James Carol: The Quiet Man

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.

There was also evidence that he’d used a magnetic door sensor to trigger the bomb, the same sort of sensor used in home alarm systems. The magnet had been superglued to the door, while the reed switch was glued to the frame. When Sobek opened the door, the switch closed and the circuit was completed. From that point on the explosion was inevitable. The device adhered to the laws of physics. Once the reaction had started nothing could stop it.

‘What’s the weak link?’ Winter asked.

Anderton pointed to the chair. ‘Isabella’s the weak link.’

‘Exactly. She’s the chaotic element. Everything else is binary. The reed switch is either on or off. The detonator is either live or inert. And the explosives are either just sitting there or they’re going boom.’

Anderton walked back over to the chair, deep in thought. ‘The killer cannot afford for his victims to move. Not so much as a muscle. If they do then they might pull out the wire. If that happens then the bomb won’t work.’

‘So he tells them that the bomb is fitted with a mercury tilt switch. If they move, then it’s going to go off.’

‘But it isn’t fitted with one. The crime-scene investigators confirmed that.’

‘And that’s his big lie. His victims don’t know that, though. By now they’ll be hanging on his every word. Whatever he says, they’re going to believe.’

‘Why not just fit the bomb with a tilt switch? They’re easy enough to get hold of.’

‘They are. But they’re not as easy to get hold of as fairy lights and matches. Part of this guy’s MO is that he wants to leave as small a footprint as possible. The beauty of his bomb is that he can get hold of the components without raising any suspicions whatsoever. Are you going to look twice at someone buying Christmas decorations in December? Or fireworks at the end of June? No, you’re not. Superglue you can buy any time of the year, from any old hardware store. Same goes for the ball bearings and the wire and the nine-volt batteries and the lengths of steel pipe.’

‘Okay, I get it. If he’d used a tilt switch then we might have been able to trace the sale.’

Winter caught that ‘we’. She wasn’t talking about the two of them. Once a cop, always a cop. ‘That’s not the only reason,’ he said. ‘I’d even go as far as saying it’s not the main reason.’

‘Because the main reason is that he doesn’t want the bomb going off early.’

‘That would spoil all his fun,’ Winter agreed. ‘It’s imperative that the bomb is triggered by the husband.’

‘Because that’s another way for him to show that he’s all-powerful.’

‘That’s how I read it. These murders are all about control and domination. We’re back to Small Man Syndrome again. He’s overcompensating for the inadequacies that plague his day-to-day existence. Remember, bombers are the lowest of the low.’

‘Lower than low,’ Anderton echoed. ‘So we’ve established that he’s lying to his victims. How does that help?’

Winter was thinking about the where, why and who of the situation again. This helped with the why, which was the hard road. If they worked out the why, then that would point them in the direction of the killer, but it wouldn’t take them all the way to his door. Winter could think of one way to use the information, but he didn’t know if Anderton would sanction the move.

Everyone had lines they wouldn’t cross. Winter was still trying to establish where Anderton’s lay. That sign on the dashboard of her Mercedes back at the airport indicated that there was hope for her. Then there was the fact that she’d been able to send him copies of everything gathered during the police investigations into the first three murders. Crime-scene photographs, autopsy reports, interview transcripts, witness statements. Information that was okay for the detective leading the investigation to have, but not so okay for a civilian, which was technically what Anderton now was.

‘It doesn’t not help us,’ he said. ‘At this stage we can’t have too much information. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘Since Sobek’s no longer here, I’m figuring he wasn’t too impressed with me sitting on his chair.’

‘His chair?’

‘Who else is going to be coming up here day after day to sit here?’

‘I’d never thought of it like that, but yeah, I can see how that might work. So what did you make of him?’

‘Well, you’re right about one thing. He’s definitely strange.’

‘And?’

Winter took a moment. ‘And I’m wondering about his motivation. Before Isabella was murdered he was all about status symbols, and making sure people saw them. He had the cars, and the plane, and the house. Now, you could argue that Isabella was a part of his collection, too. A man like that is going to need the trophy wife on his arm, right? I’ve seen the photographs of her and, speaking on behalf of red-blooded males everywhere, I’m telling you that she was stunning.’