Ascension Day (78 page)

‘I don’t know what to think any more, Tor. Long ago given up on what’s right and wrong in here. I…’ But his body language said then what his words were unable to finish. His grip weakened on Tally’s neck.

Sensing his indecision, the guards moved in. And as the last of Larry’s resolve went and the shiv slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor, they grabbed him and carried him away, Larry nodding towards Torvald with tight-lipped acceptance; Larry not even sure whether it was in thanks, or simply acknowledgement that Torvald knew him better than most.

Killer? Not killer? Twelve long years Larry had been asking himself that same question, along with a few other people that had got to know him along the way; and still now, in his final hours, the question was being asked.

Alaysha found that whenever she was back at her own apartment or Jac’s next door, every small sound on the corridor outside made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

For that reason, she’d spent as much time as she could at her mother’s place, and when she did need to be back home would grab what she needed from her own apartment, then go quickly next door to Jac’s.
With
Molly some nights, without when she was working and needed an hour or so to get ready at her own place, Molly already dropped off with Alaysha’s mom.

The first night she’d done that, she’d spent half an hour sorting out her clothes and putting on make-up at her own place – but then a sound outside on the corridor had made her skin bristle. When she looked through the spy-hole, it was nothing, visitors to another apartment three doors down; but it suddenly made her more aware of what would have happened if it
had
been something. She moved her main clothes and her make-up bag permanently next door to Jac’s.

Secrets
. She hadn’t told her mother about robbing Malastra. Didn’t want her to shoulder any burden or guilt over what the money had been for.
It was for your dialysis and treatment, Mom. I know it might have been foolish, but we’re talking about your life here
!

The only person that knew was Jac. And he wasn’t here for her to talk to any more, tell him that with each passing hour her nerves were mounting, jumping out of her skin at the smallest sound outside. She’d been hoping to see him the next night, but there was a message on her answer-phone when she’d grabbed a couple of things before coming to his place to do her make-up for work.

‘Alaysha. Adam here. I can’t make our meeting tomorrow night, I’m afraid. I’ve had to leave the country unexpectedly. In fact, I’m on my way right now. Something to do with that big deal I mentioned. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.’

Adam
. The name he’d chosen, his father’s, in case the police were listening in on her line, Jac changing his accent yet again from his own or Ayliss’s.
Big deal
: Durrant. A lot of echoing and noise in the background, sounded as if he was actually phoning from the airport.

They’d arranged to meet at nine o’clock, three hours after Durrant’s scheduled execution. It would all be over by then; Jac would have been able to share with her how everything had gone. One way or the other. Tears on her shoulder, or cracking a bottle of champagne together.

 Alaysha focused in the mirror as she started applying her eyeliner. Some life they were living: her boyfriend like a chameleon, on the run for murder, and her sneaking around from one place to another, anywhere but –

Her nerves suddenly leapt, her eyeliner pencil dog-legging off a quarter-inch, as she heard her doorbell ring next door. She hadn’t even heard anyone come along the corridor! She padded silently in her stocking-feet to the door, looking to the side through the spy-hole: a messenger. FedEx, complete with buff uniform.

He rang the bell again, and at that moment Mrs Orwin’s door opened behind him. He pointed to Alaysha’s door, saying something about ‘special delivery’, though Alaysha couldn’t see a package in his hand, and then her heart froze as Mrs Orwin’s bony finger lifted and pointed to Jac’s apartment.

She’d noticed Mrs Orwin peering out a couple of times the night before as she’d gone between one apartment and the other, perhaps eager to alert the police in case that ‘killer McElroy’ returned, and obviously she’d done the same tonight.

The messenger nodded his thanks and approached Jac’s door – Alaysha shrinking back a step as the doorbell rang, her heart beating hard and fast. Memories of that black kid with a message, Gerry at her door a second later.
The gunshot
.
Jac running through the night from the police
.

She swallowed hard. But that was a street boy; this is a recognized messenger, in a uniform! Get a grip.

He rang the bell again, then four seconds later knocked.

Alaysha moved forward again, risking another glance through the spy-hole: the messenger looking down at his feet for a second, Mrs Orwin still behind him, frowning slightly; an ‘I’m sure she was there’ expression on her face.

Then finally, deciding he’d waited long enough, he wrote something on a card and slipped it through the letter box. And as Alaysha saw it come through, saw the official FedEx logo on its top, she thought: it must be real! Maybe even an urgent message from Jac. And what could possibly happen with Mrs Orwin still looking on?

She quickly slid back the latch and opened the door, caught the messenger as he was only a pace away. He turned back and smiled.

‘Mrs Reyner?’

‘Yes.’ Alaysha watched Mrs Orwin pull back behind her door, close it again. And of all the times she’d found her neighbour’s spying annoying, now she felt like screaming: ‘
No, no
!
Stay here looking until at least this messenger has gone. Be as nosy as you fucking like
!’

‘
Alaysha
Reyner?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have something for you.’

And as the messenger reached his hand toward her and she saw what he held, her breath caught in her throat, and she knew then that she’d made a mistake opening the door. A big mistake.

As Larry Durrant’s death approached, its tentacles reached out like an octopus.

There’d been a steady build up over the past weeks, but now in the last twenty-four hours, those tentacles carrying news of his fate spread deeper and wider than ever before: the night-before vigil was on every news channel, there were evening debates pro and con death-penalty, more again on breakfast TV, Durrant’s last meal, how he’d spend his last minutes, medical details of how he’d be executed, background to the recently-failed clemency plea to the Governor, details of the murder twelve years ago, drama with his last lawyer, his new lawyer Darrell Ayliss apparently no longer available for comment…

Louisiana and half the States beyond, who knew little about Larry Durrant’s life, got to know every last detail of his impending death, as if they were a modern-day Roman amphitheatre crowd blood-lust hungry for it.

Those tentacles reached people they never had before, and some felt deeply touched and saddened by Larry Durrant’s plight, became more anti-death-penalty, while others simply munched their popcorn faster,
Come on, get on with it. Give it to the fucker
!

But those tentacles gripped tightest around those who knew Larry Durrant. Francine Durrant changed channels or turned off the TV every time it came on, couldn’t watch it any more. Mike Coultaine found himself tapping his fingers anxiously on tables and counter tops, increasingly looking towards the phone, praying that Jac had managed to run the gauntlet through customs and would be in Cuba by now, that any minute the phone would ring with good news. And Mack Elliott stared absently out of the window at Henny’s on to a bright winter’s day, street bustling with life, as he bit into a Debris po-boy and tried desperately to remember what he’d seen on TV twelve years ago.

And as those news broadcasts talked more and more about
time
– time of last meal, time for the final medical examination, time Durrant would walk to the death chamber, time of execution – those tentacles pulled everyone’s eyes repeatedly to the clock; half the state, two million people or more, watching the hours and minutes tick down to his death.

 Roland Cole was no exception. Over the past two hours, his eyes had lifted twenty times or more to the clock in the Algiers fish warehouse where he and a colleague were busily shifting that day’s shipments onto the right pallets. 

‘What’s wrong wit’ you?’ the colleague said. ‘Yo’ got a hot date tonight or somethin’ – can’t wait to leave today?’

‘No, it’s not that.’ Cole’s hand went to his stomach where his mounting anxiety had settled like a bucket of eels writhing in acid. ‘Somethin’ I ate last night – it’s half killing me.’ With a meek smile, he rushed to the washroom at the back again; his fourth visit that morning.

‘You timin’ to make sure you don’ shit yo’self?’ his friend shouted after him, chuckling.

Cole closed his eyes and shuddered as he sat on the toilet.

Stealing away the time alone was the main thing. Time alone with his own thoughts, but most of all away from TV, news broadcasts and clocks.

Durrant’s face had been on news broadcasts twice the night before, but even though Cole had made sure not to turn on breakfast news and had rushed past every newsstand on the way in, that image was still with him practically everywhere he looked: around the warehouse, at his friend…
at the clock
!

Not me, not me…
not me
!
I’m not the man you saw that night
!

A thousand times he’d replayed that night in his head: hot-wiring the Mercedes in the driveway as he saw a man run round the corner from Coliseum Street: six-foot, stocky, skin-colour and tone not much different to his own, breathless and jaded as he stared back momentarily. Cole sunk down even lower beneath the dashboard, praying that he hadn’t been seen. And four minutes later, when he was sure the guy was long-gone, he started up the Mercedes and drove off.

Then when Durrant was first arrested, he saw from the news that it wasn’t the man he’d seen that night. He read as much as he could about the background to the case, but there was no possible doubt: the other eye-witness had only seen
one
man leaving the scene, and the timing matched exactly with the guy he’d seen run past. It wasn’t Durrant!

But the problem was, he couldn’t see a way of coming forward without also holding his hands up to the grand-theft auto. Five to seven years, maybe more if they linked the MO back to other luxury auto-thefts over the past few years.

Cole managed finally to push it to the back of his mind; but then when Durrant’s execution date was set, it was back at the forefront, with a vengeance! And so he sent the e-mails; as far as he felt he could go without putting his own head in the noose.

Cole shook his head, a shiver running through him as he felt his stomach cramp and tighten again. Surely they couldn’t go through with killing Durrant? He’d told them in those e-mails that it wasn’t him! What the fuck more did they want: five to seven years of his own life?

43

Atlanta customs, Miami, Nassau…
Havana
.

A re-run each time of Jac’s ordeal going through the passport check at New Orleans, perspiring, his stomach doing somersaults, praying that they didn’t notice his hand shaking as he handed over his passport.  

But it was worse after the call from Mike Coultaine. Far worse.

Jac had landed at Atlanta an hour and fifty minutes beforehand, had just twenty minutes before boarding for the next leg to Miami, when Coultaine’s call came through. Bad news, Jac.
Bad news
.

Coultaine explained that while he believed he’d successfully quelled the suspicions of the officer that had called, he thought it worth keeping an eye on. Just in case. And so he’d called an old police contact who owed him a few favours, said that he’d just had a strange call from a certain Joe Rayleigh of Eighth District regarding Darrell Ayliss, an old lawyer buddy of his. Probably nothing, but could he contact him on the QT if anything came up on police radar about it.