Ascension Day

45

Grab him by the throat and scream at him; hit him; speak gently and appeal to his better nature; shout and threaten and appeal to his worst: all the different ways of handling Truelle had spun wildly through Jac’s head over the past hours, so much, too much, depending on it. Now, as he walked across the casita lawn towards the promontory, they were still spinning, nothing decided, words and fragments of sentences jumbling around until finally they all merged together and became little more than a buzz. A buzz that progressively became stronger with the blood-rush to his head, competing with the hum and click of cicadas as he got closer to the table and Truelle.

The promontory was no more than twenty feet above the sea, but it was enough to give a panorama: clear sea one side, a string of islands and cays, a mile offshore, the other. Truelle had taken a seat at the table, then angled his chair to face the sunset view. He didn’t become aware of Jac, still in his Ayliss disguise, until he was only a few yards away.

Truelle jolted with a sharp breath, his eyes darting anxiously to one side and past Jac, as if for a second escape might be an option before realizing the futility, rugby-tackled after a few yards, and his eyes settled back. Or perhaps he was hoping that Calbrey might come out and save him?

‘How… how did you find me?’

‘Cynthia. And a friendly woman at the Sancti Spiritus post office.’ Jac shrugged. ‘But don’t blame Cynthia. She only told me because I convinced her that if I didn’t get to you, then Malley would. And he’d kill you.’ With all the Ayliss padding, Jac was hot from the rapid walk from his car, his breath falling short. The buzzing was subsiding, only his rapid pulse-beat beneath… ticking down the seconds left for Larry. Jac smiled tightly. ‘In the end she had your best interests at heart.’

‘I… I phoned her, home and office. There was no answer. I was beginning to — ’

‘When I left her,’ Jac held one hand up, placating, ‘I told her not to hang around the office waiting for Malley to turn up there. She obviously took my advice.’

Truelle nodded thoughtfully, but then his eyes clouded again, looked unsettled as Jac took a seat and placed the small cassette tape recorder from his pocket on the table between them.

Jac took a fresh breath. ‘Now, we could sit here for the next half hour with me piling on the pressure about the DA and how if you let Durrant die I’m going to make sure he adds on an Accomplice to Murder rap — ten to fifteen of the hardest time you can imagine — but, you know, the problem is I don’t have the time any more. I got to call Governor Candaret right away and get him to phone Libreville prison and stop Durrant’s execution.’ Jac’s Ayliss drawl heavy, he leant over menacingly and laid one hand on Truelle’s thigh, feeling the jerk of discomfort and the underlying tremble. As Jac clenched hard against it, he could feel the pulse at his own temples, the buzzing in his head stronger again for a moment. ‘And having flown for half a day and driven across half of fucking Cuba… I don’t have the patience left, either.’ Jac glared hard at Truelle, and, giving his thigh one last warning grip, lifted his hand towards the recorder. Truelle’s eyes fixed on it as if it was a loaded gun. ‘So I’m just going to press record here while you tell me, chapter and verse, everything that happened twelve years ago.’

‘I… I can’t.’ Truelle shook his head, staying Jac’s finger an inch above the button. He closed his eyes as if in submission as a small shudder ran through him. Opening them again, he smiled meekly. ‘Like you said before… he’ll kill me.’

‘Malley?’

‘Yeah. Nel-M, as he’s known. He’s killed two others… that I know of. Both good friends.’ Truelle closed his eyes fleetingly again, shutting out the images, and then looked to one side, as if consulting someone unseen as to whether to finally say anything. He took a fresh breath. ‘Not long after this all started twelve years ago, I began to get concerned and so took out a couple of insurance policies — ’

Jac’s hand went to press record, but Truelle held a hand up, staying it again; clear indication that if Jac did, he’d immediately clam up.

‘They… they were accounts of what happened with Durrant twelve years ago left in sealed envelopes with a couple of friends — only to be opened in the event of something happening to me. I changed those policy holders not long ago, but then found out early yesterday that… that…’ Truelle closed his eyes again. Catharsis. What he’d always advised patients to do, unburden, share the weight that was too much to carry alone; but he’d never imagined that it would be to this sly and gushing Southern lawyer that he’d just met. And now not even able to say the word that would help him start accepting it, healing. Dead. Dead. Dead. ‘Both of them. One, I spoke to his wife and she told me… the other a police officer answered.’ Truelle swallowed, exhaled gently. ‘That’s why I jumped on the first plane here to Cuba.’

‘Thought you might be next?’ Observing Truelle’s doleful nod, his eyes red-rimmed and fearful, that thinking made perfect sense; but as Jac considered it more deeply, an incredulous leer rose. ‘What? You think that if you just sit it out here in Cuba for a few hours until Durrant’s dead — after that, everything’s going to be fine?’

Truelle shook his head. He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything any more.

Jac saw Truelle start to crack, rode it. ‘Afterwards, it’s going to be just as bad — probably even worse.’ Jac leant over and held one hand towards Truelle, a few inches short of a direct prod. ‘After Durrant’s gone, you’ll be the only one left to know what they’ve done. You think for one minute they’re going to leave you alive?

Another head-shake, Truelle scrunching his eyes shut. Push it away… push it away…

‘In fact, if you asked me to put money on it, I’d say that not only is Malley going to kill you after Durrant’s gone, but he’s going to do it quick. Real quick.’ Jac grimaced tautly. ‘Everything done and dusted at the same time.’

‘I…. I don’t know.’ The words shuddered out on Truelle’s fractured breath. But maybe a part of him had known all along. That gap between what the subconscious knew and conscious mind wouldn’t accept; basic Jungian theory. And he’d tried to bridge that gap by either shutting it out of his mind or with drink, but had never really succeeded. And what now? More bottles stacked under his sink, more bodies of close friends? Maybe Nel-M putting a quick bullet through his head would be for the best. Quick release. The thoughts raged inside him along with his strung-out nerves and acid-bile stomach, the ghostly images of his dead friends now stabbing his brain — finally spilling over with a spluttering exhalation. ‘I would never, ever have gone along with it, if I thought — ’ Truelle broke off then, suddenly realizing he’d let the genie out of the bottle, but looking at it strangely, as if someone else had done it without asking his permission. ‘Thought for a minute that Durrant was innocent.’

‘What? You went along with it only because you believed he was guilty?’ When Truelle had said it the other day in his office, Jac thought it had been just a ruse, a fob-off.

‘Yeah. Roche and Nel-M — though I never actually saw Roche over the whole thing, Nel-M was always the go-between — they claimed that, from word on the street, Durrant was the main name to come back as his wife’s murderer, but his accident and coma had conveniently blotted it all out. The police couldn’t even apply basic questioning and interrogation. Wasn’t even worth hauling him in.’ Truelle shrugged. ‘And when the DNA evidence came in, I was convinced they were telling the truth.’

Jac nodded pensively. The buzzing had faded again; only his steady pulse-beat now in rhythm with the cicadas. He checked his watch. Just over two and a half hours left to get the call in to Candaret. ‘And at which stage did you become not so convinced?’

‘I don’t know.’ Truelle’s eyes shifted, sifting through the past. ‘I’ve always had some doubts, I suppose. And those have become stronger recently. Though I’m still far from sure — either way.’ Truelle shut his eyes again for a second, final closure, then looked across directly. ‘It’s important, though, that you understand I wouldn’t have done this if I’d truly thought Durrant was innocent.’

Jac wasn’t sure what Truelle wanted: absolution, or simply understanding. Jac nodded. ‘I understand.’ Jac was quick to reassure that, with him now co-operating, he’d push the DA for the lightest possible sentence, ‘And also get him to offer a good WPP — if you think you’ll need it.’

Truelle nodded, but as Jac went to press record, Truelle stopped him again with a gentle grip on his arm.

‘One last thing. What I say now is no doubt going to save Durrant’s neck, get him off. But what if that DNA’s right and he is guilty?’

Jac looked thoughtfully ahead for a moment. The last of the sun was dipping into the sea, crimson-blue dappling every wave.

‘I do strongly believe that Durrant is innocent. Though in the end, as with you, I can’t be a hundred per cent sure.’ DNA: the one factor that had made Jac doubt more than a few times over the past weeks. ‘But that can’t be your concern right now. You’ve got to say what happened, finally do the right thing and clear your own conscience. And whatever Larry Durrant has done is then between him and his conscience. And Governor Candaret.’

The second that Nel-M saw Ayliss’s Audi, he knew that he’d have to move quickly, couldn’t risk leaving him together with Truelle for any length of time.

As soon as he saw Ayliss get out of his car and head across, he pulled his own car out from behind a tree where he’d tucked it when he’d first spotted the Audi, and edged a hundred yards closer. Then got out, deciding to do the rest on foot.

He gripped the Browning in one pocket as he went; the small plastic water bottle he’d picked up at Cienfuegos, now empty, makeshift silencer, was in the other.

The two figures by a table at the end of a promontory as he got closer, Ayliss taking a seat. A lot of talking, gesticulating and head-shaking, Nel-M concerned how long he could risk leaving it, but nervous about moving in yet; it was still light enough for them to see him approach. And as they did, one of them would probably rush to the main villa to alert Truelle’s friend, with him then on the phone to the police. A nightmare before he’d started.

If he waited just eight or ten minutes more, it would be completely dark. He could move in without either of them seeing him. Until it was too late.

Nel-M waited on the setting sun.

‘Most of the details came back out from Durrant pretty much how I’d fed them to him. Some were weaker, some stronger or even embellished with how, from his own psyche, he thought he’d have reacted. And some small details never did come out… unless maybe it was in police questioning that wasn’t shown at trial.’

Jac nodded pensively. Maybe that explained some of the extra details and reactions from Larry in Ormdern’s sessions. Maybe. Halfway through, Jac had taken out his cell-phone and put it next to the tape-recorder in preparation to call Candaret.

Eleven minutes it had taken Truelle to pour out his soul, tell all. Eleven minutes to end twelve years of hell for Larry Durrant. The sun setting, the last light fading over the coastline of Cuba as the first light of hope finally hit Larry Durrant, Jac thought ruefully.

Another minute for Truelle to wrap up the background, incidental details, and he’d call Candaret. As Truelle saw his eyes go to the phone, he lifted a hand up, as if he’d suddenly remembered something.

‘Oh, and when you phone, apart from what you’ve now got on tape,’ Truelle took a step to one side, reaching for his briefcase, ‘there’s something else that will — ’

Truelle froze then, as if he’d been struck with an arrow. As he’d stood up, part of his field of vision had swung wider, and he stood transfixed, looking past Jac’s shoulder.

Jac swung round sharply and stood up, the faint tread of footsteps reaching him in that same instant. Malley… Nel-M!

Nel-M smiled tautly as he moved closer, his gun at waist level trained on them.

‘My, this is cosy. Very cosy indeed.’ He moved a step closer, bringing their awkward triangle in tight to only three yards between them. ‘So, what have you been telling him, Lenny?’

Truelle didn’t answer. Jac saw him swallow, and was sure it was quiet enough to hear it if it wasn’t for the buzzing back in his head.

Nel-M’s eyes shifted to the recorder on the table, cassette still turning. ‘Looks like I got here just in time. Would you?’

Nel-M indicated with his gun, but as Jac reached towards the recorder, Nel-M took a plastic bottle from his pocket, and with a ‘On second thoughts — let me do that for you,’ shot through it.

Inches from his fingertips, Jac watched the recorder shatter, pieces flying as it spun off the table.

Jac’s heart dived, eyes squeezing tight, Last chance gone to save Larry… Nel-M’s figure bleary through salt tears as he opened them again, tilting gently… or maybe Jac was swaying, his legs suddenly uncertain as he took a step towards Nel-M.

Nel-M prodded the air with his gun, took half a step back to maintain the distance between them. ‘Now let’s not try and be brave.’

Then silence. Their triangle tenser now, eyes darting, measuring options. What few were left. Jac’s pulse-beat was suddenly heavier at his temples, the thrum of the cicadas louder.

Jac noticed Truelle’s eyes shift for a half-second towards the main villa, perhaps hoping that Calbrey might have heard the shot and come out. But it had been little more than a dull thud, and as Jac checked fleetingly too, Calbrey was still inside, French windows closed.

Nel-M followed their gaze for an instant; it was obviously something he’d thought of too. He wasn’t going to hang around out here long.

Something, Jac thought desperately, surely something he could do. If he could get Truelle out of this, then he could get him to speak to Candaret directly and..

Then, as if answering his last two thoughts, Nel-M suddenly shot Truelle in the stomach, bringing him to his knees.

‘No, no…no!’ Jac’s screams rose from deep within, impromptu, the buzzing in his head now so loud that he could barely hear them.

Nel-M’s gun moved briefly towards him, as if he was unsure for a second who to kill first. He who makes the most noise gets it.

But then as the gun shifted quickly back to Truelle, levelling at his head, in that final second all Jac could think of was that last head shot in the police report… Jessica Roche’s sprawled body in the photos, meeting Larry for the first time… sharing a brandy with him that night… and Larry now, looking at the death-chamber clock, waiting for him to call…

With a grunting wheeze, as if the last air was being pushed out of him, Jac suddenly propelled himself towards Nel-M.

Nel-M, distracted fleetingly by the sudden movement and noise, squeezed off the shot anyway. But in the beat’s pause, Truelle started to move — the shot hitting him in the shoulder.

Then Nel-M’s gun was swinging swiftly towards Jac.

Jac hit Nel-M full in the chest before the gun had completed its arc, the breath shunting out of him heavily as they stumbled back.

Nel-M’s gun was swinging back towards him again, Jac gripping his arm before the barrel could point at him, wrestling, still falling back — and then suddenly the ground seemed to fall away beneath Jac’s legs, them both spinning, tumbling through a small bush, and then into the air… falling…

In that final, blind-fury second, Jac hadn’t paid any attention to how close to the promontory edge they were, or how far his momentum with all the Ayliss padding would carry them…

They hit the water quickly, no more than two seconds, the breath bursting out of Jac as something hit hard against his right shoulder, rock or coral a few feet beneath — then they were spluttering back up through the water, still grappling, Jac struggling to focus again on Nel-M.

Faint moonlight finally picked Nel-M out, dapples swilling back and forth, Nel-M’s features twisted, distorted through the few inches of water between them as he tried to push Jac deeper under.

Gun! Jac choking, spluttering, trying desperately to see whether Nel-M still had it in his hand.

Writhing hard, pushing back — Jac managed to gasp two seconds of air before Nel-M thrust him back under, grappling at his neck and face.

Then suddenly Nel-M froze, gasping faintly, his face wide-eyed as it swam in and out of focus in the water between them; Jac realizing in that instant that Ayliss’s facial prosthetics had come away in Nel-M’s hands, and Jac McElroy was suddenly staring up at him from beneath.

But Jac was still desperately trying to focus on Nel-M’s gun hand, see if he still had it; and as he saw the wavering shadow of Nel-M’s right arm move towards him and heard the shot, then another quickly after — saw and felt the warmth of his own blood swilling all around him in the water — he knew that Nel-M had.

And in those final seconds, as Jac saw Nel-M’s face slowly fade as the water between them became deeper, darker, suddenly he was back in the lake again, sinking down through its dark depths; though this time he knew there was nothing to save him.

‘It’s time now, Larry.’

‘I know.’ Larry nodded dolefully.

The cell bolt slid back, the door opened, and Larry got up and joined Torvald and the six guards outside.

They walked three each side of him, Torvald slightly ahead, as they went along, their footsteps echoing starkly, emptily.

Gone from their eyes.

In the end, to be able to cope in the final moments, Larry had taken a leaf out of their book. If he’d already gone from their eyes, then all that remained was to shed the last vestiges of himself in his own mind.

He’d already considered it a good idea not to think about Josh and Fran, so that he didn’t end up a quivering, blubbering wreck at the last moment.

And so, having rid himself of every good and warm past memory of Fran and Josh, all that remained was to cast off the rest: holding his hands up high after his first big boxing win, the pride in his mother’s face — still there even when he fell into bad ways, her refusing to accept it — Roddy’s sly smile as he told a joke or funny story, Sal in the library, BC in the muscle yard, passages from his favourite books… sharing a brandy with Jac McElroy that night. It didn’t take long, wasn’t too difficult, because there weren’t that many good memories left. Libreville had eroded most of them already over the years.

Footsteps echoing emptily. And as he took the last few steps towards the death chamber, of all the years that he’d heard his own footsteps echoing like a ghost’s through Libreville, only now was it finally in step with, fully mirroring, how he felt. Empty. Devoid of all memories, all feelings, all emotions.

Hands gently guiding him, laying him on the gurney. Hands of strong guards that could have pushed, but sensed in that moment that they didn’t need to.

Larry looked through the glass towards the observation room as he was strapped down: Warden Haveling, Father Kennard, the prison psychiatrist, one of the medic team, a Times-Picayune journalist who’d visited him the day before and Larry had agreed to have there.

And as the last strap was secured, Larry smiled gently towards his audience — they probably thought that he’d finally snapped, gone mad, or that he’d made some sort of inner peace in his mind and was looking forward to going to God… Ascension Day.

But the thought that had hit Larry in that moment was how he’d robbed them, cheated them. They’d put on this big event, this circus — Governor’s final thumbs down, scores of protestors and media trucks outside the prison gates, on every news channel with analysis and cross-analysis, pro and con death-penalty debates — to kill Larry Durrant.

But he’d robbed them of that privilege without them knowing it. The past long years at Libreville had already taken half the life out of him, and in the past hours he’d managed to strip and erode what was left. In the end, they weren’t killing Larry Durrant at all. They were killing just a shell.