Текст книги "Ascension Day"

Автор книги: John Matthews

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Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

37

‘Which part of nowand urgentis 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, ‘S ays 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 mypace 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 facade. 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.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Truelle said, a hint of vehemence to lift it beyond stock defence.

Jac rolled on as if Truelle hadn’t spoken. ‘And the main test as to whether that account might have been “implanted” is the amount of incidental detail recalled outside of the murder itself.’ Jac patted the file and smiled again. ‘And guess what Greg Ormdern discovered?’ Jac watched Truelle’s face redden, but it quickly transformed to bluster.

‘As I said, ridiculous… ridiculous!’ Truelle leant forward, gesturing with one hand as if to throw the report back across the desk. ‘And I strongly resent your implication.’

Jac had fully expected Truelle’s professional hackles to rise. What else could he do? And perhaps, as Jac, he’d have backed off and, if hit with more of the same, pretty soon packed up his tent and headed off. But as Ayliss, a world-weary criminal lawyer, he felt he could bluff it out. In fact, it was expectedof him; anything less wouldn’t have been true to Ayliss’s character.

Just the other night he’d commented to Alaysha that that was one advantage of being Ayliss to compensate for all the padding and discomfort: he was like Jac’s alter-ego, the heavyweight criminal lawyer that Jac hoped to be in five or ten years time. And so under the guise of Ayliss, he was able to get away with all the things he might not get away with as Jac.

Jac eased his best syrupy Ayliss smile with southern drawl to match. ‘Now come on, Mr Truelle. You and I both know the truth of what’s going on here. And if you don’t, now we’ve got Mr Ormdern’s report to tell us.’

Truelle looked at the envelope reluctantly, as if unwilling to accept its existence. He felt his stomach sinking deeper with every double-time pulse-beat, and wished the floor would open up. Detail? He’d embellished with quite a bit of detail, he thought, even covering elements after the event that he thought the police would question Durrant about. ‘ The first thing you saw about the murder was in aTV shop window late the next day…You’d made sure to avoid all newspapers and early morning TV… but then there she was suddenly…’ That hadn’t even come up in police questioning, but it was there nevertheless, embedded in Durrant’s sub-conscious. No, he’d added more than enough detail.

‘You’re wrong or misguided, or simply not telling the truth. I implanted no false memory on Mr Durrant, and I don’t believe for a minute that Mr Ormdern’s report suggests that I did.’ Truelle briefly challenged Ayliss’s smile as best he could with his own.

Jac didn’t flinch for a second, his steady gaze boring straight through Truelle. Unmoved, unimpressed. Again he continued as if Truelle hadn’t spoken. ‘So, we’ve covered incidental detail – or rather lack of it.’ He nodded towards the file. ‘But the part of the equation that was always missing was opportunity. Whenmight you have been able to implant all of this in Durrant’s mind? The esteemed Mr Ormdern reckons you’d have needed at least an hour-long session, maybe more, for all that mental conditioning. But the problem was that all of the sessions were sequential with diary entries to match. No gaps.’

Truelle adopted again his best nonplussed poker face, blinking slowly, the writhing snakes of nerves in his stomach coiling tighter. It was like watching an impending car crash. Knowing that you wouldn’t like what you saw, that it would turn your stomach, but remaining transfixed all the same in case the cars miraculously missed each other at the last second, or just to see how dramatic and gory it might be.

‘And then I discovered this…’ Jac took the cassette player from his pocket and pressed play. Truelle’s voice with the date and time of the session, then two faint clicks straight after, which Jac ensured Truelle heard by turning up the volume. ‘That’s it right there, you see. Those two faint clicks.’ Jac quickly slotted in another tape and ran the same segment with Truelle announcing the date and time, again turning the volume up for the two clicks. ‘And again there… and the same on five other tapes. And the background noises too are different to the session where Larry describes the murder… and on which there’s only oneclick.’

‘I… I did the introductions afterwards rather than before on those. It happens a lot.’

Jac twisted his mouth as if he’d tasted something sour. ‘On its own, that story might wash. But, combined with Ormdern’s findings about lack of incidental detail, it answers howyou did it. The sessions were mostly two a week, and you used one of the later sessions in your diary, just before Larry’s murder confession, to mentally condition him. Then you shifted all the other session tapes forward to cover it by putting in new intro dates and times. The gap was then shifted back five or six weeks, beforethe month of tapes with diary entries to match requested at trial. The gap wouldn’t have shown.’

‘You’ve got quite a vivid imagination there, Mr Ayliss, I must say.’ Truelle pushed a tame smile, but inside the writhing tension in his stomach had wormed its way through every vein and nerve-end. He pressed his hand firmer on the desktop to kill any visible trembling. ‘But if you reallyfelt you had something with all of this, you’d be at the DA’s office right now with it, not sitting here with me.’

‘That’s where I’m headed next. I came here first to see what you had to say, purely as a courtesy. You see, if you turn State’s evidence, you could probably cut a deal that would keep you clean and clear, or at least doing easy time – six months, a year tops.’ Jac held one hand out. ‘If not, you’re probably looking at five years.’

Five years? Truelle swallowed anxiously. Though that was nothing to what he faced from Nel-M: thrown off a high building after a tango, or, if he was lucky, quick and painless: two bullets in a back-street parking-lot, like Raoul Ferrer.

Jac watched intently every small tic and nuance of Truelle’s expression. Everything in the balance; the final gauntlet down, the tension crackled like raw electricity between them. Jac knew that he didn’t have enough to go to the DA or Candaret. Everything depended on how Truelle responded to the bluff, which way he jumped now.

Truelle let out a sudden snort, half-laughter, half-derision. ‘Do you really think I’d do something like this? Conspire to frame an innocent man?’ Truelle leant forward, his voice firming with each word. ‘If so, you’re deluded, Mr Ayliss. Because I’d never, everhave agreed to something like that.’ The second truth to pass between them: he never would have gone along with the scheme if he’d believed Durrant had been innocent.

Jac flinched fleetingly at the fresh conviction in Truelle’s voice, but hopefully covered well, feeling in that instant as if they were two poker players bluffing the hell out of each other. The game to see who crumbled and folded first. He kept his stare level and even on Truelle, laying on thick the Ayliss drawl.

‘Yes, I do believe that’s exactly what you did. Because I believe this man actually committed the murder.’ Jac took from Ormdern’s envelope one of the photos Stratton had taken of Nelson Malley and slid it towards Truelle. ‘Do you know this man?’

‘No… no, I don’t.’

Truelle had hardly glanced at the photo. ‘Are you sure?’ Jac pressed, sensing a niche of uncertainty again.

‘Yes, I’m… look, Mr Ayliss.’ Truelle’s red-faced bluster resurfaced. He pushed Malley’s photo back across the desk-top. ‘Forget this man, andany others you might wish to put in the frame. The DNA evidence puts Durrant at the murder scene. He was therethat night, and he killed Jessica Roche. Get used to it.’

Truelle glared his words home hard, clinging to his belief in them: DNA! The final raft of moral justification he’d held on to all along. He was doing nothing wrong, because in the end Durrant haddone it. Roche and Nel-M had been telling the truth all along: he wasguilty.

But with each word and accusation of Ayliss’s, he’d found himself drifting further and further into a sea of doubt, with that raft all that was left to cling to. No, no, no… no! Durrant diddo it! He killed her! And if Ayliss did finally prise his grip from that raft, there’d be nothing to hold on to… sailing free into the night air as Nel-M let him loose from his dance grip.

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Jac said, and even if Truelle did finally break now, Candaret might say exactly the same when he laid it all before him: ‘ This is all very well, Mr Ayliss, but the DNA evidence puts Durrant there. There’s no other possible explanation: he killed Jessica Roche.’ Jac took a fresh breath. ‘But if they can set Durrant up so perfectly with everything you’ve helped them with – then I’m sure they also worked out how to set up the DNA evidence. Only nobody’s worked out how yet.’

Further adrift… Truelle clinging so hard, his nails dug painfully into one thigh. He stood up abruptly. ‘I’d like you to leave now, Mr Ayliss. I believe we’ve discussed everything we have to.’ Get Ayliss clear of his office before he fell apart completely.

‘I know it’s hard to face.’ Jac grimaced tautly. ‘But deep down you know the truth of what’s happened here, Mr Truelle. And you’re probably the onlyperson left now that might be able to save Larry Durrant.’

Last few fingers wrenched loose… sailing free. Truelle didn’t respond directly or even look at Ayliss, simply buzzed on his intercom. ‘Mr Ayliss is leaving now, Cynthia.’ And put the hand quickly back on his desktop, bracing as he felt himself sway slightly, as if he’d been drinking.

Jac wrote down his Ayliss cell-phone number and slid it across. ‘And remember, be careful where you call from with anything too juicy or incriminating. Your phones might well be bugged.’ He slipped Malley’s photo into the envelope and looked back from the doorway as Cynthia held the door open. ‘It’s not going to simply go away, or be any easier to face in front of the DA. Especially with five years hanging over your head.’ Jac smiled tightly and waved the envelope. ‘Twenty-four hours – again, purely as a courtesy. Then I go to him with all this.’

Nel-M had been tapping his fingers so incessantly against the steering wheel, he could feel them starting to go numb. Where the fuck was she? Already twenty-five minutes Ayliss had been in there, and still no sign of her.

He had her number from her last call, and called it back.

‘Hi again,’ Melanie Ayliss said. ‘I shouldn’t really be talking on this now.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You know, while I’m driving.’

‘I thought you’d be jumping in a cab?’

‘I’d already booked this from back in Portland… didn’t take long to get the paperwork done.’

Nel-M closed his eyes. No wonder Ayliss had fucking divorced her! He felt like screaming, I thought I told you it was urgent!.. but no point in alienating her. He took a fresh breath. ‘He’s still here – but maybe not for much longer. Where are you now?’

‘On Simon Bolivar… just crossed Melpomene.’

Six or seven minutes, thought Nel-M. No more.

‘Okay. See you soon.’

But just as it hit the six minute mark, he saw Ayliss head out of Truelle’s office towards his car. Nel-M phoned again, a couple of rings before it answered, Ayliss already back at his car, getting in.

‘He’s just leaving!’ Nel-M’s voice sharp with immediacy.

‘But I’m right there.’

‘Where?’

‘On Canal Street… just turning into Royal.’

‘What car have you got?’

‘Uuuh… Blue Chevy Metro.’

Ayliss starting up, looking around, pulling out.

And Nel-M spotted her then: Blue Metro, brown-haired woman at the wheel with a cell-phone in her hand.

‘He’s just pulled out!’ Nel-M screamed. ‘Grey Buick Century… heading your way.’

‘What? Where… where?’

The woman frantically scanning the road ahead as she assimilated the information, Ayliss’s car twenty-five yards away at that point, starting to pick up speed.

And at only ten yards away, she finally spotted him, her eyes locking fully on the car and Ayliss inside as they came alongside. Her eyes went wide for a second, and then she did something foolish – although nothing would have surprised Nel-M about her by that stage. She braked. Hard.

The car behind, a Dodge Dakota, didn’t have a chance, crushing most of the back of the Metro into a concertina. Nel-M closed his eyes and cringed; and when he opened them again, it wasn’t pretty. Though she still looked alive. Just.

Ayliss had kept going, might not have even noticed the conflagration twenty yards behind him. Quick decision to make: head into Truelle’s office and pull out fingernails until he found out what had happened, or keep tailing Ayliss? The sound of a distant siren made his mind up: there’d be a scene here now, police cars arriving at any second. He could catch up with Truelle later and, besides, he’d need Ayliss’s whereabouts for when his ex got out of the hospital.

Nel-M swung out to follow Ayliss, but at that moment the man driving ahead decided to stop to assist the accident victims, his car blocking the road.

‘Out the fucking way!’ Nel-M screamed, his head out the window. ‘You fucking numb-brained mor-’ Nel-M’s voice trailed off as he saw a squad car ahead turn into the road.

Nel-M looked over his shoulder, one arm across the passenger seat as he did a hasty three-point turn, praying that he was able to get around the block quick enough not to lose Ayliss.

The perfect set-up.

Over a couple of shots of Jim Beam, which rapidly became three, four, five and more, Leonard Truelle pondered whether Darrell Ayliss’s claim might be right.

In the very beginning, he’d had strong doubts, but he’d had little choice then: Raoul Ferrer’s hefty street debt one side, which they offered to clear, his drink problem and the threat of exposure and getting struck off, the other; then the final sweetener on top: $250,000. On one side crushing problems, on the other all the decks cleared and a hefty chunk of cash on top.

But when they’d still sensed some reluctance from him, they’d started piling it on about Durrant being guilty in any case. Adelay Roche had put feelers out on the criminal network, and Durrant’s name was the main one to come back as having killed his wife. But the coma and selective memory situation had conveniently blotted it out. The police couldn’t even apply standard question and interrogation tactics in such a situation, and in any case simply didn’t have enough evidence to haul him in.

Truelle had offered to get the information out of Durrant conventionally, but they’d said no. Too risky. If he’d blotted out the recall, or his memory of it was sketchy, the police still wouldn’t have enough to nail him. And with taped sessions, they couldn’t later go back and add or embellish; then it wouldlook suspicious, as if the memory had been falsely embedded.

No, allthe details had to be there, so there was no possible error or come-back. That’s what they were paying for: over $400,000 with Ferrer’s debt.

He should have pulled out right then, but the money and all his problems cleared at the same time was just too tempting.

And so he’d gone along with it, used the next session to condition Durrant: ‘ You went to a house that night on Coliseum Street, Lawrence… large antebellum mansion in the Garden District with grand white columns on its front portico. You know the type. It was a planned house robbery, Lawrence, and you felt guilty about it because you’d promised your wife not to commit any more robberies. And unfortunately, while you were there a woman was still in the house that you didn’t know about…. and it all went wrong… terribly wrong…’

A masterful mix of what he’d been fed from Roche and Nel-M, along with what he knew himself about Durrant’s background.

He shifted the previous session tapes to cover, and the next session dropped the right prompts to tease it all back out of Durrant’s memory as the tape ran. Then two days later he phoned the police.

Telling himself all along that he could pull back from the brink later, when he had Ferrer off his back and had worked out how to cover for his drink problem so that he didn’t get struck off and… and then, as the police investigation gathered steam, the DNA evidence on Durrant came in!

Eighty per cent of that doubt and guilt suddenly lifted from his shoulders. They’d been telling the truth all along! Durrant wasguilty.

And that’s pretty much how the years since had rolled on: guilty about what he’d done, but consoling himself all along that the end justified the means… though always with that twenty per cent of nagging doubt. That percentage swung back and forth at times: higher with the first news of Durrant’s execution date, thirty or forty per cent, maybe even…

Truelle suddenly jolted in his seat. Nel-M!

He relaxed again as he managed to focus through the haze of the five Jim Beams swimming around in his head – just a black man of similar height and build. Truelle knocked back the rest of his drink, lifted a hand towards the barman for another.

A minute after Ayliss had left his office, there’d been an almighty bang outside, and as he looked down at the accident he saw the police car swing in and Nel-M backing up and doing a three-point turn. Nel-M had been watching outside as Ayliss paid him a visit!

He told Cynthia to cancel the rest of his day’s appointments, he had something urgent to attend to. ‘And if anyone calls for me, anyone… you don’t know where I’ve gone.’

He hastily left the office, past the policemen surveying the accident, heading for a bar or anywherethat Nel-M might not find him. For that reason, he avoided Ben’s or any of his regular haunts, went deep into the CBD before he felt he was on safe enough ground, a sprawling Irish-flavoured tavern on Julia Street.

Thirty per cent… forty per cent…that doubt fluctuating wildly along with his own mood swings and shattered nerves, reaching more for the bottle each time it raised a notch.

But now this smooth-tongued Southern lawyer, Ayliss, had rocketed that doubt into the stratosphere. He seemed to be right about everything else – had pretty well worked it all out – then why not the DNA as well?

Truelle noticed that his hand was still shaking as he raised his fresh glass. Six stiff ones and he was still shaking like Jello in an earthquake. He doubted that he’d get calm and level this time, no matter how much he drank.

Some squeaky violin music scratched at the back of his brain. While a good bar in which to hide away, lots of dark corners – and better still as it started to fill with an after-office crowd – as it had become busier, they’d also turned up the frantic-fiddler Riverdancemusic.

But he still needed to kill more time. Okay, he’d sat it out beyond office hours, but now that his office was closed, Nel-M would probably be waiting at his apartment for him. He wouldn’t be able to go back there either!

Stay here and be driven mad by frantic Irish fiddlers? Or risk all out there with Nel-M: thrown from a rooftop or a quick bullet through the brain?

With the aid of three more Jim Beams, he managed to brave it out at the Irish bar for almost another two hours, smiling like an idiot and tapping his feet to the music at one point, as the drink finally made his senses swim and sway.

Then he went to a nearby restaurant, picking at a Chicken Royale, his stomach still too jumpy to swallow much. Though he did manage to wash down the five mouthfuls with a full-bodied bottle of Cote de Beaune.

He finished off the evening with four lingering night-cap brandies between two bars on Maple Street, by which time, spilling himself into a taxi at almost 1 p.m. – hopefully Nel-M would have given up waiting for him by then – everything was drifting and sailing around him so wonderfully that he hardly cared if Nel-M put a bullet through his head. He’d hardly feel it, and such a great moment to go out on: the lights of the city spinning and sparkling all around him like he’d never seen before. Everything so beeyootiful… so fucking beeeyoootiful…

Though he did snap to, sharpen his senses a bit as the taxi approached his apartment. If Nel-M’s car was anywhere nearby, he’d simply tell the driver to head-on, spend that night in a hotel. But it was nowhere to be seen.

He eased out a breath of relief as he told the driver to stop, paid, leapt out, and, taking the stairs two and three at a time, opened his door and slammed it behind him as quickly, sliding back the three deadbolts; then leant against the door for almost a full two minutes, breathless, eyes closed, the city lights still spinning all around him.

He went to the window. No sign of Nel-M’s car or anything else suspect. But still he didn’t put any lights on, except for a small back bathroom light which wouldn’t show through to the front.

He noticed the red light on his answer-phone flashing as he went back into the lounge. He played the message.

‘ Hi, Lenny… Chris here. Chris Tullington. You know I mentioned you coming up here one Christmas. Well, me and Brenda and little Giles – or not so little any more – we’re heading inland to Vernon for Christmas. It’s the ideal Christmas setting – fir trees, lots of snow and skiing and big log fires. You’d love it! We’d be real happy to see you, if you could make it. Give us a call here in Vancouver, if you think you’d be able to. We’re heading off there on the eighteenth for ten days.’

Fir trees. Skiing. Warm Christmas fires and old friends. Yeah, he’d love to be able to make it, but it felt a million miles from where he was at that moment.

He looked anxiously towards the front door. If the bell rang, he simply wouldn’t answer it, just phone the police straight away, say he had an intruder at the door.

Surely Nel-M wouldn’t be able to shoot or hack his way through all the dead-bolts before the police arrived? He wouldn’t even risk looking through the spy-hole if it rang, in case Nel-M tried to shoot him through the door. He’d immediately shut and lock every connecting door and barricade himself in a back bedroom.

And that’s where he lay as he finally put his head down to sleep, though with all the connecting doors open so that he could listen out for even the slightest sound from the corridor outside; and he was still in the same position over two hours later, eyes darting rapidly as he listened out for those small sounds that hadn’t yet come, the barrage of nerves again gripping him as the effects of the drink started to wear off, spinning city lights battling against dark demons, until his conscious mind finally gave up caring and he fell asleep.