Ascension Day (61 page)

I was there at the time
.

Ayliss’s hands clenched back tight on the wheel as he waited out the long silence on tape, recalling Larry’s brow furrowing heavily. Finally:

‘No… I… I can’t say I did. Didn’t in fact hear
any
sounds in the house.’ Larry’s breathing steady, measured, then, after a brief swallow, falling shorter again, uneven. ‘Not even Jessica Roche upstairs – otherwise I’d have got out of there earlier. Only heard her footsteps approaching at the last minute
when
–’

‘That’s okay, Larry – you don’t need to go there,’ Ormdern cut in sharply. ‘You’ve covered that more than enough in the past. Move on again to afterwards…
afterwards
.’ That drawn out, soothing tone again. ‘Afterwards… as you’re leaving the Roche house. Apart from the woman walking her dog, do you recall anyone else that might have seen you?’

‘No...’ Brief silence. ‘Not that I can recall.’

‘At a neighbouring house, perhaps… in their garden or looking out from a window. Someone that you didn’t notice before?’

Longer pause, then: ‘No, sorry… nothing. I was running hard by then, my mind set on just getting away from there. Perhaps wouldn’t have even noticed the woman with her dog if I hadn’t looked back.’

‘Right. I can understand that.’ Flicking of paper as Ormdern checked back through the notes Ayliss had handed him before the session. ‘I want to take you somewhere else now, Larry. Same week in 1992 – but a completely different place. The Bayou Brew bar and your regular pool game there with your buddies: Nat Hadley, Ted Levereaux and Bill Saunders.’ A moment’s pause as Ormdern let the new location and people settle in Durrant’s mind. ‘Now, I want you to try and recall, Larry – was your game that week before or after that night at the Roche house?’

‘Uh… uh… before, I think.’

Ayliss turned the tape off again for a moment as he came off the Causeway, and didn’t switch on again until after he’d made the turn on to Earhart Boulevard.

‘You
think
? Concentrate, Larry. It’s important. Can you place the day with any certainty?’

‘Yeah… yeah. Before, I’m pretty sure.’

Think
.
Pretty
sure. Too easily argued as reflecting uncertainty, Ayliss considered. Wouldn’t get him past square one with Governor Candaret.  

‘Okay, before, then. Do you remember how long – how many days?’

‘I don’t know. A day or two before, maybe.’

Don’t know
.
Maybe
. More uncertainty. Heavy pause as Ormdern consulted Ayliss’s notes again, looking for the key point mentioned that would help nail the day down: Bill Saunders.

‘Okay. Let’s see if we can tie it down another way. What and who did you see there? Were all your playing buddies there that night?’

‘Yeah.’ Larry’s tone offhand, Ayliss recalled him giving a little shrug at that juncture. ‘They were all there.’

As Ayliss turned onto Louisiana Avenue, he checked his watch. Looked like he’d get there six or seven minutes earlier than he’d said. He’d had to lay on the Southern charm thick and heavy to get the new owners’ agreement to look through the house; though hardly surprising, given its past history.

‘Are you sure about that? Particularly Bill Saunders. Was he there that night?’

‘Yeah, Bill was there.’

‘Absolutely sure?’

‘Yeah. A hundred per cent.’

This time Ayliss banged one fist against the steering wheel, rather than the air-punch when he’d first heard those words an hour ago in the observation room.

Ormdern had looked up at the clock at that point, only four minutes remaining, then had brought Larry back out, explaining to Ayliss afterwards that he didn’t want to get deep into what else Larry might have seen in the Bayou Brew that night only to have to break his train of thought halfway through.

Ayliss slowed as he came to the first houses of the Garden District on Washington Avenue, taking the turn into Coliseum Street two blocks down.

At least they’d ended on a positive note. High chances that the pool game
was
that crucial Thursday night, because Bill Saunders had been there rather than running his daughter to dance lessons. Ayliss would know just how high once he’d spoken to Saunders.

Ayliss was counting numbers as he went along. He swung in and pulled to a stop as he came to the old Roche residence. A resplendent antebellum mansion with two-storey high Corinthian columns supporting a thirty-foot wide front portico.

Problem was, that coinciding pool game was at odds with the details Durrant had provided from the Roche house,
if
they’d been as he described:
grey or green safe with a twist-tumbler lock, grandfather clock, books along the right-hand side
. Because he couldn’t have been both places that night: playing pool
and
killing Jessica Roche.

Everything hinged on what Ayliss found out now. And what the new owners, the Mortons, might remember: ten years now they’d been in the house. Roche had put it on the market straight after the trial, but it had taken eleven months to finally find a buyer.

Ayliss closed his eyes for a second to compose himself. If this fact-finding now went the wrong way, in an hour he could be phoning Ormdern to cancel the second session. Something along the lines: ‘
Those details Durrant gave match what I’ve been able to find out from the house itself. There’s no other possible explanation: he was there that night. There’s little point in us continuing, nor in fact do I even feel inclined – from a purely ethical point of view – to put in more time trying to save an obviously guilty man.’

A light wind outside ruffled the trees. A timeless district like this, early December, probably wasn’t that different to how it had been mid-February twelve years ago. Ayliss wondered just how much of the house inside might have also remained in a time warp.

He noticed a curtain moving on a downstairs window, the Mortons checking out if it was their expected visitor. With a resigned sigh, Ayliss got out the car and approached the house.

‘Follow him. See where he goes and who he might meet with.’

Roche’s predictable advice when he called back the next evening about Ayliss. Nel-M felt like ribbing, ‘And how exactly should I go about that? You know, after a month of doing fuck all else with McElroy, I might need some guidance.’ Not exactly that imaginative: simply swap one mark for another. But with the way those few words had been delivered, slowly and purposefully between pained breaths, as if they had real significance, Nel-M could tell that Roche was still in no mood for humour. So all he said was, ‘Okay. I’ll get right on it.’

Then, as if an afterthought, or Roche felt his instructions should be meted out separately in case Nel-M couldn’t cope with more than one at a time: ‘Oh, and get onto his ex-wife in Oregon, too. Tell her that her past dearly-beloved is back in town, and so she might want to take the opportunity to slap the rest of that old maintenance order back on his ass.’ Roche did actually manage a brief forced chuckle then, but it lapsed into a small cough as it caught an incoming breath the wrong way. ‘Should keep him on his toes and hopefully his eye off the ball with Durrant, with his wife hot on his tail again. Might even hi-tail it straight back to Mexico, if we’re lucky.’

‘If we’re lucky.’ A bit more of a plan, but Nel-M played it low-key, didn’t want to be too enthusiastic. She might just say that that was all history, she had no interest in chasing his sorry ass any more. ‘I’ll see if I can make contact with her.’

The next morning, Nel-M put a call through to Bateson and asked him to make a note of Darrell Ayliss’s car-type and registration when he arrived at Libreville that evening for the session with Ormdern. Then he started making calls to track down Melanie Ayliss’s phone number in Oregon.   

Bateson’s return call came at 7.16 p.m., and thirty-five minutes later Nel-M left his apartment and drove out to just before the start of the Pontchartraine Causeway, made a hasty U-turn in a gap in the traffic and stopped at the first pull-in where he could watch cars coming off the Causeway.

He’d got there early, just in case, and had to wait over half an hour before Ayliss’s steel-blue Dodge Stratus went past him. Nel-M let one more car pass, then pulled out and followed.

Earhart… then Louisiana… LaSalle. As soon as Ayliss took the turn onto Washington Avenue, Nel-M suspected where he was heading; confirmed as Ayliss slowed the other side of St Charles, looking out for Coliseum Street.

Nel-M had spent little time in the area since that night in 1992. Driven past it several times and through it on a few occasions out of necessity – but never stayed for any time there.

He kept straight on as Ayliss turned into Coliseum Street, then took the next turn on Chestnut and again on 2
^nd
Street, effectively circling round the block; and, sure enough, as he nosed his car out enough to get a partial view, Ayliss was closing his car door and heading up the path towards the Roche’s old house.

For the first twenty minutes of waiting, Nel-M stayed calm, tried not to think too much about what Ayliss might be doing in there. But as the minutes ticked by, his thoughts started to multiply: maybe some vital clue from the session with Durrant that Ayliss was checking out, or something Ayliss had picked up on that nobody had before; or perhaps he was just familiarizing himself with the crime scene. Standard practice.

The atmosphere of the street also began to close in on Nel-M then: its quietness and isolation from the city close by, the shadows heavier, deeper from the large mansions and more abundant tree cover. The reminders of that night drifting back:
Jessica Roche’s eyes staring back pleadingly just before that final shot… the woman walking her dog holding his gaze for a second as he’d looked back
.

Nel-M’s pulse was still raised a notch, his hands gently trembling on the steering wheel, when almost an hour later Ayliss left the house. He pulled out again to follow him.

St Charles, Jackson, Simon Bolivar… finally stopping at a hotel two blocks from the main train and Greyhound bus terminals. Again, Nel-M drifted past and then turned around and parked a block away where he had a clear sight of Ayliss’s Dodge in their side car park.

Maybe Ayliss would head out later for dinner or another meeting, Nel-M considered, but after an hour of waiting – 10.43 p.m. by then – Nel-M began to think that Ayliss might be there for the night, had grabbed something to eat in the hotel. He left it another twenty minutes, then went into the hotel. He approached the reception desk.

‘I’ve got a business colleague staying here, Darrell Ayliss, and I promised to drop off some papers for him tomorrow morning. But I don’t want to miss him before he heads off, and he told me he was having an early night – so I didn’t want to disturb him now. But I wondered what time he might have an alarm call or breakfast ordered – might give me a clue as to when he’ll be heading out.’

The desk clerk’s brow furrowed. ‘Mr Ayliss has already left, sir.’

‘But his rental car’s still in the car park.’

‘I know, sir. He left the keys here for the car-rental company to pick up, and got in a cab forty minutes ago.’

Nel-M tried to recall the dozen or so cabs he’d seen pull up in that time, and the people he’d seen get in them. The only possibility had been a man shuffling in with a homburg hat pulled down. But it hadn’t looked like Ayliss – no horn-rimmed glasses, no dark lank hair in sight, different jacket – which Nel-M supposed had been the idea.

A muscle twitched sharply in Nel-M’s jaw. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and as soon as he was outside the hotel, he took out his cell-phone.

Perhaps Ayliss was moving around because of his ex-wife, or possibly Coultaine had whispered in his ear that – given what had happened to McElroy – it was advisable to remain shadowy and elusive.

Nel-M had phoned Melanie Ayliss’s number earlier and been told, ‘Mom won’t be back till late this evening. Shopping and then sociology evening class.’