Ascension Day

can’t.

And he could still feel that drumbeat as he drove away, though now it was only his heart, its beat harder and faster as he drove back across the darkness of Lake Pontchartrain, remembering. His breath held for a moment, expectant, as if waiting for that first gulp of air again as he hit the surface. But it wasn’t the image of himself fighting up through its murky depths that reached him this time, but Larry Durrant: struggling to pick out the images of twelve years ago from its shadowy greyness, but them never hitting the light of the surface. Never becoming clear.

And staring out across the dark expanse of lake, the thought hit Jac in that instant: ‘It’s there somewhere. It’s there. Only you can’t see it.’

He drove the rest of the way back to New Orleans with only that one thought on his mind, and, as soon as he was inside his apartment, went over to his father’s painting on the far wall of the dining room, leaning close to it, feeling the texture of its oil brushstrokes.

Their Rochefort farmhouse, a patchwork of vineyards and wheat and sunflower fields sloping up towards a more prominent pine-covered hillside as backdrop.

His father had painted it their first year in Rochefort, when Jac had been only nine. And when his father had first finished it, he asked Jac:

‘What do you see?’

‘Our farmhouse.’

‘Yes, but what else?’

Jac had studied the painting more closely, looking for perhaps himself or his mother as a small dot hidden in the fields or the hillside like one of those ‘Where’s Waldo’ puzzles. But he couldn’t see anything, and shook his head after a moment.

‘Look deeper into the painting,’ his father prompted. ‘It’s there somewhere. It’s there. Only you can’t see it.’

And after a while, Jac could finally see it: a vague, shadowy outline of what looked like their farmhouse in a slightly different position.

His father explained that he’d started laying down the outline of the farmhouse, then suddenly decided it would be better from another angle, the backdrop and depth of shadow and light more dramatic.

‘But rather than waste the canvass, I decided to paint over it. It’s something the Old Masters used to do all the time — because canvasses were even more expensive then. Lean in close to many an Old Master, and you’ll be surprised what you see buried in the background.’

And from then on, Jac had always looked. Whether at the Louvre or a local gallery, while everyone else was yards away, trying to appreciate the overall impact of the painting, he’d be only inches from it, trying to see what might lay beneath the surface.

Jac looked at his watch: 11.46 p.m. Late, but he didn’t want to delay. He dialled out on his cell-phone. Mike Coultaine’s throaty voice answered after three rings.

‘That psychiatrist for the defence, Greg Ormdern, is he still practicing?’ Jac asked.

‘I believe so.’

‘Any good?’

‘At the time, one of the best. Which is why I used to use him as an expert witness. Why?’

Jac explained his thinking to Coultaine: if Truelle had been able to unearth from Durrant’s mind his actions that dark night with Jessica Roche, then perhaps Greg Ormdern would be able to fill in the gaps. ‘Uncover the rest from that time. The things we still don’t know.’

With the last call, Nel-M contemplated, the most important thing had been brevity:

‘You wanna know who your girlfriend’s new boyfriend is? Who’s fucking her now? His name’s Jac. Jac with no k.’

Hanging up before Strelloff had half a chance to think or ask who was calling. But this time he’d have to go into more detail.

He sat for almost an hour outside McElroy’s apartment — in a rented grey Chevrolet Impala, because McElroy would now recognize his Pontiac — timing and planning.

Eight o’clock, McElroy said that he’d be over to eat at her place. He still used his home phone for day-to-day non-Durrant related calls because, as Nel-M hardly needed reminding — that’s all they’d got the past six days on tape.

Nel-M left it half an hour for them to get their appetizers out of the way, then took out his cell-phone to order their main course.

Gerry Strelloff was slightly out of breath as he answered, as if he’d run from another room to pick up, or was on his way somewhere.

‘Your friend again. You know that lawyer’s letter and restraining order you just got?’

‘What? Who is this?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’ Nel-M knew they’d been sent from scuttlebutt at ‘Pinkies’, with Alaysha confiding in a couple of friends. ‘Just take it that I’m someone who’s got your interests at heart, and want you to know what a fool you’re being played for. Because that boyfriend I mentioned the other day — Jac McElroy — he’s a lawyer working for the same firm that sent the letter and arranged the restraining order.’

‘You’re joking?’ Incredulous, still slightly breathless.

‘No fucking joke about it, man. And they organized it all just to get you off the scene — so he could get in there like the slimy jack-rabbit he is and take your place.’

‘Shit! I don’t believe it… I’ll fucking — ’

‘But that’s not the best part.’ The touch paper lit — Nel-M could heard the bubbling acid-anger in Strelloff’s voice — hopefully this final bucket of petrol would get the flames sky high. ‘He lives right next door to her. Probably even heard you screwing her through the walls, and thought — I want somma that. So that’s where he is now, right now — you safely roped and tied by a restraining order while he’s in your place in her bed, fucking her stupid.’

‘What? He’s there now… this minute?’

‘Yeah… this fucking minute, as we speak. Probably already at the point where she’s screaming his name out loud: Jac… Jac! Oh… oh… Jac!’ Nel-M chuckled. ‘You hurry, maybe you’ll get there just in time for the money shot.’

Nel-M hung up and looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes for Strelloff to get over from his place in Chalmette. Correct that, seventeen or eighteen with the speed he’d be driving.

‘When my father died, I had trouble coming to terms with it. As a lot of people do with something like that.’ Jac waved one hand above his wine glass towards Alaysha. ‘But more than that, I felt he’d been cheated: he was only fifty-four, had many good years left, he’d been a good person with a kind heart, brought his family up well… so why him, God? Why him?’

Alaysha simply nodded, didn’t speak. She could tell that this was a difficult, heartfelt subject for Jac to broach, so had suddenly stopped clearing their plates from the dinner she’d prepared, not wanting to make any noise at that moment. She could see Jac struggling with his thoughts, shadows alternating in his eyes like fast-drifting clouds as he tried to sift them into order.

‘The main problem was, they didn’t discover it was cancer until late. Because of my father’s business problems, their first thought was that it was ulcers rather than stomach cancer. By the time they got to it, it had probably been there for three or four years. It had worked its way too deep, had reached his pancreas. There wasn’t a lot they could do.’ Jac shrugged, but Alaysha could see that it was like trying to flip off a ten-ton weight. His shoulders moved, but the burden stayed there. ‘And shortly after my father had the prognosis, knew that there wasn’t much hope left, his old friend from Glasgow, Archie Teale, came down to see him. Archie had kept contact with my father and visited a fair few times over the years, but we weren’t sure this time whether my mother had phoned him, or it was some invisible thread between old, close friends to tell Archie that something was wrong with my father. Certainly my father wouldn’t have phoned Archie to spill his woes, not his style — but the subject did soon get round to that.’

Jac smiled tightly. ‘Though even when it did, typical of my father, he wasn’t worried about himself, but more