John Matthews - Ascension Day

But as an hour became an hour and a half — two hours — he found himself looking repeatedly at his watch, tapping his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel in rhythm with his pulse and mounting tension, the constant tremor in his body becoming heavier.

Waves of tiredness were again swilling over him as he watched the unchanging scene ahead punctuated by the occasional car. Three times he’d shook himself back awake as he felt himself close to the brink.

He put the radio on again as a precaution; though he’d have thought that with the tension running through him and his constant finger-tapping, that alone would have kept him awake.

But that rhythm after a while formed its own soporific monotony, along with the long spells of static vista, the occasional passing car, the hum and click of cicadas, the surf lapping gently fifty yards away; and as that rhythm finally combined with the music from the radio, became one medley, it dragged him gently towards what, for the past twenty-four hours, he’d been staving off with raw tension and adrenalin, caffeine, mambo and salsa. A deep, satisfying sleep.

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.