Ascension Day (66 page)

‘God knows what I’m going to say to Tobias Bromwell…
if
I ever speak to the man again. His number has come up twice now on my call minder, but I just don’t have the stomach to phone him back. Don’t know what to say. Too embarrassed.’

Now they were getting to it, Catherine thought; the condolences and niceties out of the way, now they were getting to what really made Camille’s world turn. ‘I understand,’ Catherine said numbly. That’s practically all she’d felt since hearing the news about Jac:
numb
.

‘And you had absolutely no inkling of what was going on, what might be about to happen?’

‘No, of course not.’ The first edge to Catherine’s voice; a ridiculous suggestion even by Camille’s normal thick-skinned, lame-brained standards: “
Mom, I’m going out with a lap-dancer and we’re planning to murder her ex-boyfriend
.”

‘So you didn’t even know about this other girlfriend? This…
this
lap-dancer?’

Catherine half-smiled to herself at Camille’s difficulty in even saying the word. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said, hoping that Camille didn’t read the half-lie. All she knew, from Alaysha directly while Jac had been in the hospital, was that she did some ‘modelling’. Perhaps Alaysha didn’t know what Jac might have already said, and they’d have both got around later to telling her more.

Camille sighed heavily. ‘That’s where it all starts to go wrong, don’t you see? That initial deception. Two-timing poor Jennifer like that. And, for reasons that now become obvious, not telling
anyone
about this other girl.’

‘
What
, you think one might lead to the other?’ Normally, Catherine wouldn’t have said anything, but she could feel her blood boil as Camille had continued: her society-circle embarrassment over Jac’s two-timing and dating a lap-dancer put before the fact that he was being hunted like a rabbit by the police, might not even be still alive, with herself and Jean-Marie worried out of their minds. ‘Like some sort of prelude: date a lap-dancer… next step murder.’

Only a split-second pause, but Catherine could practically hear Camille’s flinch of surprise that she had dared to answer back. ‘No, of course not. But you can bet your bottom dollar that this girl had more than a little to do with putting Jac up to it.’ Camille snorted derisively. ‘Types like that.’

‘Like
what
, Camille?’ Maybe Camille had been grating on her nerves for a while, but now, with everything with Jac, her patience levels were exhausted.

‘Like,
you know
… I surely don’t have to spell it out.’ Again that reluctance to even say it, as if it would somehow soil her lips. ‘But one thing’s for sure: she’s certainly an entirely different kettle of fish to a girl like Jennifer Bromwell.’

‘She only takes her clothes off for money… no doubt to put groceries on the table for her little girl. There’s no sin in that.’

‘
Please
… spare me.’

‘And do you really think the likes of old-man Bromwell built up their fortunes by being squeaky clean? I hear he was involved in some messy low-rent housing early on. Complaints about rats, damp and unsanitary conditions, and strong-arm guys busting doors down and kicking whole families out in the dead of night when they complained too hard. Not exactly what he’d like to be quizzed about at one of your little dinner soirees.’

This time the surprise was clear at the other end; an audible gasp. ‘Sometimes, Catherine, you’re so…
so
French.’

Catherine wasn’t sure whether the comment was due to her laissez-faire attitude about people taking their clothes off for money, or her socialist-slanted dig at Tobias Bromwell – but she decided to take it as a compliment. ‘Thanks.’

‘And while we’re on the subject of low rents – don’t forget whose house you’re in!’ Camille hung up abruptly.

Catherine took a fresh breath, feeling strangely invigorated. Camille might soon put in the thin edge of the wedge about her and Jean-Marie moving on, finding their own place – one more problem she didn’t need now on top of all else – but all she knew was that at that moment, despite everything, she suddenly felt better. Freer.

‘
And as… as I looked back, there was this woman. Don’t know even what made me look back at that point, maybe the sense of her eyes on me... but there she was suddenly, this woman with her dog. Her eyes meeting mine for a second before I ran on.
’

‘
How far away was she
?’

‘
Maybe eighty yards the other way from the Roche house. A hundred or so from where I was then
.’

Jac stood twenty yards beyond the Roche house, where Larry would have been that night twelve years ago, and looked back to where he’d have seen the woman. Still dark, with just the first tinge of dawn light, the light values wouldn’t be far different to that night, Jac thought.   

Jac rewound on his hand-held recorder and looked back towards the house.

‘…There were no lights on at the front, or the side – which is where I broke in. Maybe if I’d gone round the back, I’d have seen a light on… or maybe she’d gone to bed early and there’d have been no light on there either
.’

‘
So you broke in at the side
?’

‘
Yeah. Removed a glass pane and wired through on the frame so as not to break the alarm circuit. Two minutes, and I was in. Took a quick tour to see where the best stuff was, and found a safe in the library that I reckoned I could break by drilling the lock without too much trouble. And I was just preparing for that when I heard something behind me, and she… she was suddenly there. Like… like out of nowhere. Not there one minute… then the next…
’

Jac could see the side of the house from where he was, and closed his eyes for a second to picture the library from his visit two days ago, then shifted to how it would have been twelve years ago, Larry checking out the safe as Jessica Roche walked in behind him…

Something he was missing…
something
…

Jac eased out his breath after a moment, started to pace away.

I was there at the time
.

He looked from side to side at the neighbouring houses and then along the street. If someone else had been there that night, then where…
where
? A neighbouring window or garden, or further away? Far enough not to have been noticed by the murderer.

Only three days left now
. Jac shook his head. He hadn’t slept well that night. He hadn’t been able to get hold of Mack Elliott until almost 10 p.m., two hours after he’d checked into yet another hotel room, the photos from the murder scene again spread around him, word and sentence fragments from the session still bouncing through his head.

‘You’re as bad as that Jac,’ Mack commented, ‘the last guy handling everything for Larry… asking me to remember things from twelve years back.’

‘I know. It ain’t easy.’ Jac laid on the Ayliss Southern drawl. ‘But now there’re a couple of notable things to hopefully remind you.’ Jac set the scene with the chicken guy and his friend in a sequinned suit, pressing him to remember what might have been so important on the TV that Mack would have asked him to shut up; and at that moment – as now, staring emptily into the first dawn light of the street where twelve years ago the murder had taken place, searching for answers – everything seemed to freeze around Jac, hang suspended as he stood in the middle of a strange hotel room, cell-phone in hand, breath held, because he knew that probably Larry’s very last chance depended on Mack’s next words.  

But with a long, tired exhalation, Mack Elliott said that he just couldn’t remember what he might have been watching. ‘Can’t bring anythin’ to mind clearly… I’m sorry. Too long back.’

‘Will you keep thinking on it for me?’ Jac reluctant to let possibly the last door close. ‘Call me if you finally remember anything. Not long left now… only a few days.’

‘I know.’

Jac wound forward again on the tape.

‘
And where did you run to then, Larry
?’

‘
Back to where I’d parked my car… a few blocks away, on Carondelet Street
.’

Jac looked around. Carondelet was to the north, a block beyond St Charles Avenue, which meant Larry would have taken the next right on 4
^th
Street to get there. Jac headed that way as the tape continued, following the same route Larry had twelve years ago as he’d run in panic from the Roche house.

‘
And did you head straight home then
?’

‘
Not straight away. My mind was spinning with so many things. I wanted to go for a drink somewhere, but I was afraid I might have some of her blood on me that people would notice. So in the end I just drove around for a while – maybe as long as fifty minutes – before I finally headed home
.’

Jac could almost hear the prison clock again in time with his footsteps breaking the quiet of the Garden District dawn.
Tic-toc… clip-clop… not long left now…

‘
And did you have the gun still with you
?’

‘
When I left the house… yeah. But I dumped it in a trash can somewhere out in Metairie while I was driving around
.
And I noticed then that my jacket was clean. I kept that on
…’

Click
…. Stop… rewind. Play again.

‘
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.