Ascension Day

27

‘Are you sure?’

‘As sure as can be,’ Nel-M said. That laboured, unsettling breathing from the other end. Darth Vader watching porno. ‘I don’t know what other explanation there can be for him leaving his phone bug in after telling Truelle he was sure it was bugged. Then all that crap with him saying he’s dropped the case and that false lead the other day. McElroy’s been playing us for mugs.’

Breathing heavier, more perturbed, as if it was a Geiger counter for Roche’s thoughts. ‘Looks like you could well be right. Did you notice anyone following you the other day?’

‘No. But then I wasn’t particularly looking out for them, because I didn’t know then what I know now from Truelle. I think it might be time to — ’

‘I know. I know what it might be time to do,’ Roche cut in. He swallowed, struggling to get his breathing back under control. ‘Let me think on this a while. I’ll phone you back.’

Roche’s call came thirty-five minutes later, but in that time Nel-M was calm, relaxed — making a pot of fresh coffee, whistling softly to himself, watching some breakfast TV — because he knew already what the answer would be. He wondered what Roche had done in that same time: played some Vivaldi or Wagner, or sat silently with only the sound of his own breathing rising and falling, looking at his cherubs and red brocade, his swimming pool surrounded by Roman statues — the precious gilded world he’d made for himself — contemplating just how fragile it all might be.

‘Okay. Do it. But make sure it’s clean. No messy loose ends.’

‘It’ll be soooo clean, you’ll be able to eat your dinner off it.’

An hour later Nel-M was inside McElroy’s apartment, latex gloves on his hands as he delicately lifted what he’d need from countertops and doors, and searched through cupboards and drawers for any vital papers Jac might have hidden. Nothing. He went over to the phone and removed the bug, then listened out for a moment: no sounds from next door, she’d probably gone shopping.

Nel-M decided to search there too, in case, knowing that he’d been targeted, McElroy had decided to hide anything at his girlfriend’s apartment. And only minutes into his search, running one hand along a high wardrobe shelf, he found the gun.

Nel-M took it down, turning it slowly, deliberately, examining. An out of issue Colt, but looked in perfect working order. His plan was shaping up better by the minute.

Jac could feel even stronger the thrumming of the prison boilers almost in time with his pounding heart as he walked away from seeing Durrant, with the steady clip of his footsteps keeping rhythm too; the same distinctive but strangely hollow sound — as if echoing the lost hope of all Libreville’s prisoners — he recalled from his first day going to see Durrant, now joining that dull, driving drumbeat: You can’t give up now. You can’t.

And he could still feel that drumbeat as he drove away, though now it was only his heart, its beat harder and faster as he drove back across the darkness of Lake Pontchartrain, remembering. His breath held for a moment, expectant, as if waiting for that first gulp of air again as he hit the surface. But it wasn’t the image of himself fighting up through its murky depths that reached him this time, but Larry Durrant: struggling to pick out the images of twelve years ago from its shadowy greyness, but them never hitting the light of the surface. Never becoming clear.

And staring out across the dark expanse of lake, the thought hit Jac in that instant: ‘It’s there somewhere. It’s there. Only you can’t see it.’

He drove the rest of the way back to New Orleans with only that one thought on his mind, and, as soon as he was inside his apartment, went over to his father’s painting on the far wall of the dining room, leaning close to it, feeling the texture of its oil brushstrokes.

Their Rochefort farmhouse, a patchwork of vineyards and wheat and sunflower fields sloping up towards a more prominent pine-covered hillside as backdrop.

His father had painted it their first year in Rochefort, when Jac had been only nine. And when his father had first finished it, he asked Jac:

‘What do you see?’

‘Our farmhouse.’

‘Yes, but what else?’

Jac had studied the painting more closely, looking for perhaps himself or his mother as a small dot hidden in the fields or the hillside like one of those ‘Where’s Waldo’ puzzles. But he couldn’t see anything, and shook his head after a moment.

‘Look deeper into the painting,’ his father prompted. ‘It’s there somewhere. It’s there. Only you can’t see it.’

And after a while, Jac could finally see it: a vague, shadowy outline of what looked like their farmhouse in a slightly different position.

His father explained that he’d started laying down the outline of the farmhouse, then suddenly decided it would be better from another angle, the backdrop and depth of shadow and light more dramatic.

‘But rather than waste the canvass, I decided to paint over it. It’s something the Old Masters used to do all the time — because canvasses were even more expensive then. Lean in close to many an Old Master, and you’ll be surprised what you see buried in the background.’

And from then on, Jac had always looked. Whether at the Louvre or a local gallery, while everyone else was yards away, trying to appreciate the overall impact of the painting, he’d be only inches from it, trying to see what might lay beneath the surface.

Jac looked at his watch: 11.46 p.m. Late, but he didn’t want to delay. He dialled out on his cell-phone. Mike Coultaine’s throaty voice answered after three rings.

‘That psychiatrist for the defence, Greg Ormdern, is he still practicing?’ Jac asked.

‘I believe so.’

‘Any good?’

‘At the time, one of the best. Which is why I used to use him as an expert witness. Why?’

Jac explained his thinking to Coultaine: if Truelle had been able to unearth from Durrant’s mind his actions that dark night with Jessica Roche, then perhaps Greg Ormdern would be able to fill in the gaps. ‘Uncover the rest from that time. The things we still don’t know.’

With the last call, Nel-M contemplated, the most important thing had been brevity:

‘You wanna know who your girlfriend’s new boyfriend is? Who’s fucking her now? His name’s Jac. Jac with no k.’

Hanging up before Strelloff had half a chance to think or ask who was calling. But this time he’d have to go into more detail.

He sat for almost an hour outside McElroy’s apartment — in a rented grey Chevrolet Impala, because McElroy would now recognize his Pontiac — timing and planning.

Eight o’clock, McElroy said that he’d be over to eat at her place. He still used his home phone for day-to-day non-Durrant related calls because, as Nel-M hardly needed reminding — that’s all they’d got the past six days on tape.

Nel-M left it half an hour for them to get their appetizers out of the way, then took out his cell-phone to order their main course.

Gerry Strelloff was slightly out of breath as he answered, as if he’d run from another room to pick up, or was on his way somewhere.

‘Your friend again. You know that lawyer’s letter and restraining order you just got?’

‘What? Who is this?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’ Nel-M knew they’d been sent from scuttlebutt at ‘Pinkies’, with Alaysha confiding in a couple of friends. ‘Just take it that I’m someone who’s got your interests at heart, and want you to know what a fool you’re being played for. Because that boyfriend I mentioned the other day — Jac McElroy — he’s a lawyer working for the same firm that sent the letter and arranged the restraining order.’

‘You’re joking?’ Incredulous, still slightly breathless.

‘No fucking joke about it, man. And they organized it all just to get you off the scene — so he could get in there like the slimy jack-rabbit he is and take your place.’

‘Shit! I don’t believe it… I’ll fucking — ’

‘But that’s not the best part.’ The touch paper lit — Nel-M could heard the bubbling acid-anger in Strelloff’s voice — hopefully this final bucket of petrol would get the flames sky high. ‘He lives right next door to her. Probably even heard you screwing her through the walls, and thought — I want somma that. So that’s where he is now, right now — you safely roped and tied by a restraining order while he’s in your place in her bed, fucking her stupid.’

‘What? He’s there now… this minute?’

‘Yeah… this fucking minute, as we speak. Probably already at the point where she’s screaming his name out loud: Jac… Jac! Oh… oh… Jac!’ Nel-M chuckled. ‘You hurry, maybe you’ll get there just in time for the money shot.’

Nel-M hung up and looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes for Strelloff to get over from his place in Chalmette. Correct that, seventeen or eighteen with the speed he’d be driving.

‘When my father died, I had trouble coming to terms with it. As a lot of people do with something like that.’ Jac waved one hand above his wine glass towards Alaysha. ‘But more than that, I felt he’d been cheated: he was only fifty-four, had many good years left, he’d been a good person with a kind heart, brought his family up well… so why him, God? Why him?’

Alaysha simply nodded, didn’t speak. She could tell that this was a difficult, heartfelt subject for Jac to broach, so had suddenly stopped clearing their plates from the dinner she’d prepared, not wanting to make any noise at that moment. She could see Jac struggling with his thoughts, shadows alternating in his eyes like fast-drifting clouds as he tried to sift them into order.

‘The main problem was, they didn’t discover it was cancer until late. Because of my father’s business problems, their first thought was that it was ulcers rather than stomach cancer. By the time they got to it, it had probably been there for three or four years. It had worked its way too deep, had reached his pancreas. There wasn’t a lot they could do.’ Jac shrugged, but Alaysha could see that it was like trying to flip off a ten-ton weight. His shoulders moved, but the burden stayed there. ‘And shortly after my father had the prognosis, knew that there wasn’t much hope left, his old friend from Glasgow, Archie Teale, came down to see him. Archie had kept contact with my father and visited a fair few times over the years, but we weren’t sure this time whether my mother had phoned him, or it was some invisible thread between old, close friends to tell Archie that something was wrong with my father. Certainly my father wouldn’t have phoned Archie to spill his woes, not his style — but the subject did soon get round to that.’

Jac smiled tightly. ‘Though even when it did, typical of my father, he wasn’t worried about himself, but more about how his family would cope with him gone. Particularly because of the financial situation, with things not going so well.’ Jac held one palm out. ‘Archie had been an accountant most of his life, and perhaps my father thought he might have some useful financial advice. Archie gave a few tips there, perhaps delayed the inevitable a year or two more, but it was his moral advice, his advice on life that I’m sure my father — and certainly I — remembered most. Because it appeared that Archie had visited at that juncture for a reason of his own.’

Jac took a sip of wine, a heavy sip, and Alaysha could tell that he was getting to the difficult part. His eyes were slightly glassy, moist, but there was a faint light in them too, as if there was some sort of warped-logic joy amongst the pain of his father’s death.

‘Archie had just had a heart attack, and had been diagnosed by his doctor with congestive heart disease. He might last a year or two, he might last six or seven — but the thing was, like my father, he wasn’t going to make old bones. I remember vividly the two of them sitting on the back terrace at Rochefort, with Archie raising a glass and smiling dryly. “It’s going to be a race between you and I, Adam, to see who goes first.” But what stood out most in my mind was what Archie said a bit later, after the coffees had turned to whiskies and they’d finished most of a bottle between them and reminisced and put half the world to rights. Archie leant forward at one point, gripping my father’s arm across the table as my father became more maudlin, lamenting about the mess he’d made of things. “Don’t you ever think that way! Ever! Because that’s the one difference between what’s happening to you and to me, Adam — you’ve lived before you died!”

‘And as my father’s eyebrows knitted, over another half-tumblerful of scotch each, Archie explained: he himself had been careful all his life, counted his pennies, but in the end, what good had that done him? He reminded my father that each time he’d come down to see him, they’d gone out to the marina at Arcachon and looked at the sail boats there. That had been Archie’s dream: retire, get a place not far from my father’s, and spend the rest of his days sailing. Now, even with his retirement pulled forward to fifty-five, it looked touch-and-go whether he’d make it. And even if he did, how many years sailing would he have? Maybe only a year or two, three if he was lucky. Whereas, he said to my father — you’ve lived your life, done what you want from age thirty and bollocks to the rest. Given your wife and son and little girl a damn good life at the same time. Watched them grow good and straight and tall amongst the sunshine and vines. “So don’t you ever regret any of that, Adam. Because, unlike me, you’ve lived your life. You’ve lived before you died.”’

Jac bit at his bottom lip, the tears closer then, Alaysha saw; but he seemed eager to continue, as if afraid that he might break down before he got it all out.

‘Archie lasted only a year after my father.’ Jac closed his eyes for a second, shaking his head. ‘But when you asked the other day, what made me fight so hard on Durrant’s behalf — not long after, that’s what finally hit me, those words: “Lived before he died”…’ Jac shrugged, grimacing tautly. ‘Because if you think about Larry Durrant’s life, such as it is: his boxing career going down in flames before it hardly started, turning to petty crime to supplement his income; then just when he’s newly married and got a son on the way — just when his life looks like it might be back on track for once — he lands himself on Libreville’s death row. And on top a car accident that’s scrambled his brain, so that he can’t even remember half his life from back then — can’t say with any certainty whether he actually committed the murder or not.’ Jac’s voice had risen with anger and exasperation, and he took a quick breath, calming himself again. ‘If you think about all of that — if the term “not living before you died” fitted anyone, it fits Larry Durrant. And the fact that he might be innocent makes it all the harder to take. Almost unbearable.’

‘I know. I know.’ Alaysha reached out and gently touched one of Jac’s hands on the table. With the talk about his father, the pain and loss she’d seen in his eyes when they first met she now better understood. But then an awkward silence fell, a pregnant pause that felt as if perhaps she should fill it with her own story. And the signals were all there — illness, sacrifice and risk-taking for family — of what that story should be.

Alaysha swallowed hard, wondering if the time was finally right to tell Jac. If she didn’t, it would become like an ever-growing boulder between them, get in the way, weigh them down. But then Jac started speaking again.

‘That thought, that realization, had hit me before I saw Durrant the other day. But when he asked me the same question as you — what had made me go out on such a limb for him — and I looked at him: life to date pretty well worthless and in ruins, last eleven years spent in hell without a single touch of warmth and closeness from his family, hardly even knowing what that was like from his own son, and only days left now until his execution — the fact that he’d probably now never get the chance to make good on all of that — I just couldn’t come flat out and tell him the truth.’ Jac shook his head, his eyes moistening again. ‘Tell him that I’d done it all because his life so far had been so worthless. That I couldn’t bear the thought of him not being able to live some before he died.’

Jac’s eyes closed for a second in submission, or perhaps to blot out the images of Durrant in his cell, a single tear rolling down one of Jac’s cheeks which he wiped away hastily, and Alaysha had never felt closer to him than in that moment — now that he’d bared his soul. All the warmth, softness and vulnerability she’d never known in the men so far in her life — and probably looked for all the more as a result. But with what Jac had now added to the pot, holding back secrets, his emotions raw and close to the surface with the guilt of it, she felt her bottom lip trembling, the lump in her throat now almost impossible to swallow past.

‘Jac… there’s something-’ Alaysha broke off, looking past Jac’s shoulder. Faint noise outside on the corridor.

Jac didn’t seem to have picked up on it — but then she had become more tuned in to sounds outside her door these past days — in fact he hardly seemed to have noticed either that she’d started to say something as he continued.

‘…So I did what people often do when they’re hiding something: I brought a couple of props along for distraction.’

‘That was a nice touch though, Jac. And by the sound of it, much appreciated.’ Jac had told her about sneaking in the bottles, and Durrant the cognac connoisseur, at the start of dinner. She looked briefly past his shoulder again. Nothing there now. Probably just someone passing on the corridor. She reached across the table to his hand again, gently pressed. ‘The thing is Jac, I — ’

Her doorbell rang.

Then, seconds later, a high-pitched voice, sounded like a young boy.

‘I’m looking for Jac McElroy… Got a message to pass to Jac McElroy.’

They exchanged glances for a second before Alaysha went to the door and, sure enough, about a foot below the spy-hole was a young boy holding out a folded piece of paper. Stories abounded of attacks from young gang boyz, but this lad was too young, no more than twelve, and besides, this wasn’t the neighbourhood for that. Probably was just what it appeared.

‘Message for Jac McElroy,’ he repeated.

Alaysha flipped back the latch, unhooked the chain, and had barely got the door a few inches open when it was barged hard into her, swinging wide as she was flung back. She pushed back against the door, reflex reaction, but Gerry was already through it, eyes wild and glaring, as the kid scampered off along the corridor.

Jac was only a couple of paces behind Alaysha. His eyes locked with Gerry’s in recognition, assessing, weighing-up through the red mist of Gerry’s rage.

‘You must be…’ Gerry swung his punch on his last word, and Jac, only managing to get his arms up in partial defence, caught it as a glancing blow on his left cheekbone, knocking him back half a step.

But he had his guard up better for Gerry’s next punches, one blocked fully and the other deflected into his shoulder. They clinched and started to grapple, with Alaysha now raining punches on Gerry’s shoulder and back, screaming, ‘No… No!.. Stop! — ’ before, wide-eyed, as if she’d suddenly remembered something, she ran into the bedroom.

Alaysha swung the wardrobe door wide and ran one hand along the top shelf for the gun. What? She ran it back and forth a couple more times, not believing that it wasn’t there. She raised up and looked just to make sure, then, breathless now, frantic, quickly searched in the drawer, in case unconsciously she’d put it back there. Nothing.

Heavier tussling now from her hallway, a low groan. She ran back, relieved to see that the groan was from Gerry, not Jac.

It had taken Jac a moment to focus and realize just how wild and misjudged Gerry’s punches were in his surging anger. He found the next two easy to dodge, and the one following no trouble to block and swing beneath it a solid punch to Gerry’s stomach. Gerry buckled, and Jac got in another good one, this time square to Gerry’s face, knocking him back against the wall by the door.

Jac seized the advantage, bringing his left hand tight to Gerry’s throat, pinning him back against the wall, his right fist cocked only inches from Gerry’s face. He felt Gerry’s body move, saw one arm rising up again, and pressed harder against his throat, tensing his cocked arm — but Gerry just wiped the bit of blood from beneath his nose with the back of one hand.

‘It ain’t the end of this, my friend… by a long fucking way.’

‘It is for now,’ Jac said flatly, pushing Gerry back through the door. ‘And if you come round here again bothering Alaysha, I’ll — ’ Jac broke off, noticing for the first time Mrs Orwin looking through the gap in her door, eyes wide as she watched Jac, hand gripped around Gerry’s throat, frogmarch him into the corridor. She hastily closed her door as Jac looked her way.

‘You’ll what, Mr — get a restraining order so I can fuck the girlfriend — McElroy?’ Gerry taunted, smiling. ‘You’ll what?’

Jac glared back long and hard. Finally, ‘You’re not worth it!’ And, with one hard push against Gerry’s throat — Gerry falling back a step and almost stumbling over — Jac turned and slammed the door behind him.

A moment’s breathless pause with his back against the door, taking stock, letting the adrenalin rush settle, with Alaysha’ eyes on him somewhere between relief, apology and surprised admiration that he’d actually been able to see Gerry off — then a bang against the door, a punch or kick, and Gerry’s voice again:

‘Your new girlfriend… I’ll bet you one thing. I’ll bet you she hasn’t told you what we did together. Our dirty, sordid little secret. Because… well, because, clean-collar lawyer like you — you’re just too goody-two-shoes to know that kinda shit.’

Another punch or kick of frustration against the door, then silence.

Jac kept his gaze steadily, expectantly on Alaysha, and Alaysha held the look back, both of them knowing in that moment that as soon as they were sure Gerry had gone, the question would come. And Alaysha, perversely, for the first time wishing that Gerry wouldn’t go, so that she wouldn’t have to answer.

But at that moment came another voice on the corridor, muffled, indistinct, with a brief, surprised exclamation from Gerry halfway through — then a gunshot.

Nel-M had finger-tapped against his steering-wheel while waiting on Gerry Strelloff. After a while the sound felt stark, uncomfortable in the silence, so he started pushing buttons on the radio to find some music. Classic soul, jazz and Latin samba were his favourites, and he finally settled on Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ on an easy listening jazz channel. Two songs later, though, it was playing Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World’, less conducive to finger-tapping or his mood at that moment, so he stabbed some buttons again, after a moment finding Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’.

As Gerry Strelloff swung his car in, Nel-M checked his watch: nineteen minutes. Not bad. He watched Gerry run into the building, then exit again only twenty seconds later, looking up and down the street as if he’d forgotten something. His eyes settled on a young black boy thirty yards along, and Nel-M watched as he talked for a minute with the boy, the boy nodding finally as Gerry handed over a piece of paper and ten-dollar bill from his wallet. The boy went into the building, Gerry waiting anxiously for thirty seconds or so, pacing up and down, before heading in after him.

Nel-M, too, was starting to get anxious; he didn’t like sudden changes, and if the boy stayed in there, it was going to kill his entire plan. As Stevie Wonder wailed about thirteen-month-old babies, broken looking glasses and seven years of bad luck, Nel-M’s finger-tapping stopped, his hand gripping tight to the steering wheel.

It felt like a lifetime that the boy was in the building, but was probably less than a minute. Nel-M eased out his breath in relief as he saw the boy run out. He slipped on his latex gloves and got out of the car. The gun was already in his pocket, and he gave it a reassuring pat halfway towards the building entrance.

The boy had by then disappeared into the first turning forty yards away, but still Nel-M gave a quick each-way glance to make sure nobody was paying him too much attention as he went into the building.

Everything was in full swing by the time he got to the top of the stairs. He held back out of sight, a foot from the corner where the corridor turned towards the girl’s door thirty feet along. Faint scuffling, raised voices, footsteps now… a door closing, but he didn’t think it was the girl’s; he could hear Gerry Strelloff’s voice, taunting:

‘…Mr — get a restraining order so I can fuck the girlfriend — Mc Elroy. You’ll what?’

Silence, so heavy that in that second Nel-M held his breath, fearing that if he even swallowed, they might hear him.

‘You’re not worth it!’

More scuffling, and then a door slamming hard. This time it probably was the girl’s.

Second’s pause, then a thud, followed by Gerry’s voice again. Some dirty secret McElroy apparently didn’t know about — perhaps her and Gerry were into bondage — then, with a half-grunt, half-frustrated-sigh, another kick against the door from Gerry.

Nel-M tensed, putting his right hand into his gun pocket. This was his cue. And, as he heard Gerry’s first steps away from the door, he emerged from around the corner, a smile rising in greeting.

‘Hey, man… that’s not the way you do it.’ Voice low, hushed, as if he was sharing a confidence with Gerry that he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

‘What?… Who the hell?-’

‘Don’t you recognize the voice, Gerry… your friend? And, like I say, that’s not the way you do it…’ His voice little more than a whisper now as he walked past a bemused Gerry Strelloff, until he was between him and the door. Then he turned, taking the gun out in the same motion. ‘This is the way you — ’

He fired only inches from Gerry’s face, dropped the gun instantly, and ran for the corner and the stairs, leaping them three and four steps at a time.