Jac waited only twenty seconds for Truelle to get settled at the table, then, checking his watch, 6.12 p.m., got out of his car.
45
Grab him by the throat and scream at him; hit him; speak gently and appeal to his better nature; shout and threaten and appeal to his worst: all the different ways of handling Truelle had spun wildly through Jac’s head over the past hours, so much, too much, depending on it. Now, as he walked across the casita lawn towards the promontory, they were still spinning, nothing decided, words and fragments of sentences jumbling around until finally they all merged together and became little more than a buzz. A buzz that progressively became stronger with the blood-rush to his head, competing with the hum and click of cicadas as he got closer to the table and Truelle.
The promontory was no more than twenty feet above the sea, but it was enough to give a panorama: clear sea one side, a string of islands and cays, a mile offshore, the other. Truelle had taken a seat at the table, then angled his chair to face the sunset view. He didn’t become aware of Jac, still in his Ayliss disguise, until he was only a few yards away.
Truelle jolted with a sharp breath, his eyes darting anxiously to one side and past Jac, as if for a second escape might be an option before realizing the futility, rugby-tackled after a few yards, and his eyes settled back. Or perhaps he was hoping that Calbrey might come out and save him?
‘How… howdid you find me?’
‘Cynthia. And a friendly woman at the Sancti Spiritus post office.’ Jac shrugged. ‘But don’t blame Cynthia. She only told me because I convinced her that if I didn’t get to you, then Malley would. And he’d kill you.’ With all the Ayliss padding, Jac was hot from the rapid walk from his car, his breath falling short. The buzzing was subsiding, only his rapid pulse-beat beneath… ticking down the seconds left for Larry. Jac smiled tightly. ‘In the end she had your best interests at heart.’
‘I… I phoned her, home and office. There was no answer. I was beginning to — ’
‘When I left her,’ Jac held one hand up, placating, ‘I told her not to hang around the office waiting for Malley to turn up there. She obviously took my advice.’
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… thatI know of. Bothgood 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 — onlyto 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. ‘ Bothof 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 onlyone 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. Realquick.’ 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 hadknown 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, everhave 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 onlybecause 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.’