‘I hear what you’re saying, Jac, but it’s not good. Not good. I know you and so I know that you’re telling the truth. But listening to this now wearing the hats of a couple of hard-boiled homicide cops — who don’t know you and on top have heard it all before — it sounds like a story, Jac. And not even a good one at that.’

‘There’s a witness, too.’

From Jac’s downbeat tone, Langfranc knew already that it was bad news. ‘And don’t tell me — they didn’t see the shooter, either?’

‘No. Old woman across the hallway. Opened her door a minute after the shot was fired — shooter long gone and just me and Alaysha standing by the body. Started screaming, “You’ve shot him, you’ve shot him!” ’

Low groan from Langfranc and a throaty, doom-laden ‘Terrific.’

‘I need your help, John. That’s why I called now.’

‘Help, yeah. Miracles take longer.’

‘I need someone I know to represent Alaysha. I need to know what’s happening, which direction everything might go.’

‘I can understand that.’ Langfranc was quiet for a second. ‘But this isn’t just protectiveness for your girlfriend, is it Jac? Something else is worrying you about this.’

‘Yeah.’ Deflated sigh. The seed of doubt had been there from the moment he’d realized it was Alaysha’s gun, rankling deeper as he’d ducked between the shadows of the night-time streets during the past forty-five minutes. ‘The question that’s bothered me is why frame Alaysha? With everything else that’s been going on, I thought I’d have been the main target for something like that. So if they’ve gone to the trouble of lifting her gun from her apartment, what else might be waiting in the wings? Some hefty Accomplice to Murder rap, perhaps, from other evidence they’ve planted? That’s why I need to know the lay of the land, John, before coming forward.’

‘I can see that. There wasn’t a Times-Picayunephotographer there to snap you as you left the apartment block with the gun, was there?’

‘No.’ Jac chuckled, and Langfranc joined him a second later, as if making sure first that Jac was ready to see the light side. Though Langfranc’s chuckle quickly died when Jac told him that he was spotted by a patrol-car a few blocks away. ‘And I ran.’ Jac sighed heavily. ‘It was dark, though, and I was probably too far away for a good ID.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Langfranc took a fresh breath as he focused on the remaining options; what few were left after Jac’s catalogue of horrors and errors. ‘Did the old girl across the hall see the gun?’

‘No, don’t think so.’

‘Okay. Hopefully then we’ll get away with the story of the killer running off with it. Or, as you say, just don’t mention the gun — because that’s what the cops will naturally assume. Hopefully, too, the story will wash that you ran off in pursuit of the shooter. As for why you’re still AWOL, I’ll think of something in the meantime.’ Langfranc sucked in his breath. ‘All will depend, though, on what Alaysha might have already told them. How long will the cops have been with her now?’

‘Half an hour, maybe more.’

‘I’d better get there. Couple of good detectives could pull her apart in that time, have her head reeling. Did you prime any sort of story with her?’

‘No. No time. But she’s bright — she’ll know not to mention the gun, particularly with it being hers.’

‘Let’s hope so. Because if she mentions the killer dropping that gun on the hall floor — we’re buried before we’ve started. And you also have to pray that the cops don’t find that gun.’

‘Don’t worry — where I’ve hidden it, they’re not going to find it. At least, not in a hurry.’

‘Remember. You didn’t tell me that.’

‘I didn’t tell you that.’

The first to arrive on the scene, six minutes after Mrs Orwin’s call, were two patrolmen from the Eighth District, who immediately radioed in for what else they’d need: forensics, homicide, and a meat wagon. They knocked on Mrs Orwin’s door first because she’d made the call but, with their talking and the harsh static from their communicators, Alaysha’s door opened seconds after, and, quickly sensing some unease between the two parties, the officers took one each for questioning — Mrs Orwin hastily ushering her officer in and closing her door behind him.

Two more patrolmen arrived minutes later and, having conferred with their colleagues, one yellow-taped the downstairs entrance before joining his side-kick in roaming and checking for tell-tale clues, though at all times two-yards clear of the body; the hallowed forensics-only zone.

Questioning was basic at that point, setting the general scene, which was all dutifully relayed to Lieutenant Jerome Derminget, a bloodhound-eyed homicide detective with wavy, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, when he arrived on the scene eighteen minutes later.

Derminget looked like the type that Alaysha would have liked under different circumstances. While his eyes looked tired, as if he read police reports or books late into the night, at the same time they appeared warm, understanding. Though that part also unsettled Alaysha; they looked like they might easily strip away her defences, get to the truth.

Derminget spent the first ten minutes questioning Mrs Orwin, and had been little more than that time with Alaysha when his station house called to inform him that they had Miss Reyner’s lawyer on the line, a certain John Langfranc, ‘And he insists on being present for any official questioning of his client.’

Derminget skewed his mouth. He didn’t like the sound of the girl’s story one bit: the shooter that nobody else had seen, appearing magically and firing just seconds after them closing the door, at the end of a big argument to boot; an eye-witness that saw both the argument and then her and her boyfriend over the body, and, to cap it all, her boyfriend, having apparently run off in pursuit of the killer, for some inexplicable reason hadn’t yet returned. It sounded like a fairy story, but Derminget had so far only been filling in background, hadn’t yet got to the harder-assed questions that might put her account to the acid-test. And the involvement of a lawyer so early rang instant alarm-bells, stank of barricades being quickly, desperately put up. If he didn’t get to those questions before her lawyer showed, her story would probably forever get stuck in la-la land. He saw his escape route in official.

‘Tell our lawyer friend that we’re still on the scene, and so we’re not even sure at this stage if there will be any officialquestioning of Miss Reyner. But if that is to take place, that’ll be at the station house later tonight; about which, of course, he’ll be duly informed beforehand.’

‘One minute.’ The female duty officer broke off and he could hear other voices in the background — obviously they had the lawyer on another line — before her voice came back. ‘He says he’s a friend and so he’d like to be there in any case, for moral support. He’s on his way.’

‘Okay. Okay.’ Fuck it. Fuck it! Derminget had drifted into the hallway as he’d taken the call and kept his voice low so that the girl wouldn’t overhear. He gave his best smile and soft-eyed look as he turned back in through the doorway. ‘Now, where were we?’ Maybe only ten or twelve minutes before her lawyer arrived, he’d better make the most of it.

Two hours. That’s when Jac had arranged to speak with Langfranc again when hopefully he’d be back from seeing Alaysha and the police. Another phone booth call, Langfranc advised, ‘Because we don’t want anything possibly later being traced to your cell-phone.’

After the change of shirt, Jac had instinctively headed away from the French Quarter — less people, less police. But as another police car drifted by him on Baronne Street, he felt immediately uncomfortable, vulnerable. They didn’t see him or even slow as they passed, but he was struck with the feeling that he was the only person there to draw their eye, and if one of them had looked his way, he’d have frozen or panicked in that gaze, the look in his own eyes instantly giving the game away.