Hermit Page 5

  Dana let the silence linger, openly studying him, watching the reaction it produced. As she’d expected, he turned away, as though she’d bullied him in a schoolyard.

  ‘You’re finding the number of people around you disturbing, Mr Whittler.’

  She didn’t ask; she stated. He didn’t reply.

  ‘I thought about this as you were brought in. I can’t necessarily reduce the number of people around you, but perhaps some explanation will give you a little context.’

  No response. Although he shivered: seemingly involuntarily, judging by his slight grimace. Any body language, any inflection – let alone any comment – appeared to him an unconscionable degree of exposure on his part. Perhaps he would prefer total darkness, or to be a disembodied voice: being visible and tangible was apparently unfamiliar, worrying. She sensed that dealing with Nathan Whittler would be like walking on coral – sharp, unsteady, desperately fragile; wanting to explore but fearing that, with every step, she would be destroying what she sought to understand.

  ‘You’re being held in a glass-fronted cell, for now. I apologise for that, but we’re guided by the advice of our specialist doctor. He’s concerned – as we all are – that you’re finding this situation difficult, and this makes you . . . vulnerable. We’ll play that by ear, Mr Whittler, but the current situation is medically guided, and for your own welfare.’

  Nathan scratched his ear with a shaking hand, which he then enclosed with the other. Dana looked for a sign of some kind that she was helping. She found nothing.

  ‘My aim in speaking to you, Mr Whittler, is to restrict ourselves to short stretches of conversation so that you’re not tired out.’

  While Dana was talking he gazed around the room, as if this were the first time he was truly cognisant of it. She followed his gaze. Blank blue walls drew the eye to the mirror. She wondered if he’d seen enough television to know there were people beyond.

  ‘I sense that your unease goes beyond being in a police station and being interviewed. So allow me to clarify. I’ll be the only person you need to speak to, unless you choose to talk to anyone else. So you needn’t try to work out, or work on, dealing with anyone else. It’s only you and I, Mr Whittler.’

  The silence seemed to shift in some intangible way: a little more amiable.

  ‘We often have wilfully gabby people in here,’ she continued. ‘They talk and talk but say nothing. Frankly, it’ll be nice to speak to someone who measures and values words.’

  His features softened and his lips twitched. Dana felt her skin flush slightly at the realisation that she had her technique for the coming interviews. This time, he knew the microphone would pick him up without leaning forward.

  ‘I think that I will speak to you, Detective, but not to anyone else. That is my preference.’

  It was soft and sharp at the same time: it made Dana stop for a moment. Responsibility, opportunity. Pressure.

  ‘Mr Whittler, we haven’t found an address for you as yet. Could you tell me your current address, please?’

  ‘I cannot, Detective Russo.’

  She paused, waiting for him to fill the space. The tape spooled on.

  ‘I see. Are you currently homeless, Mr Whittler?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I have a home, but not an address.’

  Riddles. Unlike most detectives, she liked suspects who talked elliptically, who danced around and made the police do the work. In her experience, the suspect gave her credit when she worked it out – it took their communication to a different level.

  ‘The logical inference’ – she glanced at him and thought she spotted a gold star for using the word – ‘would be some form of mobile home – a caravan, or a motorhome, or a boat.’ She watched him carefully. Not a flicker. ‘But I don’t sense that’s correct.’

  Just a small shift in his chair, maybe ten centimetres. He hid it with another scratch at his arm, which she could see held five or six insect bites. But he did move.

  ‘Would you like some calamine for those bites, Mr Whittler? I’m sure we could find some.’

  ‘No, thank you, Detective. I’m quite used to them.’

  She made sure he noticed her scribble on the pad. She was certain he couldn’t read her scrawl upside down – few could read it at all – but he watched her take note of something significant.

  Dana needed to see that he wanted to know.

  ‘So, your accommodation. We’ll come back to that, if we may. I’ll write “undefined” for now.’

  His stony expression affected disdain for whatever she was recording, but again she saw him inching towards her.

  She changed tack. ‘I’m sorry about the jumpsuit, by the way. It’s standard issue. We needed your clothing for forensic analysis.’

  He shook his head a little sadly.

  ‘Mr Whittler? Something about the jumpsuit?’

  He risked – and it felt like a risk to her – a quick glance at her face. Then he shied away, as if he’d stared at the sun. He recomposed himself with some deep breaths: she recognised the technique as a stomach-settling, centring exercise from her youth. It took her inside herself: deep down, away from whatever she was facing.

  ‘The jumpsuit is not problematic, Detective. I think the process, however, was unnecessary.’ He was talking to the table leg.

  ‘The process? Please explain, Mr Whittler.’

  He folded his arms and for a second Dana thought he’d clam up entirely. Her heart yelped as she thought she’d blown it, and blown it early. In the split-second that followed she realised how much she had already been drawn into him.

  ‘To wear this jumpsuit, Detective, I had to take off my own clothes. As you say, they’re needed for forensics, and I understand that. But it meant I had to undress . . . well . . . in front of other people. I assume you make everyone do that; but still . . . I found it . . . uncomfortable.’

  He sat back a little. She paused before replying. His fear of people seemed deep, defining. She needed to understand more about where it came from and what it implied – it suffused everything he did.

  ‘Yes. Yes, Mr Whittler, I can understand that. I apologise. Unfortunately, we have a standard procedure we have to follow with everyone, regardless of circumstance. The courts demand that we do it the same way each time.’

  ‘Hmm. You’re someone who values her privacy, Detective. Yes?’

  People had accused her of projecting that. She had been charged with being introspective, a deep thinker; a non-sharer. And it had come with that pejorative tone.

  ‘Yes, very much so. It’s a dying art, don’t you think?’

  He seemed unable to actually smile, but capable of a smirk.

  She paused again, sizing up what she needed to do at this point.

  ‘The court’s demand: it’s intended to protect your rights, in part. But I can see how it would . . . affect your privacy. I’ll try to ensure it’s done more respectfully if it’s needed again.’

  He nodded sagely at the floor and his reply was almost a whisper. ‘Thank you, Detective Russo.’ He sipped at the water; his hand shook a little. He reached with one finger and lightly touched the bottle cap.

  ‘May I ask you about your early life, Mr Whittler?’

  He scratched at his bites again, but absent-mindedly, as though he did this so often it was subconscious. She took his silence as not quite assent, not quite dissent: she edged across the highwire in between.

  ‘You were born near here?’

  He looked up towards the ceiling momentarily; the information appeared to be a reach, and she wondered why. Again, she thought of Bill and his view that Nathan would be hard to catch in a lie. But this information could be – was being – checked.

  ‘Yes, in Earlville. Or rather, in the ambulance on the way to Earlville. So I’m told.’ This last was added as if the source were unreliable and he couldn’t be held responsible for it. She took it as an indication that he didn’t want to spill anything that was untrue.

 
‘Are your family still in the area?’

  ‘I don’t know. They were.’

  Dana stared evenly at him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Detective Russo. I didn’t mean to sound short. I simply don’t know if they’re still there. They were the last time I looked. But that, as I’m sure you’ll discover, was a while ago.’

  Something thrummed in Dana’s blood: her sixth sense that she was close to something that mattered. ‘How long ago would you classify as “a while”?’

  Nathan looked at his fingers; it made her look at them, too. Elegant, long, neat; they lacked callouses or any other signs of heavy manual work. If Dana had seen a photo of them, she would have assumed he was an office worker – it fitted with his pale skin. He looked the indoors type.

  ‘It’s 2019 now, isn’t it?’ he asked. Dana nodded in reply; he would have seen only the edge of her shadow moving. He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, then, the last I heard from my family was fifteen years ago. Yes, fifteen.’ He tilted his head to one side, as if history could slosh into it.

  Dana was finding her way towards something here, but it was groping rather than striding.

  ‘So you lost contact in 2004, is that correct?’

  ‘That autumn, yes. We had a farm, about halfway between Carlton and Earlville. I was living with my parents, Martin and Pamela, and my brother. Jeb.’

  His voice quivered towards the end. He flicked a look at the mirror. Perhaps, thought Dana, he’s shut them out of his mind for so long, and now they’re creeping back. Maybe he knows exactly what information he’s giving out and what the consequences are. He’d know he’ll be traced through that, and surely they’d have a fix on who he is and where he’s been in the last fifteen years. She wondered why he was so confident in giving the information: it jarred with his reticence and seemingly acute need for privacy.

  ‘Would you like us to contact any of your family?’

  Nathan puffed his cheeks and sat back. His skin flushed and she saw his neck muscles tighten. He took thirty seconds to recover his poise. She saw how much he’d been rattled. Dana let the moment stretch. She had the feeling that any silence from Nathan was not a signal that nothing was happening. It resonated for him in a different way: it was a period of noiseless reflection, not an absence of thought.

  After a minute or so, he replied. ‘No . . . no, I don’t think so, thank you, Detective. I can’t imagine they’ll want to . . . no doubt they’ll find out that I’m here, but I don’t think I need to waste anyone’s time actively telling them so. I’m sure you’re very busy.’

  Each sentence rolled off the last; by his previous standards, it felt very deliberate – almost tactical. Dana often interviewed people who had family problems, but it rarely slid through her own skin. Nathan’s flustered reaction somehow seemed to chime with what she might say, given the same quandary.

  ‘So, fifteen years ago you lost contact with your family. Was there some kind of falling-out?’

  Again there was a stiffening, one he tried to hide by coughing unnecessarily. She mentally closed off a box in her strategy and knew to keep away from the subject – pushing it again at this stage would, she felt, prompt only resistance or shutdown.

  ‘Not really a falling-out, no. I mean, not one incident. It was me that left the family home. Families don’t always work out, do they, Detective?’

  She wrote slowly, unsure if Nathan was merely fishing randomly or if he’d seen in her features something he recognised – some form of alignment. The direction of the conversation was beginning to bother her, starting to veer off on to swampy ground.

  Nathan scratched at his palm, where the blood had pooled before. Seeming to believe that some was still there, he ran a fingernail along his fate line and studied it, looking for detritus.

  ‘No, not always. When we bumped into you, Mr Whittler, you were in Jensen’s Store, on the Old Derby Road. Had you been there before for any reason?’

  Nathan shifted his weight, leaning forward slightly and resting his elbows on his knees. Now his face was level with the edge of the table, though his focus remained on his bloodless palm.

  ‘Yes, every now and then. For supplies, you know. They have a lot of useful things in that store.’

  Dana noticed that he had slipped into adding irrelevant details; almost as if he thought this was what a conversation would sound like. She sensed that if she waited . . .

  The silence unravelled and stretched.

  One minute became two. Became three.

  Inside her head was a roaring rush, a desperation to start asking further questions. Dana made herself be still. She looked evenly at the top of his head, focusing on her breathing and the widow’s peak in his hair. His shoulders rose and fell: she noted the moment at which a slight judder infected the movement. The shudder became stronger, until he leaned back with tear-rimmed eyes. Still he wouldn’t look at her; his vision slid to the wall with the mirror and appeared distraught at what it found. She could see tears sliding down his cheeks, snot appearing at one nostril. His voice trembled when he finally gave way.

  ‘I’ve . . . done terrible things, Detective. I’m so ashamed. So . . . ashamed. I knew it wasn’t right, but I kept going, I kept on . . . terrible. I had no right, no right at all.’

  He ran a forearm across his mouth and forced himself to gaze blearily at her shadow. ‘At the store . . . is he . . . ?’

  ‘He’s dead, Mr Whittler. He’s dead.’

  Chapter 6

  Dana took a deep breath when she closed the door on Nathan. It had taken five minutes for the silent crying to stop. He now had a sandwich, some tissues and a paperback she’d commandeered for him. They both wanted a break, but he didn’t wish to go back to his cell. Bill was eager for feedback but realised she needed a moment.

  She felt in her pocket for a second, shook her head and took a deep breath.

  ‘Told you so,’ Bill called to her as he approached. ‘That’s why you’ve got this and Mike hasn’t: Whittler’s a nightmare to open up. Could take days, and we only have a few hours.’

  She nodded, exhausted already. Some of it was holding the Day at bay, but much of it was Nathan Whittler. He required total concentration; she believed the devil would be in the detail: where his fingers were touching, a quiver in his voice on a key word, what went unsaid.

  The corridor had a series of skylights – illumination without compromising security – and they walked through cylinders of muted daylight. The main custody suite was quiet now: two overnight drunks and a burglary suspect had been kicked out after an early breakfast. Simpson, the custody officer, smiled at Dana as she passed. He liked her – she never asked him to bend the rules, was scrupulous about paperwork and gave him plenty of notice when she wanted to speak to a prisoner. He worked eleven-hour shifts without daylight: anyone who played the game properly was okay in his book.

  They made their way to the drinks machine. The ceiling light was overly white and antiseptic, like in a dental surgery. She caught a half-reflection in the glass front of the machine. She looked shattered, her hair thin and strained, her skin sallow. It wasn’t all down to a sunrise swallowing a revolver. Nathan had, in a short time, taken a toll.

  Bill pretended his glasses needed cleaning. Patience was one of his virtues, alongside a purity of faith. In her. He pointed at the button for bottled water, because she was standing there, looking vacant.

  ‘D’oh, sorry, Bill. First impressions? Okay. You were right, he’s way off beam with almost anything. All our rules and training are pretty much useless.’ The bottle slid reluctantly until it toppled into the drawer below.

  Bill nodded. ‘Told you. He reminds me of someone, or something, very strongly. But I can’t quite place it. Like it keeps sliding away when I focus.’

  Dana smiled. ‘Yes, he has that kind of quality about him: not exactly slippery, more . . . hard to define. I don’t even think it’s deliberate. There’s something inside that makes him that way, something about his past.’

 
They walked slowly down the corridor. On each side were open doors and slivers of chatter; the clicks of typing and mouse-manoeuvre, low-muttering telephone conversations and the poppy chirp of personalised ringtones. Uniforms mingled with admin; whiteboards were crude mixes of handwriting and extravagant arrows. Too many shards of too many stories she didn’t know about. She needed her space. She needed to think.

  ‘Yeah,’ Bill said. ‘His past. About that. We’re having trouble finding anything after 2004. When I say “having trouble”, I mean of course we have nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Maybe he went travelling or something.’ Dana entered her office and switched on the light. Recent emails from Central made it clear they were to become a low-carbon organisation. ‘I think he took off for a big reason. He denied it, but it felt like there was some kind of family problem; a dispute, maybe.’ She stood next to her desk and slipped off her shoes.

  ‘We’ve had officers check out the Whittler family home. But it’s not in the family any more: it’s an equestrian centre now. His parents died in 2007 – ravine versus car, ravine wins. Whittler may not know about that, I suppose.’ Bill sank into a chair and played with a stray thread on his trouser hem. ‘That only leaves the brother, Jeb. He’s travelling back from some business meeting or other, apparently. He’s . . .’ Bill glanced at his watch, ‘hopefully two hours away.’

  He glanced beyond her shoulder to the wall. Most detectives – those who had their own office – used that as the Ego Wall. The venue for family photos, certificates, plaques swapped at inter-agency gatherings; a framed snap of the detective glad-handing or yukking it up with some minor celebrity. This wall had a fire-evacuation notice, a defunct taxi company’s business card and a stain of undetermined origin.