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  ‘It’s a homicide inquiry, Megan,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s no space for anything below our radar. And nor should there be, for Lou’s sake.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, ’course, you’re right. Sorry. I wasn’t . . . well, wasn’t thinking straight. Sorry.’

  Mike thought she might rush to fill a silence, but he underestimated her. She was very controlled. Almost too much.

  Time for the bomb.

  ‘Has Spencer ever met Lou?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. They lead very different lives, Detective: I’m the only link between them. I can’t imagine how they’d ever bump into each other, even in a town this size. Not that Lou would know who Spence is, anyway. Spence knew who Lou was and where he worked, so he could easily steer clear of him.’

  Mike took a couple of breaths as a run-up and made sure to take in all of Megan’s body language in her response.

  ‘So can you explain how Spencer’s fingerprints are in Lou’s store, about three metres from this morning’s incident?’

  Megan’s eyes widened, then she frowned.

  ‘No, I . . . no, you must be wrong. Why would Spence go to the store?’

  ‘You tell me, Megan.’

  ‘I, uh, no. No, I can’t. In fact, I don’t believe it. Spence and I talked about this, talked a lot. He was tol— we agreed he wouldn’t go near Lou and we’d sort it all out like adults. Why would he go there?’

  Answering an obvious question with a question felt like a distraction tactic more than incredulity.

  ‘Off the top of my head? Check out the opposition. Threaten, cajole . . . murder.’

  She was adamant. ‘No, no. Spence isn’t like that. No. We were going to get divorced one way or another, that’s all. Spence and I were prepared for a long haul. We wouldn’t need to . . . I can’t believe Spence has been there. Did you ask him? What did he say?’

  ‘I can’t answer that. Ongoing investigation.’

  Although he had no doubt she’d soon be ringing and leaving increasingly belligerent messages on Spence’s voicemail. Mike would need to have a listen when he got back to the station.

  ‘But this, uh, divorce trickiness thing, Megan. It offers motive, as I’m sure you can see. A cynical detective might conclude that the easiest way to solve the dilemma would be if Lou wasn’t around.’

  He expected some outrage, some anger. But she’d regained her balance after finding out Spence had gone freelance. Back in control. What Mike got was an appealing tilt of the head and an intelligence he was now regarding as feline.

  ‘I think your quiet little colleague thought the same thing. That I killed Lou. That I didn’t love Lou. Fair enough: she’s a smart cookie. I guess if you all see life through dark glass, it always looks black. Let me guess: Lou looked older than me, I’m the one having the affair, I’m the one wants out. So either I went to the store and killed him or I sent Spence to do it. How’m I doing?’

  ‘Not bad, Megan. We try to look at everything.’

  Megan’s frown and clenched hands displayed a hint of annoyance. Maybe impatience. Maybe insulted dignity. Possibly, Mike continued to think, she was annoyed that he wasn’t swallowing everything she said.

  ‘Well, for the record, I loved Lou, even though we weren’t getting along. I married him because I loved him; because he was sweet and strong and because he had a moral compass I could only dream about. And no; I’d have kept paying his loans. He bailed me out plenty since we met, in every way. So don’t think I didn’t care just because I’m not all tears and snot now. Don’t think I hated him because I met Spence. Sometimes life isn’t fair, or reasonable, and the good ones get the crappy end of the stick. Doesn’t make it anyone’s fault.’

  Whenever he heard an outburst like this, Mike thought of two things. First, was it authentic? Did they run words together because they couldn’t tumble them out fast enough? Did they look hot inside, flustered and emotional? Did they repeat themselves? Heartfelt emotion could be inarticulate, repetitive. And second, in all those words, what were they refusing to answer? What was it that their invective might be hiding? What were they dissembling?

  The answers he wrote – for now – were yes; and maybe nothing.

  Chapter 22

  Dana had discussed the physical conditions of Interview One with Bill. She wanted to turn up the heat: figuratively and literally. They had perhaps three hours of interview left before a lawyer became compulsory: they kept having to provide breaks and refreshments to avoid later accusations of bullying or pressurising. This time, she aimed for quicker answers and less thinking time. She needed Nathan off balance slightly: it would help if another bottle of water seemed benevolent, felt like a reward. When Nathan was taken for a toilet break Bill authorised the new temperature and the lighting dialled up a notch. Nathan would assume, on his return, that nothing had changed and he’d simply forgotten how warm it was compared to the corridor. Bill had the prisoner log updated to show Dana requesting a warmer environment because of her kneecap.

  Nathan was sitting upright this time, a measure more alert, more involved. Dana was about to demolish part of his faith in her: she might have to begin anew with him. She hoped it was one step back to take two paces forward, but she had no real way of knowing.

  He hunched down again as she entered the room. It was an attempt to hide his engagement with proceedings, an affected air of relative disinterest. She could see when she put her notes on the table that he attempted to read them upside down.

  Dana wondered what kind of impression she was giving: whether her new-found knowledge was palpable. She did the preliminaries, gave her kneecap a tweak and started the tapes.

  ‘Mr Whittler, I know you’re not one for small talk. So I’ll cut to the chase. About an hour ago, one of our search team found your home.’

  She watched him very closely. There was a quiver, a shuttering around the eyes, as he looked at the floor. His breathing became louder, but not faster. She thought she detected a slight blush around his neck, though it could have been a trick of the light. As she’d anticipated, there was no immediate ranting, only a nascent fury simmering near the surface.

  ‘I wish to reassure you, Mr Whittler,’ she continued. ‘Only one person has set foot in your home and, apart from maybe me, only one person will. The scene has been sealed off. That person will conduct any searching inside the cave that needs to be done.’

  ‘Too. Late.’

  It was a whisper, the cautious murmuring he’d first used this morning. A solid indicator that Dana had lost much of the ground she’d gained.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  It flitted through her mind that perhaps some incriminating morsel had long since been removed; that they’d find nothing of evidential value. She knew that wasn’t the case with the burglaries – maybe it was true of the killing.

  ‘Too. Late. Detective Russo.’ His voice grew sturdier, steelier. ‘Your attempts to mollify me, to suggest no harm has been done. Too late. The place is ruined: poisoned, the moment your colleague entered it.’ He gave a dismissive flap of an arm and turned away.

  Dana understood this. The emotional importance of his home was something she had comprehended long before they found the place. Nathan’s sanctuary – his perceived safety – was now compromised. It also meant, she’d realised, that he could never go back to it. Since it was sullied and tainted, the discovery meant a burning of the bridges: a blunt end to the life he’d been living for fifteen years. She’d taken away his peace when she took away his concealment. She’d done that: her mind, her insight. He was right to blame her personally.

  ‘I have some awareness of what this place means to you, Mr Whittler. We’ve videotaped footage that shows us the layout, and only one person is allowed in there, or to touch anything. We don’t wish to cause—’

  ‘What? Unnecessary suffering? Trauma?’ He was shouting now, wagging a finger at his own foot. ‘If you really cared, Detective Russo, you wouldn’t have touched it in the first place. You wouldn’t eve
n have gone looking. The moment you decided to do that, we were always in a messy compromise.’

  Dana decided to sit for a moment. Her sense was that Nathan was so unpractised, so unused to argument, that he really couldn’t do it. Little flares of temper might come and go quickly but he didn’t understand how to fan the flames. He seemingly had no template, no memory, to draw upon. It struck her that perhaps he hadn’t argued as a child either. Perhaps this was another extension of his suppressed boyhood self, a stretching of adolescent emotion.

  It also came to her that, for the first time, he had used the word ‘we’. Somewhere in his psyche, Nathan now accepted that he and Dana were joined together in an endeavour: maybe not quite as adversaries or buddies, but as two people doomed to be on the same trajectory. Which must signal that, on some level, he understood why Dana had to have the cave.

  ‘You’re an intelligent man, Mr Whittler. You appreciate why you’re here; what we found at Jensen’s. We must understand the past few years of your life if we’re to unravel what might have happened in the store.’

  He suffered silently. Twice he opened his mouth then realised he had nothing to say, or maybe no way to say it. He grabbed handfuls of his jumpsuit and sat quietly, sinking in the chair. Dana could see the cords of his clenched jaw. Eventually, words squeezed through and into the room.

  ‘What would you do, Detective, if strangers walked through your home, touched your things, had a good snoop around? What would you think?’

  Another quid pro quo; another test from Nathan about whether she was being honest with him. But again, her answer would be courtroom admissible – a potential lever for the defence if she judged it wrongly. She couldn’t afford to appear to be manipulating him, not when he had no lawyer to safeguard his interests. Dana had to be looking for the killer but simultaneously protecting Nathan’s rights.

  ‘If they had no reason? I would feel angry, violated. I would feel my privacy had been compromised: I would hate it. That’s how a burglary feels. If, however, they were executing a lawful warrant because I was clearly a significant person in a crime investigation; if they had observed due process; if they were led by a detective who understood exactly what was involved and made sure the space and property were respected? Then I would be upset, but I’d accept it, Mr Whittler. I’d recognise their legitimate right to do it, provided they did it with care and respect.’

  ‘That was my home, Detective. It’s like someone’s been in there and spat on everything I have.’

  There was a screech as he slid the chair, turning away from her and towards the blank wall. Childish: it was exactly like a small child’s tantrum. She found it reassuring that she could still read him.

  ‘No, Mr Whittler, it is not. It’s not like that at all.’ She tried to keep her voice coolly intellectual and not hectoring. ‘In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I rarely see my colleagues impressed by other people. But they can’t imagine how you managed to achieve all that. The level of thinking, the level of will – it’s beyond them.’

  ‘Flattery?’ He choked a little on his contempt. ‘You must understand I’m immune to that.’

  His voice was muted, and turned away from her. Dana briefly wondered if the microphone was picking it up, but she felt the momentum and control were too important to risk interruption. The little red light was still flickering.

  ‘Not flattery, Mr Whittler. I don’t do flattery. Ever. But if I’m impressed by something, I say so.’

  He ran a sleeve across his mouth, wiping spittle from his upper lip. ‘Milk crates, cold vegetables from a can, second-hand books and a toilet full of plastic bags. And you’re impressed, you say?’ He snorted.

  Dana pushed on, certain that she could impart a sense of wonderment that would thaw him. ‘Mr Whittler, I’m a clever person. Often, I’m creative. But there’s no way I could create a home of that . . . order. That organisation. That sustainability.’

  She paused, wondering if any of her words were even registering. He was still belligerent, shutting her out as he’d done early this morning.

  ‘It took skills that you clearly didn’t have when you began. You had to think through every detail on your own: no help, no teacher. Just you, and your mind, working through it. And you achieved something that people will still find astonishing a decade from now. Yes, I’m impressed by that.’

  Still nothing.

  Dana didn’t want to overplay her hand here. If she pursued this line too much, it might drive Nathan deeper within himself: his avoidance reflex. He couldn’t physically run away and hide, so he’d indulge that reflex by putting up the shutters. Or she might aggravate him enough that he called for a lawyer. All the same, she still felt she was turning the right key in the correct lock.

  ‘What was it you said to me before, Mr Whittler? “Everything can be survived, if you go about it right.” Hmmm. I didn’t appreciate the full intent behind those words. My apologies. Now that I’ve seen what it’s taken, what it cost, what you had to build and protect, I can see a little more clearly.’

  She’d believed repeating his own words would break through. Perhaps the fact that she remembered them might draw him out. Yet, more silence. Nathan began to tap one palm with the fingers of the other hand, a gesture almost of boredom, like an ape in an empty cage.

  Dana reached for something more specific.

  ‘The maritime flares in the bedroom. It would never be a signal that everything had failed and you needed rescuing, would it, Mr Whittler? My colleagues think so, but I don’t. You didn’t keep those flares in case you gave in. Because you’d never give in.’

  She leaned forward, peering intently at his profile as he stubbornly stared at the wall.

  ‘I mean, you’d never use those, vertically. Would you?’

  Just a flicker, the tightening of a grip on a sleeve. A sense that he was available to be in the same room as her next words.

  ‘Dingoes. Snakes. A weapon of last resort; am I right?’

  His voice sounded sticky, coated with reluctance. ‘Never needed them, thank God. I had no gun, no actual weapon, you see. If a dingo or a python got in there, especially if I was asleep . . . I was hoping to panic it, disorient it, maybe. Had nothing else.’

  Dana could suddenly sense it again: that feeling she’d had this morning, late morning. The rest of the room was fading from her mind. The only things in her consciousness were her words, his words, and her tenuous hold on what he meant by flicks, gestures, silences and absences. It was triggered by the sense of a way in, a concealed doorway opening. Her finger and thumb tapped together under the table.

  ‘I’m surprised you weren’t bothered by snakes, or spiders, or whatever.’

  He nodded at the wall but turned towards her. ‘So was I. When I first found the cave I was paranoid: funnel webs, brown snakes, maybe. Even a possum’s risky if it felt cornered – I would have been vulnerable. Not just immediately; an infected wound would have been a major problem. I assumed some animal or snake would have colonised the place. I have no idea why they didn’t. The only creature I had a problem with was a rakali.’

  Dana flicked another grab of the kneecap. The pain was getting worse – little stabs.

  ‘Ah, super-smart, aren’t they?’

  ‘One of them seemed to work out the clasp on the plastic boxes. I left a box open and put a mousetrap in there. He didn’t bother me after that. I hope he was okay.’

  He stared at the wall again. He was mentally back in his cave on the Dakota Line, on some bucolic day when he was neither hot nor cold, when he had boxes full of food, when he had books he’d yet to read, when the radio was playing Bach. She still envied huge segments of his life.

  She had to move the conversation on. He’d no doubt peak and dip as they went on, but for now his anger seemed replaced by resignation. She almost wished he’d fought harder – really gone at her. She felt as though he’d subsided in the face of opposition too quickly, that he hadn’t done justice to fifteen years of determined stubbor
nness. It occurred to her that, when the problem was in the room with him and he couldn’t avoid it, he was quite . . . compliant.

  ‘You only went into stores. Never homes.’

  He leaned back and looked at the ceiling, his pupils dancing as he sought reassuring patterns in the plaster. She’d broken through his defences: they both knew it.

  ‘No, I’d never visit homes. I didn’t want to run into anyone, of course, but it was more than that. I guarded my privacy; I didn’t wish to invade theirs. I was worried someone might feel their home was no longer their castle. Got to admit I thought about it, with some of the holiday homes, in winter. Many were left unlocked for months – some sort of country code about travellers in dire need, I think. A lot of them kept supplies, and they probably wouldn’t have been missed. You come back in late spring, open the place up – were there three packs of batteries or two, when you left? But in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’

  He twisted and looked at the tape machine. ‘You found my journal. Of course you would. Something else that was private and now isn’t.’

  Dana took a deep breath. ‘I was worried it was a diary. Hoped it wasn’t. I wouldn’t want to read your diary, Mr Whittler. I wouldn’t want to intrude in that way.’

  ‘How do you keep people out? If they’re constantly around you, I mean? I might have to learn how, I suspect.’

  It was his first intimation of life beyond today; the merest glimpse into a mind that was starting to see ahead, to a future that might be behind bars. At the very least, he could surely not return to his previous ways.

  ‘Well, turn everything back on them, Mr Whittler. Ask open questions about their lives. Feign interest. Most people want to talk about themselves more than they want to talk about you. So there’s that. Also, you can draw clear lines on certain matters and always stick to them. Keep to those lines about yourself, and others. That’s the only way some people comprehend there are boundaries. Consistency, determination.’