‘Something wrong?’
Jac put one hand over the mouthpiece, shrugging with a tight-lipped grimace. ‘I’m trying desperately to hunt down a lap dancer.’
Langfranc raised an eyebrow. ‘Can’t you wait until after work to see them, like the rest of us?’
Jac forced a conciliatory smile. ‘This one unfortunately is just about to do something that she shouldn’t.’
Langfranc kept the eyebrow arched. ‘I thought that’s exactly what they were paid to do every day: things they shouldn’t.’
Jac’s smile was weaker this time. Still the empty background clatter on the phone: the rest of the world going on as normal, oblivious. Probably it was already too late, and all these obstacles were for a reason: he was being given the message not to be so foolhardy and push things, just let Durrant go where he wanted to. Be with his God.
Jac sighed and closed his eyes briefly in submission before looking up again at Langfranc. ‘Sorry, John. I haven’t been much use to you so far this afternoon. But as soon as I’ve got this sorted out, I’ll — ’ Jac broke off, holding one hand towards Langfranc.
Alaysha’s voice.
17
‘Yep… Nice to catch up after so long. But one of the reasons for my call now, Tom — you know that envelope I sent you to safe-keep all those years back.’
‘Only to be opened in the event of your death? Have to say, Leonard, thought it was pretty morbid at the time.’
‘The same… the same. Well, I need you to send it back to me. You don’t need to safeguard it any more…’
The second call was in much the same vein, but as it came to Truelle’s third call, all made within minutes of each other, Roche sat forward, paying more attention.
‘You already got a note of that address?’ he quizzed Nel-M. ‘Know who it is?’
‘Old colleague of his from New York, now lives upstate in Binghamton.’
‘Not that much imagination. His lawyer and a cousin for the first insurance policies, now he trades for an old work colleague and…’ Roche let the sentence hang as the tape rolled on to Truelle’s fourth call.
But Nel-M felt immediately more uncomfortable. The fourth, made two hours later — possibly because of some small time zone difference — was far vaguer. He had little clue where it might be.
‘Yeah, sure, buddy… no problem. Just send it to the same mailbox number.’
‘Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it. How’s the weather right now in the frozen north?’
‘Not too bad, actually. Not that cold — hard weather hasn’t hit yet — and real pretty. Autumn gold on the trees everywhere you look. When you get so as you start feeling sicker than your clients, you should head up here and pay me a visit, get some fresh air for a change. Christmas is particularly nice…’
Nel-M let it play to the end, watching Roche’s face cloud.
‘Is that it?’ Roche quizzed. ‘No address, town or even a country? Just a mailbox — which we don’t even have the number of — and Chris?’
‘ ‘Fraid so. All we know from “frozen north” is that it’s either close to the Canadian border or, more likely, Canada itself. Or maybe Alaska.’
‘Well, that really narrows it down.’ Roche waved one arm effusively. ‘Do you want to head up there with your snow shoes and start looking? Or should we call on America’s finest, who’ve been searching for Bin Laden for the last few fucking years?’
Nel-M nodded in resignation, his face flushing. Roche rarely swore. ‘We just have to hope for a break. Hope that they speak again and we get more detail.’
Roche raised an eyebrow. ‘But as you and I well know, that might not happen. In fact, probably won’t. Truelle will just send his envelope, and they might not speak again for six months or a year. Maybe longer. And we don’t have that sort of time. We’ve only got thirty-four days.’
‘I know. I know.’ Nel-M closed his eyes for a second in submission. ‘I’ll think on how I can push things on. Like I did with the lawyer.’
‘I grant you,’ Roche shrugged, raising one hand, ‘you did well there.’ This was how he liked Nel-M: the puppy dog seeking approval, rather than posturing and cocksure, kidding himself he had anything like equal say on their best next move. And for the same reason, control, Roche loved what Nel-M had just laid in his grasp: the option of destroying Jac McElroy’s career at the drop of a hat. But the last thing he wanted to do was let Nel-M know that. ‘Although we still have to worry that if we get rid of McElroy, Clive Beaton might simply put someone else in his place. And someone that might be more able and competent.’
‘Yeah, but surely once Durrant gets to know the e-mail is false,’ Nel-M pressed, ‘it’s going to be game-on again with him wanting to die. And the clemency bid and all the lawyers with it then go straight out the window.’
‘True. And it’s nice to know that Durrant’s finally got the message of what everyone wants from him.’ Roche smiled thinly, but it faded just as quickly. ‘However, the problem is that in achieving that we’d also show our full hand. And apart from the legal lines crossed in taping McElroy, not to mention phoning Francine Durrant and posing as a prison liaison officer — some awkward questions might arise of just why we were doing all of that. So, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to give it just a tad more thought before deciding the best way to proceed.’
Nel-M felt stung by the meeting with Roche.
He’d gone there with such high hopes: the situation with Truelle’s insurance policies eighty per cent there, and the whole caboodle about Durrant’s apparent death-wish and the fake e-mails uncovered. What the fuck more did Roche want?
Nel-M popped back a blue pill from his glove compartment and pointed his car towards the French Quarter. He felt he had to take his frustrations out somewhere, and right now Misha seemed as good a bet as any.
Nel-M had been married once, a disastrous three years when he was only twenty-three. No children — though his wife blamed her two miscarriages on their arguments and his verbal abuse. He had never hit her.
Since then he’d taken solace at a number of cat houses in the city — the age gap between the girls and himself becoming ever wider. Though in the last few years he’d managed to narrow it down to a handful of regular favourites, of whom Misha at Madame B’s was top of the list. A bubbly, curvy, African-French mix with wild red hair and nipples like mahogany door stops.
‘Not your normal Friday night, then?’ Madame B greeted him.
‘No.’ Nel-M kept things short and sweet as he paid and was led to a bedroom by Misha.
He couldn’t wait to get down to business, couldn’t wait to be inside her, even cutting short halfway through their normal ritual of her slowly undressing him and kneeling before him, allowing only a half-dozen languorous slides between her lips before throwing her back on the bed and entering her.
As she felt the urgency of his thrusts, Misha commented, ‘Someone lit a fire on your tail tonight.’
‘Damn right. Damn right.’ And as he felt her responding, felt that her gasps were somehow stronger than before, he remembered from a couple of past visits that she enjoyed mild asphyxiation, that it seemed to heighten the sensations even more. He raised one hand to her throat, gently pressing.
‘Oh… Ohhh. Yes… yesss!’ Misha closed her eyes in abandon, hissing through clenched teeth as her breath became shorter.
Though at some stage it became Roche in his grip, and he started pressing harder, harder — Want to give it a tad more thought, do you? — oblivious to the fact that Misha’s gasps of pleasure had suddenly turned to ones of panic. Her eyes were wide and pleading, and she started beating at Nel-M’s shoulders and arms.
But Nel-M had already shut his eyes, lost in reverie that it was Roche beneath him, the tortured breathing convincing him all the more that it was him. Or maybe you’d like to put on your snow shoes and search up there yourself? With your stump legs and emphysema, you’d be lucky to get five miles from the fucking Canadian border. Squeezing harder, harder, a tingle of pleasure rising as he felt the last life ebbing from Roche, the beating at his arms becoming weaker.