Ascension Day (5 page)

He caught his train connection with only a minute to spare and it left on time – but then it was held up for twenty-five minutes while the Santa Fe railroad shunted a never-ending stream of freight trucks past them on a dual-track junction.

So now Jac found himself rushing to make up time, pushing his rented Ford Taurus for the most part past sixty on the country roads that made up the last forty-five miles between
Baton Rouge
and
Libreville
. Jac anxiously checked his watch as the flatlands and swamps of the Mississippi Delta flashed by.

‘
Haveling runs a tight ship at
Libreville
. Everything by the book and strict routine. And God help anyone who upsets that routine.’
Faint chuckle from Langfranc on tape
. ‘So while you and timekeeping might often not be the best of buddies – try and be on time for all your meetings with him and Durrant. Get everything off on the right foot.
’

Jac edged his foot down. If he pushed it, he might be no more than five minutes late. He’d started playing Langfranc’s dicta-tape on the train – until a man across the aisle started paying him and the tape too much attention. He’d saved the rest for the car journey.

‘
But the upside of that is that Haveling will deliver everything you need – reports and recommendations on Durrant – strictly on time. No delays or hassle. And talking of God, Warden Haveling’s even more devout than our dear Governor Candaret. Stories abound of him taking a bible with him into the execution chamber, and, if the condemned is stuck for an apt last passage to be read by the prison Pastor, Haveling will recommend a few. He even offers to hold the condemned’s hand in the final moments – if they should so require.’
Langfranc paused markedly
. ‘Which I suppose raises more awkward questions about Haveling’s character and state of mind than it should – but at least it supports that pushing Durrant’s religious bent as hard as you can is without doubt the main ticket. And in Haveling’s defence, he’s a lot better than his predecessors. Claims of turning a blind eye to, or even supporting, institutionalized violence hung over most of them. Haveling’s immediate predecessor was as straight as they come, but lacked the backbone to push through what he wanted. High levels of violence still continued. A year ago there was a
New Orleans
magazine piece on Haveling picturing him with a bible in one hand and night-stick in the other, which just about summed him up. “Iron fist, with – he believes – God’s backing and approval
”.

‘
There are still incidents of violence, but probably no more than most maximum-security penitentiaries. Certainly, things now are a far cry from the dark days of the seventies and eighties when there were regular pitched battles with Cleaver-style radicals and assorted psychos going at each other with machetes sneaked in from the fields. Inmates then regularly slept with steel breastplates to protect them from getting hacked to death in the night.

‘
Libreville was in fact originally a slave plantation dating back to the 1830s, and its name came from the West African port where most of the slaves were shipped from, with the change from plantation to penitentiary coming in the early 1900s when…

Jac’s cell-phone rang. He looked at the display: his mother or younger sister. He stopped the tape and answered.

His mother, Catherine, quickly launched into a subject she’d broached at the weekend past when he’d visited.

‘Have you given it much thought yet?’ she pressed.

‘A bit,’ he lied. Even without the Durrant case, he wouldn’t have given it much consideration. Arranged date; he thought that sort of thing had died out a century ago. ‘But I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Well, let me know when you have. She came by the other day with her father to Aunt Camille’s place, and she seems a very nice girl. And attractive, too.’

Jac sighed. ‘Come on, mum. This is more about pleasing Camille than you or, more importantly, me. One more step in her social-climbing ladder.’

‘That’s true. She’s from a very good family, and no doubt that’s what Camille saw first. But now having met the girl, it would be easy for you to forget that this is all about Camille. You could get on very well.’ Catherine sighed. ‘And it has been a while now since Madeleine.’

Madeleine.
Madeleine
. Thirty-seven months, to be precise, just before they’d left
France
. Perhaps his mum was right: If she was nice and they got on, what harm could it do? But most of all, he could hear the uncertainty, almost desperation, in his mother’s voice. The need to do this to please Camille. And that part of him made him want to rebel, say no.

His mother and sister stayed in one of Camille’s houses in
Hammond
at only half rent, and Camille also paid half of Jean-Marie’s college fees. He paid the other half; his was the only family work-visa so far granted, and it was all he could afford while doing criminal law bar exams. Meanwhile his mum and sister lived partly in his aunt’s pocket, part of the legacy left by his father’s early death and disastrous state of affairs at the time – which his aunt took every opportunity to remind them of: ‘What a mess Adam left. All of his wild dreaming. So lucky I was there to help all of you.’

Jac’s aunt was the exact opposite of his father. Maybe that’s why he rebelled and railed so against any of her suggestions: in part, it kept alive his father’s spirit.

‘Okay, I’ll think seriously about it. But if I agree to it, I’m doing it for you or because I feel it’s right – not for Camille.’

‘That’s very noble. But you need to please yourself first and second on this, Jac – not anybody else.’

‘I know.’ With a promise that he’d let her know that weekend when he came over, he rang off.

After the argument through the wall the night before, the only girl he’d given any thought to had been his next door neighbour, starting to wonder what she might look like. He’d purposely listened out for her movements as he got ready that morning: she was still moving around inside when he left, but if he timed it right one morning, hopefully he’d get to see her on the corridor.

He shook his head, smiling. Obsessing over a girl just from a few sound-bites through a wall. His mother was right: he
had
been too long without a date.

Jac switched on Langfranc’s tape again, and, as he approached
Libreville
, the details started to mirror what he saw through his car window.

‘
Spread over 17,000 acres in total, with the closest towns Libreville, four miles away – which sprung up shortly after the plantation was founded – and St Tereseville, seventeen miles away. The term “plantation” hung on until the mid-sixties, when it was dropped because it smacked too much of the early slave days, and was replaced with ‘ranch’ – possibly due to its sheer size, the fact that they rear their own cattle as well as farm, and have an annual rodeo. The term could easily evoke a laid-back
High Chaparral
-style atmosphere – but don’t be fooled. This is hard-graft, rock-breaking
Cool-Hand Luke
territory all the way
.’

Jac approached the main gate of
Libreville
. Fourteen foot high, matching the perimeter fence, with another three-foot of rolled razor wire on top.

After announcing his meeting with Chief Warden Haveling and handing over his card, Jac checked his watch while the guard phoned through for confirmation. Four minutes late; not too bad. But from the sprawl of the place, it looked like it was going to take him another four or five to actually get to Haveling’s office.

The guard returned, handed him back his card, and pointed along the shale road ahead.

‘Ignore the first three buildings, two one side, one the other – all single storey – and after a lil’ more than a mile, you’ll see the main building. Can’t miss it. Rises up four floors out o’ nowhere. Visitors’ parking on the right.’

‘Thanks.’

‘…
Three thousand eight-hundred inmates – forty per cent increase since the late fifties, which led to three new blocks being built in the grounds. All high risk or death row prisoners are held in the main block, with time allowed out of holding cells for them just two hours a day, unless they have allocated duties or privileges – though that never includes field work. Their work assignments are again all within the main block, which is like a fortress.’

Of the half-dozen or so workers that Jac passed that troubled to look his way, at best they were sullenly curious, at worst surly and menacing; no smiles. It was difficult for Jac to believe that these were the best of the bunch.

‘
Sixty-one per cent African-American inmates, sixteen per cent mixed race, and twenty-three per cent white. And with the guards, that ratio is reversed. Only nineteen per cent are black or mixed race – though a marked improvement on twenty or thirty years ago. Take the clock back to the early sixties, and there wasn’t a single black guard.’

But as Jac entered deeper into the bowels of
Libreville
’s main block, he began to appreciate the difference. Here, at best the stares were surly, at worst taunting and disturbingly intense; and there were a few smiles, though invariably leering and slanted, as if fuelled by madness, or challenging, as if viewing him as prey.

Jac felt that the stifling oppression and heat of the block – unless he was imagining it – seemed to be getting more intense as he progressed, pressing heavier on him with each guard check-point and heavy steel gate opened and bolted shut behind him. And as a few sexual taunts were thrown at him as he passed the cells – ‘Like the way you walk, pretty boy’, ‘Sweet ass – I could fuck you right through that Armani’ – he felt his face tingle and burn.

He was probably still flushed, agitated, his shirt sticking to his skin, as he was ushered into the contrasting coolness of Warden Haveling’s wood-panelled office. But he knew immediately – unless Haveling had taken to appearing as surly as his prisoners or was far more upset by his tardiness than he’d envisaged – that something serious was wrong.

It was that time of day.

Leonard Truelle nursed the two fingers of Jim Beam between his hands with due reverence, as if warming his hands through the glass. Then, with a faint gleam of expectation in his eyes, brought it to his lips and felt its warmth and aroma trickle slowly down. He closed his eyes in appreciation. Pure nectar. With a part sigh, part murmur as he felt its after-burn, he set the glass slowly down.

The hand clamping over his came an inch before the tumbler touched the table, and he flicked his eyes open again, startled.

‘What
the
… oh,
oh
… it’s you.’

‘Now that’s no way to greet a long-lost friend.’

‘You startled me, that’s all. Probably because it
has
been so long.’ Nelson Malley, Nel-M, or just plain Nel. Almost five years now, but it wasn’t a face he was ever likely to forget. There was a tinge of grey now in Malley’s tight-knit curls, and it looked as if his mahogany skin tone was becoming greyer each time, as if someone had thrown potash in his face which hadn’t completely washed off.

‘Anyway, nice to see you again.’ Nel-M gave Truelle’s hand a couple more squeezes – though to Truelle they felt threatening rather than reassuring – and as Nel-M felt the trembling there, he smiled. ‘Is that because of me? I’m touched. Or because you haven’t kicked this stuff yet?’ Nel-M flicked his hand towards the whisky tumbler as he lifted it away.

Truelle didn’t want to let Nel-M inside his head, show weakness either way. ‘Expecting Sharon Stone any minute, and, you know, first dates. Always nervous.’ Truelle forced a weak smile. ‘I might need some Dutch courage to actually get to fuck her.’

Nel-M smiled back, but his charcoal eyes fixed steadily on Truelle showed no hint of warmth; as always, icy and bottomless, as if they were independent monitors searching for weak points to signal what his next move should be. They cut Truelle to the core, ran a shiver up his spine.