Hermit Read online

  Stuart stepped gingerly past the chair and into the chamber. His torchlight was strong but the beam was narrow; it swept across items in a way that was almost too quick to take in. ‘Yeah, this probably isn’t coming across well, so I’ll give you what video I can and talk you through it. We’ll get the tech boys out from the city with the heavy gear, now we know what we’re about.

  ‘On this side are towers of plastic boxes. All airtight. Hard to see what’s in them, but uh . . . yeah, first aid in that one. I can see bandages and stuff. This one has crockery, I think. Plates, spoons, dishes. Can’t tell what’s in the bottom one. Maybe tools – he’d need hammers, pliers, that kind of thing.’ Stuart shuffled across to the next tower. ‘Clothes. Hmmm. Maybe in order of season. Probably changes the sequence of the tower every few months. On top here are sweaters, heavy-looking trousers, maybe a coat. The lower ones have T-shirts, I think. Yeah, he has a little annual wardrobe thing going on.’

  The next tower was slightly apart from the other two; jammed up against a wall of the chamber. These containers were transparent while the others were opaque. Above them, a series of rough-hewn alcoves had been cut into the rock. Maybe fifteen centimetres deep and twenty centimetres of space on them, they were occupied by perfect pyramids of tins.

  ‘Oh, food. This is the pantry. Nice and dry, and away from the water even if it floods a bit. These beauties float, anyway, so he’d be fine in an emergency. I can’t see’ – another drunken loop upwards and back, making the three of them slightly queasy – ‘nope, no hole in the roof anywhere, no damp runs. This place is watertight. And look how crazy neat he is. Not a qualified medical opinion, of course, boss.’

  He pushed the torch closer to the shelves and containers. ‘Canned stuff, mainly. Tinned fruit, cans of vegetables, that beans-and-sausage seems like a favourite. Sweet tooth – chocolate, grain bars. Guy ate like a king. This store would last eight, ten weeks easy.’

  Bill grunted. ‘How did he get all that stuff out there?’

  ‘The clothes?’ asked Dana. ‘Or the food?’

  ‘Clothes and camping gear, I get. Standard hiking procedure. I mean several months of canned goods. They’re heavy.’

  Dana thought how methodical Nathan would be, how he’d think slowly and deliberately.

  ‘One piece at a time, like the Johnny Cash song. Each time, he acquires more than he needs for a week or two and stores the extra. Over time, he builds up a cache. Then he manages it using sell-by date; probably has a system where the near-overdue stuff is at the top of each container.’

  Bill gave her a raised eyebrow that said, That’s exactly how you’d do it. Dana gave a half-grin, and they both looked back at the screen.

  Stuart turned and scanned the chamber. It was only three metres across yet the light seemed to die in it.

  ‘Stu, what’s that to the left?’ It was out of Mike’s mouth before he realised.

  Dana caught it. ‘Yes, Stu, travel forward in time to get Mikey’s message, then go back to your own time and turn left.’ She shucked him in the shoulder. ‘Seriously, why isn’t he doing that, Mikey?’

  ‘Boyish enthusiasm. My bad, people,’ he said with a raised palm.

  All three laughed when Stuart did indeed turn left.

  ‘That’s freaky,’ said Dana.

  Stuart tracked to the corner, where a sheet had been pinned up against a wall using a small hook. He dragged it back by one corner and looked beyond. ‘Ah, bedroom.’

  Dana wondered briefly why Nathan would want to shut off the bedroom, in an isolated cave in the middle of nowhere, known only to him. She assumed it was simply Nathan being Nathan – privacy to the power of privacy; solitude squared.

  The room contained an inner tent – the little brother of the flysheet outside. Pegged out and tied off, it was fully zipped up. Stuart peered through one of the mesh windows. There was a bed inside. He moved across, opened the zip door and crouched at the entrance.

  The bed was a single blow-up mattress, partly covered by a thick sleeping bag. Milk crates kept it off the ground. Stuart bent so they could see underneath it – an insulating mat and what looked like raw wool bundles to stop the worst of the damp seeping up. To prevent it sliding around on top of the crates, it was largely hemmed in by more containers, which seemed to store books and food cans.

  Stuart’s torch beam landed on some maritime flares. ‘Not sure why he’d need these. Maybe if he got too ill to carry on, he could let these babies go and hope to be saved? Dunno. That’s one for you to work out, Dana.’

  No, thought Dana, it would never be for that. She couldn’t imagine Nathan doing such a thing. He would literally rather die.

  One container had the lid slightly ajar – batteries, spare torches, pens, what looked like a journal. Dana’s heart yelped with empathy – she would kill anyone looking at her journal. She physically squirmed when Stuart knelt down and picked it up – as if he were holding a toddler over a fire. He held the book out of view; in the corner of the screen they could see pages flicking and they all strained to see what was written.

  ‘Some kind of diary? I’ll bag and tag it for you.’

  The camera looked back to the bed. A radio, with a set of earphones trailing from it to the pillow. Even out there, she thought, in the midst of the wilderness, Nathan was so paranoid about discovery he would listen only with ear buds. Dana shivered.

  Stuart stood again and looked around. In one corner of the chamber there appeared to be a fold in the walls. It turned out to be another semi-chamber, the furthest part of the cave from the entrance. A hole had been dug, and Stuart peered into it.

  ‘Now, I’d been wondering since we got here how he did this. Toilet and waste disposal. Without attracting wildlife. I’ll need to explore this a bit more to work out how he’s doing it, but I’ll spare you the footage. Let’s say he has a system, and it looks like he was running out of room.’

  Stuart turned and went back towards the light. As he replaced the sheet curtain he leaned into it. ‘Hmmm. Bug spray. He saturated the edges of the sheet to keep the bedroom as free from bugs as possible. It uses less repellent than spraying himself all the time. Smart.’

  Stuart grabbed the camera and, switching it around, loomed into it.

  ‘That’s all for now, folks. I’ll get this emailed to you as fast as I can. Hope it helps. We’ll seal the place off, grid it and get some heavier duty effort into it. Let me know if you want anything specific explored. I’ll drone the diary to the base team, and someone can drive it over to you. Might even get there before this footage. Back to you in the studio.’

  Bill stood up and massaged his lower back. ‘Thoughts?’

  Dana leaned against a bookshelf. ‘No fire.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was no fire, or barbecue, or any way of cooking anything. Or sit by, in the cold. Given how paranoid he was about discovery, he probably didn’t want any fire or smoke either. He’s seriously lived for fifteen years on cold or raw food. Even in winter.’

  Mike nodded at the darkened screen. ‘My kids would live on cereal and chocolate if I gave them half a chance. To be fair, Whittler had a fair sprinkle of fruit and veg there, but it was all canned. I guess you get used to not cooking stuff.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe there’s more nutrients that way.’

  Bill interjected. ‘Mikey, you were sceptical about the fifteen years; about whether he’d actually done that. This change your mind?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ Mike swivelled so that he faced both Bill and Dana. ‘On the logistics side, I’m more convinced. Seeing how he set things up, seeing how well that was all hidden; yeah. He could hide that long, not be seen for that long; eat and sleep and crap for that long. But I still doubt he could live for that long. By which I mean the lack of speaking, the human contact, and so on. I still think that’s impossible.’

  Bill scratched the back of his hand. ‘Hmmm. Dana?’

  Dana puffed her cheeks. ‘I’m kind of the opposite. Talking with him, I’m totally conv
inced he could manage without people. He has that within him. There’s a resilience which could do it. Plus, I think he worked out how to do it: how to make the silence an advantage. It already suited his personality, but he worked out how to be that way without going crazy. So he could do that, I reckon.

  ‘On the other hand, I’d always been sceptical about the logistics. Just the practicalities – what if he got toothache; why he didn’t get bothered by snakes, dingoes, spiders; how he survived the cold and the heat and the bugs. I’m not practical, so I couldn’t see how the day-to-day could be handled. Nothing in the world would persuade me to live in anything like that. But seeing it, yes, it’s fairly clean and bug-free. He’s worked out the water, the shelter. He seems to have plenty of food. Seeing it tells me he sorted out the practicalities as well as the psychology. So I’m sticking with yes. See it as a serial killer’s lair, Bill?’

  ‘Hmm, not especially. Though the detailed search might produce evidence of other crimes, so I’ll still hedge my bets. But, point taken. Okay.’ Bill clapped his hands once. ‘Gather your thoughts, then my office in ten minutes. I want to know what this means for our approach and any research we might need to do.’

  As he left the office Bill held the door for a uniform, who passed Dana a clear plastic bag. It contained Nathan Whittler’s journal.

  Chapter 18

  Dana saw Rainer Holt from the other end of the corridor. He waved, and mimed going into her office. She nodded and muttered, ‘Ryner, Ryner,’ as she walked. When she got there Rainer was waiting like a soldier reporting for duty. She locked the journal into the top drawer of her desk. She’d have to at least skim it before she spoke to Nathan again.

  ‘Hey, how’d it go?’

  Rainer stood a little too rigidly as he spoke. Dana kept waiting for an opportunity to tell him to sit down and relax a little. But he seemed to have the ability to continually speak, whether he was breathing in or out. He rattled off his discussion with Pringle without a semblance of a break for oxygen. Dana made a mental note to suggest he consider a career in politics.

  ‘So, in your view, much of what Whittler became was essentially set by the time he left Pringle’s?’

  ‘Looks that way. I haven’t met him, of course. But the loner thing, fear, stubbornness; that was there when he was a teenager.’

  It had struck Dana earlier that Nathan’s time in the cave would be a distillation: a pure and concentrated form of the person he’d always been. Being alone for so long, as Bill had said, left no need for adaptation imposed by compromise. Nathan had been free to be Nathan in unalloyed form. It followed, therefore, that Nathan was more likely to talk when Dana agreed with his general train of thought, but be spiky or belligerent the moment she contested things.

  ‘Pringle doesn’t know what finally made up Whittler’s mind to run? Why then, and why there?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. In his view, “there” seems to have been anywhere. Whittler had no real destination in mind, except for “not here”.’ Rainer hesitated, before following through with an observation. ‘That suggests running from, not running to, doesn’t it? Anyway, it was some months in the making – collecting all the stuff and storing it at Pringle’s. Maybe “then” was a general plan, and it got hurried up by some event. Or maybe he’d always intended to go then.’

  Dana liked the amount of thought Rainer had put into this while driving back from Earlville. She held up a finger.

  ‘I’m inclined towards a precipitating event. If it was a general plan he could activate at any time, or he had a planned date in mind, he’d have gone late spring or summer. That would have given him months without cold weather to get everything set up. I don’t believe he knew about this cave before he started running – I think he lucked into it. So he actually went at a dreadful time: winter was about to begin and he had to set things up fast. He isn’t a “fast set-up” person. He’s methodical, everything in its place.’

  ‘Like Pringle?’

  ‘Hmm. Good point. Pringle as a father figure, a role model? Yes, that fits. Sounds like his own family was the polar opposite of that. So anyway, the decision to go then, in the late autumn: that’s because a key event made him do it.’

  She had to flex her leg against the desk to free her kneecap. ‘Have a dig around of incident logs in early to mid 2004, please, especially related to the farm Whittler lived on. Including paramedic and firefighter attendance – it needn’t have been criminal to have been the last straw for Whittler. And ask Lucy what she can get about the parents’ car accident. That’s bothering me now.’

  ‘And hunt some more for the Toyota?’

  ‘Ooh, yes. Do that. I think it’s buried under fifteen years’ worth of foliage somewhere, so you’d be trying to prove a negative, really. But yes; any sightings, any traffic offences, etcetera. Good stuff, Rainer. I like your thinking about this. Thanks.’

  With Rainer gone, Dana was about on schedule for the strategy meet with Bill and Mike. As she turned to gather a file, she was seized by a sudden panic. Her vision began to swim, like a bookshelf in an earthquake. She clutched the desk to stay upright. Oxygen left her, a slight whistling sound as it passed beyond her control and away.

  Hoping she wasn’t groaning or screaming, she turned her back on the corridor and felt blindly for a pocket. From the moment she grabbed the nebuliser, the fear stabilised. She grasped it tight, squeezing desperately. Facing the wall, she took a big hit from the inhaler, and waited. For twenty seconds she allowed the gasping to subside, holding her file in front of her so anyone passing would think she was reading. Eventually she felt the heat dissipate, the vision calm and the wheezing recede.

  She’d faced it down again, thanks to the enduring, resilient power of placebo.

  Her own self-doubt whined that she should be able to cope by now: that since she had faced some version of this at least once every day for years, she should have a better means of coping. But while she was darkly familiar with panic attacks and feelings of utter hopelessness, on this Day they were fiercer; more sure of themselves and the vulnerability they induced.

  How many times could she get away with it? Each incident was a lesson. They seemed to be random – certainly beyond her control – and once started, they had to take their course. She couldn’t imagine an incident in front of Nathan or in a meeting with Bill. She didn’t want to think what they’d see in her during those moments. For now, she was trusting that an incident would punch through at a time when she could hide and ride it out. Luck. She was hoping for luck. The thing that was forever in short supply.

  She passed Lucy’s office on the way to Bill’s and caught the latest catch-and-throw with Rainer.

  ‘How’d it go with Pringle? Did you chaise him down, drawer him in? What did it hinge on? Could he handle it?’

  ‘I kept chiselling away. Sofa so good, but now I’ve had to shelve it.’

  They both chuckled then fist-bumped.

  ‘Here we go. Toyotas and their secret lives . . .’

  Mike had propped himself up against a filing cabinet, checking his messages. Bill was sitting in his comfy chair, a desk chair shaped like the driver’s seat in a sports car. It was the only overt display of masculinity in the whole room. Bill’s wife, Melinda, was an interior designer and she’d made over her husband’s office. She’d done ridiculously well: Dana wanted to live here.

  ‘Stu called me,’ began Bill. ‘He tried you first, but you must’ve left the office by then. And, for the hundredth time, turn on your damned mobile.’

  Dana’s hand reflexed to her pocket and she blushed when she realised she didn’t even have the phone with her, let alone on.

  ‘Sorry. What did Stu want?’

  ‘They found the knife, eventually. Wedged under a freezer at the end of the murder aisle. Not, in his view, hidden there deliberately. The angle it was – accidental, he thinks. Maybe kicked there in the scuffle. Anyway, it has blood on it. He had it bagged and driven to Forensics: they’re working on it now.’r />
  ‘Hmm, unlikely there’ll be fingerprints. Whoever did it might well have been wearing gloves. So it’s handy but might not be conclusive.’

  That was true, thought Bill. He remained convinced it was Whittler, simply because nothing was as compelling as finding the man there, hands on a dead body and blinking in torchlight. They kept finding maybes and could-haves on the motivations of others – Megan, Lynch, the Alvarez clan – but it still turned in Bill’s eyes to Whittler.

  ‘What’s your plan of attack, Dana?’

  She checked her notes. ‘Well, I think two main areas. First, the cave.’ She focused primarily on Bill, knowing Mike’s role in this discussion was devil’s advocate. She and Mike had an unwritten understanding that they would push each other in this kind of meeting – the reasoning and justification it required made them think better.

  ‘Whittler needs to know we’ve found it. It’s crucial to him, and we’ll be asking things that show we now understand where he’s been. It would be silly to deny it, and I think we need to face his pain up front. He’s going to be very upset, I think. It’s so personal to him.’

  ‘Yeah, totally,’ interjected Mike. ‘We’re opening him up, and he’s not used to having anything in his world disrupted.’

  She turned back to Bill. ‘So, my plan there is to focus on wonderment and marvelling on what he created. In time, I’ll need to segue into getting from the cave to all the places I’m sure he robbed, but I think that might need to happen gradually. I can be an utterly convincing know-nothing rube, for some reason. And I genuinely couldn’t live in such a place myself. So I think I’ll seem authentic to him.’

  ‘Yeah, I think if you can settle the fact that we know where it is, and that we’re being respectful in how we search it, you’re going to have to ride out the rest. As we said, he’ll pick a fight over something as part of his adjustment process. The more I consider it, the more I think it’ll be this. The other area?’

  ‘Rainer did some interesting work on Pringle, of Pringle’s Furniture. I want to ask Whittler about his time there: looks like it was quite formative generally. I think I can work in some questions about why he ran, and why then. There’s some kind of family iceberg there we’re not seeing yet. Talking it over with Rainer, I think Whittler was spooked by something particular which made him run then, rather than later.’