‘Having watched them both,’ he said, ‘I’d have bet on the latter. Jeb wants everyone within reach and scared – any other scenario annoys him. Whittler coming back would have been swiftly followed by Jeb offing him and burying him on the farm. Turns out running and hiding saved his little brother’s life.’
‘Yes, yes it did, and he knows it, too, I’m sure. Feels it deep down. That notion infected everything he did from that moment on.’ She checked the drawer for nebulisers. ‘Any further news on that intelligence between Lou Cassavette and the Alvarez family?’
‘Yeah, no, that looks like a dead end. It’s true that Lou knew the Alvarez boys, grew up alongside them, shared the same accountant. But Kaspar’s minions haven’t found anything to connect them in a criminal sense. No intel on money laundering or protection, or anything. No evidence they’re in touch.’
Lucy poked her head around the doorframe. ‘Need an update?’
‘What do you have, Luce?’
‘So, I’ve looked into this whole insulin thing. Which, by the way, is totally screwed up. Anyway, it seems it is technically possible, but immensely inadvisable. The body’s chemical reaction to exactly the right dosage is as Whittler described. So theoretically, it’s possible to do that, and then I suppose, in theory, do it on more than one occasion.’
Something in the back of Dana’s mind said she’d heard of such a thing before. ‘But since this isn’t happening all over the nation, there are some big problems, no?’
‘Précisément, chérie. So, the first problem is getting the dosage right. I mean, it’s a very fine line between right and totally wrong. Get it totally wrong and they can die. Blood sugar’s a constantly moving target. Even if you knew the required dosage now, it might be potentially fatal an hour from now. I’m assuming Jeb had controlled their diet and circumstances before injecting them. That would help, but it would only turn it from near impossible to pretty near impossible. Basically, Jeb got incredibly lucky to identify the correct dosage, then incredibly lucky again that the same dosage didn’t produce a different outcome the next time. When I say “different outcome” I mean of course, serious illness or death.’
Mike gave Dana a sidelong glance. ‘Like we said, Russian Roulette.’
‘Which was probably part of the appeal for him,’ Dana mused. ‘I bet Jeb didn’t get it right every time – sometimes overcooked it, sometimes left them partially mobile. Of course, under-cooking was fine. He could do what he liked anyway; having to control two people acting like drugged kittens wouldn’t be a stretch. So the window of “correct dosage” was wider than, for example, a doctor would deem acceptable.’
She shivered at the thought that Nathan had been subjected to that.
‘What else, Luce?’
‘I was just going to add on that point: Jeb would never be able to take them to hospital, would he? I mean, if they were in diabetic coma and wouldn’t wake up, he couldn’t allow a doctor to see them. They’d be in a diabetic coma, but clearly not diabetic. The doctor would twig and Jeb would be prime suspect.’
‘Good point. I hadn’t thought that part through.’ The gamble was bigger than she’d first calculated: Jeb was playing with his parents’ lives but, in addition to that, he couldn’t ask for help if anything went wrong.
Lucy beamed. ‘Second problem is the cumulative effect – like anything where you continually whack the human body to an extreme, especially when the extreme is unhealthy. In the longer term, the human body starts to break down. It would be like bingeing, or burning: something the body can’t keep trying to cope with. Jeb apparently did this regularly. The nurse I spoke to said the victims’ systems would be under severe stress. The organs, especially – prone to collapse.’
Dana was doing a quick calculation based on Nathan’s evidence of frequency. The irony was that the Whittler parents were – on one measure – two of the luckiest people on the planet.
‘Third,’ continued Lucy, ‘you asked if there was some wonder drug that could bring them back from the brink? There is, sort of. It’s called Glucagon. It’s used in ERs, and diabetics often carry it for a one-off emergency. It restores blood sugar levels, and fast.’
‘Ah,’ said Dana, ‘so if he mis-cooks, he can remedy that with the antidote.’
Lucy nodded. ‘All the same, it’s not perfect. It only acts temporarily, it’s an imperfect science, and it has some side effects. In other words, if you’re an untrained psycho jabbing a restorative into a comatose person, you’re not doing it right. Not accurate enough, not controlled enough, and no way to monitor if you’re getting it right. So, again, their bodies are put under immense strain. Jeb got very lucky, constantly.’
‘Jesus,’ said Mike, shaking his head, ‘it was a wonder they were still alive when Whittler left. Jeb had no idea what he was doing.’
‘And he seemingly couldn’t care less about that,’ replied Dana. ‘Especially once he had that power of attorney and the property, the parents would gradually feel like disposable toys to him.’
She thought about after Nathan had left. Jeb getting bored with only two helpless victims; maybe knowing that he was pushing his luck each time; eager to move on with a new phase of life, and having the money he needed to do it.
‘Makes me think their car accident might be no such thing,’ she continued. ‘Maybe they were killed by freezing and Jeb put them in a car and rolled them down a cliff.’
‘Yeah, or faced with endless abuse and no respite, they deliberately…’ Mike left it unfinished as Dana blanched.
‘Ah,’ said Lucy. ‘Once again I can assist in a way that’s almost spookily clever. I’ve had the estimable Rainer following all the detail on that car crash. It looks absolutely… uh, “benign” is the wrong word. Legit: that’s the word. Icy evening, a corner. There was a truck driver coming the other way, had to slam on the brakes. He thinks the car driver would have fought the skid all the way: car found a small gap between two trees, then down into the ravine. Not really suspicious’ – she glanced at Dana – ‘but the digging isn’t over.’
‘Notwithstanding all that, Luce, it still doesn’t sit well with me. I mean, of course it is possible to go into an icy corner too quickly and come a cropper. But equally, it’s possible for the driver to plan it.’
Dana could feel the judder in her voice as she recollected this Day twelve months ago: staring at a tree while the engine purred. The calculations of speed and trajectory; the need for the impact to be on the driver’s side; the assessment of where the debris might fly and who it could strike; the imagined faces of the emergency services and her role in their subsequent PTSD; the will and testament sitting on her kitchen table that morning; the anticipation of what colleagues might say. She knew how the Whittler parents would have prepared: what they would anticipate, how it would sit in their guts. She could guess that they held hands as the car left the tarmac. Dana could see it all.
‘I don’t like the convenience of it. The parents’ death frees up Jeb nicely, doesn’t it, at precisely the time he wants autonomy? Or, their death is the only way for the parents to escape because the whole insulin story is true? Either way, I want some more details around it. I don’t like the idea of Jeb getting away with anything.’
She was about to ask another question when the phone intervened.
‘Hey, Rainer. Your ears must be burning. Okay. Yes, push through.’
She grabbed a pen and scratched Pitman speedily for a couple of minutes. Mike and Lucy played rock, paper, scissors. Lucy remained unbeaten.
‘Uh-huh. Oh, really? Yes, certainly, as long as it’s not needed in court it won’t be public: that’s all we can offer.’ She sat back. ‘Thanks. Good sleuthing, Rainer, Lucy would be proud.’