Come, Time

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Water. No need to remind anyone that water is life. In death, most of us choose to return to the earth but me, if I can, I will be buried at sea. Returning to the earth makes no sense to me, returning to the sea, now that seems right. After all, our flesh is not earth; it is water - plus impurities.

  Even this weak stream of water, falling from the shower, flushes life and vigor back into my body and soul. The water flows weakly because in Malta clean, everyday water is scarce. A laminated leaflet, placed on the closed toilet seat, asked me, the guest, to flush with care. Malta, it seems, is a resource free rock, treading saltwater in the middle of the sea.

  I have taken a room in the Fortino, which was the first hotel in Valletta I came across. Physically, I am exhausted but mentally, I feel cleansed, ripe and ready for the fight. In my mind, I feel correct. My options are simple, I have only one. Continue, above and beyond Oakley. The passport, credit card and money could all help me travel the world. I could flee somewhere and anywhere, hidden but still false and tainted.

  What is the credit card for, to keep me on the leech, to pay me a wage? But for what, for silence, for work?

  Oakley is dead, but I still don’t know why? In the eyes of many, I am still the cowardly murderer of a harmless, old lady, and this, I cannot tolerate. I don’t know how, but I must dig deeper. I have evidence, enough to cause trouble and to make some demands, but not enough to clear my name. Not enough for clear and total victory.

  Once clean, fed and hydrated I sleep. Seven hours later, my watch alarm wakes me. I went to bed with a gun hidden beneath the pillow; when I wake, it is gripped in my hand. Having slept fully clothed, boots and all, I rise ready to roll, a rhythm knocked off kilter by the sight of a wardrobe and sofa pushed against the door. For a moment, I feel a beat of unease until the right memory unwinds and soothes my mind.

  With coffee cooling, I sit on the bed and review the video footage of Oakley. It doesn’t seem real, too raw and amateur. With his death about to play, I get the urge to look away but force myself to watch. About to pull the trigger, I, him, me in the video, take a step back. Why? To stop the shower of brains, blood and flesh hitting me and my clothes. What the fuck, look at me now, on the verge of becoming a pro?

  The footage clearly shows the man alive and strapped to the chair is the spit of the Oakley pictured in the newspaper. This is far from absolute proof of identity, but still, it’s got to be worth something. Enough to blow smoke into the public domain.

  I make a back-up copy. I take the camcorder and film the footage. Watching it play over, I see the rage in Oakley’s stare. A rage I read as the rage of injustice. A man of absolute arrogance reduced to a plaything. No doubt he saw himself as something great. From the divine to a lump of meat.

  What sort of man would commit the crimes he has? What would he look like? Well, if this is the template, far from average, too plain for average. Neither thin nor fat, neither pale nor tanned, neither handsome nor ugly just physically dull. Beyond the visible, I see a man too precious to be free. A man with a list of foods he fears to eat; who can’t recall the last time his belly was stuffed full of food, wine or love; fearful and anxious of what he can’t control, so much of life, from illness to people; groomed to be presentable, but not to get laid.

  As I watch him shake and nod his head, hints of rhythm and repetition emerge. Watching over and over a pattern jumps out, both obvious and pleading. For a second, he becomes still then makes twelve shakes to the left, then one to the right, then two left, eighteen right, one left, six right, five left. The shakes become nods: one up, four down, three up, seven down, five up, two down. For a second, he pauses in stillness until shaking twelve to the left, one to the right and so on.

  I rewind the footage, grab a pen from my rucksack and get ready to note the numbers down. Twelve, one, two, eighteen, one, six, five, one, four, three, seven, five, two. As numbers, they mean nothing to me, so I convert them to letters, which read LABSAFEADCHEB. Straightaway LAB SAFE jumps out, but ADCHEB? Could this mean a number? One, four, three, eight, two. Could this be the code to open the safe?

  With Wi-Fi in the room, I log on to the Internet and search for answers. In an article about the crash, a local newspaper claims that Oakley was the Head of Research at the Smith Research Centre, which is located on the outskirts of Hamrun, Malta. Is this a lab, as in lab safe? I Google it, but all I learn are details of its location. I can find no company website or any other information.

  Is he looking for revenge, looking for me to act on his behalf? OK, fine, but what’s in it for me? Information to take me above and beyond him, to prove my innocence?

  I pack my rucksack and get ready to leave. Seeing the guns, I check them for ammunition. Phillip’s gun holds twenty-one rounds, the other, twenty-four.

  Am I being watched? Properly paranoid, I believe the worst, so leave the hotel through a ground floor fire door, which leads to a discreet side street.

  The Valletta nightlife simmers with gentle potential. All tensions burn slow and subdued. The crowds I tolerate with ease. Nighttime crowds slip past me more freely than those of the day. The night is far more forgiving and seems far more physical. There are always lies but those of the night, liberate more than those of the day.

  Inside a foreign city, alone and at night, you don’t as much walk as prowl. I’ve felt it before, that spike of adrenalin, that need to live before you die, but tonight I walk with blinkers. My only thought is to find a taxi and speed quickly away.