Ascension Day (31 page)

‘True. And it’s nice to know that Durrant’s finally got the message of what everyone wants from him.’ Roche smiled thinly, but it faded just as quickly. ‘However, the problem is that in achieving that we’d also show our full hand. And apart from the legal lines crossed in taping McElroy, not to mention phoning Francine Durrant and posing as a prison liaison officer – some awkward questions might arise of just why we were doing all of that. So, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to give it just a tad more thought before deciding the best way to proceed.’ 

Nel-M felt stung by the meeting with Roche.

He’d gone there with such high hopes: the situation with Truelle’s insurance policies eighty per cent there, and the whole caboodle about Durrant’s apparent death-wish and the fake e-mails uncovered. What the fuck more did Roche want?

Nel-M popped back a blue pill from his glove compartment and pointed his car towards the French Quarter. He felt he had to take his frustrations out somewhere, and right now Misha seemed as good a bet as any.

Nel-M had been married once, a disastrous three years when he was only twenty-three. No children – though his wife blamed her two miscarriages on their arguments and his verbal abuse. He had never hit her.

Since then he’d taken solace at a number of cat houses in the city – the age gap between the girls and himself becoming ever wider. Though in the last few years he’d managed to narrow it down to a handful of regular favourites, of whom Misha at Madame B’s was top of the list. A bubbly, curvy, African-French mix with wild red hair and nipples like mahogany door stops.

‘Not your normal Friday night, then?’ Madame B greeted him.

‘No.’ Nel-M kept things short and sweet as he paid and was led to a bedroom by Misha.

He couldn’t wait to get down to business, couldn’t wait to be inside her, even cutting short halfway through their normal ritual of her slowly undressing him and kneeling before him, allowing only a half-dozen languorous slides between her lips before throwing her back on the bed and entering her.

As she felt the urgency of his thrusts, Misha commented, ‘Someone lit a fire on your tail tonight.’

‘Damn right. Damn right.’ And as he felt her responding, felt that her gasps were somehow stronger than before, he remembered from a couple of past visits that she enjoyed mild asphyxiation, that it seemed to heighten the sensations even more. He raised one hand to her throat, gently pressing.

‘Oh… Ohhh. Yes…
yesss
!’ Misha closed her eyes in abandon, hissing through clenched teeth as her breath became shorter.

Though at some stage it became Roche in his grip, and he started pressing harder,
harder
–
Want to give it a tad more thought, do you
? – oblivious to the fact that Misha’s gasps of pleasure had suddenly turned to ones of panic. Her eyes were wide and pleading, and she started beating at Nel-M’s shoulders and arms.

But Nel-M had already shut his eyes, lost in reverie that it was Roche beneath him, the tortured breathing convincing him all the more that it was him.
Or maybe you’d like to put on your snow shoes and search up there yourself? With your stump legs and emphysema, you’d be lucky to get five miles from the fucking Canadian border
. Squeezing harder,
harder
, a tingle of pleasure rising as he felt the last life ebbing from Roche, the beating at his arms becoming weaker.

The breathing was just short, strangled bursts now, almost non-existent. Nel-M kept up the pressure, felt one hand now clutching at his hair in desperation, the other…

Nel-M’s eyes opened sharply with the sting of the fingernails digging in and raking down his back – suddenly snapped back to reality of who was beneath him, saw Misha’s eyes stark and bulging with fear, her face starting to turn blue… but he was too close, felt his orgasm snaking up the back of his legs, and so he held her there for his last few thrusts, only letting go as he came, his ragged, tortured breathing finally matching hers.

Misha rolled quickly away, coughing and spluttering for her first full breaths. It sounded for a moment as if she was going to vomit, and when she’d finally got her breathing back to near normal, she glared at him.

‘What’s wrong wit’ you? You half-killed me there.’

‘Sorry. Bad day at work.’ Nel-M forced a lame smile.

‘Yeah, well. Next time you have a bad day – don’t come seeing me. In fact, bad day or not – don’t come seeing me again. Yer hear?’

Nel-M nodded dolefully. Frustrations all around, and so when he got back to his apartment, he was pleased to hear the message from Vic Farrelia, particularly when he phoned back and gained more detail.

Nel-M drove straight over to hear the latest tape offering from McElroy’s phone line, his trademark sly smile firmly back in place as it finished. Roche wouldn’t be able to delay any longer in making a move against McElroy.

‘Freedom… oh, freedom. That’s just some people talking.’ Mike Coultaine looked wistfully across the City Marina and the
Mississippi river
beyond from the back deck of his cabin cruiser. ‘So that’s what Durrant’s after these days? He doesn’t ask much.’

‘It wasn’t a straight-out request.’ Jac filled in the background with Durrant’s initial death-wish. ‘Although now I’ve finally convinced him to put in a plea – he has little interest in that possibly extended life still behind bars. It only has appeal to him if he might gain freedom – either now or in the near future. So, as part of putting in clemency, I promised.’

‘Oooh,
promised
. That’s something a lawyer should never do.’ Coultaine’s teasing smile faded as he looked at Jac directly. ‘But if Candaret turns down that appeal – which he probably will given recent history – we’re talking
now
rather than near future. How long left?’

‘Thirty-two days.’

Coultaine looked out pensively across the marina again.

Three days, and everything had changed.

Alaysha had come on the line exuberant that she’d finally got the tone right with the e-mail; so when Jac had told her, no need now to send it, Joshua Durrant had already sent one, she’d immediately felt deflated. ‘You’ve got no idea how long I sweated over that, Jac McElroy. No idea.’ And then in protest didn’t speak to him for twenty-four hours before finally softening. Durrant too let him stew; and when after two days he still hadn’t heard anything, he put in a call to Rodriguez.

‘I tell you, Counselor, he was like cat’s-got-the-cream with that e-mail from Josh. But you know what Larry’s like – proud, stubborn – so it don’t surprise me he hasn’t called you. I think it’s gonna be down to you givin’ him a little nudge.’

Nudge quickly became push with Jac informing Durrant that this was absolutely his last visit to try and convince him to put in for clemency. ‘When I walk away from here now, that’s it. So if there’s anything,
anything
that might make you want to continue clinging to life, now’s the time to speak up.’ It was as far as he dared go; he couldn’t risk Durrant catching on that he knew about Joshua’s e-mail.

But still Durrant was guarded, closed-handed. ‘Before we get into that – how you getting on with gaining me freedom from this rat-hole? Made any moves yet?’

‘I’ve already spoken to Mike Coultaine, your original lawyer,’ Jac had lied. ‘Got more background from the trial and appeal. But you’re going to have to help me too. Give me some good reasons why you think you might be innocent. Something to fight with.’

Durrant flinched at the ‘think you might be’, a sudden reminder that he couldn’t know for sure, and his face clouded as he fought to explain, though maybe it was the darkness of the images still haunting him as much as lack of clarity. Jac made brief notes and nodded knowingly at some points, as if they might be significant – and perhaps they would be when he finally got to speak to Coultaine.

Jac looked back over his notes as he finished, shaking his head. ‘I want to help,
Lawrence
, I really do. But all of this is going to take time – time which we just don’t have. And there’s another reason why we need that extra time…’ Jac had pondered long and hard whether to tell Durrant about the anonymous e-mails, had finally decided that he had to at some point; now it might be just the thing to tip the balance.

Durrant was lost in thought for a moment. A long moment. A wry smile finally surfaced, though uncertainly, as if the revelation had painted an extra confusing layer to his thoughts that would take him a while to filter anything through clearly. ‘Nice to know someone else out there is thinking about me. Thought you were the only one.’

He asked a few questions for clarification, Jac stressing that while it could be a hoaxer or could be genuine, again, it would no doubt take time to find out which. ‘Time which we don’t have right now.’

Durrant looked down thoughtfully at that point, was slow in looking back up again. ‘Okay, Counselor. There is something that’s given me some “hope”, as you call it. So, bring on whatever paperwork you have to – I’ll sign it.’

Secretive as ever, Durrant didn’t elaborate on what might have given him fresh hope, but equally Jac didn’t pursue it, was eager to tie up the details before Durrant changed his mind. But as Jac shook Durrant’s hand in parting, Durrant reached up and gripped his forearm tight.

‘Promise me, Counselor – on a Bible if that’s what it takes for you to
really
mean it – after I’ve signed these papers, you won’t just forget about me and leave me here to rot. You’ll do all you can to get me out.’

‘I promise.’ Jac felt the strength in Durrant’s grip, saw the fiery intent in his eyes.

‘Because there’s somebody I’ve been apart from already far too long. And I don’t want to spend the next ten to fifteen with us only being able to clasp fingertips through the holes in a glass screen.’

Jac had phoned Mike Coultaine when he got back to his apartment, but still now he found himself swallowing back a lump in his throat as he thought about the promise he’d made and what it signified to Durrant, Coultaine’s gaze across the marina telling him just how distant and out of reach making good on that promise might be.

‘You can actually see Adelay Roche’s yacht from here,’ Coultaine said, pointing. ‘That gin palace on the end of the second quay.’

‘I see.’ Jac wondered if that’s why Coultaine had arranged to meet him here; at the same time give him a feel for the victim’s family.

‘Never moves far. Roche either has parties on board so that everyone in the marina can see him – or at most it goes no more than a few miles offshore. Always still in sight of the refineries that paid for it.’ Coultaine smiled tightly. ‘Makes this thing look like a bathtub.’

Jac cast a quick eye around Coultaine’s boat. 32ft Bayliner, more than big enough for Coultaine’s favourite pastime of sports fishing. He seemed to have slipped fully into the lifestyle too: blue deck shoes, khaki shorts and denim shirt, with his greying brown hair tied back in a ponytail. A far cry from his cropped-haired, pinstripe-suited days defending Durrant.

‘You know, at one point in the appeal, I really thought we were getting somewhere.’ Coultaine looked keenly at Jac for a moment before his gaze drifted again across the marina and the river beyond; inspiration for distant thoughts, the steady timeless surge of the
Mississippi
pushing them on. ‘Truelle the pyschiatrist’s testimony, and everything surrounding Durrant’s initial confession, was starting to look shaky. I mean, he still had gaps in his memory about so many other things after his car accident – so how could anyone be sure that his recall about what happened that night was accurate? But his depth of detail of the events that night with Jessica Roche – things that only the killer could possibly have known – killed it, if you’ll excuse the expression.’ Coultaine forced an awkward smile. ‘That and the DNA evidence.’

Jac nodded. Before meeting Coultaine, he’d gone through the trial bundle again to get the sequence clear in his mind: the police working a general suspect list which didn’t include Durrant, his car accident four months after the murder and his resultant partial amnesia and ‘recovered memory’ sessions with Truelle in which details of the murder emerged; then the final damning DNA evidence. ‘Pretty conclusive from what I saw in the trial papers.’