Without Prejudice (18 page)

The other parents picked Sophie up at nine, and Duval showed up half an hour later, driving an old red Impala. Robert went outside right away.

‘You got a car,’ he said as Duval got out.

He shook his head. ‘It’s Jermaine’s. He’s selling it because he’s got himself a 4x4, but no one’s bought it yet.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to a paper bag in Duval’s hand.

‘I brought my lunch.’

‘Oh, okay,’ he said, and realised he was relieved. ‘Anna’s working upstairs – you’ll see her later. Why don’t I show you what the job is?’

He led the way around the side of the house, past the hose wrapped like a sleeping snake on the ground and into the back yard. Duval was dressed for heavy outdoor work – black boots, olive work pants, a long-sleeved wool shirt that looked ex-army issue. Without his glasses he looked tougher, lean and muscled rather than gaunt. Robert felt embarrassed at how little he was asking him to do.

Their house was at the end of the block. A high privet hedge separated them from the street; on the other side, a white picket fence divided them from the Jeffersons, an old retired couple who kept to themselves. The second time Mrs Jefferson had spoken to Anna, it was to complain about the previous owners of the Danziger fence. ‘They did
nothing
,’ the old lady had hissed. ‘They didn’t even paint their side of the fence.’

Robert had taken the not-so-subtle hint and was going to paint it himself, until Anna had intervened with her offer. He had bought two five-gallon tins of Dulux, a sponge roller and pans, three brushes of assorted length, and a large bottle of turpentine. He’d put them all on the picnic table in the back yard.

‘It really just needs a single coat,’ he told Duval, pointing to the fence. ‘No need to scrape.’

Duval nodded. ‘I’ll get started.’

Robert went into the house and upstairs. They had four bedrooms, so both he and Anna had the luxury of their own studies. His was at the front of the house, and if he pushed his chair back he could see Anna at her desk down the hall; she was reading prospectuses for work, but she glanced from time to time out the window at the yard. He pulled his chair back to his desk and tried to concentrate on Dorothy Taylor’s draft report on the coming year’s programme, but his mind kept wandering – to the yard. He gave up and walked down the hall.

‘How’s he doing?’

She shrugged and didn’t look out the window. ‘I’m sure he’s being very thorough.’

Robert looked down, where Duval had painted perhaps the first three feet of fence. He wasn’t using the roller, but held one of the brushes, and after each stroke he stood back to inspect his handiwork. ‘You mean slow, don’t you?’ he said, and went back to his study.

At eleven they went out to do their weekly shop, planning to find lunch at one of the bistros and cafés that sprouted in Evanston like alfalfa. ‘What’s Duval going to eat?’ Anna asked, and Robert explained he’d brought his own lunch. When he went out to tell Duval they’d be gone for a while, Anna came with him.

‘It looks great, Duval,’ she said.

‘Good to hear it. Wait ’til I finish and you won’t recognise it.’

‘We’ll be back by two or so, Duval.’ Robert pointed to the picnic table. ‘Make sure you stop for lunch.’

They bought groceries at the local market, Anna still delighted by the fact that they cost half what she’d have paid in London, and then they ate a mediocre Mexican meal around the corner. When they got home they were putting the groceries away in the kitchen when Robert saw Duval, walking stiffly towards the back door. He went and opened it. ‘You okay?’

‘Bobby, can I use the bathroom, please? I’m about to burst, man.’

‘Of course, Duval. You should have used a bush outside.’

Duval shook his head. ‘The old lady next door was keeping watch.’

Robert pointed to the small cloakroom just inside the door. ‘Be my guest.’

Anna was by the sink, and she turned towards him angrily. ‘Did you lock the back door when we went out?’ she hissed.

‘Yes. I couldn’t see any reason for him to be inside while we were gone.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Robert.’ When she smiled it was at Duval, coming out of the loo.

In the afternoon the cloud cleared and the temperature rose. At three Robert went downstairs and made a pitcher of lemonade out of frozen concentrate, then filled an enormous jelly glass and took it outside. Duval put his brush down at his approach, and Robert handed him the glass and watched as he drank greedily. Sweat streaked both his cheeks like tears, and his forehead was matted with fine bubbles of perspiration. His wool shirt looked soaked through, stained by dark patches of sweat under both underarms and by a blotch the size of a pancake on his chest.

‘Duval, why don’t you take your shirt off? Nobody’s going to mind. It’s hotter than hell out here.’

Duval finished drinking and handed the glass back with one hand, while he wiped his lips with the other. ‘I don’t want to scare anybody.’

What did he mean? Mrs Jefferson again? Did he think the neighbourhood was so lily white that the sight of a half-naked black man would have neighbours calling the police? Maybe he was right. Race reared its unattractive head yet again, and inwardly Robert sighed. It had been gone so long from his life he thought it had disappeared for ever. How wrong I was, he thought wearily, saddened that his old friend and he were not beyond that.

‘You’re not going to frighten the horses, Duval. You must be boiling.’

Duval’s expression suddenly set like plaster. ‘Have a look,’ he said, and with both hands he lifted the bottom of his sweat-soaked top up to his armpits.

Along Duval’s right flank, from his appendix to his collar bone, ran a strip of damaged skin the size of a long skirt steak, marked by crusted bubbles of scar tissue, like a melted cheese sandwich left too long under the grill. It was a revolting sight, and Robert struggled not to look away.

‘Jesus Christ, who did that to you?’

Duval gave a bitter laugh. ‘Ain’t no “who” involved. I didn’t get this in Stateville, Bobby. I’ve had this since I was twelve years old.’

‘The fire,’ said Robert. Why do I feel guilty? he asked himself. Because he thought I was the hero. Duval had been the brave one.

‘That’s right. You think this is bad, you ought to see my leg.’ He shook his head. ‘I know it ain’t pretty, Bobby, so that’s why I keep my shirt on. Anna or your little girl was to see it, they’d probably faint.’

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

He returned to the house and went upstairs to the main bedroom. He found an old striped, short-sleeved shirt in his dresser drawer, and took it outside to Duval.

‘Put this on,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot cooler.’

Duval laughed and swapped shirts, placing the sweat-soaked one over the top of the picket fence.

An hour later, upstairs reading in the house, Robert pushed back his chair and saw Anna wasn’t sitting in her study. When he went to her window, he saw her in the yard, standing near the fence while Duval crouched down, touching up the bottom of a post with his brush. He looked at her desk and saw a thick document labelled ‘Illinois Compiled Statutes’, open at the following page:

Sec. 116-Motion for forensic testing not available at trial regarding actual innocence.

(a) A defendant may make a motion before the trial court that entered the judgement of conviction in his or her case for the performance of forensic DNA
testing . . . on evidence that was secured in relation to the trial which resulted in his or her conviction, and was not subject to the testing which is now requested at the time of trial . . .

So: Duval could try and reopen his case because DNA testing had not been available at the time of his trial. But surely it couldn’t be that simple – otherwise, everyone convicted by forensic evidence in a pre-DNA age would be filing motions. Maybe they were. Then he saw, further down the page, another paragraph, highlighted by the yellow marker Anna liked to use:

(b) The defendant must present a prima facie case that

(1) Identity was the issue in the trial which resulted in his or her conviction

That fitted Duval all right. Identification had been at the core of his conviction. So these would be the grounds for reopening the case – DNA analysable evidence if it could be found, based on the fact that Peggy Mohan had identified Duval as her attacker in court. He heard Anna coming into the kitchen below, and he went out into the corridor as she came up the stairs, asking, ‘How’s he getting on?’

‘Fine, I think. He was telling me about Vanetta.’

‘What about her?’

‘Oh, just how she looked after him when he was little. And how he’d met you.’

‘That’s nice,’ he said, but he didn’t believe a word of it. When he’d watched from the window, Anna had been doing all the talking.

By five o’clock Duval was only two-thirds of the way along the line of fence. ‘I guess he’ll have to come back,’ said Robert, watching him from Anna’s study.

‘Not tomorrow – I don’t want to ask him to work on a Sunday.’

As if Duval had much else to do. ‘I don’t want him here when I’m not around.’

‘It’ll have to be next weekend.’

‘I thought we’d go to the dunes.’

‘Are you forgetting something?’

She was right; they were having dinner at the president’s house.

‘All right. I’ll see if he can come then.’

And Duval was pleased to be asked back, and more pleased still when Robert handed over $105 in a mixed wad of bills. I could build a new fence for what this is costing me, he thought.

‘Same time, same place then?’ asked Duval.

‘We’ll be here,’ said Robert, then thanked him and said goodbye. Going back into the house while Duval assembled the paint things, he found the phone ringing in the kitchen. It was the mother of a friend of Sophie’s from school, but when he called to Anna he heard her going out the front door. By the time he got off the phone and went out front, Duval’s car had gone, and Anna was coming in, with a satisfied look on her face.

‘Did you forget to tell him something?’

She looked at him defiantly. ‘Yes. I told him not to bring a sandwich next time. He can eat with us.’

5

Emails got ignored, phone calls were not returned – much as Robert didn’t want to beard the coach in his den (actually, the university’s multimillion-dollar sports complex) Robert knew it was harder for people to give bad news face to face. Though after his conversation with Balthazar he held little hope of changing the coach’s mind.

‘Virginia Carter.’ The voice was pure rural Indiana; it spoke of dairy cows and silos and barn dances.

He explained who he was. ‘I wanted to make an appointment to see Coach Carlson.’

‘Just a minute.’ He heard her paging through a diary. ‘Hmm. Well, it’s training season now so that’s no good. And then the real season starts, of course. Let’s see – I could try and slide you in for late October.’

It wasn’t even August yet. ‘That bad, huh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It doesn’t matter that I’m attached to the university?’

‘It’s a big university, sir. You should see the ticket requests the coach gets.’

He scratched one side of his chin, finding a patch he hadn’t shaved. When Sophie had been little she’d come and watch him lather up, then talking with her he would miss the same spot day in and day out.

‘Could you tell the coach I’m seeing President Crullowitch later this week?’ Strictly speaking, this was true, since he was having dinner at his house on Saturday. ‘I know he wants me to see the coach before then.’ Not so strictly true.

There was a momentary silence. ‘Hang on a minute. I’m going to put you on hold.’ He waited, while a symphonic rendition of the football team fight song played three and a half times. Then she was back.

‘Coach Carlson asked if you could come for a drink at his house on Thursday evening? Six o’clock.’

‘Sure.’

And she gave him the address, a street of large houses, mansions really, in Kenilworth, a few miles north of his own house. How did a football coach come to live among multimillionaires? Curious, he Googled ‘Carlson+football+coach+salary’. There were many entries, but five minutes later he had discovered the coach’s annual salary was $650,000.
That’s
why he lived in Kenilworth.

He’d need to make sure Anna could stay with Sophie when he went, as otherwise he’d have to line up Mrs Peterson. He thought of ringing his wife, but decided it could wait. Lately she seemed to be working very long hours, and was often coming home late. There was an edge to her talk, and he wondered if she was diverting some personal stress into her work.

But did the extra hours really come from her consulate duties? He couldn’t see how, not in the dog days of July. Or was it Duval? More likely, and though worrying, nonetheless more palatable than the third possibility. Philip.