Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) by Casey Hill

ultimately get them nowhere but for now it was at least something. ‘Is the rest of it legible?’
    ‘I think so ... just not sure if this one is a three or an eight.’ Now he accepted the magnifying class and peered closely at the sequence of numbers.
    ‘Want me to take a look and then we can compare?’
    He nodded. ‘Go ahead.’
    Reilly bent down and examined the blurred ink. Actually, the digits on the note were surprisingly legible, considering what the jacket had been through. But yes, it was difficult to tell whether the edges of the three had blurred into the shape of an eight, or if it had been an eight to begin with.
    Reilly continued studying each digit and when she was finished, she wrote down the number sequence as she’d identified it.
    When she compared it with what Rory had written, they realized they had the same mobile phone number. It was obviously relevant to Tony Coffey in some way, but the question was, was it relevant to his murder?
    Leaving the others to continue the examination, Reilly removed her gloves and headed for her office.
    From there she called the station but both Chris and Kennedy’s direct lines went to voicemail, so next she tried Chris’s mobile.
    When he answered she could hear crowd noises in the background.
    ‘Hey there,’ he said, and Reilly thought his greeting sounded unusually chirpy.
    ‘Where are you?’ she asked, and was faintly surprised when he told her he and Delaney were in a pub. Then she remembered Crowe’s funeral and recalled that drinking after a burial was an Irish tradition. A wake, wasn’t it? Another quirky local custom Reilly couldn’t quite get her head round, despite being the daughter of an Irishman, not to mention one who’d never needed a funeral for an excuse to hit the bottle.
    Unsure of the protocol surrounding a wake, especially a cop’s, she felt slightly wrong-footed. ‘Well, maybe this can wait till—’
    ‘No, whatever it is, fire ahead,’ Chris assured her. ‘We’re just about to head off now anyway.’
    ‘OK ...’ Reilly went on to tell them about the find in Coffey’s clothes.
    Chris was impressed. ‘Nice one. Could you make out the number?’
    ‘Would I be calling if I didn’t?’ she replied, faintly teasing. ‘Got a pen handy?’
    ‘Hold on a sec, it’s a bit noisy in here, and we’re just going outside.’
    There was a brief rustling and Reilly heard a creaking noise, which she guessed was the pub door opening. After that, the background din disappeared. 
    ‘OK, shoot,’ Chris said. ‘Kennedy has the notebook out.’ Reilly read out the number sequence and heard Chris recite it to Kennedy in turn.
    ‘It’s a cellphone number so should be easy enough to identify – unless of course it’s prepaid,’ she went on. ‘Whether it’s any good or not is anyone’s guess.’ When there was a brief silence at the other end she said, ‘Chris? Are you still there? I don’t know if the signal’s—’
    ‘I’m still here,’ he said in a strange voice. ‘That’s definitely the number you found in Tony Coffey’s pocket?’
    ‘No question. Why – does the sequence sound off to you or something?’
    ‘The sequence is fine.’ Chris’s voice was grim. ‘And seems we’ll have no trouble identifying it.’
    ‘What? How?’
    ‘Well, according to Kennedy, that’s Johnny Crowe’s number.’

Chapter 11
    C hris sat in the back of a taxi, his thoughts filled with Reilly’s latest discovery and its significance or otherwise.
    Why would Tony Coffey have had John Crowe’s mobile number?
    There could be any number of reasons: the most obvious being that Crowe was Coffey’s source on a story he was researching for the Herald . Yet, Coffey wasn’t a crime reporter and, as a rule, didn’t write about drug dealers, organized criminals or the other unsavory types Crowe had been typically involved with.
    More importantly, was there anything significant in the fact that the two men were now dead, both murdered in