‘For fuck’s sake, come on… phone!’ Nel-M hissed, thumping his steering wheel; and finally, six minutes after Ayliss had gone inside Truelle’s office, Melanie Ayliss’s call came through. Flight had been delayed twenty minutes.
Nel-M gave her the address. ‘And hurry… I just don’t know how long he’ll be there.’
Nel-M gently closed his eyes as he hung up, praying that Truelle could hold out long enough for her to get there and put Ayliss off his stroke.
37
‘Which part of now and urgent is it that you don’t quite comprehend?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Ayliss… but I buzzed through for you: Mr Truelle is with a patient right now, and I can’t see any slots in his diary for at least two days. I don’t know what else — ’
‘It’ll be too late by then,’ Jac cut in. As he suspected, Truelle was giving him the run around. He glared towards the connecting door to Truelle’s office, and his secretary Cynthia picked up late, too late, the decision he made in that instant. She was a step behind him as he burst into Truelle’s office, swinging the door wide.
‘I… I’m sorry, Mr Truelle,’ she stammered in the background. ‘I told him you were busy, but he — ’
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Truelle exclaimed, his best mock outrage.
‘What, you mean like the meaning of life, Mr Truelle?’ Jac didn’t bother with an introduction; Cynthia had already told him on the intercom that a certain Darrell Ayliss wanted to see him, ‘Says he’s the new lawyer just taken over representation of Lawrence Durrant.’ ‘Or the meaning of death, as in what you did to Larry Durrant?’
Truelle looked towards his patient, a bemused middle-aged redhead, then back at Jac. ‘You can’t just barge in here in the middle of a session.’ He reached for the phone. ‘I’m calling the police.’
‘Sure… sure. Go ahead. And when they arrive, I can tell them how you set up Larry Durrant.’
Truelle’s hand hovered uncertainly by the phone, then he forced an equally uncertain smile towards his patient. ‘I’m sorry about this, Mrs Venning. I think the only fair thing to do would be to credit you for the twenty-five minutes we’ve had today, and book you in again for a full session within the week.’ Truelle pushed the smile again. ‘So that you get the time we’ve had today free for the inconvenience.’
Mrs Venning got up with a faint smile, as if she was intrigued as to what might happen next and would have loved to hang around to hear it.
Truelle’s gaze settled back icily on Jac as Cynthia ushered Mrs Venning out. ‘Say what you’ve got to, then get out of my office.’
‘Great bedside manner you’ve got there, Mr Truelle. But this little talk of ours today is going to run at my pace and dictate, not yours.’ Jac sly smile quickly faded as he returned the gaze with the same iciness. He watched Truelle’s initial brash bravado quickly evaporate, his mouth setting tightly, anxiously. ‘There’s no doubt continued contact between you and whoever put you up to this — so you probably know already that I had a fresh psychiatrist see Larry Durrant these last few days.’
‘I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The truth. Nel-M hadn’t said anything, though he could easily see why not, fearful that the news might push him over the edge. Panic overload.
‘Gregory Ormdern. You might remember him from the initial trial when he stood up for the defence.’
‘Yes, I remember him.’ Truelle blinked slowly, trying to remain calm, swallowing back against the fireball of nerves brewing in his stomach. ‘But I fail to see what relevance Mr Ormdern now seeing Durrant might have.’
‘The relevance, Mr Truelle, is all contained in Mr Ormdern’s report on those two sessions with Durrant.’ Jac patted the envelope from Ormdern as he laid it on the desk. Truelle continued to blink slowly, as if this was all tiresome and uninteresting, but Jac could read the terror behind his nonplussed facade. Jac might as well have laid a dagger there. ‘You see, all along there were only two ways this cat could have been skinned. Either Larry Durrant was telling the truth and his memory of that night was real, or, if not, it had to have somehow been suggested. “Implanted” — I believe that’s the trade expression.’ Jac paused and smiled tightly. ‘And the only person in a position to do that would have been yourself, Mr Truelle.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Truelle said, a hint of vehemence to lift it beyond stock defence.
Jac rolled on as if Truelle hadn’t spoken. ‘And the main test as to whether that account might have been “implanted” is the amount of incidental detail recalled outside of the murder itself.’ Jac patted the file and smiled again. ‘And guess what Greg Ormdern discovered?’ Jac watched Truelle’s face redden, but it quickly transformed to bluster.
‘As I said, ridiculous… ridiculous!’ Truelle leant forward, gesturing with one hand as if to throw the report back across the desk. ‘And I strongly resent your implication.’
Jac had fully expected Truelle’s professional hackles to rise. What else could he do? And perhaps, as Jac, he’d have backed off and, if hit with more of the same, pretty soon packed up his tent and headed off. But as Ayliss, a world-weary criminal lawyer, he felt he could bluff it out. In fact, it was expected of him; anything less wouldn’t have been true to Ayliss’s character.
Just the other night he’d commented to Alaysha that that was one advantage of being Ayliss to compensate for all the padding and discomfort: he was like Jac’s alter-ego, the heavyweight criminal lawyer that Jac hoped to be in five or ten years time. And so under the guise of Ayliss, he was able to get away with all the things he might not get away with as Jac.
Jac eased his best syrupy Ayliss smile with southern drawl to match. ‘Now come on, Mr Truelle. You and I both know the truth of what’s going on here. And if you don’t, now we’ve got Mr Ormdern’s report to tell us.’
Truelle looked at the envelope reluctantly, as if unwilling to accept its existence. He felt his stomach sinking deeper with every double-time pulse-beat, and wished the floor would open up. Detail? He’d embellished with quite a bit of detail, he thought, even covering elements after the event that he thought the police would question Durrant about. ‘The first thing you saw about the murder was in aTV shop window late the next day…You’d made sure to avoid all newspapers and early morning TV… but then there she was suddenly…’ That hadn’t even come up in police questioning, but it was there nevertheless, embedded in Durrant’s sub-conscious. No, he’d added more than enough detail.
‘You’re wrong or misguided, or simply not telling the truth. I implanted no false memory on Mr Durrant, and I don’t believe for a minute that Mr Ormdern’s report suggests that I did.’ Truelle briefly challenged Ayliss’s smile as best he could with his own.
Jac didn’t flinch for a second, his steady gaze boring straight through Truelle. Unmoved, unimpressed. Again he continued as if Truelle hadn’t spoken. ‘So, we’ve covered incidental detail — or rather lack of it.’ He nodded towards the file. ‘But the part of the equation that was always missing was opportunity. When might you have been able to implant all of this in Durrant’s mind? The esteemed Mr Ormdern reckons you’d have needed at least an hour-long session, maybe more, for all that mental conditioning. But the problem was that all of the sessions were sequential with diary entries to match. No gaps.’
Truelle adopted again his best nonplussed poker face, blinking slowly, the writhing snakes of nerves in his stomach coiling tighter. It was like watching an impending car crash. Knowing that you wouldn’t like what you saw, that it would turn your stomach, but remaining transfixed all the same in case the cars miraculously missed each other at the last second, or just to see how dramatic and gory it might be.