by S. R. White
‘How’re you holding up?’
Lucy managed to look at Dana without staring or demonstrating pity.
‘Uh, hangin’ on grimly. Like most days.’ Dana puffed her cheeks. ‘Well, not great, as you can imagine, but I haven’t got long to get through now. Break it down into bite-size pieces, I guess. Thanks for asking. I’m all right. Really.’
In truth, all the decay was taking place under the surface, like a rivet below a ship’s waterline. Everything in daylight looked okay; normal and survivable, somehow. In the deep, it was dark and everything was unravelling.
Lucy took off her shoe and massaged a heel. ‘The interview with Whittler. We only caught the second half of it, of course, but I don’t think that went entirely as you planned.’
‘No, I was braced for more conflict than I got. Not sure if I’m happy with that or not. There’s something big behind the dam, waiting to burst it. I’d rather Whittler was letting the water out a bit at a time.’
‘Did he give in after you told him we’d found the cave? I was expecting a battle royal.’
Dana nodded, angry at herself for misjudging the strategy so badly. ‘So was I. So was Bill, for that matter. We mis-calibrated. In fact, we were way off.’
She paused, sifting through the recollection in her mind.
‘When he acquiesced so quickly it threw me off balance. I had to give too much of myself to get the information I did get: that’s a bad long-term tactic for me. We’re still on the edge here, Luce: he could shut up – or lawyer up – and I don’t think we have a lot of options if he does. So I have to be right, all the time. But Whittler did shout at me, which he hasn’t done before. Or, sort of at me. Shouted at his feet. But all his anger seemed to last about three minutes.’
‘Why?’
Dana glanced at Lucy and smiled wearily. ‘Why did I get it wrong? Ha, I get things wrong all day.’
Lucy laid a placating hand on Dana’s then withdrew it. Dana fizzed at the contact. ‘No, I mean why did he run out of anger so quickly? I had him down as a monumental grudge-bearer.’
And you’d know, thought Dana, recalling Lucy’s lacerating phone call to Spencer Lynch.
‘True. Well, in part, Whittler’s no good at arguing. Can’t do it. Probably never has. I bet he’s either caved in – see what I did there – or withdrawn, over every argument he’s ever had. The bigger the battle, the more he’s pushed to extremes.’ She felt a moment from earlier was calling to her: relevant and important but out of reach. ‘Something major tipped him into running and hiding for fifteen years.’
Lucy raised an eyebrow. ‘But he can’t run here. He’s got to face it.’
‘Exactly. He has to react in some way, in front of me.’ Dana sat forward and concentrated. ‘I think you only have major arguments with two sets of people. One, someone you really care about: like couples who fight but know the underlying relationship is rock-solid. Then you can tee-off and really vent, knowing the basic mutual respect makes it a freebie. Or two, if you really don’t give a crap about the other person. Then you can say what you like because you don’t care how that makes the other person feel.’
‘But . . . Whittler is kind of in between with you?’
‘Precisely so. He has enough respect for me that he reins in his rage. He can’t cut loose at me – he’d find it unforgivable. Assuming he knows how, of course. But equally, he doesn’t know me well enough to become angry and still be certain he’s not losing a relationship. Such as it is. Being caught in the middle like that, plus his lack of match practice, made it a pretty weedy effort at getting enraged.’
Lucy shielded her eyes from the low sun, which now flashed from below a sharp edge of graphite cloud. ‘So when he’s put on the spot, he’s weak?’
Dana considered if that was quite the right word. Nathan was open to persuasion in some ways and utterly immovable in others. It wasn’t accurate to sum it up with ‘weak’; it was more nuanced than that.
‘He can be . . . compliant. That’s what I’d call it. If he can’t run away – or run away inside his head by shutting up – he turns biddable; stubborn in some respects, but submissive. I suspect, to some extent, he’s always been that way.’
‘So what was the incident that made him leave home and find the cave?’
Dana shook her head. ‘Don’t know. We’re inching towards it, but not there yet. It’s a question for my next session with him.’
‘I need caffeine. Want some?’ Lucy slid on her shoe, grabbing the strap as she squeezed her foot back in.
‘Just water, thanks. Actually, can you get two bottles, please? I’ll give one to Whittler. Thank you.’
Lucy stood up as Mike arrived. They’d agreed a few minutes ago that they’d need to tag-team Dana. She was showing her obvious signs of people-exhaustion, and one-on-ones were now generally preferable. They surreptitiously low-fived as they passed.
Mike slid a bar of chocolate across to her. ‘There you go. Dark chocolate’s good for you, apparently.’
‘Thank you.’ Dana smiled, peeled the wrapping and broke off a corner. It felt luxurious and smooth on the tongue. Her mind snapped to the sunrise, and she had to wrench it back to the present before Mike noticed. ‘Hmm. Anti-oxidants. The science is on my side. Gracias, Mikey.’
‘De nada, gringo.’ Mike took a bite of sandwich: half of the contents squeezed out of the side. ‘Saw bits of that discussion with Whittler. If nothing else, we’ve cleared up lots of burglaries we didn’t know existed.’
‘Over two hundred. So the crime rate’ll go up, but so will the solves. Makes Bill happy, I suppose. One for his “proactive media stance”, I’d think. But here’s something I don’t get, Mikey. Three people: Lou, Megan and Spencer Lynch. I’m guessing Lynch thinks Megan’s a better person than he is?’
Mike nodded. ‘And Megan said Lou was a better person than her. Said he had a moral compass she didn’t have.’
‘Okay. All of which puts Lou top of the ethical pile, right? The most righteous and upstanding of the three. Yet he’s the one who’s dead.’
‘No one said life was fair.’
‘True. But I find it ironic.’
‘It’s more than ironic, though. It’s likely. Murder’s inherently immoral – or amoral. It’s logical, then: it would usually be committed by the less moral against the more moral. Wouldn’t it?’
Mike had a point, she thought. ‘You think Lynch did it? Sneaked out early morning and stabbed Lou?’ It didn’t make sense to her, but it was a point she had to follow: they couldn’t blindly focus on Nathan. ‘Then Whittler shows up, entirely separately, to burgle the place. Instead, he’s clutching at Lou’s blood when the torches find him?’
Mike shook his head between mouthfuls. ‘Would imply that Megan was some kind of femme fatale. Can’t see Lynch getting out of her warm bed on a cold morning, driving to the store and stabbing her husband, all off his own bat. It would need her connivance, her encouragement. Or, at the very least, her tacit approval.’
She thought back to her own discussion with Megan – the sense that Megan was not aware of quite how much she could control others with her looks, her smile, or the withdrawal of a smile. ‘Think she’s capable of that? Think it’s likely?’
‘I think she’s capable of it, if she had a mind to. By which I mean she’s attractive enough that getting what she wants is usually possible. I imagine there’s men Megan could persuade, no problem. She isn’t vampish, or anything like that. Just someone men would like to please. She has a low-level fatal appeal.’
Oh, thought Dana, you named my indefinable impression of her. ‘Low-level fatal appeal. Yes. Interesting description.’
Dana counted off her reasoning on her fingers. ‘So, Megan’s smart enough to think of the plan. Clever enough to run a trick with the bathrooms to provide an apparently bullet-proof alibi. Hot enough to make a man’s ethics run cold.’ She didn’t notice Mike’s grin at the turn of phrase. ‘And there’s motive: she wants out, but the divorce is tri
cky to prosecute.’
Mike sat back. ‘All true. But firstly, I don’t think she’s minded to do that. You thought she underestimated her own charm, didn’t you? I agree. Megan understands she’s very attractive but doesn’t quite know she has that power, or what she might do with it. She thinks all the usual rules apply to her, even though they probably wouldn’t. Plus, I think she genuinely liked Lou. I can’t see her poised over a cauldron, wishing curses on to him.’
He considered how Megan had opened his eyes to the complexities of leaving a marriage that was also a business partnership. ‘Third, if she was that ruthless about getting rid of Lou, she’d have walked out and left him to lose the business. This possible investor seems to have been a bust: Lou would go belly-up.’
Dana snapped another two squares of chocolate. ‘Yes, true, there’s that. Plus, the burglar alarm data for the store shows it wasn’t off at any point before 0530, when it was switched off by the officers. The alarm covers the perimeter, not internal movement. So how would Lynch have gained entry? The data suggests the only time anyone came into the store in any way was when Whittler climbed through the window.’
Mike offered a hypothetical, solely so she could shoot it down. ‘Unless it was Lynch who opened the window – which we now know was unlocked – and committed the crime. Then Whittler, a couple of minutes later, comes through the same window. The alarm’s already notified the station – Whittler doesn’t affect it. If Lynch closed the window behind him when he came in, it would’ve appeared to Whittler as unopened. Whittler would be none the wiser.’
She countered. ‘I don’t see how Lynch would know which window, or that the window was unlocked. Whittler said it looked locked and would seem locked when you last turned the key.’
Dana didn’t like the messiness of who knew about the locks. It was too difficult to pin down and she liked her cases when the logic flowed consistently. ‘Unless Megan knew,’ she went on, ‘and told Lynch which window to use. In which case, surely Lou would have known as well and it all breaks down.’ She shrugged. It was too convoluted to seem credible, relied on too much secret knowledge and coincidence. ‘Leaving that stuff about the locks aside, there’s a “but” coming, right?’
‘But – I still don’t see it. Megan and Lynch want to be together. They can do that easily, but they’d screw up Lou’s business. Sure it’s tricky, it’s awkward; probably slower and messier than they’d want. But they’re two intelligent people, and one is a lawyer with twenty years’ experience of exactly this thing. I think they’d have waited it out and worked it out.’
‘So you don’t see enough of a motive?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’ He paused. ‘I do see Whittler, with a knife, in the dark.’
He was right, thought Dana. They could run around in circles trying to prove or disprove the potential to fix an electric meter; they could play at the margins of divorce settlements; they could check wills and bank accounts; they could trade hypotheticals about window locks; they could look for a money-launder gone awry; they could do what they liked. In the end, someone had to have wanted to stab Lou Cassavette. Lynch and Megan didn’t really have a reason. But then, neither did Nathan. There was no evidence he even knew who Lou was, let alone had met him.
No one had a motive for this murder.
Lucy returned with an apple and two bottles of water. She pointed and gave a cartoonish disapproving look at the half-consumed bar of chocolate.
Dana looked contrite. ‘You’re probably wondering why I’m eating this, Luce.’
Chocolate guilt was the worst. Lucy put on a pout. ‘After I brought you those lovely sandwiches from the garage; a byword locally for cordon-bleu cuisine.’
Dana took another bite of 70 per cent cocoa, fair trade. ‘Appreciate the effort, Luce. But it was hard to tell where the packaging ended and the sandwich began.’
Mike spoke up. ‘I have a problem, ladies.’
Lucy beat Dana to the reply. ‘Admitting it is the first step, Mikey. Let me see . . . it won’t matter if she really loves you. That reassure you? Barb sees all; Barb forgives all.’
Mike gave a theatrical thumbs-up and shook her hand. ‘Thank you, wise laydee. By the way, Barb does not forgive all. The Christmas Present Debacle of 2005 proves that.’ He raised a finger. ‘I have a second problem. Why didn’t Whittler, or whoever, grab the biggest knife? Doesn’t make sense.’
Dana cursed herself. She’d noted that back at the crime scene, but hadn’t given it a second thought since. Stuart had needed to remind her about chasing forensics; Lucy and Rainer were catching balls she’d dropped all day. Dana felt she was skating by, getting away with it because she was making progress each time she faced Nathan. Not organised enough, she told herself. Not on top of it.
‘I haven’t fathomed that either,’ she said. ‘Let’s assume it’s Whittler for the moment. Maybe he only wanted the threat. I mean, we’re guessing Cassavette’s blocking his path to the window. Whittler’s a burglar, not an assassin. He doesn’t want to hurt the guy but he needs to escape.’
‘So?’ asked Mike.
‘So he grabs a knife that’s big enough to be a credible warning. It says he’s a threat to Cassavette. He can hurt him; he’s prepared to hurt him.’ Dana shrugged. ‘A little knife – maybe Cassavette thinks Whittler isn’t serious, or thinks he can take him down.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Lucy. ‘Cassavette’s a tall, chunky guy – way bigger than Whittler. The knife would need to be large enough to be intimidating, something that can do damage.’
Mike pursued it. ‘Still, why not the biggest one? That’s even more intimidating.’
‘Yes, true.’ Dana tried to picture it in her head. She couldn’t frame the image: Nathan with a knife. He’d baulked at a mousetrap to scare off a rakali, for Christ’s sake. Surely Nathan would only want a knife for the shock value, the threat? ‘Maybe the biggest blade ups the ante too far. It says, “We’re on. This is it. Fight Club.”’
She could see Mike wasn’t convinced, and she wasn’t entirely sold herself. But this was what they did: bounce ideas.
‘The knife Whittler chose is the Goldilocks weapon,’ she continued. ‘It’s too big to be some kind of idle boast – it’s not a kiddie knife. But it’s not so big it’s too much peril and makes Cassavette feel he has no choice but to fight. Instead, it makes Cassavette wary, but maybe not desperate enough to start the battle. Because all Whittler wants the knife to do is intimidate; get Cassavette out of the road so Whittler can run.’
Mike sat back. ‘That’s a lot of clear-headed, logical thinking going on if he’s a panicking burglar who wants out. Panic and darkness make everything instinctive, primeval. All that thinking seems too rational for that situation.’
Dana nodded. ‘That’s because it is. Good shout.’
The three were silent for a minute, Dana finishing her chocolate. Now Mike had raised the question of why that knife had been chosen, it was bugging her. If he hadn’t mentioned it, she’d probably have forgotten until tomorrow.
‘Wait, I’ve got an idea,’ said Lucy. ‘All this is speculation. I’ve got an idea based on what we actually know.’
‘Which is?’ Dana and Mike in chorus.
‘The food on the shelves.’ Lucy presented this as if it spoke for itself, sitting back with a satisfied expression.
‘What?’ asked Dana. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Assume, in a wild and unlikely scenario, we don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘No, think back to Whittler’s cave.’ Lucy bounced forward again, animated. ‘I saw Stu’s footage on the shared drive. That cave is Whittler’s personality in three dimensions, right? He used OCD, deliberately, to keep his mind from wrecking him. Checked stocks over and over, every day; those lists in his journal are positively weird. All to give his mind work to do. He said that himself, in fact. It’s ingrained now; hard-wired. He can’t stop. Those cans in the cave – perfect pyramids; threes and fives, no fours. Even the junk in the interview room today –
he stacks it in a tower, he cleans up; it’s neat, balanced. That’s what he does. Because that’s what he is.’
Lucy leaned in close to Dana, almost whispering. ‘So he took the middle knife . . . because it’s the middle knife.’
It felt like a dull thud in Dana’s chest, as though Lucy had struck her with the heel of her hand. ‘Oh God, you’re right.’ She nodded. ‘Taking that one leaves two either side of the space – the balance is still there.’
It was Nathan, she thought: it was definitely Nathan. It had always been Nathan. Now she felt certain.
‘Wait, wait,’ said Mike. ‘He’d do that in the dark? In an emergency?’
‘Especially then,’ replied Dana. ‘Like you said, Mikey, he panicked – he thought the place would be empty. He needs to get out, needs his escape route. He’s not thinking, as such, it’s all instinct. So he grabs a pack of knives and opens it. The patterns he’s ingrained over fifteen years; they make him do things automatically. Preserving symmetry is automatic.’
She scrunched the chocolate wrapper. ‘It’s not the third-smallest knife, or the third-biggest. It’s the middle one of five. And that’s all.’
Chapter 25
After collecting her thoughts in her office and texting Father Timms again, Dana joined the other three in Mike’s office and doled out some more chases for the team. Paperwork was starting to pile up on the spare desk, which now doubled as the physical repository for shared documents for the team. Dana liked the growing evidence that they might be getting somewhere. In a digital world, she still took comfort in rising towers of filing. She began with Rainer.
‘Rainer, please carry on with the checks for the period leading up to Whittler leaving. There must be something in some official record somewhere.’
He nodded, but she paused. Losing it, again.
‘Sorry, Rainer, that’s vague and unhelpful. Okay. First, I need to know if or when the parents’ finances changed – sudden loan, change of will, power of attorney, selling off property, transfer of deeds, setting up a business, that kind of thing. Anything that looks like a trigger for Whittler running, or the outcome from a trigger. Second: any reports of disturbance at their home or work: illness, any intelligence connecting them with emergency or social services. The parents appear to have had some, uh, old-fashioned values. Thank you. Good work on the redhead, by the way.’