Four calls he’d put in to Truelle’s office, leaving messages, before he finally got a call back. Now there was a further forty-two hour delay — early the day after tomorrow — before he’d actually be able to see him.
‘Sorry. That’s the earliest, I’m afraid. I’m up to my neck with things — that’s why the delay in getting back to you.’
And Dr Thallerey, Jessica Roche’s old obstetrician, was away at a medical convention in Houston till the end of the week.
‘He doesn’t like to be disturbed at these things, so we have strict instructions not to do so unless it’s an absolute medical emergency. Does it fall into that category, sir?’
‘No… no. It’s okay. I’ll contact him when he gets back.’
Jac felt the clock ticking down against Durrant like a tight coil at the back of his neck.
Superficially he looked fine after his accident, except for a slight limp in his right leg. A thigh gash had taken fourteen stitches and his calf muscles had been heavily bruised, probably from when he wrenched his leg free. The doctor said that within a week it should have healed enough for the limp to subside; but what was going on inside Jac’s head was another matter.
Now that the clemency plea had been filed, he was back assisting John Langfranc with other cases and was meant to spend no more than four man-hours a week on the Durrant case, for what Beaton described as ‘residual maintenance’. But Jac found it hard to concentrate on the fresh files before him, and more than a few times he’d noticed John Langfranc look up at him through his glass screen: a searching appraisal that hadn’t yet fully verged into concern; yet.
Sometimes, when Jac tried to focus, the words would swim and merge and become little more than a blur; a grey blur that seemed to draw him in, becoming deeper, darker as he sank through it… and suddenly he’d back in the lake again, lungs bursting , choking for air…
Jac’s line buzzing broke his thoughts.
‘Lieutenant Wallace for you,’ Penny Vance called across the office.
‘Thanks.’ Jac swallowed and took a fresh breath, noticing John Langfranc look through his glass screen as he picked up: the police mechanic’s report on his car dragged up from Lake Pontchartrain! Jac’s brow knitted as he tried to disentangle Wallace’s description of brake fluid pressures and condition of joint threads. ‘What exactly does all of that mean?’
Wallace took a fresh breath. ‘It means that the findings are inconclusive. But if we had to put money on something — it’d be on it being caused by a fault or wear and tear rather than on tampering. Otherwise the thread on the brake fluid joint would have been clean and in perfect condition. It wasn’t — the thread had shorn off.’
‘I see.’ Jac knew that he should have been relieved, but that emotion still felt out of reach, along with any clarity on Wallace’s account. All he felt was numb.
‘Perhaps the joint simply got weakened with time and wear and tear — then with the sudden jolt of you braking hard, it sheared off.’
‘But what about that truck alongside swinging in? And the fact that he didn’t stop?’
‘I know. But it might have been a driver simply distracted or falling asleep, rather than purposeful. And once he’d straightened up, he’d have been past you by then. Might well not have seen what happened to you.’
‘Yeah. Possibility, I suppose.’ Jac sighed resignedly. Might, might, might. He wasn’t convinced. Langfranc came out of his office as Jac thanked Wallace and signed off.
‘Accident,’ Jac said, looking towards Langfranc. ‘Doesn’t look like brake tampering. At least, that’s what he’s putting the money on.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
‘Yeah.’ Jac nodded dolefully. ‘That’s a relief.’
Schlish… schlap… schlish… schlap…. schlish… schlap…
The monotony of the windscreen wipers was starting to wear on Dr Thallerey’s nerves, might have got close to sending him to sleep, if he hadn’t stopped just forty minutes back for a strong fresh coffee and popped a Ritalin straight after.
He’d decided to drive, because since 9/11 he just couldn’t abide airports any more. One-and-half to two hours before check in, with invariably more delays on top. By the time he’d sat for three hours bored mindless at an airport, he could be halfway there in his car.
He tried to keep to 55 mph, but invariably he’d edge up to sixty on clear, flat stretches. Two hours more, and he’d be home.
Schlish… schlap… schlish… schlap…
Thallerey peered through the intermittent film of water on his windscreen at the murky road ahead. A quarter moon was there somewhere, drifting in and out of heavy cloud cover. His squint suddenly widened, hands gripping tighter to the wheel, as out of nowhere — not there in one sweep of the wipers, there in the next — red tail lights loomed ahead and he had to brake sharply.
Thallerey’s speedo plummeted. He glanced at it as it bottomed out: twenty-two miles an hour! Ridiculous! He edged out. A large double-trailer truck, he’d need a clear, straight stretch to get past it.
They followed a long, slow bend, seeming to take forever, and as they straightened out Thallerey peered through the gloom at a clear stretch illuminated in his headlamps, no curves for at least a couple of hundred yards. He swung out and floored it.
Forty… fifty… he should be past it soon. Longer than he thought… a lot longer. It struck him that he wasn’t making much progress past it; the truck had at the same time picked up speed. He pushed the pedal harder — fifty-five…. sixty… the curve in the road still a good hundred yards away.
Yet still he gained only a few yards, appeared to be in much the same position alongside it, just past the coupling for the rear trailer — which meant that it must now be doing the same speed. Sixty. Deciding that he wasn’t going to make it past, Thallerey eased off the pedal and braked to cut back in — when a sudden blast of lights flooded him from behind.
Headlamps full beam, now a top searchlight switched on as well. Looked like a big four-wheeler, but hard to make out fully beyond the glare. It had obviously swung out to overtake following him, and was now showing full lights as if to say: go on, go on… get past it!
He hesitated for a second whether to go for it, but then saw that the bend in the road was only forty yards ahead. He beeped his horn and hit his brakes again to pull back in behind the truck. But the truck also seemed to slow alongside him, and now the lights behind were even closer, only yards from his back bumper.
He felt his chest tighten, beads of sweat starting to break on his forehead. They had him jammed in! He braked and beeped his horn twice again — but still no give. The truck in turn also slowed, and the four-wheeler beeped back: still jammed tight behind, its headlamps flooding his car.
Then, as if the driver had a sudden change of thought, the four-wheeler pulled sharply back and tucked in behind the trailer-truck. In that split second Thallerey was disorientated — his car still seemed to be floodlit — wrenching his eyes from his rear-view mirror to the road ahead as it hit him just why the four-wheeler had cut back in so quickly: an oncoming trailer-truck suddenly, startlingly clear in the upward sweep of his wipers, bearing down on him. Fast.
At least he’d now also be able to tuck in behind the truck, he reckoned, braking hard. But again it braked to hold him there; and there was one difference between his braking and the truck’s, perhaps because in his panic he’d braked that much harder: his wheels locked and his car started to slew on the wet road.
His last hope, as he squinted against the dazzling white of the oncoming headlamps and every nerve-end tightened and froze the breath in his throat, was that the oncoming truck, seeing him blocking the road, would brake and stop in time.