Muted mumbling and rustling, as if he was in close, trying to hug and sweet-talk her. Then, after a moment, rising from the mumbling:

‘Give it up, babe… give it up.’ The words punctuated by what sounded like gentle kisses. ‘For me. Is that too much to…’

‘No… no!’ Sharper, louder. Annoyance at his intimacy to try and sway her. ‘It’s not even open for… what? What are you doing? You’re hurting me.’

‘I just don’t like other guys lookin’ at you like that. It drives me, well… crazy, thinking about it.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Crazy’sabout right. Now let me go.’ Brusquer rustling as she wrenched free, and then the slamming of another door.

But his voice followed her, and the argument continued in more muted, indistinct tones behind the closed door.

Jac had heard quite a few arguments coming from next door over the past couple of months. He could hear them clearly when they were in the lounge or kitchen directly adjacent, the bedrooms less so, and the bathroom at the far end not at all.

He listened out for a moment more, but all that reached him was the low drone of traffic, like a muffled swarm of bees, passing on Highway 90 a few blocks away. These were the main disadvantages of his apartment block. At the low-cost end of housing in the Warehouse District, the minimal partition walls meant that you could hear your neighbours when their voices raised, as well as the traffic on the nearby main arteries heading out of the city.

Jac brought his attention back to the files, opening the police report with due veneration and turning over the photos that earlier he’d flipped firmly face-down. He hadn’t wanted to look at them initially, in case they influenced his judgement of Larry Durrant before he started. He wanted to get a feel for the man first, then the crime. Get the sequence right.

One gun-shot to the stomach from eight to ten feet, according to ballistics, then the final shot to the head from close range, only a few inches. The photos of Jessica Roche’s splayed body were painfully raw and would have had a strong impact on even the most hardened juror: one of her legs was crooked behind her at an impossible angle, her blood on the black-and-whites merging with where she’d soiled her dress, and one side of her face collapsed where her skull had shattered, stark horror in contrast to the beauty of her unblemished side.

Jac rubbed his forehead and reached for his coffee cup, before realizing that it was already empty. He could imagine the first shot being fired by somebody already on edge, suddenly disturbed. But that final shot seemed out of character for someone who’d never killed before, and that thought preyed on Jac’s mind as he went through the rest of the police report.

He tried to piece together the sequence of events in his mind from Durrant’s confession and the evidence presented at trial.

But still something didn’t quite fit, and the same sequence kept replaying in his thoughts long after he’d given up trying to make conscious sense of it, along with the rest of the police report, and had gone to bed.

In the final re-runs, Jac was playing the role of Durrant, standing over Jessica Roche’s sprawled body with the still-smoking gun, begging for clues as to why he’d killed her. ‘Please tell me… if you know? Any small sign. Anything!’

But then suddenly the body beneath him became the girl from next door, her long auburn hair cascading either side of her naked body, and she was reaching up for him. ‘Make love to me… Fuck me!’

Jac could feel the heat and sweat of her skin, her hazel eyes piercing straight through him before slowly closing in abandon. ‘Oh lover, fuck me. Fuck me!’

And her gasps of pleasure seemed so real, Jac so wrapped up in it that he didn’t hear Durrant’s footsteps from behind, the shot slamming into the body beneath him changing it abruptly back to Jessica Roche — her blood sticky against his skin, replacing the sweat and passion — and Jac struggled to get away from her clutch as the head-shot came…

Jac awoke with a jolt — suddenly realizing that it was his neighbour’s door slamming again, raised voices following straight after like a tidal wave.

‘No, no… please, Gerry, please!’

‘I ask you one small favour. Just one. But with you… no. No movement. No negotiation.’

‘Please, Gerry, I’m begging you. Don’t be like this.’

‘That’s your problem. You never listen to me. Most other people, I tell ‘em once — that’s it. But you…’

‘No, Gerry, please… I’m begging you. If I’m bruised, I won’t be able to work for a few days.’

‘Maybe that’s what I want. In fact, that would probably suit me just fine.’

‘No, Gerry…. No!’ Desperate now, almost a scream. ‘You’ll wake Molly.’

Snorting derision. ‘You make me sick. You use that girl like a shield. And your beauty. And your precious fucking work and your college course. And all I feel like doin’ is putting a fist right through it, smashing it all …’

‘No, Gerry, no!

Jac heard a thud, together with a shriek from her, and was convinced she’d been hit.

He was now bolt upright in bed, his breathing rapid and fractured with the drama unfolding next door, wondering whether he should go and help her.

The sharp pistol-shot came a second later, and with the long silence following, Jac remained uncertain — his pulse galloping almost in time with his breathing — whether this time it hadbeen a gunshot.

But after a moment he was relieved to hear from next door the sound of her gently weeping.

This was the heart of Libreville. Heart of darkness.

Its six oil boilers pumped and spewed hot vented air to the cells, corridors and general open areas, and hot water to the showers, kitchens and laundry area, which was adjacent.

Some air-conditioning units had been linked up to the venting eight years ago, but they were insufficient to cool the vast prison, and the temperature rarely dropped more than 5 degrees below the outside temperature, which hovered in the 90?s for much of the summer.

The heat and stench of the prison rose insufferably during those months — but in the boiler room and laundry it was insufferable at all times of year. A permanent hell.

It was meant to be lit twenty-four hours by rows of emergency lights — but over half of them were out, either blown naturally and not yet replaced, or broken by inmates who’d wanted to make sure that a particular section remained dark so as to mask one activity or another: a sexual liaison, a drugs handover, a beating. A murder.

Despite the heat, Larry felt a cool tingle run down his spine. He couldn’t see anybody at first, only hear muffled voices and make out some indistinct, jostling shadows from the far corner. A couple of the shadows became heavier, longer, as they fell under the starker light from one of the emergency lights still in place there.

The shadows his end, hopefully, were equally as heavy, but he had to ease himself down cautiously from the ventilation shaft ledge to the floor. The slightest sound, and the mumbling voices would suddenly halt and someone would break free from the shadows to head his way.

As his feet touched the ground, the voices were slightly louder; he was able to risk a few brisk steps to behind the nearest pillar. Then froze again, swallowing back against his rapid heartbeat so that he could listen: was Roddy’s voice there, or was he already too late?

‘Always such a wise mouth, huh? Always the clown. D’yer think this is a funny place, then? Barrel o’ laughs a day?’ Tally’s voice, rising from the earlier muted tones, gave the answer.

‘Not particularly. But I reckon — why not try an’ brighten the days some. I mean, if I can…’

The rest from Roddy was lost as one of the boilers fired up. Someone had turned on a hot tap or a thermostat had dropped somewhere in Libreville’s labyrinths.