Ascension Day

‘Hi. Bell-South. My name’s Leonard Truelle and I made an earlier call requesting an engineer’s visit to check my line.’

‘Telephone number and zip-code?’

Nel-M gave them, and waited anxiously while the girl checked the details on the computer. As agreed with Roche, he’d left it twenty-four hours from his conversation with Truelle before making the call. If there was no request made, he’d have to back-track quickly and say that he’d instructed his secretary but she obviously hadn’t made the request yet. ‘Staff these days!’ Then make the same call twenty-four hours later. Nel-M felt the tension ease from his chest as the girl started speaking again.

‘Yes. Here it is. Appointment for an engineer to call at four-thirty p.m. at the number you gave me. And another one here under the same name the following morning, but a different number and address.’

‘Yes, that ones for my office,’ Nel-M said. ‘But the problem is, I didn’t have my diary with me at the time I made the appointments, and I fear those times might now be a problem. You said four-thirty tomorrow for my home visit… and what time was it for my office?’

‘Eleven the following morning, Thursday.’

Nel-M sighed. ‘I feared as much. Something’s cropped up, and I just don’t think I’m going to be able to make those now.’

‘Do you want me to re-schedule them for you?’

‘No, no. It’s okay. If you cancel them for now, I’ll phone in and book them again when I’ve got my schedule a bit clearer. As it is, I might have been worrying for nothing with the checks I wanted made.’

‘That’s been done for you now, sir. Those engineer visits have been cancelled — and we look forward to your contact again when you’re ready. Thank you for calling Bell-South.’

Nel-M phoned Roche straightaway.

‘He’s taken the bait. But not just with his home-line — he’s having his office checked as well.’

‘You really did light a fire under him.’

‘I think it was that bit about a man in a little room listening in for the past few years.’

‘Well, that’s exactly what’s going to be happening from here on in.’ Roche’s chuckle rode a laboured wheeze. ‘Nothing like a touch of irony to brighten the day.’

Tally Shavell counted down the last of forty push-ups on his cell floor, then, with a sharp sucking in of his breath changed from flat palms to closed fists on the cell floor for a further twenty.

As he finished, his breathing hardly faltering from the exertion, he straightened up and admired himself.

Nothing larger than small shaving mirrors were allowed at Libreville; not only because of the danger of all that jagged glass if they were broken, but because vanity was frowned upon by Haveling. But pictures and paintings were allowed, again with Haveling’s approval, and as long as they had Perspex rather than glass covering.

So Tally had chosen a five-foot high poster print of Othello from a production at Chicago’s Shakespeare Theater. The poster depicted Othello looking towards a light high in the wings to which he was making an impassioned, hand-outstretched, plea. The light picked out only his face, part of one shoulder, and his outstretched hand. Everything else — the rest of his body and the surrounding stage scenery — was blacked out.

Tally knew that with its strong cultural and ‘black roots’ tag, Haveling wouldn’t dare give it the thumbs-down. But it wasn’t the image itself or its message that had attracted Tally, it was its blackness. He could see his reflection in the darkness surrounding Othello’s lit face.

And perhaps, in an ironic way, he felt it also mirrored how he saw himself at Libreville: operating in the darker shadows beyond what everyone saw on the surface.

He took a deep breath and pumped up his torso and biceps. He wasn’t as dark as the actor in Othello: his father’s Arcadian Indian/Creole French blood had tempered his mother’s African lineage to make his skin tone a dark bronze with grey undertone. It showed up well against the darkness of the poster, his skin shining and glistening with the sweat from his press-ups.

He tensed more, until the veins stood up proud and blue-grey on his skin, then kept his left arm rigid as he reached with his right hand for the syringe on the table to one side.

He found the vein without hardly looking and slowly and firmly squeezed it home.

‘Ice’ or ‘chalk’, it was favoured by those in the prison who wanted a sharper, adrenalin-pumped high — which included most of his crew — rather than become zombies from crack or heroin.

Tally had his hand in the supply chain of nearly everything at Libreville, and most ‘chalk’ or ‘ice’ was supplied in tablet form or in crystals for smoking, though Tally preferred it intravenously: he liked to feel that hit after only seconds, preferably while he was still looking at his reflection and could see it practically coursing like a lit fuse through his bulging veins before exploding at the back of his brain.

His head jolted back as it hit, and every nerve end tensed of its own accord. He felt like that scene in Highlander, electrical surges connecting his body to the sky and half the universe beyond, lifting him off his feet. And he savoured the sensation, knowing that’s how he’d feel when he made his next move against Rodriguez.

He knew that he couldn’t leave it long. People were starting to talk: ‘Can’t even finish off a midget Mexican these days.’ He knew that each day he left Rodriguez alive he risked letting slip his power grip over Libreville; and, as if echoing that thought, he felt the effects of the methamphetamine start to slide away from his body. He stared back at his image through the blackness, his widely dilated pupils settling back as he focused and started to plan where and when.

13

As they took up their seats in the canteen, BC nudged Rodriguez and looked towards the end of the table. ‘Hey, don’ forget. New kid on the block.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Rodriguez studied the boy. Barely in his twenties, brush-cut black hair, wide-eyed and bewildered from arriving at Libreville just the day before. Rodriguez hardly felt in the mood for it with everything with Larry still hanging by a thread; if McElroy got no joy over Josh’s e-mails to Larry, that was probably it: throw- in-the-towel time.

But it had become standard routine, his greeting of new inmates to the cell-block. His audience now expected it of him, looked forward to it. One of the high points to break the dour, stifling routine. Rodriguez headed towards the end of the table, Theo Mellor sitting next to the new inmate promptly getting up and swapping places with him. Everyone knew their part in playing it out.

‘Hey, howya doin’?’ Rodriguez held out a hand in greeting which the boy uncertainly took to shake. ‘Roddy… Roddy Rodriguez. I’m the communications guy here, yer know, for any letters and e-mails you wanna send to family and friends. An’ it also falls down to me to give you a quick introduction to who’s who here. An’ you are?’

‘Billy. Billy Hillier.’ Still uncertain, a faint smile threatening to break through.

‘Well, Billy, the first thing you’re gonna have to know is everyone’s names roun’ here. Get their names wrong, and they’ll likely slit your throat before you even started what you were gonna say to ‘em.’ Hillier went deathly white, and Rodriguez left it a few seconds before easing a smile and nudging him. ‘Just joshin’.’ Rodriguez glanced briefly back along the table, all eyes now on them expectantly, some already allowing themselves a small grin; they knew what was coming, and this one looked like he was going to make a good mark. ‘And to make it more confusin’, everyone round here’s got nicknames. So the trick is to fix somethin’ in your mind that’ll help you remember them. Now let’s start with a few easy ones: Sal Peretti along there, his first name’s Salvatore — and maybe you’ll remember Sal by the bit of salt in his hair. Well, more than a bit by now. And Gill Arneck up there, we just call him ‘Neck’ — though that’s as much ‘cause he ain’t got much neck, his fat head just sits straight on his shoulders.’ The smiles broadening along the table, a couple of chuckles. ‘And myself, Roddy…’ Rodriguez held one hand out for Hillier to fill the gap.

‘Uh… uh, short for Rodriguez?’