S White - Hermit

Mike held up a placating hand, intrigued by the choice of words. Not Nathan Whittler’s needs – Jeb’s needs.

‘He’s been checked out by our doctor several times. He’s basically fit and well but… look, he’s fragile.’

Jeb puffed his cheeks and reached reflexively for a pack of cigarettes. He’d almost retrieved them from his inside pocket before he realised and dropped his hands.

‘I don’t believe it, really. I mean, fifteen years. We’d all given up. And your guys said something about… charging? Nate?’

Mike was sure Lucy wouldn’t have given that detail; yet Jeb clearly thought it. He must, therefore, have at least one contact inside the station; a contact who presumed Nathan had been charged. It made Jeb a connected kind of person; Mike disliked them.

‘He was at a crime scene when we got there. We haven’t charged anyone yet. Your brother is helping us with the investigation. It all takes time, Jeb, lots of time. We’re still piecing things together at the moment, so I’d appreciate talking to you about your family life; the time before your brother went away.’

Jeb shook his head, as if the news couldn’t settle.

‘Are you sure I can’t see him?’

Mike placed a notepad on the table and clicked his pen. ‘Not at the moment. He’s being well taken care of but he’s easily overwhelmed; we have to be cautious. Plus, we specifically asked him, and he said he didn’t want anyone notified on his behalf at that point.’

Jeb looked… what was it? Disappointed? Calculating? Mike was finding it hard to read a face so massive – he was drawn back again to the sheer volume of Jeb’s skull. He rushed to continue, feeling Jeb’s need to control the pace and direction.

‘Jeb, we’ve contacted you ourselves, off our own bat. We’re talking to you because it aids the investigation but we have to follow Nathan’s wishes. He’s, uh, not able to deal with too much at once. I’m sure you understand.’

‘Okay.’

Mike concluded that was the best he’d get. He was trying to distinguish between Jeb’s shock at the news and how sudden it was, and anything else he might be thinking.

‘So you’re… how many years older than Nathan?’

‘Uh, eight years, give or take. He was, um, not totally planned.’

‘Tell me a bit about your parents, and the farm.’

Jeb sat back a little. It would be reasonable, Mike thought, to assume he was collecting his thoughts, trying to frame a coherent timeline for a stranger. Eminently reasonable: yet Mike found himself seeking another motive, for reasons he couldn’t yet fathom.

‘Well, I think we lived a couple of places just after I was born, but the farm was all I could ever remember. I say farm: twelve hectares, more of a backyard by Aussie standards. Previous owners had sheep back then – Merinos, actually – but a few dry years ended that. Bank foreclosed, we got it cheap. There was still a couple of barns away from the house, and some old machinery in them. But we never ran it as a farm. I think our parents liked the extra land.’

‘Because?’

‘Because… they didn’t like people very much.’ Jeb shrugged. ‘Not sociable. They liked the isolation.’

That word again. Mike had rarely come across so many people who’d viewed it so positively.

‘Was there something in particular they didn’t like about people?’

Jeb gave a slight grin, as though Mike had asked a naïve question.

‘No, no. Everything. They thought the world was a sinful place, Detective. They were very religious, very Christian. Took the Bible at its word.’

‘Regular churchgoers, then?’

Jeb’s smile broadened. It lacked mirth, warmth.

‘Ah, not as much as you’d think, no. How can I explain it? They went to church each Sunday because they were Christians and they thought all Christians should do that. But they didn’t think much of the church in this town; weren’t very impressed.’ Jeb paused. ‘Preacher was too happy-clappy and tolerant for them. It was over-modern: too free and easy. They liked their Christianity to be… in no uncertain terms.’

‘Quite fundamentalist about it?’

‘In many ways, yeah. Don’t get me wrong – decent people. But strict parents, and pious. No flashy modern clothes, no jewellery, no TV. We had a radio, but only the spoken word, no pop music. Just Radio National, or Christian stations. A lot of modern life left them cold.’

For Mike, Nathan’s world view – and his reactions to life – were starting to add up. Raised in a preachy atmosphere that was suspicious of modern life: his running to a cave and hiding no longer seemed quite as much of a stretch. It would explain why he ran – to get away from the strictures, the unyielding doctrine and its enforcement. But Mike’s misgivings continued, as though he were missing something obvious and important.

‘So you grew up in a home at odds with the world around you?’

‘Yes, I did.’ Jeb stopped, then seemed to realise he didn’t want to finish the statement. ‘ We did. Had to adapt and live two different lives, really.’

Jeb mopped his glowing temples in a way Mike found curiously effeminate. He patted at them with an immaculate handkerchief – there was something precious about the gesture that didn’t fit his overbearing presence.

‘There was no church school in town and they couldn’t afford private education for either of us, Nate and I. So we had to go to the local school. I think our parents thought it was bad for our discipline but they never had the money to do anything about it.’

‘Discipline?’

Jeb looked up at the light then down again. ‘I don’t know how you were raised, Detective, but in my house there were rules, and a price for disobeying them. There was a strict hierarchy, a known code of conduct. Retribution was swift, the consequences of action were clear. Our house had a lockable cellar; dark, cold – full of spiders, snakes in summer. The threat was often enough. Let’s say the upper hand was what worked in that house. Nathan never got to grips with it. I was a quicker study.’

Mike concentrated hard to make sure he would recall the exact wording of Jeb’s answers. He felt they needed unpicking, somehow. For such a solid physical object, Jeb was a lot of smoke.

‘I see. How did your parents react when Nathan came along?’

‘Oh, mortified. Something’d gone wrong, hadn’t it?’ Jeb put his hands flat on the table, appearing to warm to the conversation when it turned to his parents’ potential hypocrisy or humiliation. Mike made a note as Jeb talked on.

‘Either they’d had sex when they should’ve had the faith to resist temptation, or something failed in the contraception department. Only two options, right?’

‘So Nathan was seen as…?’

‘A mistake. A horrible and obvious, walking and talking mistake. Anyone who’d thought they were a strict, holy, righteous couple were sniggering and pointing. They were a laughing stock. The devout couple and their nineteenth-century ways – and here was proof they had fornicated when they weren’t planning for a child. Everyone could see it: like catching an Amish with a laptop, you know? Nathan was their own weakness reflected back at them.’

The last struck Mike as the result of plenty of brooding; possibly, of therapy. Jeb’s dislike of his parents – and the discrepancy between their preachiness and behaviour – was apparent. Parents like those produced offspring like these, Mike concluded.

‘That’s a very deep-thinking view. Did they treat him any differently?’

‘From how they’d treated me?’ Jeb puffed his cheeks and rolled his eyes: the theatre of years of exasperation. ‘Oh, yeah. They indulged him. For all that he was a mistake, they knew it wasn’t his fault he’d been born. So they cut him some slack. I’d been on a tighter leash: classic first child. I was way older, of course, but I was the upcoming man of the house and Nate could just moon around, reading and stuff.’