He turned back towards the French Quarter. He felt in no mood to be around people, let alone crowds, but they’d at least offer some cover, distraction; to any passing police, he’d be harder to pick out amongst a milling throng.

He drifted along with the tourists and local out-on-the-towners on Bourbon Street, then turned into Bienville Street and found a bar after forty yards that looked busy and noisy enough to hopefully get lost in.

Jac ordered a Coors at the bar, then found a table deep towards the back where he was hardly visible from the street, let alone noticeable.

As Jac took the first sips of beer, he pictured again hearing the gun going off, those last footsteps on the stairs as he opened the door, Gerry’s body on the floor with part of his skull blown away, Mrs Orwin screaming, You’ve shot him… you’ve shot him! Fourth or fifth time he’d run the sequence through for anything he might have missed, along now with how Alaysha might be coping with the police, how she’d explain the same sequence of events? Would Langfranc have arrived yet to be able to draw their fire?

Jac sipped anxiously at his beer. His running off wouldn’t have helped — more possible suspicion and less back-up, Alaysha left to fend on her own — but with Alaysha’s gun still there, it would have been far worse. Alaysha would instantly have been prime suspect with himself as accomplice. Only with the weapon gone did they have a chance of getting away with the story that someone else had shot Gerry.

Between the crowd at the bar and milling by the entrance, Jac caught glimpses of the street outside as he drank, and over the next half hour he saw a couple of police cars passing: the normal French Quarter patrols, he wasn’t unduly worried. But when a police car stopped almost directly opposite and a patrolman got out and headed across the road, Jac’s nerves immediately tensed, his grip on his beer bottle tightening. He watched like a hawk through the revellers — past two twenty-somethings hugging and back-slapping like they hadn’t seen each in years, past a girl half doubling over and cackling like a witch at the joke of one of her two friends — as the policeman went slightly to one side, a door or two away.

Jac didn’t take his eyes off the entrance or fully ease his breath until two minutes later when he saw the policeman head away again; suddenly conscious of a few people at the bar looking his way curiously, Jac only then aware how hard his eyes had been burning through them, a trickle of sweat on his brow, his hand starting to shake on his beer bottle.

And in turn, with those stares, Jac suddenly realized how alone he was, separate from them all. A day ago, even a few hoursago, he’d have enjoyed the ambience, smiled at the bonhomie around him, felt the beer chill and mellow him, finger-tapped to the beat of the music: Lynryd Skynryd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was playing, and people had started to sway and foot-tap, one couple even attempting a close-clinches jive. But Jac felt cut off from it all, as if he was a world away, the throbbing beat simply fuelling the pounding of his heart and pulse, a nerve jumping in time with it just below his earlobe — one solid, deafening drumbeat that screamed, get out, get out!.. you don’t belong here…

Jac quickly knocked back the rest of his beer and stood up, started making his way back through the heaving, milling mass. The bar had become a lot busier in the past half hour, and Jac had to push and sidle his way through, the atmosphere suddenly hot, oppressive, the feeling that they were all closing in on him — we saw the way you looked at that policeman, and we’re going to keep you here until they come back for you— Jac knocking the arm of a satin-shirted young guy with a pony-tail and almost spilling his drink as he leant back into Jac. ‘ Sorry… sorry…’ Jac sweating now, heart pounding, breath short as he burst through the last of the bar crowd and back out onto the street.

But the throbbing, swirling echo of the music and people still seemed to churn through Jac’s head as he paced along Bienville Street, crossing Bourbon this time… a police siren a block away suddenly screaming along with it so that he felt in that instant dizzy, his legs weak; the feeling that he might have to start fleeing again, but now had no strength left.

The siren faded after a moment, and he eased out his breath again, raising his hand to a cab as he saw it crossing on Dauphine Street.

‘Yeah? Where to?’

Jac had to think for a second. His mum’s place would now probably be too risky. ‘Mid-City, on the way to the airport. One of the motels around Tulane Avenue.’ He could make his call to John Langfranc from there and, as one of the city’s most faceless, transient-client hotel areas, it would hopefully be ideal for laying low for a while.

As they turned onto Canal Street, the driver asked, ‘You know which one?’

‘No. Haven’t booked one yet. Got any recommendations?’

As the driver threw up the pros and cons of a couple of motels he knew there, Jac was hardly listening, the throbbing beat, voices and sirens still ringing in his head, get away… get away… and even when the taxi driver had stopped speaking and a motel had been decided upon, it was still there for a while, until finally — Jac closing his eyes and taking slow, even breaths in the back of the taxi as the city receded behind him — it was just the sound of his own heartbeat and thrum of the taxi wheels on the road.

Steady rhythmic beat. Though now it was more from Jac’s fingers drumming by the phone than his heartbeat. The only sound — apart from the traffic passing a block away on Tulane Avenue, heavily muted through the thick glazing of his second-floor motel window — as Jac made his call to John Langfranc.

When Jac had first called, after the agreed two hours, there’d been no answer — then successively after five minutes, eight minutes, twelve minutes. Still no answer, his finger-tapping by the phone heavier and more impatient each time. Now again after another three minutes. It answered late, at the start of the fifth ring, Langfranc slightly breathless.

‘I just got back in this second,’ he said to Jac’s Where the hell had he been?

‘I’ve been going crazy here… didn’t know what to think,’ Jac said. ‘What might be happening?’

‘I know… I know. It got a lot more complicated while I was there, unfortunately. You see, the thing is — ’

‘How was Alaysha?’ Jac was only half paying attention to Langfranc; his emotions so pent-up that all he could think of were the questions that had burned through his mind the past two hours. ‘How did she cope with the police questioning?’

‘She coped fine, Jac. But — ’

‘And had she said the right things before you got there, so that you were able to cover the bases okay?’

‘Yes, she’d covered well, hadn’t… but… but they found the gun, Jac.’ Langfranc blurted it out mid-sentence, as if afraid that if he got stuck in question-answer mode, he might never get the words out. Langfranc let his breath out heavily. ‘That’s our main problem now.’

‘But how? I hid it over half a mile away, and I — ’

‘You were seen burying it, Jac. A neighbour a couple of doors away, apparently.’

‘Oh God. God.’ Jac felt as if a trapdoor had opened beneath him, but it was Alaysha he saw tumbling into the abyss, her reaching one hand up desperately. Her gun. Her prints on it. He shuddered, his voice shaky, quavering. ‘How on earth is Alaysha bearing up with that news? I… I should be with her now.’ He realized something else too in that second. ‘And now I’ve made things far worse for her… trying to get rid of the gun. Made her look guiltier still.’

‘Jac, the problem is, it’s — ’

‘ Jeezus… I’ve made a right pig’s ear of everything, I’ve — ’