‘… Garden District.’
‘ Do you remember the road?’
‘ Coliseum Street. But I don’ remember the number exactly. Four hundred and something.’
‘ That’s okay, Lawrence. Relax, take it easy. And, in your own time, tell me what happened there.’
Jac became aware of Truelle’s tactic: getting background detail, district, road, because they were easier for Durrant to relate, got him talking more freely. Truelle had obviously worried that if he asked straight out ‘What happened with the woman?’, Durrant might lapse into rapid-breathing catatonia, and that would be all he’d get. Even now with a more general, soft-edged approach, there was a long pause, only the sound of Durrant’s uneven breathing coming over on the tape.
Jac turned the volume up as he hit the start of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway; with the increased tyre-noise on the rougher road surface, he couldn’t hear whether Durrant had started speaking again or not.
‘ As… as I said, there were no lights on at the front, or the side — which is where I broke in. Maybe if I’d gone round the back, I’d have seen a light on… or maybe she’d gone to bed early and there’da been no light on there either.’
‘ So you broke in at the side,’ Truelle confirmed as Durrant paused again heavily, as if each time he side-tracked it took a moment to get the sequence clear again in his mind.
‘ Yeah. Removed a glass pane and wired through on the frame so as not to break the alarm circuit. Two minutes, and I was in. Took a quick tour t’see where the best stuff was, and found a safe in the library that I reckoned I could break by drilling the lock without too much trouble. And I was just preparin’ for that when I heard something behind me, and she… she was suddenly there. Like… like out of nowhere. Not there one minute… then the next…’
Jac’s hands gripped tight at the steering wheel, feeling Durrant’s tension coming across in waves, as if he was right there alongside him as Jessica Roche confronted him, the police photos filling in the details of the room in his mind. He was suddenly reminded of Coultaine’s words: depth of detail… things that only the killer could possibly have known.
Durrant’s breathing was again erratic as he struggled with the images; or perhaps in anticipation of what he did next. ‘ “What are you doing?”she barked. She was pushy, had me rattled, and strange thing is… I don’t even remember takin’ out the gun, but suddenly it was there between us… her eyes wide, staring at it…’ A heavy swallow, Durrant fighting to get his breathing under control. ‘ You know, even then I didn’t plan to… to…’
The pause was even longer this time, and it looked for a moment as if Truelle had lost Durrant completely, his final actions too traumatic to voice, or perhaps part of him in denial that he’d actually done it. Jac tapped two fingers on his steering wheel, counting off the seconds, the sun creeping out from behind a cloud stinging his eyes as it reflected off the water. Jac slipped on his sunglasses and half-opened one window, feeling the warm Bayou breeze tease his hair. But memories of Isle de Rey seemed distant today as he felt himself immersing deeper into the shadows of the Roche residence of twelve years ago.
‘ Plan to what, Larry?’ Truelle prompted as the silence prolonged. ‘ What happened then?’
Jac tapped out another fifteen seconds with his fingers before Durrant’s voice finally returned.
‘ It… it all felt unreal, distant — like it was happenin’ to someone else and I was just looking on. But in… instead of stepping back, she stepped forward… and I… I panicked — did the wrong thing… I didn’t mean to… and… and she was layin’ there then, blood everywhere, looking at me with wide eyes. And she was in pain… real pain… a pitiful, throaty groanin’ that went right through me. So I… I…’
Even though Jac knew what happened next, he found his own breathing rapid and short in anticipation, almost matching Durrant’s, and his hands gripped tight to the steering wheel started to shake. A sign to his right displayed the 10-mile Causeway mark.
‘ I didn’t want to… but she was in pain… the blood bubbling up from her mouth… her wide eyes almost pleadin’ with me…’
Long silence again. Ragged, uneven breathing.
‘ What happened then, Lawrence? What did you do?’ Truelle’s prompt quicker this time; the edge-of-the-seat listener, impatient for what happened next, in that heated moment holding sway over the trained psychiatrist.
‘ She wasn’t meant to be there… wasn’t meant to be… I… I…’
And Jac, impatient too, fast-forwarded in his mind to the close-up police photos of Jessica Roche, both shots fired, stomach and head, sepia-grey blood pools radiating from each.
Whether the image momentarily distracted Jac, or he glanced fleetingly at the tape recorder in expectation of Durrant’s next words, the only warning was a reflected glint striking his eye — something suddenly different in the vista of roadway and sun-dappled lake spread each side.
A truck overtaking, its chrome bumper catching the sun as it veered lazily from its lane towards him, suddenly swung sharply across his front wing, pushing him towards the side-barrier.
Jac swerved, stock reaction, hitting his brakes hard as the barrier loomed before him. But they did nothing, nothing… and in panic he swung the wheel back, but not enough: he hit the barrier at a thirty-degree angle at almost the same speed, feeling himself shunted sharply forward and the airbag exploding against him, along with something else, sharper, harder, against one leg.
Momentary darkness, then the sun and lake seemed to be fighting through a hazy-grey mist. And, as the mist became darker, denser, Jac realized with mounting panic that his car was in the lake and sinking, feeling the first water swill against his thigh as it poured in through the half-open window.
Sinking… sinking… Jac felt as if he was in a washing-machine tumbler, the water swirling in relentlessly, the car swaying, tilting — then as it finally hit the bottom of the lake, a cloud of mud was thrown up, cutting visibility to almost nil. How far was he down: thirty feet, fifty?
Jac frantically tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge with the pressure outside. His heart raced, his breath falling short, the water already up to his waist. Maybe the window, but it wasn’t open enough to get through. He fumbled for the switch in the gloom, found it, pressed it — but after a second it fizzled out with a spark and the window stopped moving. Two-thirds down, maybe enough.
Jac squeezed his head and shoulders into the gap, but the surge of water rushing in was too heavy, impossible to push against. No choice but to wait until the pressure equalized, he pulled back and hoisted up until his head was against the car roof. Water up to his shoulders now, breathing in the last foot of air.
Trying to time it right, the air-gap ten-inches, eight… praying that he wasn’t too far down to make it to the surface, six… and fighting to keep his breathing even — ragged and frantic as it kept time with his racing pulse — so that he had maximum air in his lungs when… four…
Jac made the break then, got his head and shoulders quickly through, his chest… but as he tried to snake his waist through, he felt something snagging on one leg, holding him back. His seat belt or maybe part of the air-bag.
He wriggled hard, desperate to free it, knowing that he was using vital air with each second lost. And as Jac frantically jerked and tugged to get free, the images of Jessica Roche were again there with him, the sepia-grey of the police photos merging with the murky waters surrounding him, clogging his nose, his mouth, suffocating his last breaths.