Ascension Day

44

Last meal.

Lockdowns one… two. Breakfast, lunch, supper, exercise hour… final lockdown. Life at Libreville. Except it had been no life; just various regimented stages towards death, Larry now realized.

And now there were only a few stages left: medical examination, last eighteen paces to the death-chamber, strap-down and final injection.

He’d already had an extra-curricular examination from the infirmary medic who’d put fourteen stitches in his shiv wound the night before. Flesh wound, nothing internal damaged. But Torvald had asked the medic down to check it again two hours ago, just to be sure.

Larry only ate half of his last meal. Not only because he didn’t feel like it, but because in the end it didn’t bring back old days in the Ninth; it just reminded him all the more that he was here at Libreville, with cooks who didn’t have the slightest idea how to make a good P0’Boy. Libreville had steadily eroded most of his good memories over the years; he didn’t want to spoil more with his last meal.

The night before when he’d said his last goodbyes, Roddy had started to tell him a joke, but had broken down halfway through; and as they’d hugged, Larry had muttered in his ear: ‘You know that Ayliss… it’s actually Jac.’ Thinking, as he gave a quick, hushed explanation and saw Roddy’s incredulous expression, that all the years Roddy had told him jokes, the last surprise and punchline had been his.

‘Has he called yet?’ Roddy had asked.

‘No, not yet. He’s apparently still chasing down some last minute things.’ Larry shrugged. ‘You know what he’s like… never say die.’

‘He will call. I know it.’

‘Maybe.’ Larry shrugged again, his eyes shifting uncomfortably to one side. ‘But, you know, it’s not right for me to keep clinging on to hope till the last hour, when — ’

Rodriguez clasped one of his hands in both of his, shaking gently. ‘I meant either way, Larry. Either way.’

And at that moment, Roddy was one of the few people left who could still look him in the eye. The guards called out ‘Dead Man Walking’ as they escorted him along, but their eyes had already said it: ‘You’re already dead, I can hardly bear to look at you.’ Torvald, Fran and Josh the day before, the two guards outside his open-bar ‘last-night’ cell — in case he attempted suicide — the guard that had brought him his last meal; none of them could meet his eye.

The only other person who had been able to had been Father Kennard that morning when, after having prayed with him, asked, ‘Do you want to deal at all with what you did all those years ago, Larry? Ask God’s forgiveness?’

And it was Larry then who was looking away uneasily, unable to meet Kennard’s eye. ‘I… I don’t think I can, Father. When even now, I can’t rightly say whether I killed her or not.’

‘I understand.’ Father Kennard nodded thoughtfully, pursing his lips. ‘But I had to ask, Larry.’

Either way. Larry wondered if that was why Jac hadn’t yet called. Because, as with everyone else who could no longer look him in the eye, he couldn’t bear to give him bad news.

Larry had tried to avoid looking at the clock too frequently, expectantly, that morning. But after his last meal, he began to look at the clock increasingly: two o’clock, two-thirty, three… By the time it got to 4 p.m. and Torvald came to his cell to tell him that it was time for his final medical examination, Larry knew then that Jac wouldn’t call.

Jac couldn’t face telling him what Larry could already see in everyone’s eyes: he was already a dead man.

Bob Stratton finally got the breakthrough he’d been frantically chasing for half the day at 2.14 p.m.

Roland Cole had ditched his two credit cards shortly after he left his last address; both of them left hanging with big bills and no forwarding address, no possible link-0n. Cole had covered his tracks well.

But Stratton decided to check new credit card applications over the past ten months, when Cole might have applied for a new one; and out of eight R. Coles processed in that period in Louisiana, he hit gold with an exact birth-date match: Roland T. Cole, Verret Street, Algiers.

Stratton leapt into his car; twenty-five minutes drive, he made it in nineteen.

First-floor apartment of a rundown, chipped-paint, three-storey block with its front doors accessed by outside planked walkways.

Stratton rang the bell, then knocked after five seconds. No answer. He rang and knocked again, still nothing, and was about to try a third time when the neighbour’s door opened.

‘I don’ think you’ll find him there.’ A bleary-eyed man in a T-shirt, squinting as if he’d just awoken from an afternoon nap. ‘He left half an hour back carrying a holdall. Lot of banging of drawers an’ that before he went.’ The man scratched his chest absently. ‘That’s why I looked out when his door slammed — thought for a minute he might have been ransacked.’

‘Oh, right. Do you know where he works?’

‘Yeah. Three blocks away.’ He pointed with a hooked finger, a slight shrug as if he didn’t see the importance. ‘Opelousas Packing.’

‘No idea where he might have gone, I suppose?’

‘No, none at all.’

And Cole’s work colleague at Opelousas had no idea either. He’d left work an hour ago complaining of a bad stomach.

‘An’ s’far as I know he was headin’ for home and bed and stayin’ there.’

As Stratton got back in his car, his nerves still racing from the rush, he took out his cell-phone to call Ayliss.

At 2.30 p.m., Roland Cole jumped on a Greyhound bus bound for Miami via Pensacola, Tallahassee and Tampa.

Durrant’s face everywhere, he couldn’t stand it any more: warehouse walls, work colleagues, a man in the local cafe at lunchtime who reminded him of Durrant… the clock there too didn’t help, a film of sweat breaking out on Cole’s forehead. And when the cafe owner flipped channels on the corner TV from a daytime soap to the news, Cole stood up sharply as Durrant’s face loomed out at him.

‘Man, I can’t take any more o’ this,’ he said to his friend. He rubbed at his stomach and looked with disdain at the barely-eaten burger on his plate. ‘I gotta get home before I die. Tell Max for me, would ya?’

The Greyhound bus was ideal. No TV, no newspapers, no clock; and, as the miles rolled by, no New Orleans either. Out of sight, out of mind; the continued thrum of its wheels on the road would hopefully, finally, push the images of Durrant from his mind.

So he tucked himself away at the back of the Greyhound where nobody would notice him and, more importantly, he wouldn’t notice them — more faces that might remind him of Durrant — and waited for that moment to come. Like Rizzo in the last scene of Midnight Cowboy, he thought as he closed his eyes.

And after a while curled up at the back of the bus, as if in support of that image, he found that he was trembling; although, unlike Rizzo, in his case it was from the tension still writhing in his stomach and the shame of what he’d done, rather than pneumonia.

Truelle called a halt after three brandies.

Cuban measures were generous, a third of a balloon, and the road to the villa was new to him; he didn’t want to risk wrapping Brent’s prize Corvette round a lamppost.

He’d phoned Cynthia for the DHL reference number soon after she’d sent the package, then when he’d phoned to track its progress that morning was told that it was scheduled to be delivered to the Sancti Spiritus correos before midday. He didn’t want to leave the package there any length of time, and, while Brent’s casita fridge was generously stocked, there were a few essential favourites he wanted to pick up: Earl Grey tea, anchovy-stuffed olives and salted almonds. He decided to pick them up first, then head to the post office; he didn’t want to risk leaving the package in his car.

The Earl Grey tea proved impossible to get, he gave up after the third store visited, and the place where he bought the salted almonds told him of a shop halfway across town where they might have the olives. When Truelle got there, half of it was a deli with shelves jammed ceiling high with produce from Spain and Latin America, the other half a cafe where he ordered a coffee and brandy while he perused what else they had, ending up also buying some salami and spicy chorizo.

As he knocked back the last of his brandy, he tried his office number again; still no answer. Then Cynthia’s home number; the same. He’d tried both numbers earlier to find out if anyone had called by the office after he’d left, but with the same result. Maybe with little for Cynthia to be there for, she’d decided to take a break at the same time too.

When he’d first arrived at Brent’s after the long journey, Brent had given him an anxious sideways glance as he opened up the casita for him. ‘You okay, buddy? Something troubling you?’

‘No, fine… fine. Just overwork. Burning the midnight oil on too many patient histories.’

He no doubt looked at that moment how he felt, a total wreck, but he hadn’t got half his own mind around what had happened, let alone to explain it to someone else: I did something with a patient twelve years ago that I shouldn’t have, and as I became worried about the people I’d done it for, I took out a couple of insurance policies — but when I phoned the other day, both of those policy holders had been killed, and now…

Truelle ordered another brandy. He couldn’t get Maggie Steiner’s voice out of his head, cracking pitifully as she told him that Alan was dead. Then that Vancouver policewoman telling him about Chris and Brenda, that… Put the phone down. Shut it out of your head. Have another drink. Push it away, push it away… push it away…

He knocked back the brandy in three quick slugs, raised his hand for another. The shop keeper eyed him with concern as he poured.

‘Are you okay, senor?’

Again, ‘Fine… fine. Bueno. Muy bueno.’ Just don’t get too close to me, that’s all. Everyone who gets close to me gets killed.

Half the world asking if he was okay. The stewardess too on his last leg from Nassau to Havana. For the first legs of the flight, he’d kept to soft drinks, his stomach still churning from a volatile acid-bile mix of last night’s drinks and wire-edge tension. But by the time he came to the last leg, his hands were shaking so heavily that he felt he just had to have a drink to get them steady and try to dull the nightmare images burning hour by hour stronger through his head… push them away… push them away…

He knocked back a quick malt whisky at Nassau airport, ordered another as soon as he was airborne, and as he took his third in-flight whisky from the stewardess, his eyes bleary and red-rimmed, hand shaking on the glass, she asked if he was okay.

Fine. Fine. And even if people didn’t ask, it was there in their eyes. That look of concern. On the faces of the people as he now stepped outside the shop, squinting and swaying slightly as the bright sunshine again hit him. On the face of the woman at the post office as he handed across the note from Brent and collected his package. A young couple heading into the correos as he went back down its steps, unsure whether to side-step him or help him down.

Truelle closed his eyes as he got back into Brent’s car, taking slow, deep breaths to try and get his nerves calm. And, as he opened them again and started up, he checked his watch: four more hours. Then perhaps finally it would all be over, the nightmare of the past twelve years ended. Maybe then at last it would all be fine, fine. Bueno, bueno.

Jac was sitting with Larry having a brandy, both of them looking anxiously at the clock. As Jac passed across Larry’s glass, Larry said:

‘Tell my mother, Jac. Tell her it wasn’t me, before it’s too late.’

‘But I can’t see her, Larry.’ Jac, looking over Larry’s shoulder, suddenly realizing that this time they were in the courtroom. He couldn’t see anything, in fact; it was just mist and shadow beyond Larry. Vague shapes, none of them clear.

‘But she’s there, Jac. I know it. I can feel her eyes boring into the back of my right shoulder. Tell her, Jac, please… please, before it’s too late.’

‘I… I can’t see anything any more, Larry.’ Jac perplexed why it had all suddenly become misty. ‘There’s nothing there but hazy shadows. I’ve… I’ve become like you, Larry. Can’t see anything clearly any more.’

‘Please, Jac… don’t do this!’ Tears streaming down his face as he clasped Jac’s hand. ‘Please don’t let me die without her knowing that it wasn’t me!’

Ringing in his pocket.

The tears welling too in Jac’s eyes as he clasped back. ‘But now that I can’t see anything clearly, Larry… what do I even tell her? If you’d been able to see things clearly, you’d have been able to tell her yourself long before now, before…’

Telephone! As the dream fell away, Jac shuddered awake and answered the call.

Bob Stratton’s voice competing against Justo Betancourt on the radio. Jac reached out and turned it down, blinking heavily, fading afternoon light, approaching dusk. As Jac looked at his watch, 5.52 p.m., he jolted to suddenly, fearing in that second that’s why Stratton was calling: only an hour till Durrant’s execution!

Then he remembered the one-hour time difference, his caught breath and his pulse settling back as Stratton told him about his efforts with Roland Cole. Close, very close, but in the end no cigar.

‘And don’t look like he’s planning to return any time soon. Not in the next few hours, at least. That’s it.’

‘Yeah, looks like it.’ Soft, resigned exhalation. ‘Thanks. You tried your best.’

That’s it. Jac, surveying again the white villa, casita and road ahead, now knowing with certainty that his very last chance rested with Truelle.

Almost two hours asleep? Still no sign of a white Corvette. But what if Truelle had returned in the meantime and headed off again? If he’d seen the Audi up the road and had come close enough to see him inside asleep — no doubt the first thing he’d have done!

The sleep had taken some of the edge off Jac’s jaded nerves, but as the minutes dragged with the last of the day’s light fast dying, they started to intensify again, Jac’s fingers tapping steadily once more on the steering-wheel. Where was Truelle? Maybe he should give Calbrey another knock; even if Calbrey lied, he might see something tell-tale in his face, some clue as to -

Car approaching two hundred yards away, side-lights on. And as it came thirty yards closer, Jac could see it clearly: white Corvette! His finger-tapping changed to an anxious clutch.

And for a moment, no more than a fleeting shadow, Jac thought he could see another car a hundred yards behind it. But as he squinted harder, he could no longer see it. Either it had pulled in somewhere, been swallowed up with the fast-fading light, or it was just a trick of his eyes.

Jac watched Truelle park the Corvette and get out carrying a briefcase and a shopping bag.

Calbrey came to greet him and they talked for a couple of minutes. Truelle looked around anxiously at one point, then with a tight smile and half-wave, Truelle headed across the lawn to the casita.

Jac watched the lights come on inside and outside the casita, illuminating a terrace area with table and umbrella on the promontory.

As much as Jac couldn’t wait to pounce on Truelle and get his hands — verbal and proverbial — around his neck, he could see Calbrey watering some potted plants at the casita-side of the main villa. Confronting Truelle would without doubt be better without any interference, but fuck it, if Calbrey didn’t head in soon…

Jac’s finger-tapping increased, almost double-time to his pulse and the cicadas and crickets, and he managed to hold out only another ninety seconds before his hand was reaching for the door handle and, wait, Calbrey seemed to be putting away his hose and calling out something towards the casita.

Jac watched their brief exchange, Calbrey going inside the main villa as Truelle headed — briefcase in one hand, drink in the other — towards the table on the end of the promontory.

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.