Ascension Day

by John Matthews

  Jac could see the side of the house from where he was, and closed his eyes for a second to picture the library from his visit two days ago, then shifted to how it would have been twelve years ago, Larry checking out the safe as Jessica Roche walked in behind him…

  Something he was missing… something…

  Jac eased out his breath after a moment, started to pace away.

  I was there at the time.

  He looked from side to side at the neighbouring houses and then along the street. If someone else had been there that night, then where… where? A neighbouring window or garden, or further away? Far enough not to have been noticed by the murderer.

  Only three days left now. Jac shook his head. He hadn’t slept well that night. He hadn’t been able to get hold of Mack Elliott until almost 10 p.m., two hours after he’d checked into yet another hotel room, the photos from the murder scene again spread around him, word and sentence fragments from the session still bouncing through his head.

  ‘You’re as bad as that Jac,’ Mack commented, ‘the last guy handling everything for Larry… asking me to remember things from twelve years back.’

  ‘I know. It ain’t easy.’ Jac laid on the Ayliss Southern drawl. ‘But now there’re a couple of notable things to hopefully remind you.’ Jac set the scene with the chicken guy and his friend in a sequinned suit, pressing him to remember what might have been so important on the TV that Mack would have asked him to shut up; and at that moment – as now, staring emptily into the first dawn light of the street where twelve years ago the murder had taken place, searching for answers – everything seemed to freeze around Jac, hang suspended as he stood in the middle of a strange hotel room, cell-phone in hand, breath held, because he knew that probably Larry’s very last chance depended on Mack’s next words.

  But with a long, tired exhalation, Mack Elliott said that he just couldn’t remember what he might have been watching. ‘Can’t bring anythin’ to mind clearly… I’m sorry. Too long back.’

  ‘Will you keep thinking on it for me?’ Jac reluctant to let possibly the last door close. ‘Call me if you finally remember anything. Not long left now… only a few days.’

  ‘I know.’

  Jac wound forward again on the tape.

  ‘And where did you run to then, Larry?’

  ‘Back to where I’d parked my car… a few blocks away, on Carondelet Street.’

  Jac looked around. Carondelet was to the north, a block beyond St Charles Avenue, which meant Larry would have taken the next right on 4th Street to get there. Jac headed that way as the tape continued, following the same route Larry had twelve years ago as he’d run in panic from the Roche house.

  ‘And did you head straight home then?’

  ‘Not straight away. My mind was spinning with so many things. I wanted to go for a drink somewhere, but I was afraid I might have some of her blood on me that people would notice. So in the end I just drove around for a while – maybe as long as fifty minutes – before I finally headed home.’

  Jac could almost hear the prison clock again in time with his footsteps breaking the quiet of the Garden District dawn. Tic-toc… clip-clop… not long left now…

  ‘And did you have the gun still with you?’

  ‘When I left the house… yeah. But I dumped it in a trash can somewhere out in Metairie while I was driving around. And I noticed then that my jacket was clean. I kept that on…’

  Click…. Stop… rewind. Play again.

  ‘I… I’d checked for a few nights beforehand… and there was no car either in the drive… or lights on that I could see. She… she wasn’t meant to be there.’

  ‘And where was… ’

  Stop. Silence again, only the sound of Jac’s continuing footsteps. He thought about the mystery e-mailers’ words.

  I couldn’t give my name or come forward before, because I’d have incriminated myself. And that still stands now. But I was there…

  Where… where? Incriminated himself? Or perhaps it was just a hoax or a friend of Larry’s, another curve-ball along with Larry’s differing accounts of when and where he’d first seen the news on Jessica Roche’s murder.

  Clip-clop… clip-clop… did do it… didn’t do it…

  Jac stopped as St Charles Avenue came into view ahead: more activity, gentle thrum of some early traffic. Now a block and a half away, nobody would have been able to see anyone leave the Roche house beyond where he was now.

  He walked back again and stood for a moment by the Roche house, looking around one last time as he tried to picture Larry as he was that night, having murdered for the first time, breathless, panicked and running like a rabbit, the gun still with him, the woman walking her dog locking eyes with him for a second… and whether from the images spinning in his head, lack of sleep, or the exertion of walking about with all the heavy padding from his disguise, Jac suddenly felt dizzy, the street and everything around him tilting into a lazy spin. Last hopes tilting, slipping away…

  Jac snapped himself out of it, took a fresh breath. He got back into his car and grabbed a quick take-out coffee on his way back to his hotel. He sipped at it as he walked into his room, checking his watch: Ormdern’s report should arrive in an hour or so; with so little time left now, Ormdern had promised to get it to him first thing.

  Jac decided to use the time to go back over the tapes of Truelle’s earlier sessions with Larry. He’d played most of them before, purely to get a feel for the lead-up to the crucial murder-admission session. Some segments now had more resonance, particularly when Larry started trying to remember old friends, some of them from those key pool games, but for the most part it was fairly mundane, day to day recall – Truelle’s voice and Larry’s answers after a while becoming little more than a drone, soporific, the last thing Jac needed after last night’s fitful sleep. And so when something did suddenly hit him, so small that at first he almost missed it, it snapped him sharply alert again, made him sit up.

  Jac quickly re-wound to make sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard.

  Yes, it was there; no mistake. Then he started going back through the other tapes, listening to the same sections on each… and was halfway through the process when hotel reception rang through to his room to tell him that a package had been left for him by a Mr Ormdern.

  ‘Yes…. thanks. Could you send it up to me.’

  Click, stop. Play. Click, stop. Play. Click, stop… four tapes left to try by the time the knock came at the door and a bell-boy handed him the envelope. Jac practically ripped it open, his adrenalin now on fire with what he’d just discovered, flicking though quickly to the main summary points in Ormdern’s report:

  Unfortunately, the incidental detail surrounding Larry Durrant’s night at the Roche house is inconclusive. While there isn’t a great depth of incidental detail – which could then lean towards the memory somehow being suggested or “implanted” – conversely the accuracy of what little he has recalled could then support that the memory was real and true.

  Also, we have the problem I voiced when you first raised this issue of possible memory suggestion or “implanting” before these sessions with Larry Durrant. To successfully do that, a full hour session, possibly more, would have been required. But from what you told me, the tapes are all sequential and match every diary entry for that period. And there were no extra-curricular visits by Durrant outside of those diarised.

  Jac looked back towards the tape recorder. Jac thought he knew how Truelle had done it, had got the sequence of tapes to match the session diary entries. No gaps.

  Ormdern’s report concluded, ‘I think your best chance rests with hopefully getting corroborative alibis from the extra details unearthed surrounding Larry Durrant’s pool game that week.

  Two possible irons in the fire. The first he’d have to hit Truelle with, hard. Pray that he could somehow break him. Jac looked at his watch. If he phoned, Truelle would probably do what he’d done last time: shuffle him off for a day or two. No time lef
t. It was time for an unannounced visit.

  ‘Joshua, I want you to send an e-mail to your father.’ Francine kept her gaze level and constant, so that her son could be sure that she was serious and it wasn’t some kind of trick. ‘In Libreville. It’s time. Probably in fact the last time you’re gonna be able to do it. Say what you want to him.’

  ‘I… I thought that you said –’

  ‘I know what I said, Joshua.’ She sighed heavily. This wasn’t easy. She forced a tame smile. ‘Take this as an early lesson that parents can be fickle too… and that time can change things.’

  ‘But what about Frank? And the...’ Joshua fumbled while he thought about how to cover up that he’d been continuing to send e-mails. Whether he’d get found out? Whether to say anything? ‘…the keyword. And what should I say?’ Joshua’s eyes lifted to meet his mother’s.

  ‘The keyword I know. Frank told me what it was, said that you’d never guess it. That is, if you’ve been looking?’ She raised a sharp eyebrow and smiled dryly. ‘As for what to say… well, I guess whatever you’ve been holdin’ back on saying for the past month or so will do for a start.’

  Joshua was sure from her look that she suspected he’d kept contact. He looked away again, nodding. ‘Okay.’

  ‘And… and to tell your father that we want to see him. Tomorrow, if possible. After that, they might not allow any visitors.’

  She watched her request hit Joshua as if she’d jabbed him with a cattle prod. He didn’t say anything, simply lifted those big eyes again to look at her directly. Perhaps to ask again if she was sure, or because he wasn’t sure how he’d handle a face to face with his father at this stage. Or because it raised again the earlier question that she hadn’t yet answered.

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about Frank. I’ll square everything with him – you making contact and us going there tomorrow. If Frank can’t understand why you should see your father for what might be the last time, then… then…’ She looked away, chewing at her bottom lip, an image of past, happier times suddenly piercing her heart: Larry holding Josh up as a baby and singing to him in a silly coo-coo voice, and Josh looking back at him with those same big brown eyes; so loving, so trusting. But in that instant the shadows crossing her eyes were probably read by her son as her being less sure about handling Frank than she’d made out, which was also true. ‘You just leave Frank to me,’ she said, trying to sound more confident, assured.

  She gave Joshua the keyword, and heard his tapping on the computer just before she went back through the kitchen door at the end of the hallway.

  She was glad the kitchen counter was close, otherwise she wouldn’t have made it. She gripped tight at the counter-top as she felt her legs buckle, a white-hot scythe of sorrow and painful nostalgia that seemed to rip her stomach away and take everything below with it, racking sobs rising without warning from deep in her chest, as if they were her very last gasps.

  She hadn’t shed many tears for Larry over the years. The last had been when his mother died six years ago and it struck her then that he was all alone, nobody left to stand by him. But she hadn’t cried like this since Larry had first been charged and locked in a police cell. Cried herself to sleep every night for a week, and the same again when he was finally sentenced. Cried and cried until all the love and hope had gone and she thought there was nothing left inside but bitterness and anger that he could have done this to her and Joshua. Deserted. Betrayed.

  As last time, after receiving Bateson’s call, Nel-M picked up on Darrell Ayliss’s tail as he came off the Pontchartraine Causeway after Ormdern’s second session with Durrant.

  This time, though, Ayliss didn’t switch hotels that night, was scheduled to book out the following day at midday, according to reception when Nel-M phoned to check. Nel-M didn’t see the point in sleeping in his car through the night, watching and waiting. Besides, Melanie Ayliss wasn’t scheduled to arrive until late morning the next day. The main event that was seriously going to shake Ayliss’s cage, put him off his stride.

  Initially uncertain when Nel-M had told her that her ex was back in town – ‘Maybe I’ve wasted enough time already on that loser,’ – she’d then phoned back three hours later full of fire and pep and ready to go. She was booked on an early morning flight from Portland scheduled to arrive in New Orleans at 11.14 a.m. Nel-M told her to call him again immediately she arrived and he’d tell her precisely where her miserable scum of an ex was at that moment.

  Yet having set everything up, Nel-M panicked when he arrived back at the hotel early the next morning: Ayliss’s car was gone from the hotel car park! He phoned reception again, but they said that Mr Ayliss hadn’t checked out yet. ‘As far as we know, his luggage is still in his room.’ Nel-M waited an anxious fifty minutes before Ayliss finally returned, Nel-M slipping down low in his car seat as he watched Ayliss pull back into the hotel car park.

  Then the long wait, over two hours, before Ayliss headed out again, Nel-M anxious again because he hadn’t yet received Melanie Ayliss’s call: 11.42. More than enough time to have cleared check-out!

  He thought Ayliss would be heading to a fresh hotel, but then felt his blood run cold as he followed him to Royal Street, watched him park and walk towards Truelle’s office.

  Each time Nel-M had spoken to Bateson, he’d asked him whether he thought anything ground-shaking had come out of the sessions. Neither Bateson nor any of his clique of guards had been present in the interview observation room, but he’d made sure to be standing close by as they all came out, observing expressions. ‘They looked thoughtful, pensive rather than pleased with themselves… for sure nobody was punching the air or rushing to Haveling to tell him anything. So my read on it is no, they didn’t hit on anything.’

  So, maybe they were safe for now. Maybe. But that could all quickly change if Ayliss beat Truelle over the head with whatever Ormdern had unearthed at the sessions. Truelle, his nerves already strung-out tighter than piano-wire, wouldn’t last long. He’d crack.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, come on… phone!’ Nel-M hissed, thumping his steering wheel; and finally, six minutes after Ayliss had gone inside Truelle’s office, Melanie Ayliss’s call came through. Flight had been delayed twenty minutes.

  Nel-M gave her the address. ‘And hurry… I just don’t know how long he’ll be there.’

  Nel-M gently closed his eyes as he hung up, praying that Truelle could hold out long enough for her to get there and put Ayliss off his stroke.

  37

  ‘Which part of now and urgent is it that you don’t quite comprehend?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ayliss… but I buzzed through for you: Mr Truelle is with a patient right now, and I can’t see any slots in his diary for at least two days. I don’t know what else –’

  ‘It’ll be too late by then,’ Jac cut in. As he suspected, Truelle was giving him the run around. He glared towards the connecting door to Truelle’s office, and his secretary Cynthia picked up late, too late, the decision he made in that instant. She was a step behind him as he burst into Truelle’s office, swinging the door wide.

  ‘I… I’m sorry, Mr Truelle,’ she stammered in the background. ‘I told him you were busy, but he –’

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Truelle exclaimed, his best mock outrage.

  ‘What, you mean like the meaning of life, Mr Truelle?’ Jac didn’t bother with an introduction; Cynthia had already told him on the intercom that a certain Darrell Ayliss wanted to see him, ‘Says he’s the new lawyer just taken over representation of Lawrence Durrant.’ ‘Or the meaning of death, as in what you did to Larry Durrant?’

  Truelle looked towards his patient, a bemused middle-aged redhead, then back at Jac. ‘You can’t just barge in here in the middle of a session.’ He reached for the phone. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Sure… sure. Go ahead. And when they arrive, I can tell them how you set up Larry Durrant.’

  Truelle’s hand hovered uncertainly by the phone, then he forced
an equally uncertain smile towards his patient. ‘I’m sorry about this, Mrs Venning. I think the only fair thing to do would be to credit you for the twenty-five minutes we’ve had today, and book you in again for a full session within the week.’ Truelle pushed the smile again. ‘So that you get the time we’ve had today free for the inconvenience.’

  Mrs Venning got up with a faint smile, as if she was intrigued as to what might happen next and would have loved to hang around to hear it.

  Truelle’s gaze settled back icily on Jac as Cynthia ushered Mrs Venning out. ‘Say what you’ve got to, then get out of my office.’

  ‘Great bedside manner you’ve got there, Mr Truelle. But this little talk of ours today is going to run at my pace and dictate, not yours.’ Jac sly smile quickly faded as he returned the gaze with the same iciness. He watched Truelle’s initial brash bravado quickly evaporate, his mouth setting tightly, anxiously. ‘There’s no doubt continued contact between you and whoever put you up to this – so you probably know already that I had a fresh psychiatrist see Larry Durrant these last few days.’

  ‘I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The truth. Nel-M hadn’t said anything, though he could easily see why not, fearful that the news might push him over the edge. Panic overload.

  ‘Gregory Ormdern. You might remember him from the initial trial when he stood up for the defence.’

  ‘Yes, I remember him.’ Truelle blinked slowly, trying to remain calm, swallowing back against the fireball of nerves brewing in his stomach. ‘But I fail to see what relevance Mr Ormdern now seeing Durrant might have.’

  ‘The relevance, Mr Truelle, is all contained in Mr Ormdern’s report on those two sessions with Durrant.’ Jac patted the envelope from Ormdern as he laid it on the desk. Truelle continued to blink slowly, as if this was all tiresome and uninteresting, but Jac could read the terror behind his nonplussed façade. Jac might as well have laid a dagger there. ‘You see, all along there were only two ways this cat could have been skinned. Either Larry Durrant was telling the truth and his memory of that night was real, or, if not, it had to have somehow been suggested. “Implanted” – I believe that’s the trade expression.’ Jac paused and smiled tightly. ‘And the only person in a position to do that would have been yourself, Mr Truelle.’