Stuart turned and went back towards the light. As he replaced the sheet curtain he leaned into it. ‘Hmmm. Bug spray. He saturated the edges of the sheet to keep the bedroom as free from bugs as possible. It uses less repellent than spraying himself all the time. Smart.’
Stuart grabbed the camera and, switching it around, loomed into it.
‘That’s all for now, folks. I’ll get this emailed to you as fast as I can. Hope it helps. We’ll seal the place off, grid it and get some heavier duty effort into it. Let me know if you want anything specific explored. I’ll drone the diary to the base team, and someone can drive it over to you. Might even get there before this footage. Back to you in the studio.’
Bill stood up and massaged his lower back. ‘Thoughts?’
Dana leaned against a bookshelf. ‘No fire.’
‘What?’
‘There was no fire, or barbecue, or any way of cooking anything. Or sit by, in the cold. Given how paranoid he was about discovery, he probably didn’t want any fire or smoke either. He’s seriously lived for fifteen years on cold or raw food. Even in winter.’
Mike nodded at the darkened screen. ‘My kids would live on cereal and chocolate if I gave them half a chance. To be fair, Whittler had a fair sprinkle of fruit and veg there, but it was all canned. I guess you get used to not cooking stuff.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe there’s more nutrients that way.’
Bill interjected. ‘Mikey, you were sceptical about the fifteen years; about whether he’d actually done that. This change your mind?’
‘Yes and no.’ Mike swivelled so that he faced both Bill and Dana. ‘On the logistics side, I’m more convinced. Seeing how he set things up, seeing how well that was all hidden; yeah. He could hide that long, not be seen for that long; eat and sleep and crap for that long. But I still doubt he could live for that long. By which I mean the lack of speaking, the human contact, and so on. I still think that’s impossible.’
Bill scratched the back of his hand. ‘Hmmm. Dana?’
Dana puffed her cheeks. ‘I’m kind of the opposite. Talking with him, I’m totally convinced he could manage without people. He has that within him. There’s a resilience which could do it. Plus, I think he worked out how to do it: how to make the silence an advantage. It already suited his personality, but he worked out how to be that way without going crazy. So he could do that, I reckon.
‘On the other hand, I’d always been sceptical about the logistics. Just the practicalities – what if he got toothache; why he didn’t get bothered by snakes, dingoes, spiders; how he survived the cold and the heat and the bugs. I’m not practical, so I couldn’t see how the day-to-day could be handled. Nothing in the world would persuade me to live in anything like that. But seeing it, yes, it’s fairly clean and bug-free. He’s worked out the water, the shelter. He seems to have plenty of food. Seeing it tells me he sorted out the practicalities as well as the psychology. So I’m sticking with yes. See it as a serial killer’s lair, Bill?’
‘Hmm, not especially. Though the detailed search might produce evidence of other crimes, so I’ll still hedge my bets. But, point taken. Okay.’ Bill clapped his hands once. ‘Gather your thoughts, then my office in ten minutes. I want to know what this means for our approach and any research we might need to do.’
As he left the office Bill held the door for a uniform, who passed Dana a clear plastic bag. It contained Nathan Whittler’s journal.
Chapter 18
Dana saw Rainer Holt from the other end of the corridor. He waved, and mimed going into her office. She nodded and muttered, ‘Ryner, Ryner,’ as she walked. When she got there Rainer was waiting like a soldier reporting for duty. She locked the journal into the top drawer of her desk. She’d have to at least skim it before she spoke to Nathan again.
‘Hey, how’d it go?’
Rainer stood a little too rigidly as he spoke. Dana kept waiting for an opportunity to tell him to sit down and relax a little. But he seemed to have the ability to continually speak, whether he was breathing in or out. He rattled off his discussion with Pringle without a semblance of a break for oxygen. Dana made a mental note to suggest he consider a career in politics.
‘So, in your view, much of what Whittler became was essentially set by the time he left Pringle’s?’
‘Looks that way. I haven’t met him, of course. But the loner thing, fear, stubbornness; that was there when he was a teenager.’
It had struck Dana earlier that Nathan’s time in the cave would be a distillation: a pure and concentrated form of the person he’d always been. Being alone for so long, as Bill had said, left no need for adaptation imposed by compromise. Nathan had been free to be Nathan in unalloyed form. It followed, therefore, that Nathan was more likely to talk when Dana agreed with his general train of thought, but be spiky or belligerent the moment she contested things.
‘Pringle doesn’t know what finally made up Whittler’s mind to run? Why then, and why there?’
‘No, he doesn’t. In his view, “there” seems to have been anywhere. Whittler had no real destination in mind, except for “not here”.’ Rainer hesitated, before following through with an observation. ‘That suggests running from, not running to, doesn’t it? Anyway, it was some months in the making – collecting all the stuff and storing it at Pringle’s. Maybe “then” was a general plan, and it got hurried up by some event. Or maybe he’d always intended to go then.’
Dana liked the amount of thought Rainer had put into this while driving back from Earlville. She held up a finger.
‘I’m inclined towards a precipitating event. If it was a general plan he could activate at any time, or he had a planned date in mind, he’d have gone late spring or summer. That would have given him months without cold weather to get everything set up. I don’t believe he knew about this cave before he started running – I think he lucked into it. So he actually went at a dreadful time: winter was about to begin and he had to set things up fast. He isn’t a “fast set-up” person. He’s methodical, everything in its place.’
‘Like Pringle?’
‘Hmm. Good point. Pringle as a father figure, a role model? Yes, that fits. Sounds like his own family was the polar opposite of that. So anyway, the decision to go then, in the late autumn: that’s because a key event made him do it.’
She had to flex her leg against the desk to free her kneecap. ‘Have a dig around of incident logs in early to mid 2004, please, especially related to the farm Whittler lived on. Including paramedic and firefighter attendance – it needn’t have been criminal to have been the last straw for Whittler. And ask Lucy what she can get about the parents’ car accident. That’s bothering me now.’
‘And hunt some more for the Toyota?’
‘Ooh, yes. Do that. I think it’s buried under fifteen years’ worth of foliage somewhere, so you’d be trying to prove a negative, really. But yes; any sightings, any traffic offences, etcetera. Good stuff, Rainer. I like your thinking about this. Thanks.’
With Rainer gone, Dana was about on schedule for the strategy meet with Bill and Mike. As she turned to gather a file, she was seized by a sudden panic. Her vision began to swim, like a bookshelf in an earthquake. She clutched the desk to stay upright. Oxygen left her, a slight whistling sound as it passed beyond her control and away.
Hoping she wasn’t groaning or screaming, she turned her back on the corridor and felt blindly for a pocket. From the moment she grabbed the nebuliser, the fear stabilised. She grasped it tight, squeezing desperately. Facing the wall, she took a big hit from the inhaler, and waited. For twenty seconds she allowed the gasping to subside, holding her file in front of her so anyone passing would think she was reading. Eventually she felt the heat dissipate, the vision calm and the wheezing recede.