James Carol - The Quiet Man

‘And you said I wouldn’t call.’

‘Winter?’

‘You were expecting someone else? I’ve got to tell you, Jefferies, I’m hurting here. I thought I was the only one.’

‘Whatever this is about, make it quick. I’m up to my eyes here.’

‘Just wondering if there were any developments.’

‘Nope. What about you? Got anything to share?’

‘Not right now.’

‘And how did I know you were going to say that.’ Jefferies paused a second. ‘Okay, now we’ve taken care of the preliminaries, how about you tell me why you’re really calling?’

‘I’m at Eric Kirchner’s apartment. His lights are on, but he’s not answering the door.’

‘And why, pray tell, are you at Kirchner’s apartment?’

‘You’re kind of missing the point here, Jefferies. Today is the anniversary of his wife’s murder. When we saw him this afternoon he seemed depressed.’

‘Yeah, I get all that. My question still stands, though. What are you doing at his apartment in the middle of the night?’

‘It’s not the middle of the night.’

Jefferies said nothing.

‘I had a couple of follow-up questions,’ Winter went on. ‘He wasn’t answering his phone, so I made a house call. His apartment’s not far from my hotel. It’s no big deal.’

Jefferies was still saying nothing.

‘You have a duty to serve and protect. Right now, I’m just a concerned citizen who’s worried about one of his fellow men. So are you going to send someone around to check on him or not?’

‘Yeah, I’ll send someone around.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’d love to know what you’re doing there.’

‘It’s no big deal.’

‘You keep saying that.’

‘Because it’s true.’

‘Well, when it ceases to be true, you give me a call, okay?’

The line went dead. Winter called a cab firm and asked to be picked up a couple of blocks from Kirchner’s apartment. The police arrived before the cab. He’d figured that might happen. The systems used for dispatching the cars was the same. Whatever car was closest when the call came in got the job. The police cruiser that pulled up near the entrance to the apartment block was an old Crown Victoria. It was white and decorated with the Vancouver PD’s livery. The roof bar lights were off, the siren silent. This was just a routine house call.

Two cops got out and banged their doors shut. The driver walked around the hood of the vehicle and stepped up onto the sidewalk. For a moment he stood there looking both ways along the street. His buddy was doing the same. Clearly they’d been told to be on the lookout for someone. A white male, no doubt. Five-feet nine, mid-thirties, white hair, green eyes. Winter pressed a little deeper into the shadows. They weren’t looking too hard, which was just as well. If they had been, they probably would have spotted him. The driver said something and his buddy responded with a shake of the head. The exchange was perfunctory and easy to interpret. You see him? Nope. Okay, let’s go then. They headed for Kirchner’s apartment block and a second later they’d disappeared from sight.

A couple of minutes later his cab came along the street. Winter flagged it down, climbed into the back, then gave the driver directions to Nicholas Sobek’s house in Kerrisdale. It was nine-thirty by the time he arrived.

Unlike the neighbouring houses, Sobek’s was dark and silent. It reminded Winter of a haunted mansion, and to some extent that’s exactly what it was. The house was haunted by Isabella’s ghost. There were no lights on inside, no lights outside. That didn’t mean Sobek wasn’t at home. If he was here he’d be hidden away down in the basement. Down there it didn’t matter whether it was night or day. Down there it didn’t matter what anyone was doing out in the big bad world. The sun had set forty minutes ago. It didn’t take forty minutes to drive here from the cemetery.

Winter walked up to the big steel gate and pressed the button on the intercom panel. Then he waited. Thirty seconds passed without any response. He stepped forward and pressed it again. This time his thumb stayed there for a good ten seconds. Still no response. There was no point trying a third time. Sobek was paranoid about security. The second the buzzer was pressed, all hell would have broken loose in the basement. Sirens, klaxons, warning lights and God only knew what else. There were two possibilities. Either he wasn’t at home or he’d put a noose around his neck and jumped off of the balcony. Given that Sobek didn’t strike him as suicidal, Winter was veering toward the former.

He went back over to the intercom and studied it more closely. There was no numeric keypad, so no opportunity to beat the system by punching in potential security codes. There was a button you pressed to speak, a microphone to talk into, and a small sensor for a remote gate key. There were only two ways to get through these gates. Either someone inside the house let you in or you had the remote key. He glanced up. Even if he could climb the wall it wouldn’t have done any good because he would have ended up cut to pieces on the glass.

Winter crossed the street. Then he waited some more. Five minutes later a vehicle turned into the cul-de-sac. Judging by the low throaty roar, this was a high-spec performance car. Winter turned toward the sound and saw the unmistakeable profile of an Aston Martin Vantage. It was too dark to make out the driver’s face, but it was a safe bet that it was Sobek.

The Vantage pulled up to the big iron gate. No one got out to use the intercom. No windows buzzed down. The big steel gate started to slide open, the motor straining to move all that metal. Before it had got even a quarter of the way along its track, the exterior lights suddenly slammed on, the bright halogens blasting the darkness away and illuminating the front of the property.

The car rolled forward onto the driveway and Winter crossed the street, making sure he kept out of the rear-view mirror, heading for the pillar that had the intercom attached to it. He pressed up against the wall to make himself smaller. The stone still retained some of the heat of the day. Every five seconds he would steal a glance to check on Sobek’s progress. It was like watching a time-lapse video. Sobek was three-quarters of the way along the driveway. Now he’d stopped in front of the double garage. Now the doors were halfway up. Now they were fully up. Now the car had disappeared inside.

Winter waited until the gate had slid almost all the way closed before moving. The gap was down to a couple of feet, just wide enough to admit him, but shrinking with each passing second. He slipped through and started walking up the driveway. Behind him, the gate ground to a halt and the motor died. The sudden silence was eerie and unsettling. There was no point in attempting a stealth approach. That game was over. The exterior lights were so bright it was like the middle of the day. Whatever he did, Sobek would spot him.

A car door slammed shut in the depths of the garage. Five seconds later Sobek stepped out, blinking in the brightness. He was looking straight at Winter, following his progress as he walked toward him. His black hair was tied back into a ponytail and his gaze was as intense as ever. Winter stopped in front of him.

‘Good day?’ he asked.

‘I’ve had better.’

‘I take it the killer didn’t turn up at the cemetery?’

‘Nor at any of the other graves.’ He nodded toward the laptop. ‘You’ve brought your computer. Is there something you want me to see.’

‘It’s not mine. It’s Eric Kirchner’s.’

Sobek raised a questioning eyebrow. Winter waited for the question to be verbalised, but it didn’t happen.

‘Let’s talk inside,’ Sobek said.