Ascension Day

He had her number from her last call, and called it back.

‘Hi again,’ Melanie Ayliss said. ‘I shouldn’t really be talking on this now.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You know, while I’m driving.’

‘I thought you’d be jumping in a cab?’

‘I’d already booked this from back in Portland… didn’t take long to get the paperwork done.’

Nel-M closed his eyes. No wonder Ayliss had fucking divorced her! He felt like screaming, I thought I told you it was urgent!.. but no point in alienating her. He took a fresh breath. ‘He’s still here — but maybe not for much longer. Where are you now?’

‘On Simon Bolivar… just crossed Melpomene.’

Six or seven minutes, thought Nel-M. No more.

‘Okay. See you soon.’

But just as it hit the six minute mark, he saw Ayliss head out of Truelle’s office towards his car. Nel-M phoned again, a couple of rings before it answered, Ayliss already back at his car, getting in.

‘He’s just leaving!’ Nel-M’s voice sharp with immediacy.

‘But I’m right there.’

‘Where?’

‘On Canal Street… just turning into Royal.’

‘What car have you got?’

‘Uuuh… Blue Chevy Metro.’

Ayliss starting up, looking around, pulling out.

And Nel-M spotted her then: Blue Metro, brown-haired woman at the wheel with a cell-phone in her hand.

‘He’s just pulled out!’ Nel-M screamed. ‘Grey Buick Century… heading your way.’

‘What? Where… where?’

The woman frantically scanning the road ahead as she assimilated the information, Ayliss’s car twenty-five yards away at that point, starting to pick up speed.

And at only ten yards away, she finally spotted him, her eyes locking fully on the car and Ayliss inside as they came alongside. Her eyes went wide for a second, and then she did something foolish — although nothing would have surprised Nel-M about her by that stage. She braked. Hard.

The car behind, a Dodge Dakota, didn’t have a chance, crushing most of the back of the Metro into a concertina. Nel-M closed his eyes and cringed; and when he opened them again, it wasn’t pretty. Though she still looked alive. Just.

Ayliss had kept going, might not have even noticed the conflagration twenty yards behind him. Quick decision to make: head into Truelle’s office and pull out fingernails until he found out what had happened, or keep tailing Ayliss? The sound of a distant siren made his mind up: there’d be a scene here now, police cars arriving at any second. He could catch up with Truelle later and, besides, he’d need Ayliss’s whereabouts for when his ex got out of the hospital.

Nel-M swung out to follow Ayliss, but at that moment the man driving ahead decided to stop to assist the accident victims, his car blocking the road.

‘Out the fucking way!’ Nel-M screamed, his head out the window. ‘You fucking numb-brained mor-’ Nel-M’s voice trailed off as he saw a squad car ahead turn into the road.

Nel-M looked over his shoulder, one arm across the passenger seat as he did a hasty three-point turn, praying that he was able to get around the block quick enough not to lose Ayliss.

The perfect set-up.

Over a couple of shots of Jim Beam, which rapidly became three, four, five and more, Leonard Truelle pondered whether Darrell Ayliss’s claim might be right.

In the very beginning, he’d had strong doubts, but he’d had little choice then: Raoul Ferrer’s hefty street debt one side, which they offered to clear, his drink problem and the threat of exposure and getting struck off, the other; then the final sweetener on top: $250,000. On one side crushing problems, on the other all the decks cleared and a hefty chunk of cash on top.

But when they’d still sensed some reluctance from him, they’d started piling it on about Durrant being guilty in any case. Adelay Roche had put feelers out on the criminal network, and Durrant’s name was the main one to come back as having killed his wife. But the coma and selective memory situation had conveniently blotted it out. The police couldn’t even apply standard question and interrogation tactics in such a situation, and in any case simply didn’t have enough evidence to haul him in.

Truelle had offered to get the information out of Durrant conventionally, but they’d said no. Too risky. If he’d blotted out the recall, or his memory of it was sketchy, the police still wouldn’t have enough to nail him. And with taped sessions, they couldn’t later go back and add or embellish; then it would look suspicious, as if the memory had been falsely embedded.

No, all the details had to be there, so there was no possible error or come-back. That’s what they were paying for: over $400,000 with Ferrer’s debt.

He should have pulled out right then, but the money and all his problems cleared at the same time was just too tempting.

And so he’d gone along with it, used the next session to condition Durrant: ‘You went to a house that night on Coliseum Street, Lawrence… large antebellum mansion in the Garden District with grand white columns on its front portico. You know the type. It was a planned house robbery, Lawrence, and you felt guilty about it because you’d promised your wife not to commit any more robberies. And unfortunately, while you were there a woman was still in the house that you didn’t know about…. and it all went wrong… terribly wrong… ’

A masterful mix of what he’d been fed from Roche and Nel-M, along with what he knew himself about Durrant’s background.

He shifted the previous session tapes to cover, and the next session dropped the right prompts to tease it all back out of Durrant’s memory as the tape ran. Then two days later he phoned the police.

Telling himself all along that he could pull back from the brink later, when he had Ferrer off his back and had worked out how to cover for his drink problem so that he didn’t get struck off and… and then, as the police investigation gathered steam, the DNA evidence on Durrant came in!

Eighty per cent of that doubt and guilt suddenly lifted from his shoulders. They’d been telling the truth all along! Durrant was guilty.

And that’s pretty much how the years since had rolled on: guilty about what he’d done, but consoling himself all along that the end justified the means… though always with that twenty per cent of nagging doubt. That percentage swung back and forth at times: higher with the first news of Durrant’s execution date, thirty or forty per cent, maybe even…

Truelle suddenly jolted in his seat. Nel-M!

He relaxed again as he managed to focus through the haze of the five Jim Beams swimming around in his head — just a black man of similar height and build. Truelle knocked back the rest of his drink, lifted a hand towards the barman for another.

A minute after Ayliss had left his office, there’d been an almighty bang outside, and as he looked down at the accident he saw the police car swing in and Nel-M backing up and doing a three-point turn. Nel-M had been watching outside as Ayliss paid him a visit!

He told Cynthia to cancel the rest of his day’s appointments, he had something urgent to attend to. ‘And if anyone calls for me, anyone… you don’t know where I’ve gone.’

He hastily left the office, past the policemen surveying the accident, heading for a bar or anywhere that Nel-M might not find him. For that reason, he avoided Ben’s or any of his regular haunts, went deep into the CBD before he felt he was on safe enough ground, a sprawling Irish-flavoured tavern on Julia Street.

Thirty per cent… forty per cent… that doubt fluctuating wildly along with his own mood swings and shattered nerves, reaching more for the bottle each time it raised a notch.