S White - Hermit

Mike recovered from the surprise. Perhaps Megan knew Lynch had killed her husband but was distancing herself from it in case Lynch was caught. His voice was low and even.

‘Why didn’t she call you first thing today, tell you Lou was dead?’

Lynch waved a hand. ‘Don’t know. Probably to protect me from this, uh, friendly chat. If she’d called me, she’d surely know that you’d find that out. Then our relationship becomes, as you know so well, the property of mature professionals who laugh at others’ private lives in the canteen. You know what? People tell me the most intimate things in my line of work and I never repeat them to anyone. Why aren’t your colleagues able to say the same?’

His insinuation hit home. Mike knew he was right: it was a shabby part of the culture Bill hadn’t been able to eradicate.

Lynch continued. ‘Maybe she wanted to spare me all that, and spare herself that.’ He leaned forward. ‘Don’t know, Detective. Don’t really care. Meg’s a smart woman and I trust her implicitly. There’s no gap between us for you to dig into, sorry.’

Mike nodded. That was probably all true, but he’d need to talk with Megan, and without Lynch being able to forewarn her. Lynch had been made to leave his phone at the front desk when he arrived: standard security process in an era where every phone was a camera and a recorder.

Mike stood up. ‘I’ll need to verify some things before we can let you go, Spence. Should be routine, but might take an hour. I can get Lucy to bring you a coffee.’

‘A coffee would be nice, thank you. But not delivered by that young woman.’

Mike smirked. ‘As you wish.’

He made it to the door before Lynch spoke again. ‘What’s my tell, Detective? You said you’d let me know.’

‘Oh, that?’ It was subliminal, and only in certain lights. But Mike wanted Spencer’s shiny veneer scratched a little. ‘You blink three times when you’ve been caught out. It’s quick; like a reflex. But it’s there.’

Lynch pursed his lips sceptically. ‘Funny how no one’s ever mentioned that. All the negotiating I do.’

Mike shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not a mystery, really. Your friends are too polite; your opponents like it.’ He held the door handle for a second. ‘Ask Megan about it. She’ll tell you straight. She’s a smart woman, and you trust her implicitly. Don’t you, Spence?’

Dana had prepared most of her strategy for the next phase with Nathan. The endgame – the prize – was Nathan telling what took place in the store. He had no innocent reason to be there that she could see; he had blood on his hands. If there was a confession to be had, she meant to have it. If there was a viable alternative explanation, she intended to get it. But her strategy for now was to move Nathan closer to that prize without rushing him into closing down. Each conversation still held a tripwire in the dark.

Previously, she’d had various channels and escape routes. But now, armed with the knowledge of the cave and her previous discussions with Nathan, the strategy was becoming more linear and less nuanced. This part wasn’t vastly complicated. Once she started telling Nathan that his inner sanctum was now on video, viewed by strangers and being catalogued and sifted, he would freak. No, wait, she thought: he wouldn’t actually freak. More likely he’d simmer, or withdraw, or try to avoid her entirely. Because that was how he dealt with things.

She was prepared to let him; viewed it as both inevitable and necessary. As long as Nathan was free to simply be in his cave and avoid people, he’d achieved a type of serenity. She truly admired it, envied it. But that calmness was brittle by definition; it couldn’t survive sustained human contact. He hadn’t learned to bend and would therefore surely snap. She suspected that even he didn’t know how it would go, once she cracked the surface of his fragile wounds.

She put on some latex gloves and opened the evidence bag containing his journal. It was unlikely anyone else had touched it, but you never knew. Since Stuart had been wearing gloves and so was Dana, it meant the forensics were simple – any fingerprints other than Nathan’s were immediately of major interest.

The journal started six weeks after he disappeared. She’d thought that it would be reflective, philosophical. She was disappointed. It was not so much a journal, more a ledger. It held details of what food and first-aid equipment he held at any one time. It gave the impression he conducted a comprehensive stocktake at least once a day.

But on each left-hand page was a log of what he’d stolen. And where he’d stolen it. She held her breath – it was a complete inventory of his crimes.

She turned it over and saw the manufacturer spec: it was a 256-page book. By flipping quickly through the pages, she could see none had been ripped out or left blank. She counted from the back – twelve pages unused; so 244 pages filled. Each left-hand page held two separate dates and two separate burglaries. That meant 244 crimes in fifteen years – one every three weeks or so.

Stuart had reckoned on the video footage that Nathan’s current food stash would last at least eight weeks. Dana thought he was underestimating Nathan’s capacity for delayed gratification and fortitude: she was convinced Nathan could stretch that to three months if needed. Taking one or two extra items each time would build up the reserve stocks Stu had witnessed earlier.

Presumably, this morning’s foray into Jensen’s Store had been an attempt to build excess resources for the winter. Dana reasoned he’d probably eat more in winter, when the temperature required more energy. It would make sense, she thought, to stock enough for weeks when he might be hemmed in by poor weather, or it was simply too cold or uncomfortable to want to go out. She recalled what he’d said about wet cold being so much worse: he’d want enough resources that he could stay dry for as long as necessary.

All the same, the inventory was proof – in Nathan’s own hand – of exactly how many burglaries he’d carried out. Dana couldn’t recall any period in her time at the station when anyone had suggested such a spree. She wondered how he’d managed to get away with that. It seemed impossible to believe no one had truly cottoned on, or seemingly reported it.

Dana phoned for the exhibits officer and watched him sign for the journal. She asked for a photocopy of every page to be put on her desk while she was with Nathan: tomorrow, someone would have to check each claimed burglary against reports of that time. Something told her they wouldn’t find any matching reports at all. Somehow, Nathan was getting in and out of places unhindered and unnoticed and his haul wasn’t being missed.

At the very least, she mused, it cleared up the possibility Rainer had raised about Nathan keeping the Toyota and carrying out burglaries in the city. And the journal most likely precluded Nathan having some kind of sponsor or patronage; no dropped sacks of provisions at pre-arranged points.

Nathan had sneaked around the district for over a decade. They’d never even known there were crimes to investigate.

Mike’s fourth call to Central Intelligence finally yielded Peter Kasparov, the detective he really needed to speak to. Kasparov had spent most of his life dealing in snippets and slivers of information, splicing them together to gain a vague sense of what was going on out there. But, like Dana, his best work was done by his brain, in the darkest and quietest place that could be found.

‘Kaspar, just the man I wanted. You know more about the Alvarez family than the Alvarez family, isn’t that right?’

‘Very kind, Mikey. Possibly true. The Alvarez clan run the gamut from incredibly clever to dumb as a rock. I certainly know more than some of the rocks, since I haven’t been addling my brain from age ten. But the smartest ones? I’m not in the ballpark.’