The Quiet Man

by James Carol

  ‘Since the murder, this is where Sobek has been living,’ Anderton said. ‘He’s got a bedroom, a kitchen and an office down here. He’s even got a firing range.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  Anderton shook her head. ‘I’m totally serious. The person who owned the house before Sobek was a bowling fanatic. He had a lane built down here. When Sobek bought it, he had all the machinery ripped out and converted it into a firing lane.’

  ‘Is he any good?’

  ‘He shoots better than I do. I’ve seen him hit the bullseye six times out of six.’

  ‘What’s the deal with the rest of the house?’

  ‘Everything up there is exactly how it was when his wife died. Sobek hasn’t changed a thing. It’s like some sort of shrine.’ Anderton glanced over her shoulder. ‘I told you he was strange.’

  The corridor ended at a steel door that was identical to the ones they’d already passed. Anderton went straight in without knocking. The gym was fully kitted out, the equipment arranged neatly. There was a treadmill, an exercise bike, a cross-trainer and a multigym. A punching bag hung from a steel plate bolted to the ceiling. Martial arts weapons were displayed on a large board fixed to one wall.

  Sobek was lying on the bench press, pumping iron. The amount he was lifting equated to an Anderton, maybe even one and a half Andertons. Each time he pushed up he let out a long, loud grunt. His arm muscles were bulging and the tendons in his neck were as taut as piano wires. He was in his mid-thirties with a full beard and piercing brown eyes. He did two more pushes then sat up and pulled his ponytail straight. It was straggly and shiny with sweat, and fell down to his shoulders. His face was red and he was taking deep, measured breaths.

  He stripped off his T-shirt, grabbed a towel and started patting himself dry. He had good muscle definition on his arms and chest, and the full six pack. He hadn’t gone overboard, though. Working out was clearly an obsession, but he was a long way from being a steroid-enhanced freak show. There was a small key on a chain around his neck. Both hands were wrapped up with white boxer’s tape that had turned grey at the knuckles from where he’d been pummelling the punching bag. The T-shirt he put on was identical to the one he’d taken off. Plain and black. He dumped the towel on the back of a chair and walked over to Winter. For a moment, he just stood there staring.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Do you think I murdered my wife?’

  3

  Sobek was still staring, waiting for an answer to his question. If this was an attempt at intimidation, it wasn’t working. Winter had played this particular game with men a lot scarier than Sobek. While he was with the FBI he’d interviewed dozens of serial criminals. He’d come face-to-face with the worst of the worst. To survive those sorts of encounters you had to develop a thick skin. That said, he wasn’t about to underestimate Sobek. He knew a predator when he saw one. Sobek stared for a couple of seconds more, then blinked. Winter took this as his cue.

  ‘The police don’t think you killed her,’ he said. ‘At the time of Alicia Kirchner’s murder you were visiting your wife’s grave. The same goes for last year when Lian Hammond was murdered. Witnesses place you in the cemetery on both occasions. They say you were there for the whole day, so, unless you paid them off, that’s a fairly substantial alibi.’

  ‘I do have alibis for Alicia and Lian’s murders. However, I don’t have one for Isabella’s. There are plenty of theories flying around for how I might have done it. There’s even a website: www.sobekkilledhiswife.com.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. Do you know my favourite theory? You killed your wife, then the next year you hired a contract killer to kill Alicia. The reason the MO was the same was because you were able to supply the killer with the details.’

  ‘And the following year, I was supposed to have paid him to kill Lian.’

  ‘And this year you’re going to pay him again to take someone else out.’

  ‘Do you know how crazy that sounds?’ Sobek asked.

  ‘I’ve heard crazier.’

  ‘I loved my wife. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about her. She’s in my thoughts every minute of every hour.’

  ‘Was that why you kept having affairs? One police report classed you as a serial philanderer. I prefer alley cat. That’s closer to the mark, don’t you think?’

  ‘We had our problems, but we were working through them.’

  ‘Was this before or after Isabella had her affair? That must have pissed you off. I mean, it’s okay for you to screw around, but there’s no way it would have been okay for her to do the same.’

  Sobek didn’t respond straight away. He took a long breath. It was easy to imagine him doing a slow count to ten. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. Do you think I killed my wife?’

  Winter swept an imaginary dust speck from the multigym, then sat down. This was the cleanest gym he’d ever seen. He was looking up at Sobek now, but wasn’t concerned about handing him the high ground. The fact that he didn’t feel the need to keep hold of it was a power play in itself.

  ‘The police spent a lot of time, energy and resources digging into your background,’ he said. ‘The picture that gets painted is of someone who was obsessed with making money and didn’t care who they destroyed in pursuit of that goal. But let’s face it, you’re not going to earn a fortune trading stocks by playing nice. You screwed your customers, you screwed around, basically you screwed everyone you came into contact with. All that mattered was making a buck. If Gordon Gekko had been real he would have been first in line to shake your hand and welcome you to the club.’

  ‘People can change.’

  ‘In my experience they don’t change that much.’

  ‘And I’m telling you they can. When Isabella died I was forced to face up to some unpleasant truths about myself. But I faced up to them, and I sincerely believe that I’m a better person for having gone through that process.’

  ‘That’s good to hear, but I don’t care about your past. All I care about is that you play straight with me. Can you do that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Sobek was staring again. ‘So, do you think that I murdered my wife?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  He dipped his head slightly. ‘Thank you for your honesty.’

  ‘Okay, my turn. That key around your neck, what does it open?’

  4

  Sobek led them back up to the entrance hall and took the corridor on the opposite side of the staircase. The door at the far end had a large padlock attached to it. After all the high-tech security measures, it seemed oddly out of place, more a symbolic gesture than any sort of security precaution. You could jimmy it off with a crowbar in two seconds flat. A person who was halfway competent with a lock pick could crack it in five. Sobek took the key from around his neck and unlocked the padlock. He pushed the door open then stepped aside.

  Winter and Anderton went inside. Sobek didn’t. He was watching them from the doorway, his eyes following their every move. The blinds were drawn and the furniture made dim shapes in the gloom. Winter flicked on the light. By the looks of things, nothing had changed since the police moved out. There was evidence of the explosion wherever he looked. Chairs lay toppled on their sides. The walls, woodwork and floor tiles were all stained black. When he closed his eyes he could imagine the smell. The Fourth of July tainted by the stink of charred meat. The kitchen was coated with a thin layer of dust and fingerprint powder. The place where Isabella had fallen was marked with chalk that had grown faint over the years.

  The table seated six but there were only five chairs. The one that Isabella had died on was missing. Four of the chairs lay scattered around the table. Two were lying on their sides and two had been spun away from the table, as though the occupants had got up and suddenly left. The fifth chair had been set up at the epicentre of the blast zone. Winter walked over and rested his hands on the back of it. For a moment he stood there gazing around the kitchen. He was aware of Sobek watching from the
doorway. Anderton was watching as well. His eyes met hers.

  ‘What’s it going to feel like, being bound to this chair with a bomb taped to your chest?’

  Anderton didn’t respond straight away. If she was half the investigator he thought she was then this wouldn’t be the first time she’d imagined herself in that chair. Working out what made the bad guys tick was only a part of the story. Understanding and empathising with the victim was the other part.

  ‘It’s going to be terrifying,’ she said eventually. ‘Totally and utterly terrifying.’

  ‘And then some,’ he agreed. ‘Isabella was the first victim. She was thirty years old, fit and healthy. Her whole life was stretched out in front of her. She wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on. Some guy had broken into her house, bound her to a chair, then just left.’

  Anderton was still staring at the chair, imagining what it was like. ‘When she heard Sobek come home she would have tried to warn him,’ she said, ‘but she couldn’t do that because there was a strip of duct tape across her mouth. He opens the door, then boom.’

  ‘Fast forward a year. This time the victim is Alicia Kirchner. The big difference is that she knows exactly what’s happening. The story of Isabella Sobek’s murder was all over the news. There was no way she would have missed it. Knowing what’s going to happen cranks the fear level up another notch.’

  Anderton was already ahead of him. ‘Fast forward another year and the victim is Lian Hammond. Lian was Asian, which ups the ante. Up until this point he’d just been targeting Caucasians. She’d have felt safe. This just adds to the fear.’

  ‘I’ve got to hand it to this guy, having the murders on the same day each year is a stroke of genius. The anticipation really helps to increase those fear levels. So who is he going to tape to the chair this year? Or to put it another way, what’s he going to do to take this to the next level?’

  ‘Maybe the next victim will be black,’ Anderton suggested.

  Winter shook his head. ‘He’s already shown that race isn’t any sort of barrier.’

  ‘What about a male? That way he’d be showing that gender isn’t an issue. That would raise the stakes.’

  ‘It would, but I don’t think he’s going down that road. As well as raising the stakes, that would significantly increase the risk factor. Generally speaking, men are stronger than women.’

  ‘Careful with those generalisations. I reckon I could kick your ass.’

  ‘Probably, but my point still stands. The way these crimes are presenting, this killer isn’t physically imposing. He’s going to be small build. Height somewhere in the region of five and a half feet. Certainly not much taller. This is someone with Small Man Syndrome. He controls his victims through coercion rather than force. That’s why he’s going to avoid targeting a male.’

  Anderton opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again. Her brow furrowed then relaxed. Winter could almost see the thoughts cascading through her head.

  ‘You think he’s going to go after a kid,’ she said.

  ‘The thought’s crossed my mind. Serial killers have their own hierarchy. Bombers are way down near the bottom. They’re cowards. Only child killers rank lower. A bomber who kills kids would be the lowest of the low.’

  ‘Lower than low,’ Anderton agreed. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t go down that route.’

  Winter moved around to the front of the chair and sat down. Sobek was still watching from the doorway. It was difficult to read his expression. If he was bothered, it didn’t show. Equally, if he was curious then that didn’t show either. There was a kind of blank indifference on his face, like he was cataloguing what was going on but didn’t have an opinion one way or the other.

  Winter shut his eyes, and the clock spun back. It was no longer him on the chair, it was Isabella. She was living through her final moments, each breath taking her closer to death, and there was nothing she could do to change that. This was more than imagination, it was a becoming. This was his gift. His curse. He took a deep breath and stepped into the zone.

  *

  The kitchen door closes and I’m alone. I listen to the killer’s footsteps fading away into silence. The front door is too far away for me to hear it opening. The bomb is lighter than it looks, but it feels heavy. Some objects have extra mass because they’re weighed down by their significance. This bomb is one such object. It’s heavy enough to crush me. The weight of it pressing into my ribs suffocates me. I’m this killer’s first, so I don’t have a reference point to work from. Even so, I know exactly what this device is capable of, and the reason I know is because he told me. He would have laid everything out in a way that even my terrified brain would understand. All I can do now is wait for Nicholas to come home. I’m powerless to do anything else. This has all been explained to me as well.

  When you’re trapped between a rock and a hard place you’re never stuck exactly in the middle. One side will always exert more pressure, and that’s the side you’ll feel compelled to move away from. Human beings are programmed to seek out the path of least resistance. This is true for death as it is for anything else. Nobody wants to die a slow, agonising death. And nobody wants to die a violent death, their bodies ripped to pieces by forces that have no respect for blood, bone, muscle and flesh. Why would anyone wish that upon themselves? No, what we’re all looking for is a peaceful slide into the long goodnight.

  Remember those poor souls who jumped from the Twin Towers? They faced an impossible choice. Either stay where you were and burn to death, or jump. Rocks and hard places. So why did they jump? They jumped because at that moment the fire was exerting more pressure. They had to get away. That was the only thing that mattered. And then they were tumbling head over heels, falling, falling, falling, plunging toward certain death, the ground getting closer and closer, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.

  And that’s exactly what’s happening here. Because I’m not quite as powerless as I think. The killer would have told me all about mercury tilt switches. He would have explained how one wrong move would result in certain death.

  I’m going to die. Nothing can stop that. But Nicholas doesn’t have to. Even though the terror has forced my mind into meltdown, there’s a strong likelihood that I’d managed to reach this conclusion. All I’ve got to do is rock the chair until it topples over. Do that and I can save Nicholas.

  But I don’t do that because I don’t want to die. As long as I’m alive, there’s a chance I’ll be rescued. I don’t know how that would work exactly, I just know that I can’t give up yet. So long as there’s a single breath left in my body I will fight. I’ve even set myself a deadline for that final breath. When I hear Nicholas, that’s when I’ll topple the chair. There’s no point us both dying.

  Except it doesn’t work that way. I don’t hear the front door opening, but I do hear him calling out my name. I’d shout out to warn him, but can’t because my mouth is taped shut. This is the point where I should topple the chair. But I can’t do that either. I’m still breathing. I’m still alive. I hear him moving around the house, calling out my name. And then he’s in the corridor that leads to the kitchen, and I still haven’t toppled the chair. And then he’s standing outside the kitchen door, and I’m still sitting here. And then the handle starts to move and it’s too late. The door opens and the explosion rips my chest apart. I’m dead before my body hits the expensive marble tiles.

  5

  The first thing Winter saw when he opened his eyes was Anderton watching him from four feet away. There was something that might have been concern in her gaze, but mostly what he saw was curiosity. He was starting to understand why Sobek had preserved this room. This was his sacred space. It was easy to imagine him sneaking up here in the middle of the night to commune with the ghost of his dead wife. He glanced over at the doorway. Sobek had gone.

  ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’ he whispered to himself.

  ‘Who?’ Anderton asked. ‘The killer?’


  He nodded. ‘Bombs are fairly straightforward devices, right?’

  ‘Correct. When you get down to it they’re all pretty much identical. First, you need some sort of explosive material. Second, you need a detonator. Third, you need a switch to trigger the device. Everything else is just a variation on that theme.’

  Winter stood up and looked down at the chair. He could imagine Isabella sitting here with a bomb taped to her chest, terrified and desperate, paralysed by her fear and indecision.

  ‘The bomb is the killer’s take on an old favourite,’ he said. ‘The pipe bomb. Where it differs is that he only used half a pipe. He cut it lengthways down the middle, fitted it inside a plastic sleeve and filled it with gunpowder and ball bearings. The gunpowder came from fireworks. He waited for Canada Day to come around, then bought a job lot of rockets, as many as he could get away with without raising suspicions. Then he pulled them apart to cannibalise what he needed.’

  Anderton walked over and stopped at his shoulder. ‘Using half a pipe was ingenious. In most pipe bombs the casing turns to shrapnel. Red hot shards of metal are spread across the blast zone, killing or maiming everyone they come into contact with. But there’s only one person here. Isabella. By using half a pipe he can direct the blast toward her.’

  ‘The ball bearings weren’t really necessary. The force of the blast alone was enough to destroy her heart. They were an insurance policy. His primary objective was to make sure that Isabella died. He wasn’t taking any chances there.’

  ‘The detonator is interesting.’

  Winter glanced at Anderton, eyebrows raised. ‘“Interesting” is one word for it.’

  ‘And what word would you use?’

  He considered this for a second. ‘No, “interesting” works for me.’

  And it did. The police had found evidence that the killer had made his detonator from a Christmas-tree light bulb. He would have snipped the tip off, carefully so he wouldn’t damage the filament. Then he would have filled the bulb with sulphur that he’d culled from crushing up match heads. These bulbs were designed to accept a one-volt charge, but he’d hooked his up to a nine-volt battery. When the bomb was triggered the filament overloaded and ignited the sulphur.