As she finished speaking a burgundy Honda squealed to a halt outside. A salt-and-pepper, post-hip-operation version of Megan got out and hustled across the lawn. Her obvious anxiety for her daughter made Dana’s eyes prickle. Megan opened the door and, as it tilted shut, Dana saw her fall against her mother’s shoulder and convulse.
Chapter 4
Carlton was the police headquarters for the region, but this was an accident of history rather than by intent. Earlville had the busiest facilities and most officers, but the regional politicians lived in Carlton and wanted senior officers available for a conspicuous chat.
The town’s founding fathers had envisaged a grandiose civic plaza, with the impressive facades of state grouped around an open square to imply democracy and accountability. But behind the Grecian columns of city hall and the court, thick walnut doors shielded the elected from the gaze of the plebs and all the actual work went on out the back. It was the equivalent of a conjuring trick: the visible architecture was the shiny baubles and slick chatter; the prosaic buildings beyond were the flaps, trapdoors and false walls that made it work.
The police station was literally an adjunct to the court: there was a Corridor of Doom to take prisoners straight from the custody suite into Courtroom One. The building itself was a shallow-roofed, three-storey affair, draped in an awful butterscotch render that was constantly ‘too expensive’ to replace. It sat across from a small open green, below which was a staff car park that stretched under the station itself. The station’s official entrance was artfully hidden at the moment, behind a Mobile Incident Room that was parked there near-permanently. Carlton’s police station was a building for police to work in, not a public building.
The public remit ran only to a reception with two tiny interview rooms off it. Hard-working vinyl floors and wipe-down emulsion spoke of the attitude towards visitors: they would be careless, annoying, intrusive and require effort. Bill Meeks was trying to coax some pot plants and piped music into the scene, but the Police Board had scoffed at it. In their view, the type of people who were required to come to a police station didn’t deserve the niceties: either they were a victim and simply needed help, or they were a suspect and deserved stony-faced indifference.
Whenever Dana stepped through the reception door into the main part of the building a little piece of her felt like she was home. Only at Carlton for eighteen months all told, she was familiar now with the carpet-cleaner smell, the staleness of the air, the background hum of air conditioning and sub-par typing. Dana liked order, and the place had a hierarchy for everything – rank, of course, but also furniture and location. Bill was upstairs in a corner office with a leafy view and a conference table. The best chairs went to the operations room, which operated 24/7 in a twilight, non-glare world of headsets, weary routine and occasional adrenaline. Detectives were downstairs in a corner with few windows, but they got a slightly better form of elderly desk: a little less tape holding it together and marginally more chance that the drawers were lockable. Uniform were the ultimate hand-me-down youngest child: partially in the basement, watching the oldest computers in the building whirr and wheel to a halt.
Dana emailed the recording of her discussion with Megan so that Lucy could type it up and précis for the briefing later. The investigation already had its place on the station’s shared drive: all documents would be simultaneously available to the whole team, with Lucy compiling the log and tracking file updates. They’d started this system only months ago, and they still had to chase many to add their contribution online. Forensics were always late to the party, and the autopsy was still typed and couriered over. Normally, Dana was relentlessly old-school and would have relished a pile of folders to neaten. But in a murder investigation she recognised the time saved by being able to search individual words and cross-reference data quickly.
Interview preparation was one of Dana’s favourite tasks. While it held urgency and importance, it couldn’t be rushed. She was allowed to take her time – delve, think, plan. She got a magic pass from the hurly-burly of instantaneous decisions, by-the-kettle socialising and reflex thinking.
There was footage from the custody suite as Nathan Whittler was brought in: her first look at his body language, and the first time she heard his voice. He stared at his feet, shuffling forward as if he were on a chain gang. It was unusual, but not unexpected – people often had little idea of the correct behaviour. Dana noted the officers’ mild shove in the back when Nathan was too far from the custody bench: he accepted it without acknowledgement, as if it were his due.
He was, in Dana’s own phrase, ‘becoming Zimbardoed’. She was fascinated by a psychology experiment from the 1970s, where student volunteers in a fake prison took on the role, language and gestures of supplicant prisoner and overbearing guard. Zimbardo had speculated that certain pre-conditions created certain behaviour, regardless of previous personality. Nathan was acting out the role he thought he was there for: someone who’d been caught. It was either naïve or coldly calculating; the optics would be the same. His apparent meekness could be a great piece of acting, or a prelude to tortuous and brittle interviewing.
The next logical question, she mused, was what would open him up. Assuming he was intimidated by what had happened and what was occurring now, what would set him loose? He answered the standard custody questions with a hoarse whisper or slight head movements. Dana couldn’t gauge accent, or dialect, or any hint of where he might have been in the recent past. His responses were soft, arrived at after due thought, and cursory. Nothing more than the minimum.
Simpson, the custody officer, peered over the top of the monitor.
‘Do you agree that the doctor may examine you to ascertain your fitness for detention and interview?’
A nod at the floor.
Simpson was, she knew, patient and respectful – it made him a safe pair of hands. But even he was becoming exasperated; hemmed in by four walls for an entire shift, the least he expected was to be acknowledged.
‘Don’t talk to the floor, Mr Whittler, talk to me. Look up.’
It seemed Nathan tried, but failed on both occasions. A sigh from Simpson, who tapped on the keyboard again.
‘On any medications, medical treatment?’
A shake of the head, a glance to his left.
‘The power of speech, Mr Whittler. Use it.’
‘No, nothing.’
Dana strained to pick out some remnant of where Nathan might have come from: zero. His language was a flat bat; he was stripping out nuance, clues and emotion.
‘What happened out there, Mr Whittler? In Jensen’s Store?’
The mention of the location made Nathan flinch, as if slapped. Not only did he turn his face, but his hands came up reflexively, as though warding off future attacks. Simpson looked bemused.
‘What?’ Simpson turned to the two uniforms. ‘He always like this? What happened?’
Nathan slowly took his arms down, seemingly wary.
‘Yeah, he is,’ replied one officer. ‘One guy dead in the store, stabbed. This one, over the dead body.’
Simpson typed briefly then pointed to Nathan’s hands.
‘Hence, the blood. Yeah. We’ll put him in the suite and get forensics done first.’
Nathan looked down at his hands, apparently alien to him. As if they’d acted against his wishes, or without him knowing at all.
‘Anything to say at this juncture, Mr Whittler?’
A vehement shake of the head – his most definite action so far. Something juvenile about it, Dana felt, something unformed. Another shove in the back, more shuffling from Nathan, and he disappeared from sight to the forensics suite. They would take blood, fingerprints, DNA and change his clothes. She saw the doctor walk past, on his way to observe the process.