Their lovemaking felt like a dream, happening so quickly, fervently, breathlessly, that the images were little different when they replayed in Jac’s dream later that same night; tinged with the same hazy glow of the streetlight filtering into Alaysha’s bedroom.
Her coffee-cream skin, bathed in orange light, her hazel-brown eyes drawing him in like a welcoming blanket of autumn leaves, the beads of sweat massing on her top lip and, when he looked down, spread across her entire body like fine raindrops; and her breath, hot and urgent in his ear, urging him on.
‘Oh, fuck me… fuck me, Jac. Fuck me!’
But beyond her body heat and him frantically keeping rhythm with her, he started to hear the bed banging — though he could never remember that at the time. And he realized it was someone knocking at her apartment door, her boyfriend’s voice.
‘Who have you got with you? What are you doing in there?’
Then suddenly there was the banging of a door behind him, then another — the same banging he’d heard on that first night through the apartment wall — successive doors slamming like pistol shots as her boyfriend moved inexorably towards them.
But as the bedroom door burst open it was Larry Durrant standing there, gun in hand, as in his previous dream; yet this time, as the bullet hit and suddenly it was Jessica Roche beneath him, he didn’t pull back, repulsed, but clung on, eyes searching for clues he might have missed last time… something… something… her blood hot and clammy against his skin, mingling with his sweat.
‘No, no, no…. No!
Larry shouting from the doorway was little more than a silhouette, the stark light behind that of the corridor at Libreville, his desperate cries echoing through its cavernous grey depths. His face, fearful and beaded with sweat, became suddenly quizzical, pleading.
‘Don’t tell anyone what just happened here… please, Mr McElroy. Perhaps we can hide the body somewhere so that nobody will know. Maybe then I’ll get to hear from my little boy again… I haven’t heard from him in a while…’
Jac awoke with a jolt as the thunder crashed only a second after the lightning flash. His heart was beating wildly and his body was bathed in sweat, as if he had only seconds ago been making love to Alaysha.
Jac swallowed, trying to get his heartbeat settled again. He wondered if he was getting into a repetitive dream-cycle again, as in the year after his father died: the settings were usually familiar, their farmhouse, Isle de Rey beaches, but in many of them he was having fresh conversations with his father, as if he was still alive; and he’d start to panic that if he said the wrong thing, his father would then realize he was dead.
The storm outside growled and rumbled. It had been hot with the humidity sky-high before Jac went to sleep, pressure-cooking its way steadily upward through much of the day. The sort of weather that made you sweat just buttering toast, let alone making love. If it was uncomfortable here, it would be unbearable at Libreville, hot and foetid at the best of times. And for a second he had a mental snapshot of Durrant laying on his prison bed listening to the same storm, thinking about the days ahead until his execution and the many things he’d now never get to do… like holding his son in his arms again. Or maybe he was sleeping easy, like a baby. After all, he was finally going where he wanted. His Ascension Day.
He was still uneasy about misleading Durrant over his son’s e-mails; though at least he was able to console himself that the end — keeping Durrant alive — justified the means. But what was starting to unsettle him more was misleading Durrant that his clemency would buy time to prove his innocence and finally gain him freedom. Jac hadn’t even given a second thought to that, because, from what he’d seen in the police and trial files, such a quest seemed hopeless, impossible.
So while he might hopefully get Durrant clemency now, at best it would be a commute to life imprisonment. In the end all he’d be doing was sentencing Larry Durrant to another ten to fifteen in that foetid, oppressive hell-hole. And, thinking about that now, maybe Durrant had been right all along. Given that choice, maybe death would be preferable.
14
Death. Everyone at Libreville thought about it. Those on Death Row perhaps more than they should: even if their execution might be five or ten years away, with any number of possible lifelines in-between — appeals and clemency pleas, State Governors offering across the board pardons upon retirement from office, as had happened once before — death was still there in some dark corner of their minds where they pushed everything they didn’t want to face, gnawing steadily away.
But with an impending execution among their number, only thirty-six days away, it was that much harder to push away and not think about. Larry Durrant’s approaching death hung over all of them. Sudden, stark reminder that it could be them next. And maybe not so long away as they thought.
Death reached out its icy hand to every corner of the prison, trickled down cell walls along with the ingrained grime and sweat, the smeared blood and faeces, brought a chill to the air and to inmates’ spines, even when it was touching 90?. And if Death Row was the nucleus of that at Libreville, the queen bee’s hive, it didn’t lack for supporting drones.
Eighty-two per cent of inmates incarcerated at Libreville would die there; of pneumonia, heart failure, cancer, tumours, drugs overdoses, AIDS, murdered by fellow prisoners, or simply of old age. So there was a prison hospice, a chapel for prayers for the dead, and a graveyard. Libreville seemed reluctant to let go of its inmates, even in death. And while most prisoner’s families would choose to take the body home for burial — their only chance to get loved ones back — many had been so long forgotten by their families that burial at Libreville remained the only option.
Of that amount, the executioner would grim-reap less than two per cent. But that small number by far overshadowed all other deaths, because it underscored the reason they were all there. You commit murder, we kill you. When we’re good and ready.
And the passage of time, while helping inmates push the spectre of death away in their minds, also made it like a slow-drip torture; death might be trickling down their cell walls slowly, but that ensured its omnipresence. Paradoxically, of all of them Larry Durrant was probably the least worried, because he’d resigned himself to death long ago. But others on Death Row watched with foreboding that passage of approaching death as the days wound down to Larry Durrant’s execution, wondering when it might next reach out to claim them.
There were spaces though in the prison where you could escape: places that breathed life, transported you to the world outside in your mind, or simply numbed you, made you forget where you were.
For Rodriguez, it was the prison radio and communication room, all that contact with the outside world made it easy to transport himself, if only for a few moments here and there, to where that contact came from; or when he was playing songs, closing his eyes and imagining he was a DJ at some far-flung station — TKLM, Tahiti — or remembering where he’d been and what he’d been doing when he’d first heard that song. For Larry, it was the library and his books that would let him drift to other places in his mind.
And for other inmates it might be working the ranch, the annual rodeo or the muscle yard. Rodriguez had never been much for muscle training and category A prisoners weren’t allowed to work the open ranch, so the only common area where he found a quiet corner was the showers. Not for the reason they were favoured by many inmates — scoping for prison bitches — but because, with his head back, eyes closed and the water running down his body, he could escape.