‘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 stubbornness. 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.’