved up to the head of the bed, removing her gloves, and said: ‘No doubt about it, you’re five weeks pregnant. Congratulations.’

She was numb as they went through preparations for upcoming appointments and scans, talked about her diet and weight and how much sleep she was getting.

The doctor looked at her with concern. ‘Are you OK about it all? Bit of a shock, I presume?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Well, at this early stage, we have to caution people not to get too excited. It’s a perilous time. After the first trimester has passed it’s usually safer to start planning.’

‘OK,’ said Reilly. ‘Can I still exercise? I’m a runner.’

‘Of course. The body is usually fine with exercise it’s accustomed to. So I wouldn’t recommend taking up tap dance at this stage. But as long as you don’t push yourself too hard, light running should be fine, good in fact.’

‘OK .…OK, thanks.’ This was surreal. She truly couldn't believe she was sitting in this room, talking to a medical professional about something so utterly unrelated to her job.

‘Try to enjoy it, Reilly. Your body has never been through something like this before, and sometimes it will feel like hell, and sometimes it will be euphoric.’

‘Euphoric? I haven’t had any of that so far. I’ve been unbearably nauseous actually.’

‘Try ginger. Ginger tea, ginger biscuits.’ The woman chuckled. ‘Just wait until the morning sickness sets in. Then you’ll know all about it.’

When Reilly got back to work, she found another letter from Mountjoy Prison on her desk. It was the last thing she felt like dealing with right now, but with the trail on Grace Gorman’s investigation heating up, she couldn’t afford to ignore it. It could be that she was still wrong about everything, a pile up of coincidences and Darren Keating was toying with her, just for something to do.

She took out the letter and read it.

“Ms Steel, I understand your position, I really do. But I think that you should try harder to understand mine. For almost ten years I have been in and out of jail. I’ve never really had time to form a relationship with anyone but my brother. I’ve seen life through his eyes and I’m only now coming around to the idea that he may have been wrong.

You ask why I don’t believe in redemption. I believe that in order to be redeemed, you have to have something to change for. You have to want something. I don’t want anything, Ms Steel, except peace. That’s why I don’t mind prison too much, it gives me an opportunity to reflect, to be alone, without the constant pressures of the outside world.

I know you visited my mother recently. She and I are attempting to repair our relationship. I don’t want her to spend the rest of her life blaming herself for all that has happened. She sends me the knitted dolls that you doubtless saw in her flat. They are not exactly to my taste, but I keep them anyway. They speak to a kind of innocence that I once had and that perhaps my mother likes to believe I possess still.

She told me that you asked about the necklace that I gave Grace. I remember it well, it was no trinket. It was a real piece of jewelry. I would like to see it again, to be reminded of Grace when she wore it, but I guess that’s impossible.

I took that necklace from my brother. He had a collection of things that he had stolen from women he was obsessed with. He started these obsessions young. I suppose, if you wanted to get analytical about it, you could say that Brendan was searching for a replacement mother.

He stole that necklace from one of our dad’s women. According to my brother, this woman had long blonde hair and a wide, white smile. She was as nice to him as probably anyone had been in his life. He was enraged when I took the necklace.

My brother didn’t start off bad, I don’t believe. He started off desperate. He started off looking for someone to love him. I know you will probably laugh at this, but it’s the truth. He would fall in love with ten different women a day. He loved hair: black hair, blonde hair, red hair. He would have liked your hair. He loved blondes especially.

I think you know what I’m trying to tell you here, Ms Steel. Do you really need to hear the rest of the story? You and I both know it can’t end well.

There was no doubt in Reilly’s mind anymore that Brendan Keating was Grace’s killer, and that Darren was involved, but she needed proof. There was the evidence from the house: the wigs, the necklace, the fractured relationship between Brendan and his family, the desperation of Grace to get Darren away from Brendan before she disappeared.

It was all leading to one place. Reilly needed to get back into that house. She was sure that they would find the truth about what happened to Grace there.

Before she went and asked Jack Gorman for an update from the chief, she sent a quick note to Darren Keating.

“You and I know that we are edging on some hideous truth here. It must see the light, no matter how terrible. You know so much of what we have already discovered for this to be wrong. I believe that your brother killed Grace and that you helped him cover it up.

Tell me what you know. I don’t believe that you are to blame for this crime, but your culpability in covering it up has caused years of pain for Grace’s family. Let’s end it now, one way or another.