parked their cars.
Except the man didn’t head towards an office, he went fifty yards along the street to the nearest kiosk to make a call.
‘It’s all done.’
‘Great. And what’s the best point?’
‘Eight to eleven miles in. But I wouldn’t leave it beyond that.’
‘Okay, got it. Eight to eleven.’ Nel-M clicked off and dialled straight out again.
With another anxious check of his watch, Jac started reading through draft five — six? he’d lost count — of Durrant’s clemency plea. Please, no more changes. No time! And Coultaine’s support letter, which had arrived forty minutes earlier by messenger, he’d managed to give only a light skim, though the postscript had leapt out at him:
Thought you might find the enclosed of interest, found it amongst my old papers. It’ll save you asking Truelle for a copy. Remember, everything started with this.
Jac twirled the cassette tape briefly in one hand before bringing his attention back to Durrant’s plea on his computer screen, but found his eyes drifting back to the tape at intervals.
Finally, the distraction too much, halfway through reading what he hoped was the final, definitive version, he leapt up, grabbed a cassette player from a nearby shelf, slotted it in, and resumed reading again as soon as he pressed play.
‘Session fourteen. Seventeenth of August, Nineteen-ninety-two. Subject: Lawrence Tyler Durrant…’
One of Truelle’s sessions with Durrant. There was a minute’s preamble, settling Durrant down before Truelle hit any real topic: Durrant’s heavy drinking the night of the accident.
‘You mentioned feeling guilty about that. Was that because of what resulted — the accident — or the drinking itself?’
‘Mainly the drinking… because I’d promised Franny, yer know, to stop.’
‘And do you remember drinking other times after you’d promised to stop, or was it just this one time?’
‘There were a fair few other times I recall — all around that same time. I was goin’ through a real bad cycle, man… didn’t know what I was doing half the time.’
‘And why was that? Or didn’t you know that, either?’
‘Oh, I knew all right — knew all too well. That’s why I tried to bury it… burn it from my mind with as much rum and whisky as I could lay my hands on. But however hard I tried, it stayed with me. I jus’ couldn’t shake it.’
‘Shake what, Lawrence?’
‘More guilt, that’s what.’ Durrant’s breathing suddenly more laboured. ‘More guilt because that wasn’t the only promise I’d broken to Franny.’
‘Guilt over what, Lawrence. What other promise?’
‘I…. I… It’s difficult.’ Durrant’s breathing hissing hard.
‘I know. But perhaps if you unburden whatever it is, you’ll be able to break the cycle.’
Listening to Durrant’s fractured and uncertain breathing, Jac realized that this was one of the sessions where Truelle had used hypnosis to draw out his buried memory. As Durrant struggled with the decision — whether to take the leap or step back — Jac felt as if he was suddenly there with him in the moment, suspended.
He snapped out of it quickly, no time now, stopping the tape and reading the last few paragraphs of the plea. Okay, okay. Plea, Coultaine’s letter, and get there fifteen minutes early to read Haveling’s support letter. He slid the papers into his briefcase, grabbed the tape recorder, and, with a quick wave to John Langfranc who mouthed ‘Good luck’ through his glass screen, skipped down the stairs two at a time.
There was a small hold-up along Esplanade Avenue, but as soon as he was clear of the main downtown traffic, twenty yards after making the turn into Claiborne Avenue, Jac hit play again on the recorder now on his passenger seat.
‘It… it was another robbery, that’s why I felt guilty. And not just ‘cause I’d promised Franny I wouldn’t rob again, but because it went wrong… terribly wrong.’
‘In which way did it go wrong?’
‘There was somebody there when I broke in — a woman. Shouldn’t… shouldn’t have happened.’ Durrant’s breathing erratic again. ‘I… I’d checked for a few nights b’forehand, and there was no car either in the drive — or lights on that I could see. She… she wasn’t mean’a be there.’
‘And where was this house?’
‘…Garden District.’
‘Do you remember the road?’
‘Coliseum Street. But I don’ remember the number exactly. Four hundred and something.’
‘That’s okay, Lawrence. Relax, take it easy. And, in your own time, tell me what happened there.’
Jac became aware of Truelle’s tactic: getting background detail, district, road, because they were easier for Durrant to relate, got him talking more freely. Truelle had obviously worried that if he asked straight out ‘What happened with the woman?’, Durrant might lapse into rapid-breathing catatonia, and that would be all he’d get. Even now with a more general, soft-edged approach, there was a long pause, only the sound of Durrant’s uneven breathing coming over on the tape.
Jac turned the volume up as he hit the start of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway; with the increased tyre- noise on the rougher road surface, he couldn’t hear whether Durrant had started speaking again or not.
‘As… as I said, there were no lights on at the front, or the side — which is where I broke in. Maybe if I’d gone round the back, I’d have seen a light on… or maybe she’d gone to bed early and there’da been no light on there either.’
‘So you broke in at the side,’ Truelle confirmed as Durrant paused again heavily, as if each time he side-tracked it took a moment to get the sequence clear again in his mind.
‘Yeah. Removed a glass pane and wired through on the frame so as not to break the alarm circuit. Two minutes, and I was in. Took a quick tour t’see where the best stuff was, and found a safe in the library that I reckoned I could break by drilling the lock without too much trouble. And I was just preparin’ for that when I heard something behind me, and she… she was suddenly there. Like… like out of nowhere. Not there one minute… then the next…’
Jac’s hands gripped tight at the steering wheel, feeling Durrant’s tension coming across in waves, as if he was right there alongside him as Jessica Roche confronted him, the police photos filling in the details of the room in his mind. He was suddenly reminded of Coultaine’s words: depth of detail… things that only the killer could possibly have known.
Durrant’s breathing was again erratic as he struggled with the images; or perhaps in anticipation of what he did next. ‘ “What are you doing?”she barked. She was pushy, had me rattled, and strange thing is… I don’t even remember takin’ out the gun, but suddenly it was there between us… her eyes wide, staring at it… ’ A heavy swallow, Durrant fighting to get his breathing under control. ‘You know, even then I didn’t plan to… to…’
The pause was even longer this time, and it looked for a moment as if Truelle had lost Durrant completely, his final actions too traumatic to voice, or perhaps part of him in denial that he’d actually done it. Jac tapped two fingers on his steering wheel, counting off the seconds, the sun creeping out from behind a cloud stinging his eyes as it reflected off the water. Jac slipped on his sunglasses and half-opened one window, feeling the warm Bayou breeze tease his hair. But memories of Isle de Rey seemed distant today as he felt himself immersing deeper into the shadows of the Roche residence of twelve years ago.
