Ascension Day

‘I… I’d checked for a few nights beforehand… and there was no car either in the drive… or lights on that I could see. She… she wasn’t meant to be there.’

‘And where was… ’

Stop. Silence again, only the sound of Jac’s continuing footsteps. He thought about the mystery e-mailers’ words.

I couldn’t give my name or come forward before, because I’d have incriminated myself. And that still stands now. But I was there…

Where… where? Incriminated himself? Or perhaps it was just a hoax or a friend of Larry’s, another curve-ball along with Larry’s differing accounts of when and where he’d first seen the news on Jessica Roche’s murder.

Clip-clop… clip-clop… did do it… didn’t do it…

Jac stopped as St Charles Avenue came into view ahead: more activity, gentle thrum of some early traffic. Now a block and a half away, nobody would have been able to see anyone leave the Roche house beyond where he was now.

He walked back again and stood for a moment by the Roche house, looking around one last time as he tried to picture Larry as he was that night, having murdered for the first time, breathless, panicked and running like a rabbit, the gun still with him, the woman walking her dog locking eyes with him for a second… and whether from the images spinning in his head, lack of sleep, or the exertion of walking about with all the heavy padding from his disguise, Jac suddenly felt dizzy, the street and everything around him tilting into a lazy spin. Last hopes tilting, slipping away…

Jac snapped himself out of it, took a fresh breath. He got back into his car and grabbed a quick take-out coffee on his way back to his hotel. He sipped at it as he walked into his room, checking his watch: Ormdern’s report should arrive in an hour or so; with so little time left now, Ormdern had promised to get it to him first thing.

Jac decided to use the time to go back over the tapes of Truelle’s earlier sessions with Larry. He’d played most of them before, purely to get a feel for the lead-up to the crucial murder-admission session. Some segments now had more resonance, particularly when Larry started trying to remember old friends, some of them from those key pool games, but for the most part it was fairly mundane, day to day recall — Truelle’s voice and Larry’s answers after a while becoming little more than a drone, soporific, the last thing Jac needed after last night’s fitful sleep. And so when something did suddenly hit him, so small that at first he almost missed it, it snapped him sharply alert again, made him sit up.

Jac quickly re-wound to make sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard.

Yes, it was there; no mistake. Then he started going back through the other tapes, listening to the same sections on each… and was halfway through the process when hotel reception rang through to his room to tell him that a package had been left for him by a Mr Ormdern.

‘Yes…. thanks. Could you send it up to me.’

Click, stop. Play. Click, stop. Play. Click, stop… four tapes left to try by the time the knock came at the door and a bell-boy handed him the envelope. Jac practically ripped it open, his adrenalin now on fire with what he’d just discovered, flicking though quickly to the main summary points in Ormdern’s report:

Unfortunately, the incidental detail surrounding Larry Durrant’s night at the Roche house is inconclusive. While there isn’t a great depth of incidental detail — which could then lean towards the memory somehow being suggested or “implanted” — conversely the accuracy of what little he has recalled could then support that the memory was real and true.

Also, we have the problem I voiced when you first raised this issue of possible memory suggestion or “implanting” before these sessions with Larry Durrant. To successfully do that, a full hour session, possibly more, would have been required. But from what you told me, the tapes are all sequential and match every diary entry for that period. And there were no extra-curricular visits by Durrant outside of those diarised.

Jac looked back towards the tape recorder. Jac thought he knew how Truelle had done it, had got the sequence of tapes to match the session diary entries. No gaps.

Ormdern’s report concluded, ‘I think your best chance rests with hopefully getting corroborative alibis from the extra details unearthed surrounding Larry Durrant’s pool game that week.

Two possible irons in the fire. The first he’d have to hit Truelle with, hard. Pray that he could somehow break him. Jac looked at his watch. If he phoned, Truelle would probably do what he’d done last time: shuffle him off for a day or two. No time left. It was time for an unannounced visit.

‘Joshua, I want you to send an e-mail to your father.’ Francine kept her gaze level and constant, so that her son could be sure that she was serious and it wasn’t some kind of trick. ‘In Libreville. It’s time. Probably in fact the last time you’re gonna be able to do it. Say what you want to him.’

‘I… I thought that you said — ’

‘I know what I said, Joshua.’ She sighed heavily. This wasn’t easy. She forced a tame smile. ‘Take this as an early lesson that parents can be fickle too… and that time can change things.’

‘But what about Frank? And the…’ Joshua fumbled while he thought about how to cover up that he’d been continuing to send e-mails. Whether he’d get found out? Whether to say anything? ‘…the keyword. And what should I say?’ Joshua’s eyes lifted to meet his mother’s.

‘The keyword I know. Frank told me what it was, said that you’d never guess it. That is, if you’ve been looking?’ She raised a sharp eyebrow and smiled dryly. ‘As for what to say… well, I guess whatever you’ve been holdin’ back on saying for the past month or so will do for a start.’

Joshua was sure from her look that she suspected he’d kept contact. He looked away again, nodding. ‘Okay.’

‘And… and to tell your father that we want to see him. Tomorrow, if possible. After that, they might not allow any visitors.’

She watched her request hit Joshua as if she’d jabbed him with a cattle prod. He didn’t say anything, simply lifted those big eyes again to look at her directly. Perhaps to ask again if she was sure, or because he wasn’t sure how he’d handle a face to face with his father at this stage. Or because it raised again the earlier question that she hadn’t yet answered.

She shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about Frank. I’ll square everything with him — you making contact and us going there tomorrow. If Frank can’t understand why you should see your father for what might be the last time, then… then…’ She looked away, chewing at her bottom lip, an image of past, happier times suddenly piercing her heart: Larry holding Josh up as a baby and singing to him in a silly coo-coo voice, and Josh looking back at him with those same big brown eyes; so loving, so trusting. But in that instant the shadows crossing her eyes were probably read by her son as her being less sure about handling Frank than she’d made out, which was also true. ‘You just leave Frank to me,’ she said, trying to sound more confident, assured.

She gave Joshua the keyword, and heard his tapping on the computer just before she went back through the kitchen door at the end of the hallway.

She was glad the kitchen counter was close, otherwise she wouldn’t have made it. She gripped tight at the counter-top as she felt her legs buckle, a white-hot scythe of sorrow and painful nostalgia that seemed to rip her stomach away and take everything below with it, racking sobs rising without warning from deep in her chest, as if they were her very last gasps.

She hadn’t shed many tears for Larry over the years. The last had been when his mother died six years ago and it struck her then that he was all alone, nobody left to stand by him. But she hadn’t cried like this since Larry had first been charged and locked in a police cell. Cried herself to sleep every night for a week, and the same again when he was finally sentenced. Cried and cried until all the love and hope had gone and she thought there was nothing left inside but bitterness and anger that he could have done this to her and Joshua. Deserted. Betrayed.