Whatever had been said, Tally didn’t appear to like it. The sudden burst of air from Roddy as he was hit in the stomach almost mirrored the hurrrumph from the boiler.

‘B’fore I slit your throat, I’m gonna beat you like y’never…. known… before.’

Tally timed his blows to emphasise his last few words, and Larry used the sound-cover to shuffle quickly forward to the next pillar.

‘I wantya t’feel this first. Each blow like the rotten, fuckin’ jokes yer told… day in… day out…’

The sound of the blows landing, accompanying Roddy’s guttural groans, was sickening, and his coughing and retching straight after sounded as if it already carried blood.

Larry clenched his jaw as he risked a glimpse past the pillar. There were three of them with Tally: Dennis Marmont, one of the guards in head-guard Glenn Bateson’s pocket — he should have guessed Bateson wouldn’t risk being present personally — and Jay-T and Silass, two of Tally’s main muscle men.

Jay-T worried Larry the most. The only true brother of the group — Tally was a Creole-African mix — at six-five, a full four inches over Larry, he was surprisingly fast for his size, and had good technique for someone who’d never been formally trained.

‘ What’s that? I thought I saw something.’

Larry ducked quickly back into the shadows behind the pillar as Marmont’s torch flicked on and shone his way.

A frozen few seconds with only the sound of the group’s suppressed breathing before Tally said, ‘Only a rat … or maybe you jus’ seein’ things among the shadows.’

‘Fucking big rat, when I can see its shadow halfway up a pillar,’ Marmont retorted, and Larry heard his footsteps start towards him.

But after a moment the steps became uncertain, then stopped completely.

‘You check it out’ — Larry saw the beam of the torch swing back and then towards him again — ‘I’m only meant t’be here as a witness. To ensure fair play.’ Faint chuckle from Marmont, but along with his faltering step, it betrayed his nervousness.

Another set of footsteps started forward. Larry stayed deathly still, struggling to make out whose they were beyond his pounding heart. He looked at the advancing shadow in Marmont’s torchlight beam — but exaggerated and elongated, it told him little.

Marmont also started moving forward again, no doubt feeling braver now that someone else was a few steps ahead of him.

Larry held his breath, his whole body rigid as the footsteps approached.

He’d have to make his first punch count and jump Marmont almost in one — otherwise Marmont would have a clear shot with his night-stick or gun, and it would all be over. But if it was Jay-T or Tally, he’d be hard pushed to do much with just one punch. His breath fell fast and shallow, his flank pressed firm against the pillar shielding him as the footsteps moved closer.

And as the torch-beam came to within a few feet, bathing the area just to his side in light, suddenly he was a fresh-faced twenty-two year old contender again, facing his first big fight in Atlanta’s Omni arena — the clapping and stomping of the crowd almost in time with his thudding heartbeat.

His mouth was dry, his skin bathed in sweat — as it had been then — as the adrenalin rush fired up every nerve-end and muscle.

But as the approaching footsteps and the torch-beam’s angle passed the point of no return, and Larry lunged fully into its light with his first punch, he wasn’t sure if it was the roar of approval of his first fights, or the groans and shouts of derision of his last — when only four years later he lay on the canvass for the last time.

Glory or demise? Like so much else in his life, the line between them had been slight, almost impossible to discern.

Jac was running late.

He was fifteen minutes later than planned getting into the office because he’d dozed off again for a while after his alarm sounded; he’d slept fitfully after being awoken in the middle of the night by the slamming doors and voices from next door, which, in turn, meant that he didn’t have time to get Penny Vance to type up Langfranc’s dictation notes on Libreville — he’d simply grabbed a hand-held cassette before rushing out again, and planned to listen to it on the journey.

He caught his train connection with only a minute to spare and it left on time — but then it was held up for twenty-five minutes while the Santa Fe railroad shunted a never-ending stream of freight trucks past them on a dual-track junction.

So now Jac found himself rushing to make up time, pushing his rented Ford Taurus for the most part past sixty on the country roads that made up the last forty-five miles between Baton Rouge and Libreville. Jac anxiously checked his watch as the flatlands and swamps of the Mississippi Delta flashed by.

‘ Haveling runs a tight ship at Libreville. Everything by the book and strict routine. And God help anyone who upsets that routine.’Faint chuckle from Langfranc on tape . ‘So while you and timekeeping might often not be the best of buddies — try and be on time for all your meetings with him and Durrant. Get everything off on the right foot.’

Jac edged his foot down. If he pushed it, he might be no more than five minutes late. He’d started playing Langfranc’s dicta-tape on the train — until a man across the aisle started paying him and the tape too much attention. He’d saved the rest for the car journey.

‘ But the upside of that is that Haveling will deliver everything you need — reports and recommendations on Durrant — strictly on time. No delays or hassle. And talking of God, Warden Haveling’s even more devout than our dear Governor Candaret. Stories abound of him taking a bible with him into the execution chamber, and, if the condemned is stuck for an apt last passage to be read by the prison Pastor, Haveling will recommend a few. He even offers to hold the condemned’s hand in the final moments — if they should so require.’Langfranc paused markedly . ‘Which I suppose raises more awkward questions about Haveling’s character and state of mind than it should — but at least it supports that pushing Durrant’s religious bent as hard as you can is without doubt the main ticket. And in Haveling’s defence, he’s a lot better than his predecessors. Claims of turning a blind eye to, or even supporting, institutionalized violence hung over most of them. Haveling’s immediate predecessor was as straight as they come, but lacked the backbone to push through what he wanted. High levels of violence still continued. A year ago there was a New Orleans magazine piece on Haveling picturing him with a bible in one hand and night-stick in the other, which just about summed him up. “Iron fist, with — he believes — God’s backing and approval”.

‘ There are still incidents of violence, but probably no more than most maximum-security penitentiaries. Certainly, things now are a far cry from the dark days of the seventies and eighties when there were regular pitched battles with Cleaver-style radicals and assorted psychos going at each other with machetes sneaked in from the fields. Inmates then regularly slept with steel breastplates to protect them from getting hacked to death in the night.

‘ Libreville was in fact originally a slave plantation dating back to the 1830s, and its name came from the West African port where most of the slaves were shipped from, with the change from plantation to penitentiary coming in the early 1900s when…

Jac’s cell-phone rang. He looked at the display: his mother or younger sister. He stopped the tape and answered.

His mother, Catherine, quickly launched into a subject she’d broached at the weekend past when he’d visited.

‘Have you given it much thought yet?’ she pressed.

‘A bit,’ he lied. Even without the Durrant case, he wouldn’t have given it much consideration. Arranged date; he thought that sort of thing had died out a century ago. ‘But I haven’t decided yet.’