Ascension Day

by John Matthews

  Ascension Day

  John Matthews

  E-Media Books

  As well as being a novelist, John Matthews is an experienced journalist, editor and publishing consultant, though after the success of Past Imperfect, which became an international bestseller, he has devoted most of his time to writing books. In 2004, The Times compiled a list of top ten all-time-best legal thrillers which included Past Imperfect. John Matthews lives in Surrey with his wife and son.

  Praise for John Matthews.

  'A major talent has joined the ranks of thriller writers'.

  - Dublin Evening Herald.

  'A novelist of real accomplishment'.

  - Barry Forshaw, Amazon UK.

  'Matthews certainly knows how to keep the reader hungry for the next revelation'.

  - Kirkus UK.

  Ascension Day.

  Ascension Day is like a narcotic, laced with danger, and totally

  addictive. Impossible to put down. This is what thrillers are meant to

  be. Jac McElroy is a character I want to read more of.

  - Jon Jordan. Crime Spree Magazine.

  'If John Grisham ever developed a sense of irony, or Scott Turow ever tried to write from the other side of the prison bars, they might come up with something like John Matthews’s Ascension Day. This is a book that doesn’t sacrifice style for suspense, or character for plot. The legal thriller has needed a jolt of electricity for a few years now and Matthews may just be the man to throw the switch.'

  - Peter Blauner,

  Author of Slipping Into Darkness and The Intruder.

  'Move over Grisham, your reign is over! Reminiscent of vintage Grisham, but Matthews has his own distinctive style. Strong, believable characters and a plot that grips from page one and won't let go, twisting and turning its way towards a nail-biting climax - they don't come much

  better than this. One of the best and most memorable thrillers I've read in

  years. A winner all the way.'

  - Bob Burke. Mystery Readers International.

  'ASCENSION DAY is a fast-paced thriller set between New Orleans and an upstate Louisiana prison, and Matthews' strong descriptive prose brings the darkness at the heart of Libreville penitentiary alive. His chief protagonist, Jac McElroy, is particularly interesting with his Franco-Scottish heritage - and his ever-changing relationship with prisoner Larry Durrant sets the main pulse for this race-against-time thriller... with the stakes and tension racheted up throughout the book.'

  - Luke Croll, Reviewing the Evidence.

  "Lock the doors and turn off the phone. Once you start this compelling, thoughtful, edge-of-your-seat thriller, you won't have time for anything else. A riveting read that hits it just right - right on the knife-edge between psychological and action thriller."

  - Chris Mooney,

  Edgar-nominated author of ‘Remembering Sarah’.

  Past Imperfect.

  'Matthews maintains the suspense... an engrossing odyssey into the seamy side of a world that is so near, yet sometimes seems so far. Compulsive reading.'

  - The Times

  'Impressive... strong characterization and a relentless race against time to avert the worst carry the reader along the thick pages of this psychological and legal thriller with a difference.'

  - Time Out

  'One of the most compelling novels I've read... an ambitious and big novel which will keep you enthralled to its last page.'

  - Cork Examiner

  'A classy, well-written and unusual thriller.'

  - Yorkshire Post

  'Matthews delivers one of the best debut thrillers in years, brave, ambitious and remorselessly entertaining. Past Imperfect is a stormer.'

  - Dublin Evening Herald

  The Last Witness.

  'Distinctively written... all the forceful energy of the best thrillers.'

  - Kirkus UK.

  The Shadow Chaser (The Cure)

  'A thumping great read and a terrific tale, terrifically told.'

  - Ireland on Sunday.

  1

  October, 2004. Libreville, Louisiana.

  At first, Larry wasn’t sure why the sound had awoken him.

  He’d become familiar with all the usual night-time sounds: the clunk of the cell doors and the rattle of keys whenever anyone had to be let in or out unexpectedly after last shut-down; the steady, ominous clump of boots along the steel walkways with the regular cell patrols every hour, punctuated by the impromptu sliding back of two or three inspection hatches along the line; the mumble of the guards at the end and the occasional peal of laughter; the jibes and taunts of new prisoners or regulars who’d suddenly fallen from grace; the gentle sobbing of some of those same new inmates that might take up to a week to finally abate; and the klaxon blare of the Amtrak from Baton Rouge to Jackson seven miles away across the Bayou plain, a siren call to the prisoners from the world outside, elusive freedom – only one of eight attempted break-outs over the past thirty years had got even that far, and they’d all been rounded up within the week between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

  Over the past eleven long years, these sounds had been Lawrence Tyler Durrant’s nightly companions. But this sound was different.

  He could recognize the voices of two of the guards, but they were fighting not to be heard: little more than muted whispers along with the soft sliding back of the bolts on a cell door. Normally, their boot-steps would be heavy and purposeful, cell-door bolts would be slammed back like gunshots, whatever the time of night, and the prisoner’s name shouted out, as if by some miracle the clamour of the guards’ approach might not have awoken him along with everyone else on the cell-block row.

  This time they didn’t want anyone to hear them.

  Larry kept his breathing low and shallow, trying to pick out more. But suddenly his heart was drumming fast and strong, threatening to drown everything out. And when he finally tuned in beyond his own heartbeat, everything was still and silent, as if they somehow knew he was listening in. Then a sudden flurry of shuffling footsteps from five or six cells along.

  ‘What?… What the ffffmmm!’

  Even from that muffled exclamation, before a hand was clamped across to completely strangle it, Larry clearly recognized the clipped Latino intonation: Rodriguez. ‘Roddy’, who’d managed to make him smile and laugh on even the darkest of days; a rare spark of light and life in this pit of gloom he’d called home for over a decade, and one of the closest friends he’d ever had, inside or out. He couldn’t just close his mind and shut his eyes, as he had to so much over the years.

  Maybe he could have turned away if he thought they were just going to give Roddy a beating, but he’d seen that look fired across the canteen earlier by Tally Shavell. It was only a fleeting stare, but in Libreville that was often all you got as warning. The last two on the end of that same look from Tally had both been killed; one with a shiv through the neck in the showers, the other garrotted with a guitar string. There was no reason to believe that with Roddy it would be any different, especially after the beating Tally had given him five months back. Tally didn’t issue second warnings.

  Larry looked towards his cell’s makeshift altar with its array of photos for inspiration: his mother who’d died after a stroke on year five of his sentence, ten months after his appeal failed; his father who’d died when he was only fourteen, mercifully before he’d started to slip into bad ways; his wife, Francine, who hadn’t visited him for the first five years and after that only infrequently, depending on her current-partner-situation, though they still hadn’t divorced yet; his son, Joshua, now twelve, who, except for some recent e-mail contact, he’d seen at most half-a-dozen times over the years – occasional birthdays and at Christmas-time. The only one not represented from his
family was his elder sister, who’d disowned him the day of his incarceration, told his mother – as if she didn’t already have enough heartbreak that day – that as far as she was concerned ‘he no longer exists’.

  But swamping his family photos were religious prints: Dali’s Christ on the Cross, Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, Da Vinci’s Last Supper, Caravaggio’s St Francis, Raphael’s Madonna and Child.

  When word had first got around that Larry had found religion, one of the other inmates, Sal Peretti, had his aunt, who still lived in her native Umbria, send a collection of prints and cards, eleven in all, from the gift shop at Perugia Cathedral, to complete the array on his makeshift altar.

  Upon sight of the finished display, given a misty, eerie glow from fifteen interspersed candles, Roddy had commented simply, ‘Christ!’

  ‘Exactly.’ Larry smiled back drolly.

  Now Larry wasn’t looking just at the altar for inspiration, but beyond – his eyes boring through to the hole they’d dug in the wall behind, along the ventilation shaft, then the twists and dog-legs through three hundred yards of ducting barely enough to squeeze through and two more walls before arriving at the vents by the boiler room; then the final sixty-foot waste-pipe slide to the Achalaya river. The passage that the five of them – himself, Roddy, BC, Sal Peretti and Theo Mellor – knew every inch of, had consumed every spare minute they could steal away over the past ten months.

  That’s where they’d be taking Roddy, for sure: the boiler room deep in the prison’s bowels, where the clank and hiss of the boilers and pipes and two-foot thick walls would prevent even the loudest screams reaching the cells above.

  Larry also knew that if he used their escape passage to get to the boiler room, it would be uncovered, their last hope gone and four of them condemned to die. Those were the odds at Libreville: twenty per cent reprieved, pardoned or commuted to life imprisonment, eighty per cent executed.

  That was the choice right there: Roddy’s life saved for four others lost, including his own. And with two or three of them now with Roddy, what chance did he have in any case of being able to save him? Another muted mumble from Roddy, fading quickly with the rapid shuffle of footsteps along the outside walkway, gave him a sharp prompt. He had to decide quickly.

  But Larry Durrant stayed staring at his makeshift altar, frozen with indecision. Just when he needed guidance the most, there was nothing.

  ‘That’s the original trial preparation file. That’s the trial transcript and notes. Appeal preparation…. and appeal transcript and notes.’ John Langfranc piled each file on the desk before him, some of them four inches thick, with an appropriate pause. ‘Finally, any case notes since.’ The last file was thinnest of all. ‘Though to be honest, not much has happened over the last seven years. Lawrence Durrant has been all but forgotten. Until now.’

  ‘Now that they’re about to kill him,’ Jac said, though his disdain could equally have been aimed at the mountain of paperwork he’d have to plough through over the coming days.

  Langfranc raised an eyebrow and smiled smugly. ‘First thing to get clear, Jac, is that the State of Louisiana never kills anyone. They execute, process, fulfil sentencing, lethally inject, expedite and terminate… but they never kill. If you’re going to use a word like kill, you’ll have to get used to putting legally in front. Presumably, that one word differentiates the State’s actions from those of the people they’re killing. Sorry, processing.’

  ‘Why me?’ Jac asked.

  Fair question, thought Langfranc. He shrugged. ‘Time for you to prove yourself, I guess.’ No point in embellishing beyond that, trying to kid Jac that this might be a landmark glory case. They knew each other too well for that now, and with Jac only passing his criminal law bar exams ten months ago, he’d be aware that he was a long way from being handed the firm’s prize cases. ‘You and I both know that if there was a good angle left in all of this,’ Langfranc waved one hand across the files, ‘Beaton would have taken it himself.’

  Clive Beaton, senior criminal trial lawyer at Payne, Beaton and Sawyer, New Orlean’s second largest law firm, at which Langfranc was a junior partner. Strange title, ‘junior’, for someone fifty-two years old, Jac had always thought. In a way it further underlined Langfranc’s frustration that he should have been made a senior partner earlier. Perhaps one reason why the two of them had bonded so well, the feeling that the firm’s main head-pats and accolades had gone to others, often less deserving. Though in Jac’s case that was mainly because he’d spent his first years wallowing in corporate and tax law before he’d turned to criminal law. The easy route after his initial years of practice in France; commercial law in Louisiana followed the French Napoleonic code, criminal law didn’t.

  Langfranc looked up as the clatter from the general office drifted in.

  ‘I’ve re-scheduled Donneley for three-fifteen,’ Penny Vance, his PA who Jac also shared as a secretary, said through the half-open door. ‘That will give you a clear hour at Liberty street. Oh, and Jem Payne has called for an update briefing on Borkowski before you head out this afternoon, so you might have to cut lunch short to make the time.’

  The information brought a faint slouch, an extra ruffle to Langfranc’s appearance. He always wore the best Versace or Missoni suits with slip-on Italian loafers to match, but with his wild, wavy greying hair, to Jac he still looked somehow unkempt; as if there’d been a strong breeze on his way into work, then the rush of the day simply kept him that way.

  ‘Thanks.’ Langfranc sighed as the door closed; only ten minutes into the day and already everything was at full tilt. He brought his attention back to Jac and Durrant’s files. ‘It’s a no-goer from the outset. Full confession. Every possible angle exhausted at the appeal. No new evidence since. Your only hope is to try and get our good – or bad – Lawrence Durrant pardoned. Throw all on the mercy of our good – or bad – Governor. The illustrious Piers Candaret. And to a lesser extent, the Board of Pardons.’

  Jac’s eyes narrowed. ‘Candaret holds the whip hand?’

  ‘Without a doubt. He nominates the Board to begin with, and while they’re meant to sift through and review everything on his behalf – when it comes to big cases, he likes to have a hands-on, first look-see. And while he’s also meant to accept their recommendations, in many cases he’s gone his own way. So, you’ll file simultaneously with both of them – but the buck stops with Candaret.’

  ‘And that’s all there’s left to do – prepare a simple plea letter?’

  ‘Well, there’s a tad more to it than that. You’re going to have to plough through most of this to get the tone right for the letter. Hit the right notes. Durrant’s apparently very religious. Candaret is too, or at least he pushes Christian and family values at every photo opportunity. And by all claims, Durrant has been a model prisoner. Kept his nose clean. So those are probably good start points. We’re talking about quite a long, considered clemency plea. Six or seven pages, maybe more – plus any relevant file attachments. It might only take a day to prepare the letter, but you could spend a good week in preparation.’ As Langfranc fought to boost the case’s merits, Jac’s quizzical eyebrow merely arched higher. ‘For God’s sake, Jac, this is a big case. For Louisiana murder cases, they don’t come bigger. So don’t make light of it. And whatever might or might not be involved, also don’t lose sight of what’s at stake here. Good or bad or rotten to hell’s core – a man’s life.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ Jac held up one hand in submission and bowed his head slightly. When Langfranc had first told him he’d be getting the case, he was excited: murder of the wife of Adelay Roche, one of Louisiana’s wealthiest industrialists, the case had occupied more newspaper column inches than any other Louisiana case since the Garrison-JFK investigation. He’d immediately dived into the library on St Charles Street to leaf through clippings. But most of the attention had been at the time of the trial and the appeal. For the past seven years the newspapers, and the world outside, had forgotten about Lawr
ence Tyler Durrant; though now no doubt there’d be a renewed flurry of media activity. ‘I suppose I’m just disappointed to know that all the main angles have gone, all avenues for appeal already exhausted. All I’m left with is sweeping up the dust of the case.’

  ‘The only shot at appeal was centred around Durrant’s accident and his resultant memory lapses at the time. And all hopes on that front died seven years ago.’ Langfranc shrugged. ‘And as I said, if there were any angles left, Beaton would have taken the case himself. But it’s still a big case, Jac. The biggest. Life or death for Larry Durrant and every local TV network and newspaper, and some beyond, covering which way it’s going to swing. You might not be Beaton’s golden boy, but the fact that he’s even given you a high profile case like this – even if all that’s left is a clemency plea – means that he’s noticed you. You exist.’

  ‘Therefore I am.’

  Langfranc smiled back thinly. Jac McElroy had set his cap on criminal law with a determination that probably was largely lost on old man Beaton. At thirty-one, with six years practice under his belt, he could have just kept coasting along with corporate law, raking in the big bucks. Taken the easy route. But, no, he’d wanted to do criminal law, so that meant going back to square one and taking a fresh set of bar exams alongside a bunch of fresh-faced graduates while still juggling the remainder of his corporate caseload. So that meant he was either crazy, or it was a real vocation. From Jac’s first ten months of criminal case-handling, Langfranc hadn’t yet made his mind up which.

  Jac was thoughtful for a second. ‘What’s Candaret’s track record on pardons and reprieves?’

  ‘Pardons are rare, and will no doubt now be doubly difficult since the last but one guy pardoned, Aaron Harvey – also African-American, as it happens – killed again just six months back. With commuted to life there’s far more chance, I think running somewhere between one in five or six. But that could be one of the first things to check – along with case histories. Get a feel for what might hit the right note with Candaret.’