Ascension Day (75 page)

Nel-M wrote it down. ‘And that’s all you have?’

‘Yeah. That’s it.’

The truth, he sensed. ‘And have you given this to anyone else?’ She started to shake her head, but as his eyes narrowed, reading her hesitance,
untruth
, he moved his gun towards her again.

She changed to a hasty nod. ‘Yeah… yeah. A lawyer.
Ayliss
… I believe that was his name.’ 

‘How long ago?’

She shrugged. ‘Four, maybe five hours.’

Nel-M nodded thoughtfully, absently sliding the bullets back into his gun.
Cuba, four or five hours jump on him
?

Cynthia’s eyes were fixed on his gun, her breath catching slightly. ‘There… there weren’t any bullets in your gun all along.’

‘I know. I palmed it.’ Nel-M smiled slyly as he slid in the last two bullets. ‘When you were a little girl, didn’t you just love surprises?’

Yanking her hair back, Nel-M put the gun barrel back in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

‘Yep, I managed to dig up something,’ Stratton said. ‘Mercedes 300SL lifted from a driveway on 4
^th
Street, just two houses in from Coliseum, while a couple were away on holiday. They apparently already had a Jaguar and a Caddy in the garage, that’s why the car was out.’

‘Sounds promising.’ Jac had decided to use his time waiting for flight-boarding to make his follow-up calls. He’d tried Mack Elliott’s number to see if he’d recalled anything yet – no answer – then he’d called Stratton. ‘And it happened the same night as Jessica Roche’s murder?’

‘That’s the thing that can’t be said for sure. The couple, the Lapointes, were away for ten days, and from the police report the neighbours were vague on when the car went missing. Closest it can be nailed down to is two days before the night of the murder or three days after. But there’s at least a
chance
it went down that same night.’ Stratton sucked in his breath. ‘Thing is, that’s the only recorded crime close by that could have been that night. It’s either that, or nothing.’

4
^th
Street
? From Jac’s pacing the district a few nights back, that’s where he’d worked out the murderer would have probably cut through to get back to his car. ‘Yeah, okay. Certainly it’s close enough for someone there to have seen the murderer leaving the Roche’s house. Anything else yet on it?’

Jac looked up as his flight was called.
Echoing PA, clamour of other voices swirling around
. He’d checked in for his flight as late as possible, was nervous being too long among crowds, knowing that Melanie Ayliss was on the prowl for him.

‘Still waiting on a list of possible MO matches from that time. Then fast-forwarding to those still active now before I can get some mug-shots in front of the staff at that Internet café.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Jac got up and headed towards the gate. Echoing footsteps among the voices,
walking through Libreville
... legs shaky, nerves biting as he viewed the passport officers ahead. First time Ayliss’s passport had been put to the test. ‘And timing?’
That clock-hand ticking hour-by-hour heavier in his head
. Only thirty hours left, and half of that would now be eaten up getting to Truelle in Cuba.

‘Hopefully, I’ll get everything I want before the day’s out. And if that Internet café’s still open, get the photos in front of them tonight. But if not, it’s going to have to wait till first light tomorrow morning.’

‘Okay.’ Six people ahead in the queue, Jac’s stomach doing a quick turn as one of the passport officers ahead, surveying who was approaching, eyed him for the first time.
Melanie Ayliss’s eyes locking on him
. A rock had sunk through his stomach as Coultaine had told him about her notifying the police. Coultaine said he was sure that he’d put their minds to rest on that front, but what if he hadn’t? ‘I’ll be plane-hopping pretty much till the early hours, anyway. But I might get a chance to contact you between connections late tonight.’

‘Sure, if you can. Where are you going?’

‘Nassau, Bahamas.’ Because of US travel restrictions, Jac had been warned not to mention his destination was Cuba until he was actually in Nassau. The officers ahead were close enough to hear him now: the queue down to three, passing quickly through…
two
.

‘Nice.’

‘Wish it was. Like everything else right now – another last-ditch shot at saving Larry Durrant’s life.’ That officer ahead locking eyes on him again, Jac worried that with all the Ayliss padding he was sweating more than he should, looked more nervous than he should. Or perhaps part of his face had finally melted. Something in the officer’s eyes.
Something
. Jac swallowed hard.
Forged passport, Melanie Ayliss’s police alert, travelling to Cuba when you shouldn’t, face melting off
… take your pick on what might be wrong!
One
. ‘I’d… I’d better go now.’

‘Yeah, speak to you later. Good luck.’

‘Thanks. You too.’

The usual offhand reciprocation; but as Jac handed over his passport and saw again that look in the officer’s eyes, and he was then asked to step to one side as his passport was passed to a colleague behind to check on his computer – he was in little doubt which one of them needed luck the most at that moment.

41

Torvald Engelson, Tor or TDO to the other Libreville guards and inmates, liked to think of himself as a good and caring ‘death custodian’. Since the changeover from the electric chair to lethal injection in 1991, the final lethal dose was given by expert medical practitioners from outside, different ones each time, administered in a separate adjoining room to where it would finally feed through to Larry Durrant, strapped down to a gurney. And even with those six straps holding him down, each one would be secured by a different guard from the ‘execution team’. At each stage, responsibility for Durrant’s death was shifted as much as possible away from any single person.

In that same spirit, throughout the whole process Torvald himself would never touch Larry directly – except perhaps to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder the night before and say ‘goodbye’ – but it was Torvald’s responsibility to make all the preparations, make sure everything ran without hitch: arrange the practitioners, a medical examination of Durrant two hours before that, select the ‘execution team’, check-list of those who wished to be present in the viewing room, timing to go through to the ‘night-before’ cell, priest, last meal...?

Torvald had all of that turning through his head as he paced, clipboard and folder in hand, towards Larry’s cell.

At 41, a ‘striking’ rather than conventionally good-looking man, with a shock of dark blond hair and green eyes inherited from a Norwegian father, who forty years back had decided to fish in the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and pale mahogany skin-tone from an African-American mother – when he’d asked inmates why the nickname TDO, ‘The Dark One’, they’d answered that he had the darkest skin you could imagine for a blond-haired man. But Torvald suspected it was because of his work not only as death custodian, but also as one of the main guards in the prison hospice. They thought he had a fascination with death.

Not true, Torvald knew in his heart; in fact, quite the opposite. He did it because he cared; at times, probably too much. Horror stories abounded of the old electric chair malfunctioning and half-frying prisoners before they finally died; and with injections, prisoners with so many track marks that the IV for the poison feed couldn’t be inserted properly, or the necessary medical checks weren’t made and they reacted badly, their body contorting so wildly they had to be sat on by two or three guards.

Not on his watch. Prisoners had been stripped of all dignity in life, he was going to ensure it was at least there for them in death; and with that same philosophy, his work in the hospice had become a natural follow-on.

But the problem with all of that caring was that in the final hours, by necessity, Torvald would find himself drawn closer to the prisoners – then so quickly they’d be gone! Torvald had never quite got used to that wrench and the void it left. Though he’d never complained to the prison psychiatrist at the bi-annual counselling sessions established to ensure prison guards’ continuing stability; always feared that if he said anything, that duty might be taken away from him.

To him, the prisoners mental well-being in those final hours was more important than his own.

The guard on duty, Warrell, let Torvald through the last gate to Durrant’s cell-row. The clock on the wall behind read 5.38 p.m. Warrell then accompanied him for the final fifteen paces.

Closeness
.
Caring
. The only problem with Larry Durrant was that over the past few years he’d become something of a favourite of Torvald’s; he held a soft spot for him aside from the extra closeness that, by necessity, the death process would bring. 

It had only happened a couple of times before, when he’d allowed himself to get
that
close, and both times it had ripped his heart out.

Torvald closed his eyes for a second, solemn acceptance, as he nodded for Warrell to open Durrant’s cell door. This wasn’t going to be easy.

‘Four or five hours ahead, you reckon?’

‘Yeah. But if Ayliss got the flight I think he did, we might have shaved some back. He had a longer wait than me for the next flight there.’

At the other end of the line, the steady cadence of Roche’s breathing measuring options. Though for once Nel-M found it strangely soothing, like the gentle fall of surf. He could easily drift off to it: he hadn’t slept much on the flight from Vancouver, and no doubt more fitful hours lay ahead. He checked his watch: thirty-five minutes till boarding.

‘And getting a gun there?’

‘No problem. Dollars talk loud down there. Within a half-hour I’ll have found a guy in a Havana back street to sell me one, along with his sister thrown in as part of the deal.’

‘Okay.’ The breathing settling, accepting. ‘But we might have to face that if this Ayliss gets to Truelle first, he could break him before you even get there. It might be time to put our contingency plans into play.’

‘Suppose so.’ If they didn’t play those cards now, they never would.

‘Which means you and I have each got a call to make.’  

Derminget’s APB announcement had gone out almost three hours after Jac went through the check-out at New Orleans Airport.

The passport officer there, Paul Styman, had found his eye drawn to Ayliss because of his crumpled cream suit and perspiring, anxious appearance – but he’d have nevertheless quickly waved him through; until, that is, he looked at his passport and flight destination. Seven years in Mexico, now heading to Nassau.

Styman decided to have his colleague check him against a list of suspected drug runners, just in case.

Nothing came up. He waved Ayliss through, and an hour after that he handed over his shift. 

But when he returned eight hours later, within fifteen minutes he spotted the APB alert on screen when he leant over to check something else.

‘This is the guy we checked out early afternoon,’ he said to his colleague, still on from the earlier shift. ‘How long has this been through?’

His partner shrugged. ‘Five hours or so.’

‘And didn’t you recognize him?’

His partner shrugged again. He wasn’t sure he’d even looked at the man or the passport photo, had probably just tapped in the name for a match. And he’d done eighteen or twenty name checks since.

Styman looked at the contact details: Lieutenant Derminget. Eighth District. He called the number and explained what had happened.

‘
Nassau
?’ Derminget confirmed. ‘Eight or nine hours ago, you say?’