Текст книги "Ascension Day"

Автор книги: John Matthews

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Текущая страница: 36 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

And, as he was a few paces away, Calbrey called after him, explaining that ‘Lenny’ might return direct to the ‘casita’ rather than the main house itself. ‘Its entrance is forty yards along.’

Jac looked towards where Calbrey pointed and the white Moorish-style bungalow, a smaller version of the main house, on a small promontory with panoramic views over the sea lapping fifteen yards its other side. Everything was white, Jac thought: the villa and ‘casitas’, Calbrey’s Bermudas and cheese-cloth top, the Corvette. Jac nodded his thanks and, as he got back into his car, looked anxiously at his watch.

He couldn’t just sit there for two hours, knowing that meanwhile Larry’s life was ticking away. He started up, heading back to Sancti Spiritus. But halfway there, his foot suddenly eased from the pedal. Two hours? Hardly would he have arrived there before Truelle was heading back out to the villa. And if Truelle heard that meanwhile someone had called for him, he might rush off again, go to ground.

No, the only safe thing was to wait there and watch. At the next side road, he did a hasty three-point turn, headed back; and, eighty yards along from the bungalow, with a clear view of it and the main house, he parked and waited. Watching hawkishly every car that approached and passed, though there weren’t many: seven in the past hour.

But as an hour became an hour and a half – two hours– he found himself looking repeatedly at his watch, tapping his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel in rhythm with his pulse and mounting tension, the constant tremor in his body becoming heavier.

Waves of tiredness were again swilling over him as he watched the unchanging scene ahead punctuated by the occasional car. Three times he’d shook himself back awake as he felt himself close to the brink.

He put the radio on again as a precaution; though he’d have thought that with the tension running through him and his constant finger-tapping, that alone would have kept him awake.

But that rhythm after a while formed its own soporific monotony, along with the long spells of static vista, the occasional passing car, the hum and click of cicadas, the surf lapping gently fifty yards away; and as that rhythm finally combined with the music from the radio, became one medley, it dragged him gently towards what, for the past twenty-four hours, he’d been staving off with raw tension and adrenalin, caffeine, mambo and salsa. A deep, satisfying sleep.

44

Last meal.

Lockdowns one… two. Breakfast, lunch, supper, exercise hour… final lockdown. Life at Libreville. Except it had been no life; just various regimented stages towards death, Larry now realized.

And now there were only a few stages left: medical examination, last eighteen paces to the death-chamber, strap-down and final injection.

He’d already had an extra-curricular examination from the infirmary medic who’d put fourteen stitches in his shiv wound the night before. Flesh wound, nothing internal damaged. But Torvald had asked the medic down to check it again two hours ago, just to be sure.

Larry only ate half of his last meal. Not only because he didn’t feel like it, but because in the end it didn’t bring back old days in the Ninth; it just reminded him all the more that he was here at Libreville, with cooks who didn’t have the slightest idea how to make a good P0’Boy. Libreville had steadily eroded most of his good memories over the years; he didn’t want to spoil more with his last meal.

The night before when he’d said his last goodbyes, Roddy had started to tell him a joke, but had broken down halfway through; and as they’d hugged, Larry had muttered in his ear: ‘ You know that Ayliss… it’s actually Jac.’ Thinking, as he gave a quick, hushed explanation and saw Roddy’s incredulous expression, that all the years Roddy had told him jokes, the last surprise and punchline had been his.

‘Has he called yet?’ Roddy had asked.

‘No, not yet. He’s apparently still chasing down some last minute things.’ Larry shrugged. ‘You know what he’s like… never say die.’

‘He willcall. I know it.’

‘Maybe.’ Larry shrugged again, his eyes shifting uncomfortably to one side. ‘But, you know, it’s not right for me to keep clinging on to hope till the last hour, when – ’

Rodriguez clasped one of his hands in both of his, shaking gently. ‘I meant either way, Larry. Eitherway.’

And at that moment, Roddy was one of the few people left who could still look him in the eye. The guards called out ‘Dead Man Walking’ as they escorted him along, but their eyes had already said it: ‘ You’re already dead, I can hardly bear to look at you.’ Torvald, Fran and Josh the day before, the two guards outside his open-bar ‘last-night’ cell – in case he attempted suicide – the guard that had brought him his last meal; none of them could meet his eye.

The only other person who had been able to had been Father Kennard that morning when, after having prayed with him, asked, ‘Do you want to deal at all with what you did all those years ago, Larry? Ask God’s forgiveness?’

And it was Larry then who was looking away uneasily, unable to meet Kennard’s eye. ‘I… I don’t think I can, Father. When even now, I can’t rightly say whether I killed her or not.’

‘I understand.’ Father Kennard nodded thoughtfully, pursing his lips. ‘But I had to ask, Larry.’

Either way. Larry wondered if that was why Jac hadn’t yet called. Because, as with everyone else who could no longer look him in the eye, he couldn’t bear to give him bad news.

Larry had tried to avoid looking at the clock too frequently, expectantly, that morning. But after his last meal, he began to look at the clock increasingly: two o’clock, two-thirty, three… By the time it got to 4 p.m. and Torvald came to his cell to tell him that it was time for his final medical examination, Larry knew then that Jac wouldn’t call.

Jac couldn’t face telling him what Larry could already see in everyone’s eyes: he was already a dead man.

Bob Stratton finally got the breakthrough he’d been frantically chasing for half the day at 2.14 p.m.

Roland Cole had ditched his two credit cards shortly after he left his last address; both of them left hanging with big bills and no forwarding address, no possible link-0n. Cole had covered his tracks well.

But Stratton decided to check new credit card applications over the past ten months, when Cole might have applied for a new one; and out of eight R. Coles processed in that period in Louisiana, he hit gold with an exact birth-date match: Roland T. Cole, Verret Street, Algiers.

Stratton leapt into his car; twenty-five minutes drive, he made it in nineteen.

First-floor apartment of a rundown, chipped-paint, three-storey block with its front doors accessed by outside planked walkways.

Stratton rang the bell, then knocked after five seconds. No answer. He rang and knocked again, still nothing, and was about to try a third time when the neighbour’s door opened.

‘I don’ think you’ll find him there.’ A bleary-eyed man in a T-shirt, squinting as if he’d just awoken from an afternoon nap. ‘He left half an hour back carrying a holdall. Lot of banging of drawers an’ that before he went.’ The man scratched his chest absently. ‘That’s why I looked out when his door slammed – thought for a minute he might have been ransacked.’

‘Oh, right. Do you know where he works?’

‘Yeah. Three blocks away.’ He pointed with a hooked finger, a slight shrug as if he didn’t see the importance. ‘Opelousas Packing.’

‘No idea where he might have gone, I suppose?’

‘No, none at all.’

And Cole’s work colleague at Opelousas had no idea either. He’d left work an hour ago complaining of a bad stomach.

‘An’ s’far as I know he was headin’ for home and bed and stayin’ there.’

As Stratton got back in his car, his nerves still racing from the rush, he took out his cell-phone to call Ayliss.

At 2.30 p.m., Roland Cole jumped on a Greyhound bus bound for Miami via Pensacola, Tallahassee and Tampa.

Durrant’s face everywhere, he couldn’t stand it any more: warehouse walls, work colleagues, a man in the local cafe at lunchtime who reminded him of Durrant… the clock there too didn’t help, a film of sweat breaking out on Cole’s forehead. And when the cafe owner flipped channels on the corner TV from a daytime soap to the news, Cole stood up sharply as Durrant’s face loomed out at him.

‘Man, I can’t take any more o’ this,’ he said to his friend. He rubbed at his stomach and looked with disdain at the barely-eaten burger on his plate. ‘I gotta get home before I die. Tell Max for me, would ya?’

The Greyhound bus was ideal. No TV, no newspapers, no clock; and, as the miles rolled by, no New Orleans either. Out of sight, out of mind; the continued thrum of its wheels on the road would hopefully, finally, push the images of Durrant from his mind.

So he tucked himself away at the back of the Greyhound where nobody would notice him and, more importantly, he wouldn’t notice them – more faces that might remind him of Durrant – and waited for that moment to come. Like Rizzo in the last scene of Midnight Cowboy, he thought as he closed his eyes.

And after a while curled up at the back of the bus, as if in support of that image, he found that he was trembling; although, unlike Rizzo, in his case it was from the tension still writhing in his stomach and the shame of what he’d done, rather than pneumonia.

Truelle called a halt after three brandies.

Cuban measures were generous, a third of a balloon, and the road to the villa was new to him; he didn’t want to risk wrapping Brent’s prize Corvette round a lamppost.

He’d phoned Cynthia for the DHL reference number soon after she’d sent the package, then when he’d phoned to track its progress that morning was told that it was scheduled to be delivered to the Sancti Spiritus correosbefore midday. He didn’t want to leave the package there any length of time, and, while Brent’s casitafridge was generously stocked, there were a few essential favourites he wanted to pick up: Earl Grey tea, anchovy-stuffed olives and salted almonds. He decided to pick them up first, then head to the post office; he didn’t want to risk leaving the package in his car.

The Earl Grey tea proved impossible to get, he gave up after the third store visited, and the place where he bought the salted almonds told him of a shop halfway across town where they might have the olives. When Truelle got there, half of it was a deli with shelves jammed ceiling high with produce from Spain and Latin America, the other half a cafe where he ordered a coffee and brandy while he perused what else they had, ending up also buying some salami and spicy chorizo.

As he knocked back the last of his brandy, he tried his office number again; still no answer. Then Cynthia’s home number; the same. He’d tried both numbers earlier to find out if anyone had called by the office after he’d left, but with the same result. Maybe with little for Cynthia to be there for, she’d decided to take a break at the same time too.

When he’d first arrived at Brent’s after the long journey, Brent had given him an anxious sideways glance as he opened up the casita for him. ‘You okay, buddy? Something troubling you?’

‘No, fine… fine. Just overwork. Burning the midnight oil on too many patient histories.’

He no doubt looked at that moment how he felt, a total wreck, but he hadn’t got half his own mind around what had happened, let alone to explain it to someone else: I did something with a patient twelve years ago that I shouldn’t have, and as I became worried about the people I’d done it for, I took out a couple of insurance policies – but when I phoned the other day, both of those policy holders had been killed, and now…

Truelle ordered another brandy. He couldn’t get Maggie Steiner’s voice out of his head, cracking pitifully as she told him that Alan was dead. Then that Vancouver policewoman telling him about Chris and Brenda, that… Put the phone down. Shut it out of your head. Have another drink. Push it away, push it away… push it away…

He knocked back the brandy in three quick slugs, raised his hand for another. The shop keeper eyed him with concern as he poured.

‘Are you okay, senor?’

Again, ‘Fine… fine. Bueno. Muy bueno.’ Just don’t get too close to me, that’s all. Everyone who gets close to me gets killed.

Half the world asking if he was okay. The stewardess too on his last leg from Nassau to Havana. For the first legs of the flight, he’d kept to soft drinks, his stomach still churning from a volatile acid-bile mix of last night’s drinks and wire-edge tension. But by the time he came to the last leg, his hands were shaking so heavily that he felt he just had to have a drink to get them steady and try to dull the nightmare images burning hour by hour stronger through his head… push them away… push them away…

He knocked back a quick malt whisky at Nassau airport, ordered another as soon as he was airborne, and as he took his third in-flight whisky from the stewardess, his eyes bleary and red-rimmed, hand shaking on the glass, she asked if he was okay.

Fine. Fine. And even if people didn’t ask, it was there in their eyes. That look of concern. On the faces of the people as he now stepped outside the shop, squinting and swaying slightly as the bright sunshine again hit him. On the face of the woman at the post office as he handed across the note from Brent and collected his package. A young couple heading into the correosas he went back down its steps, unsure whether to side-step him or help him down.

Truelle closed his eyes as he got back into Brent’s car, taking slow, deep breaths to try and get his nerves calm. And, as he opened them again and started up, he checked his watch: four more hours. Then perhaps finally it would all be over, the nightmare of the past twelve years ended. Maybe then at last it would all be fine, fine. Bueno, bueno.

Jac was sitting with Larry having a brandy, both of them looking anxiously at the clock. As Jac passed across Larry’s glass, Larry said:

‘Tell my mother, Jac. Tell her it wasn’t me, before it’s too late.’

‘But I can’t see her, Larry.’ Jac, looking over Larry’s shoulder, suddenly realizing that this time they were in the courtroom. He couldn’t see anything, in fact; it was just mist and shadow beyond Larry. Vague shapes, none of them clear.

‘But she’s there, Jac. I know it. I can feel her eyes boring into the back of my right shoulder. Tell her, Jac, please… please, before it’s too late.’

‘I… I can’t see anything any more, Larry.’ Jac perplexed why it had all suddenly become misty. ‘There’s nothing there but hazy shadows. I’ve… I’ve become like you, Larry. Can’t see anything clearly any more.’

‘ Please, Jac… don’t do this!’ Tears streaming down his face as he clasped Jac’s hand. ‘Please don’t let me die without her knowing that it wasn’t me!’

Ringing in his pocket.

The tears welling too in Jac’s eyes as he clasped back. ‘But now that I can’t see anything clearly, Larry… what do I even tell her? If you’dbeen able to see things clearly, you’d have been able to tell her yourself long before now, before…’

Telephone! As the dream fell away, Jac shuddered awake and answered the call.

Bob Stratton’s voice competing against Justo Betancourt on the radio. Jac reached out and turned it down, blinking heavily, fading afternoon light, approaching dusk. As Jac looked at his watch, 5.52 p.m., he jolted to suddenly, fearing in that second that’s why Stratton was calling: only an hour till Durrant’s execution!

Then he remembered the one-hour time difference, his caught breath and his pulse settling back as Stratton told him about his efforts with Roland Cole. Close, very close, but in the end no cigar.

‘And don’t look like he’s planning to return any time soon. Not in the next few hours, at least. That’s it.’

‘Yeah, looks like it.’ Soft, resigned exhalation. ‘Thanks. You tried your best.’

That’s it. Jac, surveying again the white villa, casita and road ahead, now knowing with certainty that his very last chance rested with Truelle.

Almost two hours asleep? Still no sign of a white Corvette. But what if Truelle had returned in the meantime and headed off again? If he’d seen the Audi up the road and had come close enough to see him inside asleep – no doubt the first thing he’d have done!

The sleep had taken some of the edge off Jac’s jaded nerves, but as the minutes dragged with the last of the day’s light fast dying, they started to intensify again, Jac’s fingers tapping steadily once more on the steering-wheel. Where wasTruelle? Maybe he should give Calbrey another knock; even if Calbrey lied, he might see something tell-tale in his face, some clue as to -

Car approaching two hundred yards away, side-lights on. And as it came thirty yards closer, Jac could see it clearly: white Corvette! His finger-tapping changed to an anxious clutch.

And for a moment, no more than a fleeting shadow, Jac thought he could see another car a hundred yards behind it. But as he squinted harder, he could no longer see it. Either it had pulled in somewhere, been swallowed up with the fast-fading light, or it was just a trick of his eyes.

Jac watched Truelle park the Corvette and get out carrying a briefcase and a shopping bag.

Calbrey came to greet him and they talked for a couple of minutes. Truelle looked around anxiously at one point, then with a tight smile and half-wave, Truelle headed across the lawn to the casita.

Jac watched the lights come on inside and outside the casita, illuminating a terrace area with table and umbrella on the promontory.

As much as Jac couldn’t wait to pounce on Truelle and get his hands – verbal and proverbial – around his neck, he could see Calbrey watering some potted plants at the casita-side of the main villa. Confronting Truelle would without doubt be better without any interference, but fuck it, if Calbrey didn’t head in soon…

Jac’s finger-tapping increased, almost double-time to his pulse and the cicadas and crickets, and he managed to hold out only another ninety seconds before his hand was reaching for the door handle and, wait, Calbrey seemed to be putting away his hose and calling out something towards the casita.

Jac watched their brief exchange, Calbrey going inside the main villa as Truelle headed – briefcase in one hand, drink in the other – towards the table on the end of the promontory.

Jac waited only twenty seconds for Truelle to get settled at the table, then, checking his watch, 6.12 p.m., got out of his car.

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… howdid 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… thatI know of. Bothgood 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 – onlyto 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. ‘ Bothof 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 onlyone 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. Realquick.’ 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 hadknown 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, everhave 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 onlybecause 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 notso convinced?’

‘I don’t know.’ Truelle’s eyes shifted, sifting through the past. ‘I’ve always had somedoubts, I suppose. And those have become stronger recently. Though I’m still far from sure – eitherway.’ 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 isguilty?’

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 hundredper 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 andclear your own conscience. And whatever Larry Durrant has done is then between him and hisconscience. 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 neverdid 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.