Vicious Circle (43 page)

‘I know that something has happened to the girls. No matter what Ronnie has told Henry tonight I am going to be strong,’ she promised herself. ‘I am not going to break down and weep. I am going to be strong for him.’

She resumed her restless pacing. Suddenly the phone that she had placed beside her own seat rang and she ran back to the table and snatched it up with a great surge of relief.

‘Henry!’ she said. ‘Darling! Where are you?’ And her voice sang joyously.

‘No, Hazel, it’s me. Ronnie.’

‘Oh God!’ The music went out of her voice. ‘Is Henry all right? Where is he?’

‘There is only one way to tell you this, Hazel. With any other woman I would try to soften it, but you are different. You are as strong as any man I know.’

Hazel could hear her own heart beating in her ears. She did not speak for five slow heartbeats, and then she said quietly, ‘He had a premonition. He’s dead, isn’t he, Ronnie?’

‘I am so dreadfully sorry, my dear.’

‘How?’

‘A stroke. A massive stroke. It was almost instantaneous. He felt nothing.’

‘Where is he?’ She felt the cold, a searing arctic cold that struck down into the inner regions of her soul.

‘Hospital,’ he said. ‘St Luke’s Episcopal.’

‘Send Bonzo to fetch me, please, Ronnie.’

‘He’s on his way already,’ Ronnie assured her.

*

Hazel stood beside the high hospital bed and looked down on the human shape under the white sheet. The cold was still in her heart and in her bones.

Ronnie stood beside her. He took her hand.

‘Thank you, Ronnie. I mean no offence, but I have to do this on my own.’ Carefully she withdrew her hand from his.

‘I understand, Hazel.’ Ronnie took a pace backwards and then looked across the bed to the nurse who was standing ready. ‘Thank you, Sister.’ The nurse took the top edge of the sheet and drew it down gently.

In death Henry Bannock had recaptured the imperial mantle which grief had stripped from him.

‘He was a beautiful man,’ Ronnie said softly. ‘He was the finest man I ever knew.’

‘He still is,’ Hazel said. She leaned forward and kissed Henry. His lips were as cold as her heart.

‘
Au revoir,
Henry,’ she whispered. ‘God speed, my love. You should have died hereafter. Cayla and I are bereft. You have left us only dust and darkness.’

‘No, Hazel,’ Ronnie contradicted her softly. ‘Henry has left you an empire and the shining beacon of his example to light the way ahead for both you and Cayla.’

*

‘A stroke!’ said Carl Peter Bannock joyfully. ‘A massive stroke. The only thing bad about it is that they say he never suffered. His doctors are on TV saying that it was so quick that there would have been almost no pain. I would have enjoyed it even more if they told me that he went out screaming and blubbering in agony.’

Johnny grinned. ‘I never knew him but I hate the old shit as much as you do. They should feed him to the pigs the way you did to his brats.’

‘Unfortunately, my father built himself a big marble temple on top of a hill where he will lie for ever like Napoleon, stuffed and embalmed.’

‘That’s great, white boy. As soon as they turn you loose you should go up there and piss on him.’

Carl whooped with mirth. ‘Great idea! While I am about it I might go all the way and curl out a turd on his head.’

‘Did you know that this would happen when you sent him the video? Did you know that it would kill the old bastard?’ Johnny Congo asked.

‘Of course I did!’ Carl gloated. ‘Didn’t you know, man? I have some weird powers. My father kept the ashes of all the filthy Jews he burned in the gas ovens in Bergen-Belsen, and on the day I was born he rubbed a pinch of those ashes on my head.’

Johnny stopped grinning and looked uneasy. ‘Don’t talk that sort of crap to me, man. It gives me the shits.’

‘I am telling you, Johnny. Voodoo stuff, man! The evil eye! I got the evil eye.’ Carl opened his eyes wide and stared at Johnny Congo. ‘I can change you into a toad. Do you want to change into a toad, Johnny? Just look into my eyes.’ Carl’s face contorted into a horrible rictus and he rolled his eyes.

‘Cut that out, man, I’m warning you. Stop fooling around with that sort of stuff.’ Johnny jumped off his bunk and went to the barred window. He deliberately turned his back on Johnny and stared out at the tiny wedge of sky that passed for a view in Holloway. ‘I’m warning you! Don’t make me mad.’

‘Your mother made you mad, Johnny. She made you mad when she dropped you on your head when you were a baby.’ Johnny spun around from the window and glared at him.

‘You leave my mother out of this, white boy.’ Carl knew that this time it was not an endearment. Carl also knew just how far he could press his luck with him, and he knew that he had reached the absolute limit.

‘Come on, Johnny.’ Carl held up both hands in surrender. ‘I’m your friend, remember? You told me I give you the best blow jobs you ever had. I don’t have any voodoo powers. I love you, man. I was just kidding around, man.’

‘Well, don’t kid around about my mother.’ Johnny had lost the main theme of the discussion. ‘She was a saint, man. I’m telling you.’ He was only marginally mollified.

‘And I believe you, Johnny. You showed me her picture, remember? She looked pretty damn saintly to me.’ He changed the subject quickly. ‘Just think of this. You and me, we set out to get those three bitch relatives of mine and we got more than that. We got the main man as well. I brought down my own daddy. How cool is that?’

‘That’s cool. That’s cool as a pound of shit in a deep freeze.’ Johnny turned back from the window. He was smiling again.

‘We got more than half of them with one punch. There are only two left now; my old man’s bride and her bastard brat. Only two more to go down and the money is all mine.’

‘How much is it, Carl baby?’ Johnny had forgotten and forgiven the affront to his sainted mother’s memory. ‘Tell me how much money you going to get, man.’

‘One day soon I am going to get me fifty billion green frogskins out of that old trust, Johnny baby.’

Johnny rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘Man, that’s so much money I still can’t get my head around it. Tell me how much it is in a way that I can understand it. Tell me the stuff about the motor cars.’

Carl thought for a moment. ‘Well, let me put it this way, Johnny. I will have enough money to buy every single motor car in the whole of the US of A.’

Johnny rolled his eyes as though he was hearing it for the first time. ‘Awesome, man, Carl baby. That’s just plain awesome!’ Johnny Congo waggled his head and giggled like a teenage girl. It always took Carl by surprise when he did that.

‘And I tell you something else. If one of my good friends is standing beside me when that all goes down he is going to get himself one – or ten – truckloads of those green goodies.’

‘I’ll be right there beside you, Carl baby, all the way.’ Then Johnny’s face puckered up into a bulldog frown. ‘That is unless the man don’t give me the hot needle first.’

The buoyant mood between them changed swiftly. Earlier that week Johnny Congo’s lawyer had informed him that his appeal against the death sentence had finally reached the Supreme Court, and that in all probability the judgement would be handed down within the next eighteen months. Up to this stage the appeal seemed to have become totally bogged down in the legal system. As the years passed Johnny Congo had settled into a state of complacency. He had come to believe that his comfortable existence within the walls of the Holloway Correctional Unit would continue for the tenure of his natural life.

But now abruptly the spectral figure of the executioner with his dreaded needle had reappeared on Johnny’s horizon and was closing in on him, slowly but inexorably.

He had long ago been found guilty in the High Court of Texas of multiple murders with aggravating circumstances. To date the exact number of his capital convictions was twelve. The state prosecutor had decided that this was sufficient to his purpose. However, in the event that this was not the case and that Johnny somehow managed to wriggle off his hook, he had dockets for a further twenty-eight cases of murder that he could bring against Johnny at any time in the future.

Texas law recognized nine capital felonies. As he had boasted to Carl Bannock on more than one occasion, Johnny had qualified for five out of the nine. They had convicted him of straight murder; for sexually aggravated murder because sometimes Johnny liked to spice up the job; and of murder for remuneration which had been Johnny’s main profession after he had completed his two tours of duty with the US Marine Corps. They had also got him for multiple killings, which were inevitable in his line of business, and murder in the course of a prison escape. In his case the jail break had not been a success.

As Johnny very reasonably complained to Carl, ‘How they expect anyone to break out of here without blowin’ somebody away? It’s just downright illogical, man.’

All these birds of his were coming home to roost, and Johnny’s birds were all vultures. He was a worried man.

‘Calm down, Blackbird. Don’t worry,’ Carl counselled him.

‘Soon as anybody tells me “Don’t worry”, that’s when I really start worrying myself to death, man.’

‘We have gotten Marco and half the guards eating out of our hands. When the time comes to spring you they will lay down the red carpet for you to waltz out through the gates without getting your shoes dirty.’

‘When is that going to happen, man?’ Johnny insisted.

‘They are not going to hit you with the needle for another two years, like your lawyer says. So we have got that long at least,’ Carl explained. ‘In ten months’ time my own jail time ends, and I am out of here. We already have everything set up. As soon as I am released I will get everything else set up on the outside. We will make it all infallible.’

‘So then we will go into business with each other on the outside, just like we done in here.’

‘You can bet your sweet ass.’

‘I don’t know, Carl.’ Johnny looked dubious. ‘I have been thinking about this. When I get out I’ll be a marked man. With twelve murder raps on my score card the man will put a million dollars on my head, and they will have wanted posters stuck up on every wall in Texas and across the whole US of A. With a face like mine people are going to recognize me pretty damn easily. I’ll have every bounty hunter in the northern hemisphere after me.’ Gloomily Johnny reeled off the list of his woes. ‘Where am I going to hide?’ They were both silenced by the question.

‘Where’re you from, Johnny?’ Carl demanded suddenly, and Johnny stared at him blankly.

‘That’s a stupid question. I told you I’m from Nacogdoches, the toughest town in the entire Lone Star State, didn’t I?’

‘I mean where were you born? You don’t speak like you were born in Texas.’

‘I was born in Africa, man.’

‘Whereabouts in Africa?’

‘What you think my name is, white boy?’ Johnny cheered up and grinned.

‘Johnny.’

‘Johnny who?’

‘Johnny Congo.’

‘Right on, man! Johnny Congo. That’s me. My grandpappy owned half the entire country. He were the paranormal chief of the whole damn place.’

‘Do you mean the paramount chief?’

‘Whatever, man. He was the king. He had five hundred wives, man. That’s as much a king as anybody can get!’

‘Do you speak the language?’ Carl asked.

‘My mammy taught me well. There are two languages. Inhutu is the language of where I come from. And Swahili is the lingo of all of East Africa. I speak them both.’

‘Why did your father decide to leave Africa, Johnny?’

‘When my grandpappy died my father was his son number twenty-six. He got himself the hell out of there before his big brother, who was son number one, could put him in a pot and cook him for dinner. Where I come from we don’t piss around. We are real mean bastards, I tell you, man. The Congo is a big country. It has been split up into three or four separate countries.’

‘Which one do you come from, Johnny? Where were you born, man?’

‘My country is called Kazundu.’

‘How do you spell that?’

‘Shit, I don’t know. I was only born there, white boy. I didn’t discover the place.’

Suddenly there was a rattle of keys on the steel bars of the cell, and Carl stood up.

‘It’s time for me to go,’ he said with resignation. With the influence that the two of them wielded in the institution, they had been able to meet every night from midnight to three a.m. Every visit cost them a few thousand dollars in bribes. Neither of them grudged the money. Over the long period of their association Johnny had become a multimillionaire, carried to those heights on the back of Carl’s financial smarts.

Apart from Carl, Johnny had been deprived of many other forms of convivial, intimate and sympathetic human contact. The cells on death row were arranged so that the inmates were unable to see each other. Their only contact was verbal, shouting to each other down the echoing gallery.

Johnny Congo had been a certifiably crazy psychopath even before he was jailed. Without the benefit of Carl’s company over the past nine years he would most likely have become a suicide or a raving lunatic.

On the other hand, Carl’s prison routine as a trusty was relatively easy. He was allowed four hours a day in the exercise yard where his contact with other sub-humans was, if anything, overly unrestricted.

He was allowed visitors twice a week, though nobody from the outside came to visit him, unless it was his bank manager. Once Carl had numbered his friends in their hundreds, but now he had none, other than Johnny Congo. The notoriety of his crimes had placed the mark of the Beast on his forehead for all the world to see. He had been shunned and abandoned by everybody outside of Holloway.

However, Carl had a deep-seated need of human contact, of sycophants to flock around him and tell him what a marvellous person he really was. He knew that when he left prison he would have to buy his friends, or seek them in the ranks of the outcasts from society wherein he now found himself numbered.

Suddenly the idea of Africa was very attractive. His father had taken him on a hunting safari to that land when he was sixteen. He had killed over fifty wild animals, and had sex with a number of Maasai and Samburu girls. He had enjoyed it all immensely.