Ascension Day (4 page)

‘Come on, babe – gimme some credit. I told you what mine was for, too. But this time, I’m like an assistant bar-manager rather than just a barman… and the tips are big.’

Muted mumbling and rustling, as if he was in close, trying to hug and sweet-talk her. Then, after a moment, rising from the mumbling:

‘Give it up, babe… give it up.’ The words punctuated by what sounded like gentle kisses. ‘For me. Is that too much to…’

‘No… no!’ Sharper, louder. Annoyance at his intimacy to try and sway her. ‘It’s not even open for…
what
? What are you doing? You’re hurting me.’ 

‘I just don’t like other guys lookin’ at you like that. It drives me, well… crazy, thinking about it.’

‘Yeah, yeah.
Crazy’s
about right. Now let me go.’ Brusquer rustling as she wrenched free, and then the slamming of another door.

But his voice followed her, and the argument continued in more muted, indistinct tones behind the closed door.

Jac had heard quite a few arguments coming from next door over the past couple of months. He could hear them clearly when they were in the lounge or kitchen directly adjacent, the bedrooms less so, and the bathroom at the far end not at all.

He listened out for a moment more, but all that reached him was the low drone of traffic, like a muffled swarm of bees, passing on Highway 90 a few blocks away. These were the main disadvantages of his apartment block. At the low-cost end of housing in the Warehouse District, the minimal partition walls meant that you could hear your neighbours when their voices raised, as well as the traffic on the nearby main arteries heading out of the city.

Jac brought his attention back to the files, opening the police report with due veneration and turning over the photos that earlier he’d flipped firmly face-down. He hadn’t wanted to look at them initially, in case they influenced his judgement of Larry Durrant before he started. He wanted to get a feel for the man first, then the crime. Get the sequence right.

One gun-shot to the stomach from eight to ten feet, according to ballistics, then the final shot to the head from close range, only a few inches. The photos of Jessica Roche’s splayed body were painfully raw and would have had a strong impact on even the most hardened juror: one of her legs was crooked behind her at an impossible angle, her blood on the black-and-whites merging with where she’d soiled her dress, and one side of her face collapsed where her skull had shattered, stark horror in contrast to the beauty of her unblemished side.

Jac rubbed his forehead and reached for his coffee cup, before realizing that it was already empty. He could imagine the first shot being fired by somebody already on edge, suddenly disturbed. But that final shot seemed out of character for someone who’d never killed before, and that thought preyed on Jac’s mind as he went through the rest of the police report.

He tried to piece together the sequence of events in his mind from Durrant’s confession and the evidence presented at trial.

But still something didn’t quite fit, and the same sequence kept replaying in his thoughts long after he’d given up trying to make conscious sense of it, along with the rest of the police report, and had gone to bed.

In the final re-runs, Jac was playing the role of Durrant, standing over Jessica Roche’s sprawled body with the still-smoking gun, begging for clues as to why he’d killed her. ‘Please tell me… if you know? Any small sign.
Anything
!’

But then suddenly the body beneath him became the girl from next door, her long auburn hair cascading either side of her naked body, and she was reaching up for him. ‘Make love to me…
Fuck me
!’

Jac could feel the heat and sweat of her skin, her hazel eyes piercing straight through him before slowly closing in abandon. ‘Oh lover, fuck me. Fuck me!’

And her gasps of pleasure seemed
so real
, Jac so wrapped up in it that he didn’t hear Durrant’s footsteps from behind, the shot slamming into the body beneath him changing it abruptly back to Jessica Roche – her blood sticky against his skin, replacing the sweat and passion – and Jac struggled to get away from her clutch as the head-shot came…

Jac awoke with a jolt – suddenly realizing that it was his neighbour’s door slamming again, raised voices following straight after like a tidal wave.

‘No, no… please, Gerry, please!’

‘I ask you one small favour. Just one. But with you…
no
. No movement. No negotiation.’

‘Please, Gerry, I’m begging you. Don’t be like this.’

‘That’s your problem. You never listen to me. Most other people, I tell ‘em once – that’s it. But you…’

‘No, Gerry, please… I’m begging you. If I’m bruised, I won’t be able to work for a few days.’

‘Maybe that’s what I want. In fact, that would probably suit me just fine.’

‘No, Gerry….
No
!’ Desperate now, almost a scream. ‘You’ll wake Molly.’

Snorting derision. ‘You make me sick. You use that girl like a shield. And your beauty. And your precious fucking work and your college course. And all I feel like doin’ is putting a fist right through it, smashing it all …’

‘No, Gerry, no!

Jac heard a thud, together with a shriek from her, and was convinced she’d been hit.

He was now bolt upright in bed, his breathing rapid and fractured with the drama unfolding next door, wondering whether he should go and help her.

The sharp pistol-shot came a second later, and with the long silence following, Jac remained uncertain – his pulse galloping almost in time with his breathing – whether this time it
had
been a gunshot.

But after a moment he was relieved to hear from next door the sound of her gently weeping.

This was the heart of
Libreville
. Heart of darkness.

Its six oil boilers pumped and spewed hot vented air to the cells, corridors and general open areas, and hot water to the showers, kitchens and laundry area, which was adjacent.

Some air-conditioning units had been linked up to the venting eight years ago, but they were insufficient to cool the vast prison, and the temperature rarely dropped more than 5 degrees below the outside temperature, which hovered in the 90ºs for much of the summer.

The heat and stench of the prison rose insufferably during those months – but in the boiler room and laundry it was insufferable at all times of year. A permanent hell.

It was meant to be lit twenty-four hours by rows of emergency lights – but over half of them were out, either blown naturally and not yet replaced, or broken by inmates who’d wanted to make sure that a particular section remained dark so as to mask one activity or another: a sexual liaison, a drugs handover, a beating. A murder.

Despite the heat, Larry felt a cool tingle run down his spine. He couldn’t see anybody at first, only hear muffled voices and make out some indistinct, jostling shadows from the far corner. A couple of the shadows became heavier, longer, as they fell under the starker light from one of the emergency lights still in place there.

The shadows his end, hopefully, were equally as heavy, but he had to ease himself down cautiously from the ventilation shaft ledge to the floor. The slightest sound, and the mumbling voices would suddenly halt and someone would break free from the shadows to head his way.

As his feet touched the ground, the voices were slightly louder; he was able to risk a few brisk steps to behind the nearest pillar. Then froze again, swallowing back against his rapid heartbeat so that he could listen: was Roddy’s voice there, or was he already too late?

‘Always such a wise mouth, huh? Always the clown. D’yer think this is a funny place, then? Barrel o’ laughs a day?’ Tally’s voice, rising from the earlier muted tones, gave the answer.

‘Not particularly. But I reckon – why not try an’ brighten the days some. I mean, if I can…’

The rest from Roddy was lost as one of the boilers fired up. Someone had turned on a hot tap or a thermostat had dropped somewhere in
Libreville
’s labyrinths.

Whatever had been said, Tally didn’t appear to like it. The sudden burst of air from Roddy as he was hit in the stomach almost mirrored the hurrrumph from the boiler.

‘B’fore I slit your throat, I’m gonna beat you like y’never….
known
…
before
.’

Tally timed his blows to emphasise his last few words, and Larry used the sound-cover to shuffle quickly forward to the next pillar.

‘I wantya t’feel this first. Each blow like the rotten, fuckin’ jokes yer told…
day in
…
day out
…’

The sound of the blows landing, accompanying Roddy’s guttural groans, was sickening, and his coughing and retching straight after sounded as if it already carried blood.

Larry clenched his jaw as he risked a glimpse past the pillar. There were three of them with Tally: Dennis Marmont, one of the guards in head-guard Glenn Bateson’s pocket – he should have guessed Bateson wouldn’t risk being present personally – and Jay-T and Silass, two of Tally’s main muscle men.

Jay-T worried Larry the most. The only true brother of the group – Tally was a Creole-African mix – at six-five, a full four inches over Larry, he was surprisingly fast for his size, and had good technique for someone who’d never been formally trained.

‘
What’s that
? I thought I saw something.’

Larry ducked quickly back into the shadows behind the pillar as Marmont’s torch flicked on and shone his way. 

A frozen few seconds with only the sound of the group’s suppressed breathing before Tally said, ‘Only a rat … or maybe you jus’ seein’ things among the shadows.’

‘Fucking big rat, when I can see its shadow halfway up a pillar,’ Marmont retorted, and Larry heard his footsteps start towards him.

But after a moment the steps became uncertain, then stopped completely.

‘You check it out’ – Larry saw the beam of the torch swing back and then towards him again – ‘I’m only meant t’be here as a witness. To ensure fair play.’ Faint chuckle from Marmont, but along with his faltering step, it betrayed his nervousness.

Another set of footsteps started forward. Larry stayed deathly still, struggling to make out whose they were beyond his pounding heart. He looked at the advancing shadow in Marmont’s torchlight beam – but exaggerated and elongated, it told him little.

Marmont also started moving forward again, no doubt feeling braver now that someone else was a few steps ahead of him.

Larry held his breath, his whole body rigid as the footsteps approached.

He’d have to make his first punch count and jump Marmont almost in one – otherwise Marmont would have a clear shot with his night-stick or gun, and it would all be over. But if it was Jay-T or Tally, he’d be hard pushed to do much with just one punch. His breath fell fast and shallow, his flank pressed firm against the pillar shielding him as the footsteps moved closer.

And as the torch-beam came to within a few feet, bathing the area just to his side in light, suddenly he was a fresh-faced twenty-two year old contender again, facing his first big fight in Atlanta’s Omni arena – the clapping and stomping of the crowd almost in time with his thudding heartbeat.

His mouth was dry, his skin bathed in sweat – as it had been then – as the adrenalin rush fired up every nerve-end and muscle.

But as the approaching footsteps and the torch-beam’s angle passed the point of no return, and Larry lunged fully into its light with his first punch, he wasn’t sure if it was the roar of approval of his first fights, or the groans and shouts of derision of his last – when only four years later he lay on the canvass for the last time.

Glory or demise? Like so much else in his life, the line between them had been slight, almost impossible to discern.

Jac was running late.

He was fifteen minutes later than planned getting into the office because he’d dozed off again for a while after his alarm sounded; he’d slept fitfully after being awoken in the middle of the night by the slamming doors and voices from next door, which, in turn, meant that he didn’t have time to get Penny Vance to type up Langfranc’s dictation notes on Libreville – he’d simply grabbed a hand-held cassette before rushing out again, and planned to listen to it on the journey.