Ascension Day (71 page)

‘Hello.’ A woman’s voice, but it didn’t sound like Chris’s wife Brenda.

‘Is… is Chris there?’ 

   ‘I’m afraid not.’ The tone subdued, grave. ‘I’m afraid something’s happened. Who is it calling?’

Truelle’s stomach plummeted.
Something’s happened
! ‘It’s, Len… uuuh, a friend. What’s happened?’

‘I’m a RCMP liaison officer, Jackie Melkin. And I’m sorry to have to report that there was a serious incident earlier this morning involving Mr Tullington, a homicide, and his wife’s not able to speak to anyone – because she was injured too in the incident. You say you’re a friend of the Tullingtons…
Len
, was it? Could I have your full name, please, sir? I have strict instructions to make a list of all callers.’

‘I…
uuuh
, it… it doesn’t matter.’ He hung up abruptly. Not sure where the conversation would head, or if he’d even be
able
to talk any more. His writhing nerves had tightened around his chest and throat like a vice, so that he could hardly breathe – all that came out was a strangled, breathless gasp as he clenched his eyes shut and banged one fist repeatedly against the kiosk glass.
No, no, no…. no…. no
!
But you had your lines cleared of bugs
!
You had them cleared
!

He could no longer be sure of that until he’d made one more call; but he didn’t have time now. He had to get away. As far away as possible!

He made a quick stop at a deli for a take-out coffee to clear the dust from his throat and his head-throb from last night, sharpen his senses – though fear and adrenalin seemed to have already done half of that job for him. And running on that high-octane mix of fear, adrenalin, caffeine, and night-before Jim Beams and brandies, within seven minutes he had everything he needed from his apartment packed in a suitcase and was heading back down the stairs.

A final anxious scan of the road outside, having already checked every other minute while packing, then he scampered a block round the corner and hailed a cab to an internet café in Metairie where he’d make the rest of his travel arrangements.

Cuba
! The remotest-placed friend he could think of – probably the
only
one of his old friends who hadn’t yet been shot. Not a million miles away, but with US travel restrictions a nightmare to get to: he’d be travelling half the day with stop-offs at Atlanta, Miami and Nassau to get there. Then a six hour drive from Havana.

The arrangements made, he suddenly thought of something he’d forgotten. He couldn’t leave it in his office, yet he couldn’t risk going back there, either. He checked his watch. 8.46 a.m. He called Cynthia’s cell-phone – he’d need to tell her he’d be away for a few days in any case – and instructed her where to find what he needed and the P.O. Box in Cuba to send it to.

‘DHL… immediately you get to the office. And don’t for God’s sake tell
anyone
where I’ve gone.’ 

Anyone
? She told him about Nel-M’s visit the day before. ‘Big black guy, eyes like a dead frog’s. Seemed to be the day for people barging into your office.’

‘Him in particular don’t tell.’

But Cynthia knew that something was seriously wrong, probably from the breathless, rapid-staccato way he spat everything out, as if afraid a minute later it would be too late; and as the questions started to come, he cut her short.

‘I can’t tell you, Cynthia. I
can’t
.’
I might have set up an innocent man, and everyone who gets near to knowing about it ends up dead
! The stale drink, caffeine and sour bile was like a bubbling quagmire surging up through his lungs.
Hard to breathe
! The throbbing in his head and body’s trembling was so heavy that it felt as if a limb might fall off at any second. ‘I just need to get away for a few days, that’s all. Just DHL that package straightaway and don’t tell
anyone
where I’ve gone – you’ll be okay. And Cynthia: be especially careful what you say on the office line. It might be bugged.’

He hung up quickly before any more questions came, and dialled straight out to his friend in Cuba as he went outside and hailed a cab to the airport.

‘Yeah…
yeah
, Brent… on my way right now.’

‘Be great to see you, old buddy. Been a long time… lot of catching up to do. Four-shot
Mojito
session, at least…’

 Never any doubt. But if he hadn’t been able to stay with Brent, he’d have simply booked a nearby hotel. As his taxi headed towards the airport, he made his last call; the one that had troubled him more and more the past hour.

‘Bell South.’

Truelle explained about the engineers’ visits he’d booked three weeks back to clear suspected bugs from his home and office telephones.

Brief flurry of keyboard taps. ‘Yes… I’ve got them here. Both booked at the same time on the fourteenth of last month.’

Truelle’s hopes raised; then, with a few more taps at her end, quickly sank again as she looked at the next entry.

‘And then both cancelled again the following day.’

‘That’s… that’s not possible,’ Truelle spluttered. ‘
I
didn’t cancel them, and two different engineers called at the times arranged,
both
wearing Bell uniforms.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. If those visits actually happened – then we don’t have any record of them here on our computer. The last recorded entry we have is for the two cancellations. And no new times set for alternative visits.’

No point in arguing further with the girl; he now knew the truth of what had happened. How they’d done it.

‘Thanks.’
Falling
… sinking deeper into the abyss, his voice little more than a hollow, detached echo rising up through it.

The two engineers had put the bugs
in
rather than taken them out! From then on, they’d listened in to every word. And when Chris had left the message with his details, he’d signed his own and Alan’s death-warrant.

Truelle shut his eyes as he felt the first tears of the day sting them. Maybe Ayliss was right: if they were clever enough to set all of that up, perhaps they’d set up the DNA evidence as well. And in two days time, he’d have Durrant’s death also on his conscience.

Truelle kept his eyes shut, the tears rolling gently down his cheeks as the taxi sped to the airport. But at least the battle inside his head was over: there were no longer any spinning city lights, only dark demons.

Melanie Ayliss’s enquiry landed on the desk of Joe Rayleigh, a portly, six-three black detective with a constant scowl. He glanced briefly at its opening page as it arrived. He had a stack of murder, rape, missing persons and armed robbery files on his desk; impersonation wasn’t exactly a priority. The only thing to give it a curious edge was that it concerned Larry Durrant’s new lawyer, Darrell Ayliss.

Rayleigh glanced at his watch. Not much he could do about it that night. But at 9.20 the next morning, he called the two places where he thought he might get a contact number or the current whereabouts of Darrell Ayliss.

At Libreville prison, Warden Haveling’s secretary said that it was likely either Warden Haveling or his assistant Mr Folley had a number for Mr Ayliss. But Folley had been on night duty and wouldn’t be in until midday, and Warden Haveling was tied up in a meeting until 10.30 a.m. ‘But I’ll get Warden Haveling to call you back the minute he comes out his meeting.’

Rayleigh left his number and made his second call to Payne, Beaton and Sawyer, the law firm that previously represented Durrant, and was put through to a John Langfranc.

‘No, unfortunately I don’t have Mr Ayliss’s number,’ Langfranc commented. ‘But I know someone who very likely has: Mike Coultaine. He used to work for us and apparently has kept in contact with Darrell Ayliss since. In fact, I understand that it was Mike Coultaine who recommended Ayliss to the Durrant case now.’ The small bit of scuttlebutt he’d found out when he’d called Rodriguez to find out how the BOP hearing had gone.

Rayleigh took Coultaine’s number, and dialled it the second he hung up on Langfranc.

‘Yeah. I know how to get in touch with Darrell Ayliss,’ Coultaine said. ‘In fact I met up with him just a few days ago. What’s this all about? Something to do with the Durrant case?’

‘No, no. Some query to do with his ex-wife.’ Rayleigh was thinking more about the first part of what Coultaine’s had said. ‘You mentioned you met up with him. What did he look like?’

‘Like… like Darrell Ayliss.’ It was obvious from Coultaine’s tone that he found the question odd. ‘Why?’ 

Rayleigh sensed that he was about to make a serious horse’s ass out of himself unless he explained a bit more. He told Coultaine about Melanie Ayliss’s brief encounter with someone she’d expected to be her ex-husband in a car the day before. ‘And although it was only for a couple of seconds and she hasn’t seen her husband for seven years, she’s got it in her head that the man she saw wasn’t
him
. So, I have to ask you, sir – do you know Darrell Ayliss well? Well enough, when you met him a few days back, to know whether it was him or not?’ 

Coultaine exhaled heavily. ‘I shared an office with Darrell Ayliss for three full years, with him no more than a few yards from me. And, unlike his ex, I’ve had the benefit of seeing him far more recently. I’ve visited him in Mexico twice now, the last time just fourteen months back. It was him. There’s no question about it.’

‘Right. Thanks for that, sir.’ Rayleigh chuckled awkwardly. ‘You know, we get these things in… we gotta chase them up.’

‘I understand.’ Fresh breath from Coultaine. ‘But I think you’ll find this is more to do with Melanie Ayliss’s old maintenance battle with her ex-husband. She’s trying craftily to make use of police resources to track him down.’

‘Yeah, yeah…. could be.’ Sounded about right. But he loved it when they were cleared up quickly. ‘Thanks again.’ The second he rang off, he threw the folder onto the ‘Case closed’ pile.

And at Coultaine’s end, as soon as he hung up, he called Jac. 

39

The phone was on its fourth ring before Bob Stratton finally picked up and Jac worried for a moment that he wasn’t there. He put on the drawl and introduced himself as Darrell Ayliss, said that he’d seen Stratton’s name in the file he’d taken over from Jac McElroy.

‘He’s noted here that you’re good at finding people –
with
an exclamation mark. And that’s exactly what I’m after.’

I was there at the time… I’d have incriminated myself
…

The thought had struck Jac in the early hours of the morning, woke him sharply at 5.40 a.m. – not that he was sleeping that well in any case, different hotel beds every night and the turmoil of thoughts in his head –
another crime going down at the same time
! That’s why he hadn’t been able to come forward; fear of self-incrimination. 

Maybe he was clutching at straws – maybe it was just an old friend or hoaxer – but with still no reply to his last e-mail and only forty-eight hours now left, that was all there was left to do: squeeze every last drop out of the few remaining possibilities.   

He explained his thinking to Stratton. ‘Probably not in the Roche house itself – too much of a coincidence – or even immediate neighbours. But somewhere within, say, fifty or a hundred yards… close enough that this person would have got a reasonable look at the murderer leaving the Roche house that night. Enough to say that it wasn’t Larry Durrant.’

‘And you say you’ve got some photos and a description of this mystery e-mailer?’

‘Yeah. From a girl in the internet café, I…. I see from McElroy’s file.’ Having to be careful every second what he said. ‘Though the photos don’t give that much, they’re only partial cam-shots with at most thirty per cent facial profile, and the description – black, stocky, five-ten, maybe six foot, late thirties, early forties – could fit ten or twenty per cent of the city’s black population.’