Ascension Day

phone. What, you want to not get shot and get a phone call? Lorraine Gilliam’s phone simply didn’t answer, and Mack Elliott wasn’t hopeful that she’d remember anything: ‘Dizzy blonde, if yo’ know what I mean — ‘xcept she was a red-head. Had trouble even recallin’ half the drinks orders in the distance just from the tables to the bar.’

Jac felt lonely, cold and deflated that night. Lonely and cold because Alaysha wasn’t there, had taken Molly to her mom’s for dinner and to stay the night while she worked: her regular four-night-a-week ritual. And deflated from the day’s let-downs and the scant remaining options.

He could have done with sharing his woes with Alaysha, felt her hugging and reassuring him; and, in turn, he’d have reassured her about Gerry, told her that the restraining order arriving in the asshole’s lap the next day would surely stop him in his tracks. Hopefully soothe the lines on her brow and the quiver he’d seen on her lips when he’d come back from Rillet’s and she’d told him about Gerry’s second visit.

Jac reached for the brandy bottle to warm himself and lift his spirits, but stopped short after two heavy measures, tucking the bottle back in the cabinet. He knew that if he kept it close, he’d probably half finish it.

But it was enough, with the hectic, wearying day, to slide him into a doze not long after dinner; and so when his cell-phone rang at some stage later — Jac didn’t know how long, he’d lost track of time — it took him a moment to orientate himself.

Lenny Rillet’s voice, coarse and throaty, as if he’d just woken from the dark tomb that was his crack house.

‘That be the same Jac McElroy pinchin’ his ass that he still alive?’ Sharp, rattling chuckle from Rillet. ‘ ‘Cause I thought you’d like t’be the first to know — I foun’ those diaries.’

Leonard Truelle was only twenty yards into the dusk light of the side-street, heading towards his car, when the blow came to his lower back, feeling like someone had hit him with a sledgehammer, his legs buckling as the pain shot up his spine and lanced like an ice-pick through his skull.

Then another blow quickly after, sending his pain sensors into overload as the breath left his body in a strangled groan and he fell to his knees. Something was slipped over his head then, some sort of fabric, the smell of cotton pleasant, welcoming; but the darkness he was plunged into, suddenly not being able to see anything, was decidedly unwelcome, frightening.

Aware now of sound and movement for the first time, rustling, shuffling — they seemed to have come out of nowhere behind him and he hadn’t heard any approach — one person, no, two, he realized, as he felt himself being lifted and carried. But still no voices, nothing said between themselves or to him, which somehow made it all the more terrifying.

No more than eight or ten paces before a car door was opened and he was thrown brusquely into the back — Truelle trying to recall which cars he’d seen close by as it started up and pulled out. He could feel mucus on his chin, or maybe he’d vomited without realizing it, and the pain in his back had now spread like burning oil to his stomach, razor shards shooting up his spine as his body lurched with two sharp turns, one after the other. A long flat stretch for a while, a half mile or more, and a voice finally came from the front.

‘You know, you should never have had those phone bugs cleared, otherwise we wouldn’t have to do this now.’

Nel M. As much as Nel-M’s voice made Truelle’s skin crawl each time, he felt an odd sense of relief hearing it now: a face at least put to one of his abductors. Two faceless abductors would have been more ominous, worrying. Better the devil you know.

‘We’ve become concerned about what you might have been saying. Because we simply don’t know any more. And that makes us worry perhaps more than we should.’ Nel-M had got part of the idea when he’d looked in his car mirror the other night and seen the hood being taken off McElroy. The other part had been from an interview with Truelle in a psychiatric journal that Roche had got hold of, in which Truelle had talked about drawing out patient’s fears and phobias, with a brief aside about his own fear of heights. ‘Do you like dancing, Leonard?’

‘What? What the hell are yoouuu — ’ A cough rose from the back of Truelle’s throat and became a brief coughing fit that he thought for a second would lapse into retching.

‘Nasty cough you got there, Leonard. Maybe some fresh air would help… like somewhere up high. Way up high.’ Nel-M smiled to himself as the silence settled deeper; he could almost hear the wheels in Truelle’s mind turning in time with the thrum of the wheels on the road.

‘Where… where are we going?’ Hesitant, tremulous, as if afraid of hearing the answer.

Silence. Nel-M purposely let it lengthen, let the unknown, the uncertainties multiply in Truelle’s mind as he motioned Vic Farrelia into the next turn, and then, two hundred yards along, pointed out a good parking spot. No words between them, as had been agreed at the outset: this was stretching Farrelia’s call of duty, and so he wanted to remain as anonymous as possible.

They bundled Truelle out from the back, a dozen or so paces counted by Truelle before the sound of a door opening, closing, four more paces and then another door, mechanical, sliding. An elevator.

Nel-M didn’t speak again until the elevator started rising.

‘Like I said, Leonard… somewhere up high. Way up where you and I can get a good view of the city. A real good view.’

But Nel-M knew that Truelle was only half-listening, he was timing and counting in his mind just how far the elevator was rising.

Eighteen floors, Nel-M could have told him, but wasn’t going to; the elevator wasn’t that fast, in Truelle’s mind it probably seemed more.

Out of the elevator, along and through a door, then up the steps to the roof and over to its far side. They stood Truelle up, but Nel-M kept one arm around him, bracing. Again, Nel-M didn’t speak throughout, and he waited a moment now, wanted the air wafting up from eighteen floors below to hit Truelle’s senses.

Nel-M took a deep breath. ‘Real nice up here. And fine view… fine view, indeed. You can see the whole city.’ He knew that his words combined with the heavier breeze on the rooftop had painted enough of a picture for Truelle inside the darkness of the hood. He could feel Truelle’s body trembling in his grip. ‘But you know, we don’t have to do this now… we don’t have to go dancing. If only you just told us where you’ve got those insurance policies held.’

‘What… dancing?’ Truelle’s mind was scrambled. All he could think about was Nel-M’s last words. That view. ‘I… I can’t tell you. You’d just kill me then.’

‘Possibility that I would, I suppose.’ Nel-M was silent for a moment, thoughtful. ‘But you know, Leonard, if you’d seen some of the things I have in my lifetime, you’d know that there’s actually worse things than death. Like pain. And dancing.’

There it was again, thought Truelle: dancing? Had Nel-M gone completely mad, was looking to book a session on his couch? He was still trying to work it out as with an, ‘Okay…. Huuuup,’ from Nel-M, he felt himself being lifted bodily. He thought for one horrible moment — the intake of breath rising sharply in his throat, making him dizzy as it hit his brain — that he was being thrown straight over the edge. But then he felt something firm again under his feet, and Nel-M close, his breath hot against the cloth covering his face; strangely comforting, given how he’d have normally felt about that.

‘Now you’re going to have to keep real close, Leonard, and hold real tight — like we’re dancing,’ Nel-M said. ‘Because this ledge — it ain’t that wide.’

Oh God. Oh God. And suddenly it all made sense to Truelle, and he clung on to Nel-M as if his life depended on it; because now he knew with certainty that it actually did.

Nel-M could have found buildings higher, thirty floors or more, but this was the only one he knew with such a wide ledge running around, just over two foot. Enough for them to move around on, as long as they kept in close. At each corner and in the middle of each side were large Roman urns with squat fan palms. Probably the main reason for the width of the ledge. But there was still a good thirty-foot between each urn for their dance run, Nel-M observed.

Nel-M started moving then, swinging Truelle out for a second to feel the drop — heard him gasp and felt the trembling in his body run deeper — then swung him sharply back in again.

‘So, shall we try again… where have you left those insurance policies?’

‘I… I can’t. It’s… it’s my only pro.. protection.’ Truelle was trembling so hard, he had trouble forming the