Free Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) by CASEY HILL Page A

chuckled. ‘No harm in our getting the lowdown from this … MacDonald,’ he said, reading the name of the cold-case investigating officer from the file. He stretched and groaned. ‘I thought we’d caught a break with finding the driver. So much for wrapping this one up quickly. Now, it looks like we’ve got not just one fallen angel, but two.’

     
     
    Chapter 10
     
    The following morning, Gary hurried into the lab with his sample bag over his shoulder and kit under his arm.
    ‘What are you doing in on a Sunday – hungry for overtime?’ Lucy teased as she turned away from the microscope.
    ‘I could say the same for you, thought you were away with the girls this weekend?’
    ‘Nah, cancelled due to terminal old age; Debs has no babysitter and Nic would rather stay in with her new man,’ she said.
    In truth Lucy hadn’t been too bothered. Lately it always seemed that when she met up with her friends, she had less and less in common with them. Conversation usually turned to something funny someone had said or done years ago, and she was starting to feel jaded by the endless reminiscing. Spending hours alone in a cold, lonely lab didn’t faze her. This was what she’d wanted from the beginning, after all – a chance to make a difference, and get closer to finding answers.
    ‘What about you?’ she asked Gary. ‘No plans at all for the weekend?’
    ‘Nah. Since I started working here I’ve lost touch with about half my old mates, they move in different circles. It’s funny though, I always thought it would really bother me … you know, being like Reilly,’ he added, taking off his jacket. ‘But the longer I work here the more I appreciate it for what it is.’
    ‘And what’s that?’
    ‘The perfect job. We don’t have to clock in, we don’t have some troll of a boss breathing down our necks, our “clients” don’t – or can’t – answer back and most of the time, as long as we get results we get to do things our way.’
    Lucy smiled. ‘Which is why you’re in here bright and early on a Sunday morning instead of sleeping off a Saturday night …’
    ‘Yep. I’ve just been down to the compound at the Phoenix Park to give that van a proper comb-over. I might be getting old and boring, but nailing the evidence on this guy is a much better use of a day than fighting off a hangover,’ Gary said as he placed the two bags on top of his workstation.
    ‘Find anything interesting?’
    ‘A couple of samples for DNA to see if I can get a match on that coffee cup from the ditch. There were two other older cups in the door pocket, same MegaCoffee branding on the side, so I bagged those too.’
    ‘Should stand up well in the prosecution – the detectives will be happy.’
    ‘Yep, we caught a break, getting a hit on the vehicle like that. Lots to compare with what we found at the scene.’ He indicated the full sample bag on his desk. ‘At this stage it’s looking like this courier guy is toast – I just need to make sure I cover all the angles so that the evidence is water tight.’
    ‘Or “Walter tight” as Reilly would say,’ Lucy said with a grin, referring to Reilly’s motto about well-known Dublin defense solicitor Jeffery Walters. He had got a particularly nasty individual off on a forensic technicality once, a loophole that Reilly had not foreseen and which had caused a massive storm in the GFU. Since then, none of them took any chances.
    ‘Yep, so that’s about the sum of it. What are you cooking in Pegasus?’ Gary nodded towards an elaborate unit that looked part-microwave, part life-support machine. On the left of the device was a large keypad and digital readout that displayed various alpha-numerical keys as well as the periodic symbols. Attached to the top of the unit was a standard LCD computer screen that sat beside a tall attachment with pressure dials and gas hoses coming out of either side. This was one of the GFU’s greatest weapons, the gas chromatography-mass