Truelle nodded thoughtfully, but then his eyes clouded again, looked unsettled as Jac took a seat and placed the small cassette tape recorder from his pocket on the table between them.
Jac took a fresh breath. ‘Now, we could sit here for the next half hour with me piling on the pressure about the DA and how if you let Durrant die I’m going to make sure he adds on an Accomplice to Murder rap — ten to fifteen of the hardest time you can imagine — but, you know, the problem is I don’t have the time any more. I got to call Governor Candaret right away and get him to phone Libreville prison and stop Durrant’s execution.’ Jac’s Ayliss drawl heavy, he leant over menacingly and laid one hand on Truelle’s thigh, feeling the jerk of discomfort and the underlying tremble. As Jac clenched hard against it, he could feel the pulse at his own temples, the buzzing in his head stronger again for a moment. ‘And having flown for half a day and driven across half of fucking Cuba… I don’t have the patience left, either.’ Jac glared hard at Truelle, and, giving his thigh one last warning grip, lifted his hand towards the recorder. Truelle’s eyes fixed on it as if it was a loaded gun. ‘So I’m just going to press record here while you tell me, chapter and verse, everything that happened twelve years ago.’
‘I… I can’t.’ Truelle shook his head, staying Jac’s finger an inch above the button. He closed his eyes as if in submission as a small shudder ran through him. Opening them again, he smiled meekly. ‘Like you said before… he’ll kill me.’
‘Malley?’
‘Yeah. Nel-M, as he’s known. He’s killed two others… that I know of. Both good friends.’ Truelle closed his eyes fleetingly again, shutting out the images, and then looked to one side, as if consulting someone unseen as to whether to finally say anything. He took a fresh breath. ‘Not long after this all started twelve years ago, I began to get concerned and so took out a couple of insurance policies — ’
Jac’s hand went to press record, but Truelle held a hand up, staying it again; clear indication that if Jac did, he’d immediately clam up.
‘They… they were accounts of what happened with Durrant twelve years ago left in sealed envelopes with a couple of friends — only to be opened in the event of something happening to me. I changed those policy holders not long ago, but then found out early yesterday that… that…’ Truelle closed his eyes again. Catharsis. What he’d always advised patients to do, unburden, share the weight that was too much to carry alone; but he’d never imagined that it would be to this sly and gushing Southern lawyer that he’d just met. And now not even able to say the word that would help him start accepting it, healing. Dead. Dead. Dead. ‘Both of them. One, I spoke to his wife and she told me… the other a police officer answered.’ Truelle swallowed, exhaled gently. ‘That’s why I jumped on the first plane here to Cuba.’
‘Thought you might be next?’ Observing Truelle’s doleful nod, his eyes red-rimmed and fearful, that thinking made perfect sense; but as Jac considered it more deeply, an incredulous leer rose. ‘What? You think that if you just sit it out here in Cuba for a few hours until Durrant’s dead — after that, everything’s going to be fine?’
Truelle shook his head. He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything any more.
Jac saw Truelle start to crack, rode it. ‘Afterwards, it’s going to be just as bad — probably even worse.’ Jac leant over and held one hand towards Truelle, a few inches short of a direct prod. ‘After Durrant’s gone, you’ll be the only one left to know what they’ve done. You think for one minute they’re going to leave you alive?
Another head-shake, Truelle scrunching his eyes shut. Push it away… push it away…
‘In fact, if you asked me to put money on it, I’d say that not only is Malley going to kill you after Durrant’s gone, but he’s going to do it quick. Real quick.’ Jac grimaced tautly. ‘Everything done and dusted at the same time.’
‘I…. I don’t know.’ The words shuddered out on Truelle’s fractured breath. But maybe a part of him had known all along. That gap between what the subconscious knew and conscious mind wouldn’t accept; basic Jungian theory. And he’d tried to bridge that gap by either shutting it out of his mind or with drink, but had never really succeeded. And what now? More bottles stacked under his sink, more bodies of close friends? Maybe Nel-M putting a quick bullet through his head would be for the best. Quick release. The thoughts raged inside him along with his strung-out nerves and acid-bile stomach, the ghostly images of his dead friends now stabbing his brain — finally spilling over with a spluttering exhalation. ‘I would never, ever have gone along with it, if I thought — ’ Truelle broke off then, suddenly realizing he’d let the genie out of the bottle, but looking at it strangely, as if someone else had done it without asking his permission. ‘Thought for a minute that Durrant was innocent.’
‘What? You went along with it only because you believed he was guilty?’ When Truelle had said it the other day in his office, Jac thought it had been just a ruse, a fob-off.
‘Yeah. Roche and Nel-M — though I never actually saw Roche over the whole thing, Nel-M was always the go-between — they claimed that, from word on the street, Durrant was the main name to come back as his wife’s murderer, but his accident and coma had conveniently blotted it all out. The police couldn’t even apply basic questioning and interrogation. Wasn’t even worth hauling him in.’ Truelle shrugged. ‘And when the DNA evidence came in, I was convinced they were telling the truth.’
Jac nodded pensively. The buzzing had faded again; only his steady pulse-beat now in rhythm with the cicadas. He checked his watch. Just over two and a half hours left to get the call in to Candaret. ‘And at which stage did you become not so convinced?’
‘I don’t know.’ Truelle’s eyes shifted, sifting through the past. ‘I’ve always had some doubts, I suppose. And those have become stronger recently. Though I’m still far from sure — either way.’ Truelle shut his eyes again for a second, final closure, then looked across directly. ‘It’s important, though, that you understand I wouldn’t have done this if I’d truly thought Durrant was innocent.’
Jac wasn’t sure what Truelle wanted: absolution, or simply understanding. Jac nodded. ‘I understand.’ Jac was quick to reassure that, with him now co-operating, he’d push the DA for the lightest possible sentence, ‘And also get him to offer a good WPP — if you think you’ll need it.’
Truelle nodded, but as Jac went to press record, Truelle stopped him again with a gentle grip on his arm.
‘One last thing. What I say now is no doubt going to save Durrant’s neck, get him off. But what if that DNA’s right and he is guilty?’
Jac looked thoughtfully ahead for a moment. The last of the sun was dipping into the sea, crimson-blue dappling every wave.
‘I do strongly believe that Durrant is innocent. Though in the end, as with you, I can’t be a hundred per cent sure.’ DNA: the one factor that had made Jac doubt more than a few times over the past weeks. ‘But that can’t be your concern right now. You’ve got to say what happened, finally do the right thing and clear your own conscience. And whatever Larry Durrant has done is then between him and his conscience. And Governor Candaret.’
The second that Nel-M saw Ayliss’s Audi, he knew that he’d have to move quickly, couldn’t risk leaving him together with Truelle for any length of time.