Ascension Day Read Free Page A

‘White collar crime like that.’
    BC huffed. ‘ ‘Cept that’s not what landed him here. ‘Sfor cutting his partner’s throat, when he tried to stiff Tally outta part o’ the fuckin’ take.’
    ‘So, more like red collar crime,’ Roddy quipped.
    Everyone laughed, except Peretti, who was still slightly lost in thought and managed only a meek smile. Peretti shook his head.
    ‘Still, not the sort of crime you’d expect Tally to get tied up with in the first place – Y2K scam like that.’
    Roddy nodded, smiling drolly. ‘Yeah, daresay the closest he’s ever come to that is askin’ Lay-lo whether he wants some KY too?’
    The laughs were louder this time, and Peretti joined in as well. Lay-lo was the name given to Maurice Lavine, a soft, doe-eyed Creole African-Mexican drag-review dancer, who, when made up and wearing the right wig, could give J-Lo a run for her money. Lay-lo had earned a life sentence for poisoning a rival dancer who’d started to steal the limelight, and Tally quickly corralled him as his exclusive love interest.
    But it was a touchy subject for Tally – never openly admitted. And for all of their liaisons, Tally had Lay-lo dress up in full regalia – J-Lo, Halle Berry, Beyonce, a different fantasy every time – so that Tally could hide away from the fact that he was having a gay relationship. Not good for his tough guy image. And so Tally also liked to kid himself that it was a closely-guarded secret, even though most of the prison knew yet never dared openly talk about it.
    Because of the nature of the conversation, they’d made sure that Tally or any of his goons weren’t around – but then Tally walked into the canteen just as Roddy delivered his killer punchline. The guffaws and belly-laughs died as quickly as they’d started under Tally’s stony stare.
    Just a look, but in that moment everyone present knew that Roddy’s days, more than anyone else on Libreville’s death row, were numbered.

    Larry regretted the decision as soon as he was a few yards into the ventilation shaft. It was pitch black. Peretti always came armed with the penlight for their digging sessions, from his shared library duty with Larry; with his poor eyesight, he used it for highlighting fine text or picking out titles in the darker corners of the library.
    But even if Larry had the penlight now, he wasn’t sure he would use it. They never dug at night, and the faint light might be picked out shining through where there were corridor grills. Though the main reason they never dug at night, even if they could dummy up their beds and sidestep lock-up, was due to the noise; the hectic hubbub and clatter of daytime prison activity drowned out their digging and scratching.
    Now it was deathly silent, and Larry was aware that his slightest movements seemed to bounce and echo along the steel shaft and sail free into the prison.
    He closed his eyes and swallowed hard as he crawled forward another couple of feet. Anyone close to the shaft could surely hear him. They’d done this journey so many times now that he could picture practically every inch of the prison below him as he went. For another five or six yards, the shaft ran along the back of the cells in his row. Then it crossed a corridor, ran along its side for another eight yards, and dog-logged to run along the back of the cells in J-block.
    Careful, eeeassy does it , he told himself as he crawled the first stretch at the back of the cells; though maybe if one of the other inmates did hear him, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling and unable to sleep, as he’d done for much of his first year, they wouldn’t give him away. Go on, man. Make it! Make it to freedom! Show some hope for all of us.
    He was doubly careful crossing the stretch running by the corridor, edging forward a few inches at a time. The slightest sound reaching the guards on duty, the alarm would be raised in a heartbeat.
    Heartbeat . Pounding rapidly, deafeningly, so that he could hardly tell