Ascension Day

American citizenship six years previous. All Morvaun had done was make Antonio look like Enrique.

One drawback to their scheme was that Antonio wouldn’t be able to use the documentation to work, otherwise it would look like Enrique had two jobs. But that hardly mattered since Antonio’s main aim was to move freely back and forth across the Mexican border running cocaine. Apprehended one day during a routine search, Antonio promptly gave Morvaun’s name in a plea bargain.

But Jac argued in court that no forging of documents had taken place, and since all Mr Jaspar had done was make Antonio look like his brother — unless he’d informed Mr Jaspar in advance that it was to perpetrate some criminal activity — Mr Jaspar himself had committed no crime. ‘Given the circumstances, it’s unlikely that Antonio Amador would have shared that information with Mr Jaspar.’

The judge agreed and directed the jury accordingly. It was unlikely, and on its own it was no crime to make one person look like another. Hollywood did it all the time.

Some chuckles from the courtroom floor, and a beaming hug of thanks for Jac from Morvaun when, forty minutes later, the jury acquitted him. But the police and the prosecuting attorney were far from pleased.

‘Good result, Jac. Good result,’ Langfranc congratulated him on his return. ‘But you want to watch out you’re not pushing your luck too far. The police might now target Jaspar, go all the harder on him.’

Pushing your luck. As soon as Langfranc said it, Jac realized that the Morvaun Jaspar case, along with a few others, embodied how he saw himself as a lawyer. Beaton would hand him these hopeless cases that nobody else wanted, and because he was eager to prove them all wrong and not fail, he’d go that extra mile, or two. Push his luck.

Perhaps it went deeper than that. Trying desperately to prove that in no way was he continuing his father’s cycle, a scream back at the world and Aunt Camille: ‘He was never a failure, and nor am I.’

Jac realized that his main strength was also his Achilles Heel, and began to worry that one day Langfranc would be right, that he’d push his luck too far.

Jac busied himself with preparation for Morvaun’s police interview, but felt his chest tighten with anxiety as it approached eleven, his mouth suddenly dry. With still no answer back from Haveling, Jac wondered if finally his luck was about to run out.

‘No, I told you, Jac. I’m happy to help out and send the e-mail.’

‘No morning-after second thoughts?’

‘None. But if you’re fishing for reasons why someone you just met would help out with something momentous like this. Well, you know, it’s not often we get a chance to change things in this life — I mean, really make a difference. And helping to save a man’s life must surely come close to the top of that poll. If this works, I can look at Durrant’s face in future newscasts and think smugly to myself: “Hey, I actually helped save that man’s life. I made a difference for once”.’

‘I can understand that.’

‘But how about you after last night? No morning-after second thoughts?’

‘None. Because, you know, it’s not often we get a chance to really make a difference with things in this life.’

A chuckle. ‘So the spicy dish went down okay, and I’m not talking here about the Jambalaya? ’

‘A treat. Except that it left my legs a bit weak heading back to my place.’

‘Well, at least you didn’t have far to go. If you couldn’t make it a dozen paces, then I was rougher on you than I thought.’

Nel-M waved one hand, indicating for Vic Farrelia to wind forward to the next conversation. They’d already played the tape once, this was just a highlights re-run.

So, that explained why he hadn’t seen the girl going into McElroy’s building that night, or why there was no trace of her belongings in his apartment: she was his neighbour! And with the earlier call from that other girl, it certainly looked like McElroy’s love life was more complicated than most.

As the tape came to McElroy’s conversation with Rodriguez ‘…I gotta get back on communication-room duty to receive it. Also to send out those last few sample e-mails from JD…’ Nel-M suddenly sat forward, the final pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

On that first taped call, McElroy’s new girlfriend had suggested someone else sending an e-mail; now she was doing it herself! But still he was no closer to knowing why an e-mail from Josh Durrant held such a crucial key to keeping his father alive.

A bloodless coup. All over in less than twenty minutes. Jac shouldn’t have worried.

From the outset, it was clear that the police evidence was slim, and while with a good deal of posturing and dark innuendo Lieutenant Pyrford tried to make more of it than it was, the crunch came when he passed across Alvira Jardine’s forged passport.

‘Do you recognize it now?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Morvaun said indignantly, his glasses perched on the end of his nose as he inspected it. ‘And you should be ashamed of yo’selves tryin’ to link a piece of shit like this with my handicraft. An eight-year-ol’ could do a better job.’ Morvaun pointed out its many flaws and failings as Pyrford’s jaw twitched. ‘If you’d taken the trouble to study in detail any o’ my — ’

Jac stopped Morvaun there, before he incriminated himself on any past cases.

More congratulations from Langfranc. ‘Luck’s still holding with Jaspar, by the looks of it.’

But it did little to make Jac feel good, quell the uneasy feeling that some day soon it must surely run out. And that each time he got away unscathed merely increased the chances of a fall.

Jac finally got a call back from Haveling just before lunch, forty minutes after his return from the Fifth District station-house, agreeing to let Rodriguez back into his seat in the communication room later that same day, ‘Sometime between three-thirty and four.’

Jac left his office immediately to call Alaysha from his cell-phone. She had to pick up Molly around that time, so she’d drop into a nearby internet cafe.

‘There’s one a couple of blocks away on Palmyra Street… “Netwave”. I’ve used it a few times before. Probably four-thirty by the time I get there.’

‘That’s fine.’ Aside from haste, Jac didn’t mention the other reason he was keen on the suggestion: it pushed things still further away from any connection with him. He explained that her initial e-mail to Rodriguez should be as if Josh Durrant wanted the last few e-mails to his father, mistakenly deleted, sent back to him to check on something. ‘That way hopefully nothing will seem untoward with the monitoring guard when Rodriguez sends those samples out to you as a guide. Then send back the main e-mail when you’re ready.’

‘It’ll probably be twenty minutes to half an hour after the samples arrive before I send it … I want to make sure to get this right. I’ll go to their cafe section with Molly or maybe round the corner for a while in between.’ Alaysha explained that Netwave had dedicated e-mail numbers for each computer to save people the time of setting up personal e-mail accounts. ‘So tell Rodriguez not to send me anything else meanwhile — because I’ll probably be sending that final e-mail from another machine.’

‘Okay, will do.’ Jac tucked his head deeper into his shoulder as the passing traffic got louder. ‘And, once again, Alaysha… thanks for helping. Good luck.’

Then he phoned Rodriguez, and, after the usual long pause of getting routed through to the phone at the end of the cell block, kept his instructions ambiguous.

‘We’re on for four-thirty. One e-mail incoming with the address for the samples we discussed to go out to. And then the main return twenty minutes or so later.’

‘Okay. Good going, Counselor. Catch yer later.’

‘Sorry to trouble you, Mrs Durrant. My name’s Jim Whitman from the Prisoner’s Liaison Committee. It’s just a general survey, but I wondered if I might ask a few questions about what contact you and your son have had with your husband, Lawrence Durrant, while he’s been incarcerated at Libreville prison.’

‘Well… I suppose so.’