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 willcall. 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. Eitherway.’
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.
So he tucked himself away at the back of the Greyhound where nobody would notice him and, more importantly, he wouldn’t notice them — more faces that might remind him of Durrant — and waited for that moment to come. Like Rizzo in the last scene of Midnight Cowboy, he thought as he closed his eyes.
And after a while curled up at the back of the bus, as if in support of that image, he found that he was trembling; although, unlike Rizzo, in his case it was from the tension still writhing in his stomach and the shame of what he’d done, rather than pneumonia.
Truelle called a halt after three brandies.
Cuban measures were generous, a third of a balloon, and the road to the villa was new to him; he didn’t want to risk wrapping Brent’s prize Corvette round a lamppost.
He’d phoned Cynthia for the DHL reference number soon after she’d sent the package, then when he’d phoned to track its progress that morning was told that it was scheduled to be delivered to the Sancti Spiritus correosbefore midday. He didn’t want to leave the package there any length of time, and, while Brent’s casitafridge was generously stocked, there were a few essential favourites he wanted to pick up: Earl Grey tea, anchovy-stuffed olives and salted almonds. He decided to pick them up first, then head to the post office; he didn’t want to risk leaving the package in his car.
The Earl Grey tea proved impossible to get, he gave up after the third store visited, and the place where he bought the salted almonds told him of a shop halfway across town where they might have the olives. When Truelle got there, half of it was a deli with shelves jammed ceiling high with produce from Spain and Latin America, the other half a cafe where he ordered a coffee and brandy while he perused what else they had, ending up also buying some salami and spicy chorizo.
As he knocked back the last of his brandy, he tried his office number again; still no answer. Then Cynthia’s home number; the same. He’d tried both numbers earlier to find out if anyone had called by the office after he’d left, but with the same result. Maybe with little for Cynthia to be there for, she’d decided to take a break at the same time too.