Once In, Never Out

by Dan Mahoney

  “We do? Who?”

  “Vernon Gebreth. I went to a homicide seminar he was giving in Las Vegas and we got quite close. He talked about you and your cases all the time.”

  McKenna was stunned that Thor from Iceland knew Vernon Gebreth from the NYPD. Vernon had been the department’s premier homicide investigator and was a good friend of both McKenna and Brunette. While still in the NYPD, Vernon had written Practical Homicide Investigation, a work that quickly became the textbook on murder. The success of the book prompted considerable jealousy from a few chiefs, so Vernon had retired to conduct his rather profitable seminar courses, teaching police from all over the world about murders, the psychology of the people who committed them, and how homicide investigations should be conducted.

  If he was a student of Vernon’s and if he’s been to those courses, this Thor can’t be quite the dummy I was expecting, McKenna thought. And he certainly doesn’t look like a dummy. If anything, he looks like a giant Robert Redford in great shape.

  “I’m flattered that Vernon remembers any of my cases,” McKenna said, trying to sound humble.

  “I think Vernon remembers everybody he’s come across. He takes murder personally. Remember what he always says?”

  “Sure do,” McKenna answered. “‘We work for God.’”

  “Sort of gave me the same feeling and swelled my head,” Thor said. “Getting a killer is the last act a government can do for the victim.”

  Careful, McKenna thought. This guy sounds like me and I’m beginning to like him. “How’s the investigation here going?” he asked.

  “Poorly, but we’re plodding along. Knowing who Meaghan Maher is should help us. I assume you’re familiar with everything that’s been reported in the papers?”

  “Yes, they seemed to have quite a bit.”

  “Difficult to hide anything from the press in cases of this scope, isn’t it?” Thor asked dryly.

  McKenna knew from experience that it was a classic understatement and also suspected that Thor had managed to hide a few things anyway. “I’ve always found it difficult, to say the least.”

  “Let me show you what we’ve got, so far.”

  McKenna followed Thor across the trailer to the table where Hackford was standing. On it were two small, black plastic boxes. Each one had been broken by an explosion into many burned pieces and later reassembled, but there were missing pieces from each. Also on the table was a small brass chandelier. Connected to the wires at the top of the chandelier was another black plastic box, intact and larger than the other two.

  Hackford picked up one of the smaller boxes and said, “This is one of the reassembled radio-remote detonators found by Thor at the crime scene. It’s American-made under military contract and is still in production.”

  “M1929A radio-remote detonator. I’ve had some experience with them,” McKenna blurted out, but instantly regretted it. The look on Hackford’s face changed from that of the patient instructor to the teacher surprised that one of his students might have some brains, and then to the disappointed disciplinarian contemplating how many detentions the class wise guy should get.

  Oh-oh, no more showing off, McKenna thought. Don’t want to spoil Mr. Stuffyface’s fun. “I’m sorry. Go on, please.”

  “As I was saying, the transmitter supplied with this radio-remote detonator usually has an effective range of five hundred meters, at the most. Both detonators were set off by the same transmitter which is contained in this unusual device here.”

  Hackford moved down the table, picked up the larger box attached to the chandelier, and nodded to Thor.

  “Right after the blast, Janus had anyone leaving the country at the airport detained for questioning if they had a brogue,” Thor said. “However, when the body of the female washed up on Heimaey Island, I acted on the hunch that the bombing and her murder were somehow connected. That meant that the bomber had a boat. We checked the harbor and there were no foreign boats in port except for the usual commercial trawlers fueling up. But there had been one, a British sport fisherman that had left port the night before the bombing. I figured that the bomber was on board.”

  “Meaning he had already left the country when the bomb went off?” McKenna asked.

  “Yes, but he still had to set it off. If that were the case, I knew that he had to have a relay transmitter somewhere. I looked until I found it,” Thor said, pointing to the box in Hackford’s hands.

  “This is a very clever device,” Hackford continued. “The chandelier actually serves as the antenna. Contained inside this box is a receiver hooked up to the small transmitter that sent the signal to the two detonators. It’s quite sophisticated and runs on a battery that’s charged by the chandelier’s voltage. The bomber had a powerful transmitter on board his boat, so, when he decided he was safely away and that it was time to blow up Sir Ian and his wife, he sent the signal to the chandelier. The receiver picked it up, relayed it to the transmitter tuned to the short-range radio-remote detonators attached to the bombs, and that was it for Mr. and Mrs. Foreign Secretary.”

  “I assume this receiver and chandelier were in the foreign secretary’s suite,” McKenna said.

  “No, Thor found it and it was very well hidden. Quite amazing, really. It was in a suite in the Saga Hotel that our bomber had occupied before he had the presidential suite. He had removed the chandelier and had installed this box in the ceiling among the rafters. I’m certain that he never expected it would be found.”

  From the way Hackford said it, McKenna got some additional information that he tucked away in the back of his mind. The Brits must have sent their best here for this investigation, he reasoned, so one of them has to be Hackford. Yet, Hackford is obviously in awe of Thor.

  “How about the explosive?” McKenna asked. “I understand he used C-4 det cord, but not very much of it.”

  “Correct,” Hackford said. “This bomber really knows his work. We’ve examined the burnt residue removed from the bodies, the clothing, and the ceiling. It’s an old variety of C-4 without the chemical signature added in. He used less than half a pound total in both bombs to achieve the results he wanted. Never seen that before.”

  “Not too much structural damage?” McKenna asked.

  “See for yourself,” Hackford said. He opened a drawer under the table, removed an envelope, and handed it to McKenna. “The presidential suite has already been refurbished and is ready for occupancy,” Hackford added.

  McKenna opened the envelope and removed a stack of photographs. They were the crime scene photos taken immediately after the bombing. Shown in clear detail were the two bodies and every bit of the presidential suite, along with close-ups of every small thing the crime scene photographer considered pertinent.

  Hackford, Rollins, and Thor waited patiently while McKenna went through the photos, taking his time. “Your crime scene photographer is really quite good,” McKenna commented, meaning it.

  “That would be Thor,” Hackford said.

  A homicide investigator who’s also a very competent crime scene photographer? Pretty rare combination, McKenna thought, then tucked that one as well into the back of his mind. “Apparently, the bomber wanted to kill whoever was in those two beds, but he didn’t want to destroy the place and piss the Icelanders off too much. I would also say that he had to have some inside information.”

  “Because he used two bombs?” Rollins asked, speaking for the first time.

  “Yes. How would he know the foreign secretary and his wife would be sleeping in separate beds?”

  “It’s another question Thor’s raised and he’s come up with an interesting conclusion,” Rollins said. “Without having anything concrete enough to report above a whisper, we have reason to believe that a high-ranking official of the Irish government is involved.”

  Oh-oh. Looks like another Thor fan has developed here, McKenna thought. “But not strong enough reasons to charge anyone or take to the press?” he asked.

  “No. I would characteriz
e our suspicions at this point as informed speculation,” Rollins said, and left it at that.

  McKenna handed the envelope of photos back to Hackford. “Could you tell me about the boat?” he asked Thor.

  “Very nice one, a fifty-six-foot sport fisherman, British registry. Twin engines and all the amenities. It came limping into Reykjavík harbor on February twenty-third and docked at our pleasure-boat marina in town. The owner told the dockmaster that one of the transmissions had given out and that he would order a new one from the U.K. Said he and his mate would install it themselves when it arrived. They stayed on board and that was that.”

  “Do pleasure boats from the U.K. frequently stop here?”

  “In the summer we get a few. Visits in the winter are rarer, but they happen.”

  “Did your immigration check them out?” McKenna asked.

  “Yes, the dockmaster called them. An agent stopped by and checked their passports and the boat’s papers, but his visit was rather perfunctory. We don’t have a smuggling problem or much of a drug problem here, so there was no reason for him to be suspicious of anything. He accepted the captain’s story at face value.”

  “How many people on board?”

  “Two.”

  “The passports and the boat’s papers were forgeries?”

  “Of course. Inspector Rollins checked them out on March fourth, but they were long gone by then. They paid their bill and left the marina on the afternoon of March 1st. Told the dockmaster they were going to another marina in Grindavík to wait for their transmission.”

  “Where’s Grindavík?”

  “About ten minutes from here. It made sense to the dockmaster because their transmission would be arriving by air freight.”

  “Did they show up at Grindavík?”

  “Yes, but by then both transmissions were working fine, of course. They stopped only long enough to fuel up and pick up a passenger.”

  “The bomber?”

  “Yes, the bomber. He had checked out of the Saga Hotel on the night of Saturday, February twenty-eighth, right after the Rockall incident. The desk clerk called him a taxi to take him to the airport. That’s where he went, but I’ve since found another taxi driver who took him from the airport to the hotel in Grindavík.”

  Of course, there had been nothing wrong with the boat’s transmission, McKenna thought. That was just their excuse to hang around until the foreign secretary arrived and their passenger set the bombs. “And the bomb went off on March second?”

  “Yes, at seven minutes after one in the morning, after they put out to sea.”

  “I take it this boat was very seaworthy?”

  “Yes. According to our immigration agent and the dockmaster, it had all the best in navigation and radio equipment. The dockmaster tells me that it has two eight-hundred-gallon fuel tanks and an auxiliary four-hundred-gallon tank. That’s enough to get that boat to Scotland or Ireland, if that’s where they wanted to go.”

  “Where do you think that boat is now?” McKenna asked.

  “The bottom of the North Atlantic. Inspector Rollins had every marina in the U.K. checked and the Irish government has also cooperated. The boat’s not there, so I’m assuming they were met somewhere at sea by another boat.”

  That explains how the bomber got away, but what about Meaghan? McKenna asked himself. Her body had been in the water for about a week, so that means she had been dumped in the ocean before March 2nd. She didn’t make her flight out on February twenty-third, so she was either dead or a prisoner by then. “Did the boat ever leave the marina in Reykjavík harbor before March first?”

  “The dockmaster says no, but it must have,” Thor said. “The marina isn’t manned at night, so they must have slipped out sometime between February twenty-third and March first to dump Meaghan’s body at sea.”

  Glad to see we’re on the same wavelength, McKenna thought. “Can we talk about your bombing suspect now?”

  “Arrived in Iceland on February twenty-first from Montreal carrying the valid Canadian passport of a man named Thomas Winthrop. But he’s not Thomas Winthrop. At my suggestion, the Toronto police checked Winthrop’s house. He was there, been dead over a week. Found him in a freezer in the basement. Tortured and finally strangled.”

  So the bomber arrived on the same flight as Meaghan, McKenna thought. Must be one of the reasons Thor thinks she and the bomber are connected, but I’ll get to that later. “Did Winthrop live alone?”

  “Yes, and rather well. He was independently wealthy and reported to be gay. He was last seen in a gay bar in downtown Toronto on February eighteenth, left with a man matching the description of our bomber.”

  “How old was Winthrop?”

  “Forty-one, about the same age as the bomber.”

  “So he killed Winthrop for his passport, and then changed the picture.”

  “Got his credit cards, too. Charged his flight from Montreal to Iceland on Winthrop’s American Express.”

  “When and where?”

  “February nineteenth at a travel agency in Montreal. Bought a round-trip ticket with an open return.”

  “Did the Toronto police come up with anything else?”

  “No prints, nothing we can use. Winthrop was tortured and killed in his bedroom on the second floor. I’ve got their crime scene photos in my office in town. Really rather grisly. Meaghan’s body shows much of the same kind of torture as Winthrop’s, so I sent copies of the photos of both bodies to Vernon for his opinion.”

  Sharp, McKenna thought. “What does he say?”

  “Just sent them a few days ago, so he hasn’t gotten back to me, yet,” Thor said.

  “Any IRA connection with Winthrop?” McKenna asked.

  “No. Born in Canada, totally apolitical.”

  “How come I haven’t read anything in the papers about this Winthrop connection?”

  “At Inspector Rollins’s request, the Toronto police are keeping it confidential. They haven’t publicly connected Winthrop’s murder to our bombing here.”

  “I feel we shouldn’t tip our hand to the IRA about our progress,” Rollins said.

  “I see. Could you tell me how you think Meaghan fits into all this?” McKenna asked Rollins.

  “She arrived with him on the same flight from Montreal and a person matching her description was seen with the bomber in a Reykjavík restaurant called Steikhút on the night of February twenty-first. The waiter says they arrived together and stayed talking for hours.”

  “Did he say they were intimate?”

  “No, just friendly,” Rollins said.

  “Did they sit together on the plane?”

  “No. He was in first class. Meaghan was in coach, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, but they might have met on the plane or in either airport,” McKenna said. “That certainly doesn’t put her in the IRA or involve her in the bombing.”

  “No, but we thought that since she appeared to be Irish, there was a strong possibility of involvement on her part. Of course, that was before we knew who she was.”

  “Well, let’s put that one to bed,” McKenna said. “Meaghan is an innocent victim here. She has no sympathy for the IRA and didn’t even know she was coming here until the day before she arrived. The only reason she was here at all was because Icelandair ran a package that was her cheapest way to Belgium.”

  “There’s the matter of her passport,” Rollins said. “Once you told us who she was, Thor checked with Iceland Immigration. She arrived here on a British passport. I checked that out and the address she listed on her passport application was on Ballymore Road in Belfast. The building no longer exists, but that part of Belfast is very Catholic and a real IRA bastion.”

  “More coincidence,” McKenna said. “She’s Catholic and originally from Belfast, but nobody in her family has anything to do with the IRA. They moved to the South when she was a little girl, but she used the Belfast address later on because she needed a British passport.”

  “Why? If she’s living in
the Republic, why not just get an Irish passport?” Rollins asked.

  “She did, but it’s a little complicated. She’s an illegal alien in the United States, but she’s a good planner. Long before she moved to the U.S., she knew she was coming and also knew that having the two passports makes it easier for her to travel around and still get back into the country.”

  “I see, and I’m glad to hear it,” Thor said. “Down the road, it should simplify our investigation somewhat.”

  Now for some tough questions, McKenna thought. Have to ask them in a way that won’t make me sound critical of the work they’ve done so far. “Did you know that Meaghan was staying at the Hotel Loftleidir?”

  “Only once you told us,” Thor said. “After her body was found, I checked all the hotels looking for guests who had disappeared without checking out. There were none. Once Janus told me that she had been booked in the Hotel Loftleidir as part of her Icelandair package, I went back to the hotel last night and checked the room she had there. That was where she had been killed.”

  “How can you tell after two weeks?”

  “I found a small bloodstain and two red hairs under the bed. Inspector Hackford performed some tests and confirmed that the blood and the hairs are Meaghan’s. I figure that after the bomber overpowered her, he removed the box spring and mattress and laid the shower curtain over the rug underneath the bed frame. Then he stretched Meaghan out, tied her wrists and ankles to the four bed legs, and tortured her until he got tired of having fun. After that, he choked the life out of her, cleaned up, and put the bed back together.”

  “How did he get the body out of the hotel?”

  “In her luggage. I think she had one of those pieces that you put suits in, then fold up. He put her body in there, zipped her up, and packed whatever clothes she had into her other bag. Her room faced the rear parking lot, so whatever wouldn’t fit, he threw out the window.”