Director Tom Cavanagh/First Fetcher Character Analysis

A short man with a beard, Director Cavanagh oversees operations and teaches classes at the children’s home that serial killer Alexander Sholt founded in his rural Australian hometown. The children’s home is located near the bunker where Alexander and fellow serial killer Derek Bell hold girls captive, abuse them, and eventually murder them. When Alexander and Derek’s final victim Isobel Catching escapes from the bunker, the allegorical tale of her abuse that she narrates to detective Michael Teller—in which two masked creatures named Fetchers, who call themselves “First” and “Second,” bring girls to be assaulted and devoured by two monsters called Feeds—indicates that Director Cavanagh and his colleague Nurse Flint were paid to bring victims to Alexander and Derek. As Director Cavanagh outranked Nurse Flint and “First” outranks “Second,” readers can infer that Director Cavanagh is the First Fetcher. When Catching escapes the bunker, she brings with her the ghost of Alexander and Derek’s first victim, Sarah Blue/Crow, whom Catching has empowered to interact with the physical world. Shortly thereafter, Crow finds Director Cavanagh and Nurse Flint hiding out at the Sholt family home, kills them, and dumps their bodies near where Alexander and Derek first abducted her. When detective Michael Teller realizes Director Cavanagh and Nurse Flint’s involvement in the serial killings, he speculates that both men were morally vacuous, empty inside—a judgment that the novel represents symbolically in Catching’s story: she describes the Fetchers as having no faces, only voids, beneath their humanoid masks.