S White - Hermit

‘Ah, I see. To be honest, Detective Russo, I’d struggled with that most of my life anyway, albeit in a different setting. As I assume you…’ He collected himself. ‘Well, anyhow, it wasn’t a different trade-off as such, just a different balancing point on the same set of scales.’

For a moment she feared he’d clam up, just when she sensed he was revealing something deep inside himself. She felt her breath resume when he did.

‘I’d always wanted more solitude than my life could practically offer. Now I was much further along that spectrum: but the same spectrum, and essential issue, were there. I still had to engage with people in some way, at some point. This time the engagement was more about observation, planning. It was, what’s the word? More… anthropological, I think.’ He nodded to himself, as if the exact word had only now occurred to him. ‘I studied humans for a particular reason, for a particular end: how to avoid them for the few minutes I was in their world. I could choose, after a fashion, when and how.’

‘I understand, Mr Whittler.’ Dana paused then almost whispered, ‘And yes, you’re correct in the assumption you made.’

Nathan nodded solicitously, and both were silent for a moment, almost as an act of commemoration for Dana’s admission. She swallowed hard as she realised this was a disclosable, legally usable declaration. People would know: it felt like cutting open a scar.

‘It’s impossible, you know,’ he said suddenly.

‘Excuse me?’

‘To get that kind of total internal silence. In the modern world, I mean. There’s too much in the world to allow it, too much stimulus. There’s noise, distraction, obligations, people, the need to earn money, the pressure to engage, the reactions of others. Too much. I mean, that’s what you’re reaching for isn’t it, Detective? I could tell, when I was speaking about it.’

She had to judge swiftly. ‘I, uh, I can see the virtue of it. But I think most people wouldn’t be able to cope as well as you, Mr Whittler, with that degree of solitude. Both practically and emotionally. Some of us believe we need a ladder out of the pool, no matter how much we enjoy swimming.’

Nathan inclined his head in a touché gesture.

She was about to ask the next question when there was a double rap on the mirror, swiftly followed by another. Each officer had a distinct knock, so the detective knew who was interrupting. Two doubles was Bill’s call sign. She couldn’t ignore it.

‘Would you excuse me a minute, please, Mr Whittler? I need to speak to my boss.’

Nathan nodded and sat back to examine his fingernails. Dana noticed again how fastidiously clean and neat they were. She confirmed to the tape that she was leaving the room.

Bill was there when she closed the door behind her.

‘We found his home. Got video and everything. You need to see this.’

Rainer Holt left the patrol car two hundred metres down the street from Pringle’s, on a herring-bone park with a needlessly steep pitch to the drain. Earlville’s inhabitants had plenty of observational skills, and the time to deploy them. Better to seem to be on a lunch hour and a little aimless than striding deliberately into any particular establishment. So he paused to window-shop in a place selling handmade leather boots, rain slickers and other paraphernalia it claimed was ‘vital for the wilderness’. He wondered if Whittler had much of that kind of gear; or whether he’d disproved the shop’s hectoring by surviving fifteen entire years with pretty much none of their stock.

The main street in Earlville had been pedestrianised last year. He’d seen an old photo of this street with a line of momentous fig trees down the middle, planted to commemorate WW1 diggers. They’d been ripped out ‘for safety reasons’ and replaced with some shade-free human-sized saplings and silver waste bins with ads for flavoured milk. It didn’t seem to Rainer like a reasonable trade-off. An ugly multi-storey car park loomed over the back of the main shopping centre. Designed in the seventies with a deliberately brutalist air, the centre’s concrete now barked harshly at on-comers, the childish font over the entrance failing to impart joy. Off this main strip, older stores remained: the wilderness store, and larger units of pharmacy, grocer, baby clothing and shoes. Pringle’s had been there since the thirties, as the art deco lettering overhead implied. Hipsters from the city weren’t put off by the location. They found it ‘authentic’ and ‘old-school’: they treated the trip like a journey to a living museum.

He strolled into Pringle’s Furniture, immediately spotting the old man himself. The store itself was unpretentious. The walls were the bare metal of a warehouse, the floor unpolished concrete. Furniture wasn’t laid out in ‘inspirational designs’ of fake rooms: this wasn’t a series of lifestyle scenarios and concepts. The items were placed individually and haphazardly, with enough room to walk around each piece, feel the wood and the fabric, and appreciate both the time and effort of creation. It was less a shop, more a space for admiring craftsmanship.

Chatting to a spotty apprentice-type in a space between two expensively distressed armoires, Rufus Pringle flicked a double-glance at Rainer and dismissed the young employee. Rufus wore an old-fashioned brown overall with frameless spectacles peeking from a front pocket. Underneath the overall was a red tie and a collared, checked shirt. He had stubby fingers that toyed with a well-used pencil. Rainer tagged him as a ‘measure twice, cut once’ kind of man.

‘Mr Pringle? Rainer Holt. Police.’ He held out his ID and was unsurprised when Rufus retrieved his glasses, put them on, read every syllable of the card front and back and returned it with a quiet nod.

‘What can I do for you, sir?’ Rufus’s voice was slightly raspy – either the remnants of a cold or he was a reformed smoker.

‘To be honest, Mr Pringle, I’m not sure. I’m testing your dim and distant memory. Nathan Whittler?’

Rufus reached within his mind for a second as he pocketed the spectacles, then shook his head and whistled.

‘Ah, Nate. They found him, eh? What happened?’ There was a disappointed resignation to his tone.

‘You don’t seem surprised he’s resurfaced.’

Rufus shucked off the comment with a wave of the hand and leaned against one of the armoires. ‘Ah, well, he took off like that; always possible it wouldn’t work out. Where did they find the body?’

Rainer paused. His first instinct was to disabuse the old man of the notion. But then he wondered if delaying might eke out something that would otherwise remain hidden.

‘Took off, you say? It was before my time, obviously. Could you talk me through his last few months with you?’ Rainer was just boyish enough for the wide-eyed ingénu shtick to work.

‘Sure.’ Rufus pointed to a bubble office up some rough-hewn stairs. Rainer followed him up, reluctant to touch the handrail for fear of splinters. The office was a repository of invoices with handwritten comments, some sawdust on the floor, a calendar still showing last month, a lousily made mug holding pens, and a crayon drawing of a stick man with Gradad written lopsidedly on the top. Rainer sat on the only other chair, feeling it tilt and groan – he hoped the furniture Pringle sold was more solid than the furniture he used.

‘So, little Nate. Yeah, ’course I remember him.’ There was a slight smile around Rufus’s mouth. ‘Quiet little thing. So damn conscientious. Never really got to grips with any idea of time management. He’d fuss over some little thing for ages, when he should have been on to gluing the joints, or whatever. Steady as, mind; nice kid. Young.’