The Top Prisoner of C-Max (17 page)

With Dlomo in the back of the truck were four other prisoners who knew nothing about what was planned for them. In front he could see the driver and two other guards, whose repeating rifles were held between their legs, facing upwards and away from them. If the aim was good, the
RPG
would take out all three. Dlomo knew the two men who would be firing it and he doubted the national defence force had anyone who could fire an
RPG
better. In this place, with the vehicle coming down the straight on an almost-flat stretch of road, it was the nearest thing to aiming at a stationary object.

The message had got through to Dlomo that the flat stretch came right after a large farm dam on the right and a barn on the left. The dam should be easy to spot and would give him a few seconds before the
RPG
was fired.

Smallholdings on either side of the road gave way to bigger farms. A few horses were grazing on a pasture that was green with the late-summer rains. Beyond it a tractor was ploughing a small field, dragging behind it a small plume of dust. Dlomo saw the dam in enough time to get down on the floor. There was also enough time for the other prisoners to follow, the whites of their eyes bright in their brown faces. There was not enough time for the guards to notice that anything unusual had happened.

In the thicket ahead, the man supporting the barrel of the
RPG
moved as the projectile was launched. He was standing on a slope and had wedged one foot between a stunted thorn tree and the sloping ground. His shoulder moved no more than a centimetre, but it was enough to send the rocket left and low. It ricocheted off the road surface and into a dirt bank, exploding on impact and showering dirt onto the road.

The driver had spent a few years in the army and he recognised what he had just seen. He braked hard and had started to swing the truck round when the second rocket was fired. The aim was again low, but not as low as the first time and the direction was much better. The truck was now at an angle of some forty-five degrees to the direction they had been travelling in. The projectile smashed into the left passenger door, destroying that side of the cab, the head and left side of the man who was seated there and the left shoulder of the man next to him.

By the time the members of Dlomo’s gang reached the truck, the guard nearest the door was already dead and the one next to him was unconscious and dying. The driver had both hands in the air and was shouting ‘not armed, not armed’. The first gang member to reach the door, one of the new men, killed him with a single shot from his
AK
-47.

The back door had burst and Dlomo forced his way through a ragged hole in the bodywork, the others following. Wilfred Seremane, who had organised the raid, was pointing to the scrub with his
AK
and shouting at the other prisoners, ‘Fuck off, all of you. Fuck off.’ None of them could hear what he was saying, but the gesture was enough. They all ran for the scrub.

For a moment, Dlomo, drunk with the shock that came from his proximity to the explosion, leant against what remained of the truck’s left side, but Seremane had him by the arm and was pulling him towards one of two cars that had been parked down a narrow farm track. ‘Come, Chief,’ he said. ‘We got to fuck off too.’ Like the others, Dlomo had been deafened by the explosion. On unsteady legs, he followed Seremane.

Despite his condition, a fierce and angry joy had risen within him. He was free to carry out his plan.

BECAUSE
the Dongwana matter was criminal, the
CID
had been called and they were conducting the interrogation, with Director Nkabinde observing. The director’s brown face was overlain with grey. He had just received the news of Dlomo’s escape and the fact that all three men in the truck had been killed. Later that evening he would tell his wife that this had been the worst day of his career.

Yudel had asked to be allowed into the interrogation of Dongwana, but had been told that his presence was not necessary. When he objected, the director had said, ‘Please, Yudel, for a change just do your own work.’

Dongwana had been escorted into the interrogation room, looking like a dog that had been whipped. Before Yudel returned to his office, the director asked him, ‘Where were the guns going, do you think?’

‘Kruger.’

‘I know you hate him, Yudel. That doesn’t mean he’s guilty of everything.’

‘I think he’s the only one who could have forced Dongwana to do it.’

‘You think he had to be forced?’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe the police will get him to talk.’ He was moving towards the door of the interrogation room.

‘They won’t.’

Nkabinde stopped and turned back. ‘Why not?’

‘He doesn’t want bad things to be done to Penny again. I know Alfred. He’d die rather than say anything if it’s going to endanger Penny again.’

The director looked thoughtfully at Yudel. ‘What the hell’s going on here? Dlomo’s escape and this in one morning? Why don’t you walk through and tell me what you think. Maybe we need to lock the place down, at least for the day.’

‘Okay. I’ll walk through.’

‘Talk to me later.’

‘I will.’

Yudel went from Nkabinde through one cell block after the other, walking slowly, observing what he could, employing all the senses recognised by physical science and at least one that had not yet achieved that recognition. Yudel believed in intuition, but not in a broad, objective way. He believed in his own intuition. He did not know if other people possessed it, but he knew he did.

He walked corridor after corridor, through workshops, the laundry, exercise yard and even the sickbay. Prisoners were doing the things they did every day. There were perhaps more who looked searchingly at him for longer than usual, but he was aware that this may be his imagination. Outwardly, nothing had changed. And yet a fever that was not present on other days permeated the prison and descended on him from every side.

The news of Dlomo’s escape and Dongwana’s arrest would have spread through the prison in minutes. That was the nature of the fever. It was expectancy. Something was happening to break the dull, repetitive pace of prison life. The brown boer and his boys had not been able to hold Dlomo and one of their own men had tried to bring guns through the main gate. A change had taken place and every man in the prison wondered if maybe there was something in it for him. Every man knew that it was possible to break out. C-Max was not impregnable, no prison was, except perhaps Kokstad.

He was barely back in his office when the phone rang. It was Brigadier Sibiya. ‘He’s gone,’ the brigadier told Yudel.

Yudel knew who he was talking about, but his response was automatic. ‘Hall?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you know he’s gone?’

He heard the brigadier sigh. ‘The total of his possessions amount to some clothing and a few personal items. It’s all gone and the cleaners in the building tell us he had unauthorised visitors last night. We know what we’re doing, Yudel.’

‘So where’s he gone?’

‘Christ, Yudel. I found out fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Thanks for letting me know,’ Yudel said.

‘It’s my pleasure.’ But there was no pleasure in the brigadier’s voice.

A moment after he had hung up, Yudel called Beloved’s number. The phone rang for a while, then her recorded voice reached him. ‘This is Beloved Childe,’ it said. ‘I’m not available at this very moment, but I’m deeply fascinated to hear what you have to say. Please do leave a message after the signal. You can depend on receiving a reply as soon as I’m free. I know you’re going to have a lovely day.’

Yudel hated speaking into recording devices. He usually hung up when they invited him to leave a message. This time he told the recorder, ‘Beloved, this is Yudel. I’ve just received news that Oliver Hall has violated his parole. Please be careful. He is more dangerous—’ At that point the recorder lost interest in Yudel’s message and stopped recording him. He went on to tell cyberspace that he trusted that Hall did not know that she was working at the Freedom Foundation, but that she should stop working until Hall was rearrested. He had no way of knowing that the last part of the message was not going to reach her.

News of Elia Dlomo’s escape and the failed attempt to smuggle guns into C-Max had also reached Freek Jordaan’s desk and interrupted his reading of a national Afrikaans newspaper. Reading the newspaper was not an activity he usually indulged in while at his desk, but the subject matter of a report was especially interesting.

His office was in the new police headquarters building, and, according to the report, the way the tender had been awarded to a friend of the national commissioner of police was not legal. It seemed the public protector felt that the commissioner’s friend was going to make an excessive profit at the taxpayer’s expense. The disagreement between the public protector and the commissioner had reached the front page of all national newspapers.

So far, it had been an unusual morning in other ways too. A query had come by email from the police laboratory in Silverton, just outside the city, to ask if it was in order to use human heads in a ballistics test. ‘I trust the heads are no longer being used for their more common purpose,’ Freek replied, ‘and that we will not have complaints from the relatives of their former owners.’

Earlier he had turned down a photograph for the police magazine showing him addressing a hall full of officers. ‘Let’s find one in which the senior officers in the front row do not appear to be asleep,’ he had told the magazine’s editor.

Freek was putting down the newspaper when the phone rang, and he heard Yudel’s voice on the other end of the line. ‘Oliver Hall’s gone,’ Yudel told him.

‘The Department of Correctional Services is having an interesting morning. Any idea where he’s going?’

‘He has a brother in Johannesburg and there’s a woman in Cape Town who may need protection.’

‘The American?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d better tell me about her.’

‘I will,’ Yudel said.

‘I have to go to Midrand on an asset forfeiture matter. Come with me and we can talk on the way.’

Freek drove and Yudel told him about Beloved, the effect she had on the prisoners, her meeting with Hall and the time she had spent alone with him.

Freek glanced at him out of the corners of his eyes. ‘She had an effect on the prisoners, you say. You said nothing about the effect she had on you.’

‘She had no particular effect on me.’

‘Come on, Yudel. I’ve known you a long time.’

‘At my age,’ Yudel spluttered, ‘do you think …’

‘Gimme a break, Yudel. Good-looking is she?’

‘Her looks have got nothing to do with it.’

‘Great figure?’

Freek’s questions were almost identical to his own questioning of Dongwana over the matter of his having sex with a female prisoner. ‘How does her figure get into this?’

‘Nice little wiggle when she walks? Twinkle in her eyes?’

At last Yudel recognised the twinkle in Freek’s own eyes and realised that he was joking. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I share my thoughts with you.’

Freek took hold of Yudel’s shoulder closest to him and shook it hard enough to rattle his teeth, had they been dentures. His ready laughter roared up from within him. ‘Your parolee probably got himself drunk and will turn up in the next twenty-four hours.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Yudel said.

When Freek swung the car into the gate of the Gentleman’s Lodge, Yudel turned to him in genuine surprise. ‘And this?’

‘Come along. We manage it now.’

‘Who does?’

‘The Asset Forfeiture Unit.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘That’s what everybody says when I tell them.’ Freek had stopped the car in the parking area and had reached the steps of a fairly grand front entrance by the time Yudel caught up to him. He pressed a bell set into the doorframe. A closed-circuit television camera, mounted high on the wall, was aimed at them.

The door opened almost immediately. A primly dressed young woman who looked like a secretary in the office of an accounting firm invited them in. ‘Good evening, gentlemen. If you’d like to go into the lounge …’ She was gesturing to an open door. ‘… I’ll call the ladies. Or perhaps you’d like a drink first.’

Freek smiled warmly at her. ‘It’s all right, my dear. We’ve come to see Lieutenant Moloi.’

‘And you are?’

‘Brigadier General Jordaan,’ Freek told her.

The girl took a step back, clearly trying to put a little distance between them. She glanced at Yudel. ‘Yudel Gordon,’ he said, feeling a warm glow creeping up into his face. Yudel rarely met women in this line of work.

The girl smiled. ‘You gentlemen haven’t come to close us down?’ she asked coquettishly.

‘It’s quite all right, my dear.’ Freek’s winning smile was still in place. ‘I’m just a representative of the new owners.’

‘Louis’s got an office in the back. If you’ll follow me.’

‘Louis?’

‘That’s his name.’

She led the way past the lounge to which she had invited them and through a larger one. The women, perhaps ten of them, whose function it was to entertain the guests of the establishment, were seated or reclining on armchairs and couches. Some were reading, others listening to music on earphones, while two were seated at a coffee table, playing cards. All were dressed much less primly than the girl who had met them. Much skin, of shades that varied between nut brown and snow white, was on display. All turned to observe their visitors. ‘It’s all right, ladies,’ the girl said. ‘These gentlemen have just come to see Louis.’

‘What a pity,’ one of the ladies said, ‘specially the big one.’

Freek smiled and walked on without slowing. He gave the speaker a little wave with one hand.

Another voice said, ‘I rather fancy the little one.’

Yudel again felt the warm glow rising up his neck into his face.

‘Look, he’s blushing,’ a third voice said. ‘Isn’t that cute?’ Yudel’s blushing was a wonderful source of merriment. A chorus of giggles burst from the women of the establishment as if on cue. Freek glanced down at Yudel with at least as much amusement.