Ascension Day

But now this smooth-tongued Southern lawyer, Ayliss, had rocketed that doubt into the stratosphere. He seemed to be right about everything else — had pretty well worked it all out — then why not the DNA as well?

Truelle noticed that his hand was still shaking as he raised his fresh glass. Six stiff ones and he was still shaking like Jello in an earthquake. He doubted that he’d get calm and level this time, no matter how much he drank.

Some squeaky violin music scratched at the back of his brain. While a good bar in which to hide away, lots of dark corners — and better still as it started to fill with an after-office crowd — as it had become busier, they’d also turned up the frantic-fiddler Riverdance music.

But he still needed to kill more time. Okay, he’d sat it out beyond office hours, but now that his office was closed, Nel-M would probably be waiting at his apartment for him. He wouldn’t be able to go back there either!

Stay here and be driven mad by frantic Irish fiddlers? Or risk all out there with Nel-M: thrown from a rooftop or a quick bullet through the brain?

With the aid of three more Jim Beams, he managed to brave it out at the Irish bar for almost another two hours, smiling like an idiot and tapping his feet to the music at one point, as the drink finally made his senses swim and sway.

Then he went to a nearby restaurant, picking at a Chicken Royale, his stomach still too jumpy to swallow much. Though he did manage to wash down the five mouthfuls with a full-bodied bottle of Cote de Beaune.

He finished off the evening with four lingering night-cap brandies between two bars on Maple Street, by which time, spilling himself into a taxi at almost 1 p.m. — hopefully Nel-M would have given up waiting for him by then — everything was drifting and sailing around him so wonderfully that he hardly cared if Nel-M put a bullet through his head. He’d hardly feel it, and such a great moment to go out on: the lights of the city spinning and sparkling all around him like he’d never seen before. Everything so beeyootiful… so fucking beeeyoootiful…

Though he did snap to, sharpen his senses a bit as the taxi approached his apartment. If Nel-M’s car was anywhere nearby, he’d simply tell the driver to head-on, spend that night in a hotel. But it was nowhere to be seen.

He eased out a breath of relief as he told the driver to stop, paid, leapt out, and, taking the stairs two and three at a time, opened his door and slammed it behind him as quickly, sliding back the three deadbolts; then leant against the door for almost a full two minutes, breathless, eyes closed, the city lights still spinning all around him.

He went to the window. No sign of Nel-M’s car or anything else suspect. But still he didn’t put any lights on, except for a small back bathroom light which wouldn’t show through to the front.

He noticed the red light on his answer-phone flashing as he went back into the lounge. He played the message.

‘Hi, Lenny… Chris here. Chris Tullington. You know I mentioned you coming up here one Christmas. Well, me and Brenda and little Giles — or not so little any more — we’re heading inland to Vernon for Christmas. It’s the ideal Christmas setting — fir trees, lots of snow and skiing and big log fires. You’d love it! We’d be real happy to see you, if you could make it. Give us a call here in Vancouver, if you think you’d be able to. We’re heading off there on the eighteenth for ten days.’

Fir trees. Skiing. Warm Christmas fires and old friends. Yeah, he’d love to be able to make it, but it felt a million miles from where he was at that moment.

He looked anxiously towards the front door. If the bell rang, he simply wouldn’t answer it, just phone the police straight away, say he had an intruder at the door.

Surely Nel-M wouldn’t be able to shoot or hack his way through all the dead-bolts before the police arrived? He wouldn’t even risk looking through the spy-hole if it rang, in case Nel-M tried to shoot him through the door. He’d immediately shut and lock every connecting door and barricade himself in a back bedroom.

And that’s where he lay as he finally put his head down to sleep, though with all the connecting doors open so that he could listen out for even the slightest sound from the corridor outside; and he was still in the same position over two hours later, eyes darting rapidly as he listened out for those small sounds that hadn’t yet come, the barrage of nerves again gripping him as the effects of the drink started to wear off, spinning city lights battling against dark demons, until his conscious mind finally gave up caring and he fell asleep.

38

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… fuck…. fuck!

When Nel-M got round the block, Ayliss was nowhere to be seen. He trawled as far as ten blocks up and four or five each side before finally giving up with the thump of his palm against the steering wheel… fuck!

Twenty minutes already gone, he went to a coffee bar and gripped a steaming cappuccino so hard that he thought the cup might shatter, his eyes fixed steadily, stonily ahead, until he’d killed a further half-hour and was sure all the police and ambulances would have cleared from in front of Truelle’s building.

But when he got back there, Truelle’s secretary said that he wasn’t in. He barged through to Truelle’s office in case she was lying, then asked where he was and what time she expected him back.

‘Don’t know… he didn’t say. For either.’

Faint ring of truth about it, but it wouldn’t get him anywhere pulling out her fingernails. Truelle wouldn’t get back any quicker. He’d just have to sit it out.

Another flat-handed bash of the steering wheel as he got back into his car… fuck! Two more as an hour rolled past and Truelle still hadn’t returned, three each at the two and three hour marks, and then finally, as it got close to office closing time and Truelle still wasn’t back, a machine-gun roll of them as Nel-M felt his nerves finally snapping.

He daren’t even phone Roche or answer his call if he rang. If he told Roche he’d lost both Ayliss and Truelle and that Ayliss’s wife had ended up in hospital, the resultant incredulous gasping fit would send Roche into seizure; one good result from the afternoon, perhaps, but not the one he was after.

He waited another hour in case Truelle was late getting back to his office, left with another flat-handed fuck, one more as he arrived in front of Truelle’s apartment building and saw no light on at his window, and was halfway through another couple at the one hour mark with Truelle still not back, when his cell-phone rang. Vic Farrelia.

A slow smile crept across Nel-M’s face as Farrelia related the call that had just come in on Truelle’s line. Truelle’s second, so far elusive, insurance policy: Chris Tullington, wife Brenda; Vancouver, Canada. Shouldn’t be too hard to track down. Now they had them both: full house.

Nel-M checked his watch. Both would have to be taken out at the same time, no question, and if possible that very night. But which one did he take himself and which did he leave to Tommy Garrard, who’d so effectively taken care of Dr Thallerey? Vancouver or upstate New York? Not much to choose between them travelling-time- wise.

He called Roche to tell him the good news and see if he had any preferences. Leave him with that last bit of power and decision-making he so coveted.

Every joint and muscle of Melanie Ayliss’s body seemed to scream and ache as she made her way up the steps of the Eighth District station house and approached its front desk at just after 10 p.m.

‘I have a complaint to lodge.’

‘Oh, really?’ A bright-eyed young sergeant called Brennan quickly killed his faint smile and the surprise in his voice as he realized his sarcasm had been lost on the sour-faced woman before him. Rule fifty-eight of the police manual: never joke with heavily-bruised women in neck-braces. He lowered his voice an octave; feigned gravity. ‘And what would that be ma’m?’

‘I had an accident earlier…’

‘Oh?’