James Carol - The Quiet Man

‘Yes, I know someone.’

Sobek walked around the desk and sat down in the chair. He pulled the telephone toward him. While he made the call, Winter walked over to the wall that contained Isabella’s pictures. Hidden away amongst all the devastation was a seven-by-five photograph that stood out because it had nothing to do with death and everything to do with life. It had been taken someplace hot. Isabella was standing next to a palm tree wearing a bikini with a loose wrap over the top. She looked happy and beautiful and full of life. Winter took it down and carried it over to the desk. Sobek was winding up his call. He dropped the receiver back into the cradle and rocked back on his chair.

‘Someone will be around to look at the computer.’

‘Tonight?’

‘They’re not in the city so it might take them a couple of hours to get here.’

‘Get them to look at your computers as well.’

Winter placed the seven-by-five photograph on the desk and slid it over. Sobek picked it up and studied it. Even though he must have seen this photograph a thousand times, he was looking at it like this was the first. There was a wistful expression on his face, as though he was back in the moment. Chances were he’d taken the picture. That’s where he was now. He was standing there with a camera in his hand, hoping to capture the perfect moment. Because that was the hope you harboured whenever you took a photograph. For every hundred taken, only one would have that extra something. Maybe the light was just right, or you somehow managed to catch the subject in a way that was interesting, a way that made you want to look at that picture again and again. It didn’t happen very often but when it did it was like capturing a piece of magic. That’s what had happened here. Sobek had captured a little piece of magic.

‘Tell me about this photograph.’

‘Why?’

Winter pointed to the wall that contained Isabella’s pictures and Sobek followed his finger. The wistful expression had gone, replaced by something harder. The only photographs left there were the death ones. There was no cohesion to the narrative. Pictures of Isabella lying in the kitchen fought for space with pictures of her body after it had been brutalised by the ME’s tools.

‘That is not your wife.’ Winter tapped the desk, bringing his attention back to the photograph in his hand. ‘This is your wife.’

Sobek took another look at the photo. ‘This was from our honeymoon in Antigua. Isabella had always wanted to go there. We were on our way back from the beach and it was just before sunset. I asked her to hold up for a second and took a quick picture on my cell. Just before I took it, she whispered that she loved me. It’s my favourite picture of her.’

‘Thank you for sharing that. Call me when your guy’s had a look at the laptop.’

Winter headed for the door. He glanced back over his shoulder before opening it. Sobek was staring at the photograph, deep in thought. In that moment, he was just another victim, someone who’d lost someone dear to him. In a lot of respects he wasn’t any different from Eric Kirchner or Scott Hooper. Sobek had said that he’d managed to escape from the hurricane. Looking at him sitting there, Winter wasn’t so sure. There were some things that were impossible to move on from.

It was after eleven before Winter got back to the Shangri La. Even though he was exhausted, he wasn’t ready to sleep. He poured a glass of Springbank, found the remote and settled down on the sofa. For a while he killed time surfing the channels. He was looking for a distraction, but kept coming back to the news. Myra Hooper’s murder was still the only story in town. In another forty-seven minutes August 5 would become August 6. The countdown clock inside his head was ticking louder than ever.

The screen changed from a reality show where everyone was trying to out-humiliate each other to a film where all the actors had bad eighties haircuts and bad eighties clothes and really bad dialogue. Winter punched in the number for the news and the screen flickered and changed. To start with he thought he’d got the wrong channel. The picture was grainy and low-resolution, like it had been shot on a cheap cell phone. It had the feel of a film that would feature on America’s Funniest Home Videos . But this wasn’t the wrong channel. The Global logo was in the corner of the screen and the newsfeed was running along the bottom.

Winter turned up the volume then leant forward on the sofa. There was a bunch of kids on the screen. College students, by the looks of things. It was dark and they were drunk and overexcited, their attention fixed on something that was happening in the near distance. At this range, in this light, it was difficult to work out what they were staring at. He willed the camera operator to zoom in closer, and a second later that’s exactly what happened.

The object everyone was focussed on was a stuffed toy bear. It was as large as a small baby, with brown fur and a happy smile. Three fireworks were attached to its body. For added authenticity they were held in place with duct tape. The fuses had been twisted together to create one single fuse. Someone moved in from stage left. The face was pixelated and the clothes were gender neutral, making it difficult to tell if they were male or female. A prank like this, male seemed more likely. They were holding a lit taper, which inferred a minimal amount of common sense and a passing acquaintance with firework safety. They touched the taper to the fuse then ran like hell, which suggested that self-preservation had been considered, albeit fleetingly.

The laughter stopped and everything fell silent. Winter couldn’t see the other students, but he could sense their presence. They’d be pushing forward as close as they dared, eyes fixed to the toy bear. The fuse flared and burned, getting shorter and shorter, then it split into three, the flames chasing closer to the fireworks. All three went off at more or less the same instant, creating a series of bangs that sounded like rapid gunfire. The bear jumped three feet in the air before landing in a heap and bouncing to a stop. It was lit up white, blue, red and green. Unlike the killer, these kids hadn’t bothered to separate the gunpowder from the flash powder.

The cheering and laughter had started up immediately after the bangs, and was getting louder and more frenzied as the mob mentality kicked in. The last firework burned out and the kid with the camera ran over to get a closer look. The bear had been completely destroyed. Its head was hanging off and the stuffing had been blown out of it. The fur was smouldering and burning, the flames getting bigger. The picture cut back to the news studio. The anchor was describing how police had been called to break up a student party near the university. She actually called it an execution party. The whole thing had been organised via social media. Apparently a similar thing had happened last year.

Winter had seen enough. He switched off the TV and picked up his tumbler. This was just a case of dumb college kids acting like dumb college kids. There was no real harm intended. They were just out looking for fun. It had no doubt seemed like a good idea at the time. Drink some beers, have a few laughs, cause a little mayhem. As far as they were concerned it was all a big joke. This had nothing to do with reality. If they were to come face to face with that it wouldn’t end well. Put them in a crime scene or an autopsy lab and they’d last two seconds before puking or passing out. His cell phone rang. He picked it up, checked the caller ID, then connected the call.

‘People are going to talk, Jefferies. You know how gossip spreads around police stations.’

‘I just thought you’d like to know that Eric Kirchner is alive and well. His sister lives in the city. She’s gone over to his apartment to make sure he stays that way.’