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 I bet he’s either caved in – see what I did there – or withdrawn, over every argument he’s ever had.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 tricky 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.’