Hermit
Copyright © 2020 S. R. White
The right of S. R. White to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
First published as an Ebook in Great Britain in 2020 by
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication – apart from the obvious historical figures – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 6840 2
Cover images © Dominic Jeanmaire/Shutterstock
and Roadwarrior Photography/Shutterstock
Cover design by Patrick Insole
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About S. R. White
About the Book
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Acknowledgements
About S. R. White
S. R. White worked for a UK police force for twelve years, before returning to academic life and taking an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He now lives in Queensland, Australia.
About the Book
‘A taut, beautifully observed slow-burner with an explosive finish.’
Peter May
‘Original, compelling and highly recommended. S. R. White is the real deal.’
Chris Hammer
HE DISAPPEARED FOR 15 YEARS . . . SHE HAS 12 HOURS TO FIND OUT WHY.
After a puzzling death in the wild bushlands of Australia, detective Dana Russo has just hours to interrogate the prime suspect – a silent, inscrutable man found at the scene of the crime, who disappeared without trace 15 years earlier.
But where has he been? Why won’t he talk? And exactly how dangerous is he? Without conclusive evidence to prove his guilt, Dana faces a desperate race against time to persuade him to speak. But as each interview spirals with fevered intensity, Dana must reckon with her own traumatic past to reveal the shocking truth . . .
This book is dedicated to my mother,
Patricia, a woman of letters and
language her whole life
Chapter 1
In the purple pre-dawn: the ink-black pools and white spray of Pulpit Falls. Dana Russo was here on this morning each year, and it always seemed the same. Never rained, never snowed. Bruised and sullen, every time.
She could easily climb over this flimsy fence. Two strands of wire threaded between rudimentary wooden posts. It was nothing, would only take a second. She wouldn’t have to jump, really. She could just fall.
Maybe that would be better. Dana knew about trajectories: it was part of her job. If she landed on the middle rock – the one splitting two churning arcs of swift water – they’d understand it was deliberate. She’d have died in a manner that would demand close scrutiny. It would oblige them to sift through her life, looking for the explanation. Her emails and private documents, the contents of her safe, her diary. Everything would be exposed and picked over. She’d be dead, and then sliced open. Dana knew how far investigations could burrow; the kind of stones they turned over.
Whereas if her head struck the nearside bank, cleaving open her skull in a single strike, it might be considered an accident. There had been a lot of rain recently, and then this icy spell, so the edge was brittle. They might think her stupid or foolhardy, but they couldn’t prove she’d meant it. Perhaps then, they’d have less reason to pilfer the remains of her life and hold them up to the light.
A cold breeze slapped her face. Below her, a hawk skimmed the surface of the calmer water downstream. She watched its careless, immaculate wheeling and heard a keening cry through the misty air. Eucalypts on the far shore hissed; the blustery chill made her eyes water.
This was her Day. The day Dana granted herself full permission to think about all this; to examine it and ask if she found herself wanting. Each day through the year she kept it as locked down and hidden away as she could. Often, she failed. She failed because while the threat and the shame kept its strength, she waxed and waned: she was the variable. It was her reaction that stumbled frequently – she drifted with good days and bad, triumphs and disappointments, strong and weak. She tried to contain it adequately by allowing it one day of total freedom. For this Day alone, she deliberately and overtly questioned from every angle if she wished to live another year. If she was still asking at midnight, the contract was made: she would try to carry on until the next Day.
Last year she’d sat with the engine ticking over, safety belt unbuckled, staring at a large tree near her house. She’d fretted that the road wasn’t straight enough to gather a killer speed: she could ram into it, but she might still be alive afterwards.
Now she was shivering in an empty car park. She stepped back from the edge and squatted, hidden from any dog-walkers or joggers, her back uncomfortable against the car’s radiator grille.
This place – already a wound in her mind. Her memory reeled and spun, back to an identical day that changed her life. Being found at the foot of the falls would invite comparisons, make people reach for connections.
So she couldn’t jump. But she knew how to shoot.
Dana closed her eyes and counted to five. She held her revolver in both hands; it juddered as she struggled for breath. The barrel felt sharp on the roof of her mouth. It grazed and nuzzled, begging for the chance to release her. The trigger pressure on this weapon was hefty, but her thumbs squeezed consistently. Saliva oozed silently down to the grip.
Up: she must point up. She knew this. Shifting herself a little against the car, adjusting her posture, the memories skidded past her. Even though she fought to rein them in, they started to pulse faster, became subliminal. She closed her eyes again, squeezed a little more, feeling the trigger mould a groove in her thumbs. A silent tear caressed her cheek.
All Dana had to do was move her thumb a centimetre. Then it would be over. She’d never have to think about it again. There would be no more recriminations; no more hours glaring at her reflection, daring herself to own what she’d done. She’d never have to wake up again with a feeling of dread already drenching her. There must be something better,
beyond this. If only she could do it. If only she had the courage. If only—
She could feel the phone vibrate despite her thick jacket. She hesitated, blinked hard and swallowed. The ringtone wouldn’t go away.
Dana hid when she could from loud noises, from bright lights, from squealing children and yapping dogs; from sentiment and kindness, from impatience and arrogance. She needed the flat line of quiet consistency. Usually she struggled through much of it beyond the gaze of others. Especially on this Day, she had nothing to give, and every moment since midnight she’d been a beat away from snapping. The pressure it created was volcanic, irresistible.
The ringtone still wouldn’t go away.
The gun bumped against her lip, numbing it on contact. Dana glanced at it, put the safety on and holstered. On her forehead was a cooling sheen of sweat; she felt clammy and nauseous under her coat. She stood uneasily and leaned against the car. In the windscreen’s reflection she loomed across the convex glass, pallid and desperate. Swearing, she fished out the phone and swiped.
‘Yes?’
‘Dana?’
Neither of them could hear above the roar of the waterfall. ‘Hold on,’ she shouted, and climbed into the car. Closing the door silenced the siren call of her pain. All she could make out now was her own stuttering breath. ‘Yes?’
‘Dana, glad I got you.’ Bill Meeks, her boss. ‘We have a dead body. Sending you the route. It’s kinda hard to find if you’ve never been there . . . Dana?’
She wasn’t ready. Wasn’t up to doing that. Her hand was shaking; she dropped her keys. ‘Isn’t Mikey on call?’
There was a pause. Did she come across as irritable, unprofessional? Why should she care either way? She wasn’t first on call today.
‘Yeah, he’s had to go to Earlville Mercy. His kid: stomach pains. You’re next cab off the rank. See you in twenty.’
He was gone before she could grunt any kind of reply. She looked back at the fence, and the void.
Someone just kept her alive, by dying.
Something didn’t want her gone. Not yet.
Chapter 2
Jensen’s Store was down a rutted track about two hundred metres off the Old Derby Road, between Carlton and Earlville. Surrounded by tall pines, its solitude and serenity meant it made little sense as a commercial venture – there was no road frontage; the sign for it was half obscured by undergrowth and unlit. If Dana hadn’t been following instructions on the phone, she’d have overshot. Behind the building, forest stretched away gauzily.
The building itself was a lazily designed flatroof; wilfully utilitarian, it had a short overhang on a frontage that was mainly glass, speckled with fluoro-coloured posters of special offers. The parking area to the side was simply gravel and mud, mixed by spinning wheels and crunching boots. It was rutted and slippery in the despondent winter.
The emergency vehicles were parked herringbone along the approach lane: the area around the store was being tracked by a single-file line of uniforms, treading slowly as they scoured the frozen soil. The sun was above the horizon, but obscured below lingering mist which billowed lazily through the trees and gave everything a grey, ethereal wash. The occasional ghost gum stood out, a sharp vertical sliver like pristine flesh. Ferns glinted silently with crystalline frost.
To one side, two paramedics gazed at the gloom and drew testily on cigarettes. Their green smocked uniform had short sleeves; one seemed oblivious to the damp chill, the other yanked on the zip of a red puffa jacket. The hardier of them gave a raised-head acknowledgement as Dana passed; she couldn’t place him but nodded back in any case. Aside from the search team, she and Bill were the only cops available for now.
She snapped on some gloves at the entrance, where a wire basket offered two-for-one on rubber-soled deck shoes. When she started as a police officer, putting on latex gloves was a cop or a medical thing: now everyone did it, even if they were only heating a pastry. She checked her boots, tapping off some mud from her waterfall visit, and covered them with plastic booties that swished as she crossed the aisle. Reflexively, she looked for cameras: one over the checkout counter, and that seemed it for the interior. Maybe there were others hidden.
The police incident code had been ‘response to silent alarm’, so she knew that much. Little else. The alarm was one of those that covered the perimeter of the building, not internal movement. By the first aisle was a pinboard of local notices – grass-cutting services, a wooden aviary free to a good home and a ratty-looking old Ford Falcon to be gutted for spares. Above this, a gallery of the regular staff, who were all ‘looking forward to helping you’.
As she reached the third aisle, staff from the medical examiner’s office came into view, holding the stretcher. The two bearers had the same red hair and freckled faces, similar bloodless lips and consumptive countenance. She thought they might be twins and considered this an odd kind of family occupation. They paused automatically when they reached her, looking stoically up and forward to nowhere while she peeled back the zip on the body bag.
The victim’s face was puffy but looked oddly contented. The serenity of dead people never ceased to amaze Dana. Even those who’d suffered violent, lingering or painful demises: they all took on a repose of quiet satisfaction, as if a job well done. Somehow, in a small way, it gave her hope. They usually looked . . . pleasantly asleep.
The victim was maybe late thirties, and shaven-headed. His skull was broad at the forehead, giving him a massive and tipped-forward look even when horizontal. He was absurdly tall, with a large, bear-like jaw, and the collar of his T-shirt was ripped on one shoulder. With the body bag zip further back, Dana could see the entry wound. Just one, it looked like. No hesitation marks she could see, no splatter. The bleeding would all be internal. A smallish rose of dried blood on the T-shirt surrounding it and some smeared and bloody finger marks. Maybe a palm, too.
She guessed a blade of fifteen centimetres – it would need to be that long to pass the ribs and enter a major organ. Sometimes, only one wound spoke to expertise but frequently it was blind luck. In a melee of two people grappling for their lives there was little time or space to be forensic. The attacker might have stabbed purely to get the victim off them, or get away, or make them stop. Few people wielded a knife accurately – their efforts were often wild and desperate.
She zipped up carefully. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. The ‘twins’ headed for the door in lockstep.
Around the corner, Bill crouched by some blood droplets. There were several packets of rice behind him which had dropped from a shelf without breaking open. That appeared to be the extent of the physical evidence. A minor clean-up in aisle three: on a par with a kid spilling some chocolate milk. Even one pint of blood looked like a serial-killer rampage if it was sprayed around in a struggle; this was maybe ten drops.
Because of the solitary stab wound, Dana had expected the knife to be on the floor. A single stab in panic, in the midst of a scuffle, usually prompted the stabber to drop the blade and flee. At the very least, they let go in shock at what they’d done, or in disbelief that the person in front of them was dying. That didn’t seem to have happened here.
Bill glanced up. He would have been handsome when younger. In fact, she’d seen pictures of him up to his forties when he was exactly that. It was as if he’d signed a Faustian pact: breath-taking until mid-life, then your face will collapse. He looked almost a travesty of what he once was and she sometimes wondered – as someone who’d never experienced one – what it was like to have a definable golden era behind you, a period when your whole life glowed and others basked in it. Perhaps the juxtaposition was painful, or maybe it was comforting to have been something significant, once.
‘Hey, Dana. Sorry to take your day off you.’
She nodded non-committally, unsure exactly how much Bill knew about her motivation for taking this day off work each year. He knew it was an important date – half the station knew that much – but she didn’t know if his knowledge went
beyond that.
Best not to ask. Best to avoid.
‘One stab wound,’ she noted.
‘Suspect is headed to the station. Knife is still someplace unknown – we’ll need a detailed finger search of the store, and maybe the undergrowth within throwing range. Unless the killer departed and took it with them. Patrol responded to a silent alarm linked to the station.’
‘A professional?’
Bill hefted himself up and rubbed the base of his spine. ‘I only saw our suspect briefly. No ID, nothing obviously incriminating. Couldn’t get a word out of him except his name. Nathan Whittler? Ring any bells for you? Nah, me neither. But, uh, dishevelled and disorganised at best. Could be a serial killer, for all we know. But no, I doubt he’s a hitman.’
‘Hmmm.’ Having nailed one last year, she didn’t believe professional killer meant anything beyond financial payment. That hitman had been an idiot, in a dozen different ways. But he’d been paid to do it.
Bill stretched out a kink in his back. ‘Dead man is Lou Cassavette, the store owner. There’s a sleeping bag, a home-electronics mag and some Chiko Rolls in the storeroom by the freezer section. Looks like he was waiting up for someone.’
‘Hmmm, breakfast of champions. CCTV? I saw the camera by the checkout, but’ – she glanced up and down the aisle – ‘I’m guessing we’re out of luck here.’
‘Yeah, only one other camera, in the storeroom. Overlooks the food-prep area out the back.’ Bill schlepped off a glove and scratched his forehead.
Dana took out a torch to see the blood drops more clearly. There was no way her kneecap would let her crouch down. ‘Mr Cassavette didn’t trust his own staff. He watched if they were dipping the till; he watched if they were spitting in the food. So maybe the suspect is an employee, or ex-employee?’
Bill nodded. ‘Way ahead of ya. I’ve got Luce checking for employment records as we speak. See these?’ He pointed at the bloodspot trail and she swung the torchlight back on them.
She followed the pathway with a silver beam. ‘Half of them in one place – where he was stabbed? Then he fell, or staggered, back a couple of paces, then they stop.’