Ascension Day

downstairs entrance before joining his side-kick in roaming and checking for tell-tale clues, though at all times two- yards clear of the body; the hallowed forensics-only zone.

Questioning was basic at that point, setting the general scene, which was all dutifully relayed to Lieutenant Jerome Derminget, a bloodhound-eyed homicide detective with wavy, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, when he arrived on the scene eighteen minutes later.

Derminget looked like the type that Alaysha would have liked under different circumstances. While his eyes looked tired, as if he read police reports or books late into the night, at the same time they appeared warm, understanding. Though that part also unsettled Alaysha; they looked like they might easily strip away her defences, get to the truth.

Derminget spent the first ten minutes questioning Mrs Orwin, and had been little more than that time with Alaysha when his station house called to inform him that they had Miss Reyner’s lawyer on the line, a certain John Langfranc, ‘And he insists on being present for any official questioning of his client.’

Derminget skewed his mouth. He didn’t like the sound of the girl’s story one bit: the shooter that nobody else had seen, appearing magically and firing just seconds after them closing the door, at the end of a big argument to boot; an eye-witness that saw both the argument and then her and her boyfriend over the body, and, to cap it all, her boyfriend, having apparently run off in pursuit of the killer, for some inexplicable reason hadn’t yet returned. It sounded like a fairy story, but Derminget had so far only been filling in background, hadn’t yet got to the harder- assed questions that might put her account to the acid-test. And the involvement of a lawyer so early rang instant alarm-bells, stank of barricades being quickly, desperately put up. If he didn’t get to those questions before her lawyer showed, her story would probably forever get stuck in la-la land. He saw his escape route in official.

‘Tell our lawyer friend that we’re still on the scene, and so we’re not even sure at this stage if there will be any official questioning of Miss Reyner. But if that is to take place, that’ll be at the station house later tonight; about which, of course, he’ll be duly informed beforehand.’

‘One minute.’ The female duty officer broke off and he could hear other voices in the background — obviously they had the lawyer on another line — before her voice came back. ‘He says he’s a friend and so he’d like to be there in any case, for moral support. He’s on his way.’

‘Okay. Okay.’ Fuck it. Fuck it! Derminget had drifted into the hallway as he’d taken the call and kept his voice low so that the girl wouldn’t overhear. He gave his best smile and soft-eyed look as he turned back in through the doorway. ‘Now, where were we?’ Maybe only ten or twelve minutes before her lawyer arrived, he’d better make the most of it.

Two hours. That’s when Jac had arranged to speak with Langfranc again when hopefully he’d be back from seeing Alaysha and the police. Another phone booth call, Langfranc advised, ‘Because we don’t want anything possibly later being traced to your cell-phone.’

After the change of shirt, Jac had instinctively headed away from the French Quarter — less people, less police. But as another police car drifted by him on Baronne Street, he felt immediately uncomfortable, vulnerable. They didn’t see him or even slow as they passed, but he was struck with the feeling that he was the only person there to draw their eye, and if one of them had looked his way, he’d have frozen or panicked in that gaze, the look in his own eyes instantly giving the game away.

He turned back towards the French Quarter. He felt in no mood to be around people, let alone crowds, but they’d at least offer some cover, distraction; to any passing police, he’d be harder to pick out amongst a milling throng.

He drifted along with the tourists and local out-on-the-towners on Bourbon Street, then turned into Bienville Street and found a bar after forty yards that looked busy and noisy enough to hopefully get lost in.

Jac ordered a Coors at the bar, then found a table deep towards the back where he was hardly visible from the street, let alone noticeable.

As Jac took the first sips of beer, he pictured again hearing the gun going off, those last footsteps on the stairs as he opened the door, Gerry’s body on the floor with part of his skull blown away, Mrs Orwin screaming, You’ve shot him… you’ve shot him! Fourth or fifth time he’d run the sequence through for anything he might have missed, along now with how Alaysha might be coping with the police, how she’d explain the same sequence of events? Would Langfranc have arrived yet to be able to draw their fire?

Jac sipped anxiously at his beer. His running off wouldn’t have helped — more possible suspicion and less back-up, Alaysha left to fend on her own — but with Alaysha’s gun still there, it would have been far worse. Alaysha would instantly have been prime suspect with himself as accomplice. Only with the weapon gone did they have a chance of getting away with the story that someone else had shot Gerry.

Between the crowd at the bar and milling by the entrance, Jac caught glimpses of the street outside as he drank, and over the next half hour he saw a couple of police cars passing: the normal French Quarter patrols, he wasn’t unduly worried. But when a police car stopped almost directly opposite and a patrolman got out and headed across the road, Jac’s nerves immediately tensed, his grip on his beer bottle tightening. He watched like a hawk through the revellers — past two twenty-somethings hugging and back-slapping like they hadn’t seen each in years, past a girl half doubling over and cackling like a witch at the joke of one of her two friends — as the policeman went slightly to one side, a door or two away.

Jac didn’t take his eyes off the entrance or fully ease his breath until two minutes later when he saw the policeman head away again; suddenly conscious of a few people at the bar looking his way curiously, Jac only then aware how hard his eyes had been burning through them, a trickle of sweat on his brow, his hand starting to shake on his beer bottle.

And in turn, with those stares, Jac suddenly realized how alone he was, separate from them all. A day ago, even a few hours ago, he’d have enjoyed the ambience, smiled at the bonhomie around him, felt the beer chill and mellow him, finger-tapped to the beat of the music: Lynryd Skynryd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was playing, and people had started to sway and foot-tap, one couple even attempting a close-clinches jive. But Jac felt cut off from it all, as if he was a world away, the throbbing beat simply fuelling the pounding of his heart and pulse, a nerve jumping in time with it just below his earlobe — one solid, deafening drumbeat that screamed, get out, get out!.. you don’t belong here…

Jac quickly knocked back the rest of his beer and stood up, started making his way back through the heaving, milling mass. The bar had become a lot busier in the past half hour, and Jac had to push and sidle his way through, the atmosphere suddenly hot, oppressive, the feeling that they were all closing in on him — we saw the way you looked at that policeman, and we’re going to keep you here until they come back for you — Jac knocking the arm of a satin-shirted young guy with a pony-tail and almost spilling his drink as he leant back into Jac. ‘Sorry… sorry…’ Jac sweating now, heart pounding, breath short as he burst through the last of the bar crowd and back out onto the street.

But the throbbing, swirling echo of the music and people still seemed to churn through Jac’s head as he paced along Bienville Street, crossing Bourbon this time… a police siren a block away suddenly screaming along with it so that he felt in that instant dizzy, his legs weak; the feeling that he might have to start fleeing again, but now had no strength left.

The siren faded after a moment, and he eased out his breath again, raising his hand to a cab as he saw it crossing on Dauphine Street.

‘Yeah? Where to?’

Jac had to think for a second. His mum’s place would now probably be too risky. ‘Mid-City, on the way to the airport. One of the motels around Tulane Avenue.’ He could make his call to John Langfranc from there and, as one of the city’s most faceless, transient-client hotel areas, it would hopefully be ideal for laying low for a while.

As they turned onto Canal Street, the driver asked, ‘You know which one?’

‘No. Haven’t booked one yet. Got any recommendations?’

As the driver threw up the pros and cons of a couple of motels he knew there, Jac was hardly listening, the throbbing beat, voices and sirens still ringing in his head, get away… get away… and even when the taxi driver had stopped speaking and a motel had been decided upon, it was still there for a while, until finally — Jac closing his eyes and taking slow, even breaths in the back of the taxi as the city receded behind him — it was just the sound of his own heartbeat and thrum of the taxi wheels on the road.