Текст книги "Ascension Day"

Автор книги: John Matthews

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

33

Darrell Ayliss was sweating profusely as he paced back through the seemingly endless, cavernous grey corridors of Libreville. He was a large man with an awkward gait, and the sweat poured off him.

Testament to just how hot it was in Libreville, or perhaps equally it was from Durrant’s words still burning through his head from the session just finished with Greg Ormdern. Or the crushing reminder that had run through him like a red-hot pulse in time with the wall clock ticking down the minutes of the session: only six days left now to possibly save Durrant.

Ayliss inhaled deeply of the air outside just before he got in his rented Dodge Stratus, observed the 20 m.p.h speed limit for the two miles of shale road back towards the guard post, then gunned it once clear the other side. He let out a slow, heavy breath, as if blowing off the steam of the prison and the session, and hit play on the tape recorder on his passenger seat.

Ormdern’s voice drifted out, Durrant’s more muted timbre interspersed, the tinny tone of the recorder almost matching how he’d initially heard it through the small speaker in the observation room with Pete Folley at his side, looking on through the glass screen as Ormdern questioned Durrant on a camp-bed set up in the adjoining interview room.

Ormdern had been adamant that there should be no possible distractions in the room, and the sound feed and glass screen at the same time gave Ayliss what he wanted: not only to be able to hear every word, but watch every nuance and beat of Durrant’s expression. He wanted to feelthe experience, not just hear it.

It had taken almost ten minutes to get Larry fully under, then another few minutes for Ormdern to set mood and place, put Durrant in the moment: Eighteenth of February, the Roche’s Garden District residence.

‘The night that everything went wrong with the robbery and Jessica Roche.’

Ormdern had said that he didn’t want to use overtly leading words like kill or murder . ‘There’s part of Larry Durrant probably still in denial, most likely why he’s never described actually pulling the trigger, and I don’t want to inadvertently draw that out… put up his defences.’

‘You’ve already broken in the house… and I want you to tell me what you see there in the rooms, before you’re disturbed by Jessica Roche.’

‘In…in what way? Which rooms?’

‘Let’s start with the library. You went there to rob the house, and that’s where you found the safe, I understand.’

‘Yeah, that’s where I found it. That’s where I was in fact when-’

‘That’s okay,’ Ormdern cut in sharply. ‘What happened with Jessica Roche has been covered many times already. It’s going back before that, I’m interested in. Before…’

Ormdern dragged the word out, giving it a soothing quality. Larry’s breathing had become agitated, irregular, and as Ormdern repeated himself, ‘Before… before…’ it gradually settled back down.

‘That room… the library itself, for instance… what did it look like?’

‘I don’t know… it was dark. I didn’t really pay attention.’

‘Okay, okay… the safe, then? You’d have concentrated on that, because you were about to break it.’

‘Yeah… yeah.’ Larry swallowing, a long pause as he applied thought. ‘Straightforward twist-tumbler lock, as I recall.’

‘And the colour?’

‘I don’t know… grey or green, I think.’ Another heavy pause. ‘But it’s difficult. As I say, it was dark, and I was disturbed pretty soon, before I’d really had a chance to – ’

‘That’s okay, Larry… that’s okay. You’ve done well.’ Now it was Ormdern’s turn to pause. ‘Anything else that stood out in the house or that room, however small or inconsequential?’

Only the sound of Larry’s steady breathing, a faint swallow. Then he started mumbling something indiscernible, and Ormdern lost him for a few moments at that point.

‘Try and focus again, Larry… focus… focus…’ repetitive, the voice fading softer each time, ‘….that’s it Larry… that’s it…’ Gently closing in, Ormdern getting the images to settle again behind Durrant’s flickering eyelids. ‘Tell me what you see?’

‘Noth… nothing that stood out that much, really. Lot of books in the room, obviously… along one side.’

Ayliss had to concentrate on the road for a moment. He reached over and turned off the tape as he came off Highway 12 and negotiated the turn on to the Causeway. Lake Pontchartrain spread each side like a dark, moody blanket, the only relief some faint moon glow one side and the reflected lights of New Orleans in the distance. Ayliss didn’t switch on again until he was a few miles into the Causeway.

‘Do you remember which side of the room they were?’

‘Uh… uh. Right-hand side as you walk in, I believe. Oh, and there… there…’

‘Yeah?’ Ormdern prompting as Larry paused heavily again. ‘Go ahead, Larry. Tell me.’

‘There was a large clock in the hallway, I seem to remember. One of those ornate grandfather clocks.’

Ayliss clenched a fist tight on the steering wheel. The sort of detail that would seal Durrant’s fate rather than save it. If his memory of detail in the house had been scant, they could have cast doubt on his recall of the murder itself, claimed that it had somehow been suggested or even implanted. Those few details could be enough to support that he was definitely there – unlessthose descriptions didn’t match what Ayliss discovered at the old Roche residence.

‘Okay. We’ve covered what you might have actually seen in the house. But I want to deal now with what you might have actually feltwhile you were there. Your fear and anxiety with what happened with Jessica Roche has already been dealt with in depth… but I wondered if at any time you had the feeling that someone else apart from her was there at the time. Someone watching that you probably didn’t see or know about… only felttheir presence?’

I was there at the time.

Ayliss’s hands clenched back tight on the wheel as he waited out the long silence on tape, recalling Larry’s brow furrowing heavily. Finally:

‘No… I… I can’t say I did. Didn’t in fact hear anysounds in the house.’ Larry’s breathing steady, measured, then, after a brief swallow, falling shorter again, uneven. ‘Not even Jessica Roche upstairs – otherwise I’d have got out of there earlier. Only heard her footsteps approaching at the last minute when– ’

‘That’s okay, Larry – you don’t need to go there,’ Ormdern cut in sharply. ‘You’ve covered that more than enough in the past. Move on again to afterwards… afterwards.’ That drawn out, soothing tone again. ‘Afterwards… as you’re leaving the Roche house. Apart from the woman walking her dog, do you recall anyone else that might have seen you?’

‘No…’ Brief silence. ‘Not that I can recall.’

‘At a neighbouring house, perhaps… in their garden or looking out from a window. Someone that you didn’t notice before?’

Longer pause, then: ‘No, sorry… nothing. I was running hard by then, my mind set on just getting away from there. Perhaps wouldn’t have even noticed the woman with her dog if I hadn’t looked back.’

‘Right. I can understand that.’ Flicking of paper as Ormdern checked back through the notes Ayliss had handed him before the session. ‘I want to take you somewhere else now, Larry. Same week in 1992 – but a completely different place. The Bayou Brew bar and your regular pool game there with your buddies: Nat Hadley, Ted Levereaux and Bill Saunders.’ A moment’s pause as Ormdern let the new location and people settle in Durrant’s mind. ‘Now, I want you to try and recall, Larry – was your game that week before or after that night at the Roche house?’

‘Uh… uh… before, I think.’

Ayliss turned the tape off again for a moment as he came off the Causeway, and didn’t switch on again until after he’d made the turn on to Earhart Boulevard.

‘You think? Concentrate, Larry. It’s important. Can you place the day with any certainty?’

‘Yeah… yeah. Before, I’m pretty sure.’

Think. Prettysure. Too easily argued as reflecting uncertainty, Ayliss considered. Wouldn’t get him past square one with Governor Candaret.

‘Okay, before, then. Do you remember how long – how many days?’

‘I don’t know. A day or two before, maybe.’

Don’t know. Maybe. More uncertainty. Heavy pause as Ormdern consulted Ayliss’s notes again, looking for the key point mentioned that would help nail the day down: Bill Saunders.

‘Okay. Let’s see if we can tie it down another way. What and who did you see there? Were all your playing buddies there that night?’

‘Yeah.’ Larry’s tone offhand, Ayliss recalled him giving a little shrug at that juncture. ‘They were all there.’

As Ayliss turned onto Louisiana Avenue, he checked his watch. Looked like he’d get there six or seven minutes earlier than he’d said. He’d had to lay on the Southern charm thick and heavy to get the new owners’ agreement to look through the house; though hardly surprising, given its past history.

‘Are you sure about that? Particularly Bill Saunders. Was he there that night?’

‘Yeah, Bill was there.’

‘Absolutely sure?’

‘Yeah. A hundred per cent.’

This time Ayliss banged one fist against the steering wheel, rather than the air-punch when he’d first heard those words an hour ago in the observation room.

Ormdern had looked up at the clock at that point, only four minutes remaining, then had brought Larry back out, explaining to Ayliss afterwards that he didn’t want to get deep into what else Larry might have seen in the Bayou Brew that night only to have to break his train of thought halfway through.

Ayliss slowed as he came to the first houses of the Garden District on Washington Avenue, taking the turn into Coliseum Street two blocks down.

At least they’d ended on a positive note. High chances that the pool game wasthat crucial Thursday night, because Bill Saunders had been there rather than running his daughter to dance lessons. Ayliss would know just how high once he’d spoken to Saunders.

Ayliss was counting numbers as he went along. He swung in and pulled to a stop as he came to the old Roche residence. A resplendent antebellum mansion with two-storey high Corinthian columns supporting a thirty-foot wide front portico.

Problem was, that coinciding pool game was at odds with the details Durrant had provided from the Roche house, ifthey’d been as he described: grey or green safe with a twist-tumbler lock, grandfather clock, books along the right-hand side. Because he couldn’t have been both places that night: playing pool andkilling Jessica Roche.

Everything hinged on what Ayliss found out now. And what the new owners, the Mortons, might remember: ten years now they’d been in the house. Roche had put it on the market straight after the trial, but it had taken eleven months to finally find a buyer.

Ayliss closed his eyes for a second to compose himself. If this fact-finding now went the wrong way, in an hour he could be phoning Ormdern to cancel the second session. Something along the lines: ‘ Those details Durrant gave match what I’ve been able to find out from the house itself. There’s no other possible explanation: he was there that night. There’s little point in us continuing, nor in fact do I even feel inclined – from a purely ethical point of view – to put in more time trying to save an obviously guilty man.’

A light wind outside ruffled the trees. A timeless district like this, early December, probably wasn’t that different to how it had been mid-February twelve years ago. Ayliss wondered just how much of the house inside might have also remained in a time warp.

He noticed a curtain moving on a downstairs window, the Mortons checking out if it was their expected visitor. With a resigned sigh, Ayliss got out the car and approached the house.

‘Follow him. See where he goes and who he might meet with.’

Roche’s predictable advice when he called back the next evening about Ayliss. Nel-M felt like ribbing, ‘And how exactly should I go about that? You know, after a month of doing fuck all else with McElroy, I might need some guidance.’ Not exactly that imaginative: simply swap one mark for another. But with the way those few words had been delivered, slowly and purposefully between pained breaths, as if they had real significance, Nel-M could tell that Roche was still in no mood for humour. So all he said was, ‘Okay. I’ll get right on it.’

Then, as if an afterthought, or Roche felt his instructions should be meted out separately in case Nel-M couldn’t cope with more than one at a time: ‘Oh, and get onto his ex-wife in Oregon, too. Tell her that her past dearly-beloved is back in town, and so she might want to take the opportunity to slap the rest of that old maintenance order back on his ass.’ Roche did actually manage a brief forced chuckle then, but it lapsed into a small cough as it caught an incoming breath the wrong way. ‘Should keep him on his toes and hopefully his eye off the ball with Durrant, with his wife hot on his tail again. Might even hi-tail it straight back to Mexico, if we’re lucky.’

‘If we’re lucky.’ A bit more of a plan, but Nel-M played it low-key, didn’t want to be too enthusiastic. She might just say that that was all history, she had no interest in chasing his sorry ass any more. ‘I’ll see if I can make contact with her.’

The next morning, Nel-M put a call through to Bateson and asked him to make a note of Darrell Ayliss’s car-type and registration when he arrived at Libreville that evening for the session with Ormdern. Then he started making calls to track down Melanie Ayliss’s phone number in Oregon.

Bateson’s return call came at 7.16 p.m., and thirty-five minutes later Nel-M left his apartment and drove out to just before the start of the Pontchartraine Causeway, made a hasty U-turn in a gap in the traffic and stopped at the first pull-in where he could watch cars coming off the Causeway.

He’d got there early, just in case, and had to wait over half an hour before Ayliss’s steel-blue Dodge Stratus went past him. Nel-M let one more car pass, then pulled out and followed.

Earhart… then Louisiana… LaSalle. As soon as Ayliss took the turn onto Washington Avenue, Nel-M suspected where he was heading; confirmed as Ayliss slowed the other side of St Charles, looking out for Coliseum Street.

Nel-M had spent little time in the area since that night in 1992. Driven past it several times and through it on a few occasions out of necessity – but never stayed for any time there.

He kept straight on as Ayliss turned into Coliseum Street, then took the next turn on Chestnut and again on 2 ^ndStreet, effectively circling round the block; and, sure enough, as he nosed his car out enough to get a partial view, Ayliss was closing his car door and heading up the path towards the Roche’s old house.

For the first twenty minutes of waiting, Nel-M stayed calm, tried not to think too much about what Ayliss might be doing in there. But as the minutes ticked by, his thoughts started to multiply: maybe some vital clue from the session with Durrant that Ayliss was checking out, or something Ayliss had picked up on that nobody had before; or perhaps he was just familiarizing himself with the crime scene. Standard practice.

The atmosphere of the street also began to close in on Nel-M then: its quietness and isolation from the city close by, the shadows heavier, deeper from the large mansions and more abundant tree cover. The reminders of that night drifting back: Jessica Roche’s eyes staring back pleadingly just before that final shot… the woman walking her dog holding his gaze for a second as he’d looked back.

Nel-M’s pulse was still raised a notch, his hands gently trembling on the steering wheel, when almost an hour later Ayliss left the house. He pulled out again to follow him.

St Charles, Jackson, Simon Bolivar… finally stopping at a hotel two blocks from the main train and Greyhound bus terminals. Again, Nel-M drifted past and then turned around and parked a block away where he had a clear sight of Ayliss’s Dodge in their side car park.

Maybe Ayliss would head out later for dinner or another meeting, Nel-M considered, but after an hour of waiting – 10.43 p.m. by then – Nel-M began to think that Ayliss might be there for the night, had grabbed something to eat in the hotel. He left it another twenty minutes, then went into the hotel. He approached the reception desk.

‘I’ve got a business colleague staying here, Darrell Ayliss, and I promised to drop off some papers for him tomorrow morning. But I don’t want to miss him before he heads off, and he told me he was having an early night – so I didn’t want to disturb him now. But I wondered what time he might have an alarm call or breakfast ordered – might give me a clue as to when he’ll be heading out.’

The desk clerk’s brow furrowed. ‘Mr Ayliss has already left, sir.’

‘But his rental car’s still in the car park.’

‘I know, sir. He left the keys here for the car-rental company to pick up, and got in a cab forty minutes ago.’

Nel-M tried to recall the dozen or so cabs he’d seen pull up in that time, and the people he’d seen get in them. The only possibility had been a man shuffling in with a homburg hat pulled down. But it hadn’t looked like Ayliss – no horn-rimmed glasses, no dark lank hair in sight, different jacket – which Nel-M supposed had been the idea.

A muscle twitched sharply in Nel-M’s jaw. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and as soon as he was outside the hotel, he took out his cell-phone.

Perhaps Ayliss was moving around because of his ex-wife, or possibly Coultaine had whispered in his ear that – given what had happened to McElroy – it was advisable to remain shadowy and elusive.

Nel-M had phoned Melanie Ayliss’s number earlier and been told, ‘Mom won’t be back till late this evening. Shopping and then sociology evening class.’

Nel-M hadn’t planned to try her again until the next day – but if this was going to be the name of the game with Ayliss, Runaround City, the sooner his ex-wife was chasing his ass, the better. With two of them trying to find him, he wouldn’t find it so easy to slip away.

Darrell Ayliss’s cab took him deeper into the city – through the Warehouse District, CBD and French Quarter – to a smaller, more intimate hotel with a quaint Spanish courtyard and pool on the edge of Faubourg Marigny.

He glanced through the cab’s back window a couple of times, nobody following that he could tell – but then he hadn’t noticed anyone following earlier either. Just basic precautions: change his hotel and his rental car every day. Keep on the move.

He’d phoned to book the room under his name four hours back, and, as he checked in, the desk clerk informed him that his guest had already arrived. ‘About half an hour ago.’ The desk clerk handed him his key. ‘Room twenty-nine. First floor.’

Ayliss nodded with a tight smile and, despite it being only one floor, took the elevator. He felt as awkward as hell moving around, felt as if all that clammy heat and stale sweat from Libreville was still trapped against his skin.

Noises from the en-suite as he walked in: running water. He’d knock the door in a minute, but meanwhile he couldn’t wait any longer to get everything off. First his oversized jacket and shirt, then the padding strapped around his shoulders and waist that made him look seventy pounds heavier. He leant forward to shake and blink out the two brown contact lenses into his right palm, then finally, stripped to the waist standing in front of the dressing-table mirror, he started peeling off the skin-coloured prosthetic stuck tight to his cheeks and around his jaw.

The bathroom door opened, and, reflected in the mirror, he saw Alaysha Reyner leaning against the door frame in burgundy-red La Perla panties and matching bra. She smiled slyly.

‘My, my, Mr McElroy. I swear I only recognize you with your clothes off.’

He felt an ache of longing as he looked at her, but as he remembered Gerry’s words ‘… I’ll bet you she hasn’t told you one thing. Our dirty, sordid little secret…’ before he ran off into the night with her gun, it dissolved into something else in his stomach. Something sourer, more uncertain, but equally as painful.

34

As Jac had been about to phone John Langfranc that night out by the Great River Road, he’d suddenly thought of Morvaun Jaspar. He’d stood frozen in the same position for a couple of minutes, turning over in his mind whether the scenario that had just struck him might be at all possible. Yes, it would be one way of disappearing for a while and, yes, he might be able to get into Libreville with a good enough disguise. But some of the practicalities and worrying gaps in the plan he wouldn’t be able to fill until he’d actually spoken with Morvaun.

Morvaun had seen the late news bulletin, ‘‘Spect half of New Orleans has by now,’ and while his initial excitement over the idea outweighed his concerns, he reserved full judgement until they’d talked it over some more. ‘First thing is t’get you picked up. Then we can sit over some hot coffee – an’ maybe somethin’ stronger – while we thrash out if this is actually gonna work, or is jus’ the worst damn-fool plan since the Presiden’ decided to go into Iraq.’

In the half-hour wait, despite hanging in the shadow of some trees until he saw Morvaun’s car turn the corner, again Jac’s nerves bubbled as if being pressure-cooked, worried that the man on the terrace – or someone else seeing him through a window – might have matched him to the news bulletin, and a squad car would get to him before Morvaun.

Though when he did show, Jac still had good reason to worry. Morvaun’s car, a late fifties Plymouth Belvedere, two-tone pink and sky-blue with grandiose tail-fins that looked like they belonged on a Buck Rogers space-craft, couldn’t have stood out more in the small community. If Morvaun had leant out a side window with a loud hailer shouting “Septegarian pimps’ convention” or “James Brown’s back in town!” – that would at least have half-explained the car’s presence to them.

As the car coughed and jerked its way back up to Highway 10, with the occasional backfire, Morvaun half-turned towards Jac in the back seat.

‘Now you keep down real low there, Jac. Outta sight. Don’ wanna bring no untoward attention to ourselves.’

Jac swallowed back a muted chuckle.

Morvaun’s driving was atrocious. Jac lost count of the number of horns blared at them as Morvaun pulled out when he shouldn’t or drifted across lanes. As a car at a cross-street screeched and swerved around them, a narrow miss as Morvaun pulled out without apparently seeing them, Morvaun apologized.

‘Sorry ‘bout that, Jac. Haven’t been drivin’ this for a while.’

Jac looked around at the car. ‘What, since nineteen-fifty-eight?’

Morvaun chuckled. ‘You wanna save what humour you got left fo’ what the fuck I might make you look like later.’ Then he shrugged lamely. ‘Nah, eight months, perhaps. An’ before that, jus’ weekends now and then. ‘Cause my eyesight ain’t what it used t’be.’

Jac would never have guessed.

‘…An’ sounds like it needs a bit of a service now, too.’

Jac was convinced that, between Morvaun’s erratic driving, the car’s garish appearance and spluttering and gunshot-loud back-firing, they were bound to get stopped by a police car before they got back to Morvaun’s place.

But somehow, miraculously, they made it, and over coffee and Kahlua – Morvaun didn’t have brandy and whisky, only a wide array of exotic Caribbean and Pacific Island liquors – they got down to the serious business of not just if and how it might work, but most of all whoJac was going to be.

Jac quickly discounted implicating Langfranc, what with old-man Beaton no doubt now looking hawkishly over his shoulder, but Mike Coultaine was another matter: long-retired, no remaining allegiances, and a strong invested interest – having been thwarted both at trial and appeal – in saving Durrant’s neck.

Coultaine was understanding of Jac’s plight, but was non-committal at first, saying he’d phone back in an hour. But when he called back he not only had a name, Darrell Ayliss, but within minutes had e-mailed a j-peg to Morvaun’s computer. Coultaine had spent most of that hour making arrangements, calling in old favours.

‘Ayliss is ideal,’ he explained, ‘Because he’s been off the scene for a while – seven years – and there’s hardly anyone in New Orleans that’ll recognize him. Ex-wife’s in Oregon, and the rest of his family in Mississippi.’

Morvaun agreed: ideal. Not only because of the lack of close friends and family in New Orleans, but the eight years since his last passport photo. ‘Gives us a pile more leeway in how he might look now.’

Though to get the likeness as close as possible, Coultaine arranged the next day for Ayliss to e-mail Morvaun directly – along with scans of each page of his passport – details of his appearance now: hair colour, length, level of greyness, eye-colour, weight, type of clothes and glasses.

Coultaine had also covered their tracks by arranging for Ayliss to go to Cabo San Lucas for a week’s fly-fishing. ‘Some old favours owed between us – don’t even ask the hows and whys. All you need to be assured of is that if anyone checks on Ayliss down in Vallarta, according to his staff he’s simply away for the week. Where, they don’t know – they weren’t told.’

That evening, Morvaun went out to see Alaysha at Pinkies – the only way they could think of safely getting a message to her. Jac surmised that there wasn’t nearly enough for the NOPD to hold her for any length of time, let alone charge her with an accomplice to murder rap.

As she leant close in the middle of a dance, Morvaun whispered in one ear, ‘Jac wants to see you. I know where he is.’

A beat’s pause, then she resumed quickly in case Security thought that Ol’ Man River had just made an inappropriate suggestion. And in the next couple of lean-ins, she got the rest of the details.

A rare treat for Morvaun, Jac reflected; hoping, that is, his heart held out. Part payment for helping out, along with 200 bucks Jac gave him towards a car service and a new paint-job.

‘What, yo’ don’t like the pink and blue?’

Jac smiled dryly and shook his head, not sure if Morvaun was serious. Not sure of anything any more. Two-tone: more or less mirrored his life for the next week.

‘You should have told me.’

‘I tried, Jac. I tried.’

‘When?’

‘That same night Gerry came knocking on my door while you were there.’

Jac shook his head incredulously. ‘What, when the knock came? Oh, that must be Gerry – I just remembered there’s something I forgot to tell Jac. Or when he shouted through the door about your sordid little secret together?’

Alaysha’s hands clenched in exasperation. The struggle for clarity. ‘No, Jac… before. I tried – believe me. But you were too caught up in your own little story about that Archie Teale and your father dying.’ As she saw him flinch, realizing how trivial she’d made it sound, she reached out and gently touched his arm. ‘Sorry, Jac… I didn’t mean it like that. But I didtry to tell you then. Just felt like the right time, you know… pouring hearts out to each other time. Probably the first time between us that it had felt right to…’ She cast her eyes down for a second, biting at her bottom lip, ‘… to share a secret like that.’

He nodded with a tight-lipped grimace, starting to understand. She needn’t have come here, he reminded himself. She could have just stayed away, felt that it was just too awkward to explain. Left him wondering. ‘I know. I’m sorry too…’ though he had to pause then to think what for. ‘…For being too hasty.’

All she’d said so far was that she and Gerry had conspired to rob someone that they shouldn’t, and now it was coming back to haunt her – and he’d started putting her on the rack. ‘You said rob someone that you shouldn’thave. What, some defenceless old lady or friend or relative, maybe?’

‘No.’ Alaysha shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean shouldn’tfrom a moral standpoint; it’s because of the risk involved if we ever got found out. How much our necks would be on the line.’ Alaysha looked down again briefly, swallowing. ‘It was Carmen Malastra we robbed. That’s why we shouldn’t have done it.’

Malastra. New Orleans biggest, most-feared mobster. The name ran a shiver down most spines. ‘Oh, I see.’ All he could think of saying immediately, his head suddenly feeling hot and pressured.

Seeing the shock on Jac’s face, she smiled awkwardly, shrugging. ‘From a moral point of view, my slate’s completely clean. In fact it was that that made me do it, in a moment of weakness, or madness, or both – my mother’s illness.’ She stroked absently at one thigh for a second. ‘And, you see, that’s why it felt right to tell you at that moment… when you were talking about your father.’

Jac just nodded, closing his eyes for a second in understanding, but didn’t say anything. He could see that this was difficult for her to talk about, the right words elusive, hanging by slim threads between them, and if he spoke they might break, the chain of thought lost and her perhaps not able to get it back in quite the same way again. The shadows in her eyes shifted rapidly for a few seconds more before finally settling and focusing, and she started to explain.

Gerry had been telling her for a while about the Bay-Tree’s manager, George Jouliern, needing a courier for a scam he was planning, but she’d initially refused. Gerry had kept on about how much money it would mean to both of them, thirty to fifty thousand dollars each, depending how much of a skim Jouliern was able to get away with – but she’d had no interest or particular need for the money then, felt it was mainly to benefit Gerry, who’d got himself in deep with a twenty-grand debt to a local loan shark, Raoul Ferrer.

‘Gerry kept piling on the pressure – “I gotta do something about Ferrer, otherwise he’s gonna break my legs” – but still I said no; until, that is, I got news about my mother.’ Her mother had been suffering with diabetes for years, but suddenly it had taken a chronic turn, ‘Something called diabetic nepropathy. Suddenly it was life-threatening, she needed urgent, regular dialysis, the costs were sky-high and she didn’t have medical insurance. And so, despite the risks involved – Gerry maintained there were little or none, Jouliern had it all too well-planned – that thirty to fifty grand started to look like a godsend. My only chance of saving my mother’s life. I finally agreed, said I’d do it.’