The Top Prisoner of C-Max (32 page)

‘You can get back on the next flight and go home. And that is not my view. My commissioner advises you that you are outside your jurisdiction and you must leave immediately.’

Freek looked past the colonel and yawned slightly. ‘Yesterday your commissioner was in intensive care.’

The colonel stared unblinkingly at Freek. The yawn had no effect. ‘He’s still there. But he sent me with this message.’

Freek looked studiedly bored. He waved a hand in a gesture of exasperation. ‘Willem, do you know what we’re here for?’ Freek’s attempt at establishing seniority had no effect on the other man. He took a step closer.

‘Of course, I do. We heard from your office that you were coming and this is our response.’ He stopped and seemed to sigh. ‘Christ, Freek. You’re insulting us, you know that? Do you think we can’t handle this matter? Come on. You walk in here as if you’re the only policeman in the country.’

‘Well, what are you doing about this matter?’

‘We’ve got a man on it – around the clock.’

‘Just one?’

‘The commissioner thinks one is enough.’

‘We know this Oliver Hall and one is not enough.’

‘Freek, old son, you act as if you’re in charge wherever you go, but you’re not in charge here. We don’t interfere in Gauteng. My commissioner instructs you to go back home. He sent me here to give you the message that unless you have orders from our minister you are to get onto the next flight back to Johannesburg.’

Freek looked thoughtfully at the little colonel. The colonel knew he had won the argument and that Freek was the last white officer of that rank in the country. Crossing territorial boundaries and ignoring a legitimate order was no way to retain his position.

Yudel looked at Freek, then at the colonel, then he looked for Moloi. It took a moment to pick him out in the crowd. He was at the far end of the hall, clearly feeling this matter had nothing to do with him. He glanced back once before he turned a corner and was gone.

The flight Abigail was on lifted off just over an hour after the one that Yudel, Freek and Moloi had taken. She was seated between a fat man who overflowed his seat and a six-year-old boy who spent the flight playing an electronic game on a hand-held device.

The man had soon fallen asleep and was snoring loudly. Abigail felt herself leaning away from him. That brought her closer to the child. To avoid watching his game, she switched on her laptop. She had finished the police report on the politician’s wife and had not meant to open her emails, but suddenly they were on the screen before her. A number had not yet been answered. That at least gave her something useful to do. Answering the new mails took close to half an hour. They were made up largely of the trivia that was part of running any office: the requisition of copying paper had not arrived, the tea lady was sick so Johanna wondered if she would have to make the tea, the servicing of her car cost twice the garage estimate, the new intern wanted two days’ leave although she had only been with them a week … An hour of the flight remained.

In the act of closing the emails, the hand on the mouse slipped and she found that she had opened the drafts. Without consciously searching, her eyes picked out an address that should not have been there. It had not been sent by her. The subject line was empty, but the mail had been directed to [email protected].

Ashton Hall, Abigail thought. Oliver Hall’s brother?

She opened the mail, but whoever had created it had deleted the message. She was troubled by the discovery of this out-of-place bit of correspondence on her computer and was ready to switch it off, when a new thought came to her. She opened the deleted items section and let her eyes run down the list of superfluous mail. Halfway down the first page she came to the same address.

She opened the mail and this time the message was still present. It read:

Dear Mr Hall. Please pass this address to Oliver when you see him:

12 Sea View Crescent, Scarborough. Cape Town.

Thank you so much. With deepest sincerity,
Beloved Childe

Ashton Hall was in hospital, but he had seen his brother before the two cops got hold of him. In that case, Hall would be going to that address, not to the Freedom Foundation offices. And this stupid, stupid girl was waiting for him there.

The Freedom Foundation

THE COMPLEX
in which the Freedom Foundation had its offices had once housed a small factory and warehouse. When the factory had moved to a bigger building, a smart executive had seen that the long, narrow, two-storey building lent itself to premises for smaller organisations.

The rents had been reasonable and within a month of completion, it was filled by social-welfare bodies, non-governmental organisations, human rights lawyers and others with commendable social aims. The entrance to the complex was at one end of the building and the Freedom Foundation’s offices at the other. Their offices occupied two suites, making the foundation the complex’s largest tenant.

The taxi dropped Elia Dlomo at the gate. He paid the driver the six hundred he had promised and approached the lone watchman, who was behind a steel palisade fence. The complex was on the mountain’s eastern slope. It had been in shadow for a few hours already and twilight was deepening. ‘Good evening, brother,’ Dlomo said to the guard in Zulu.

The guard opened the pedestrian gate and stepped into the road. He answered in the same language. ‘Yes, Father, how can I help?’

‘Freedom Foundation? It’s here?’

‘Yes, Father, it’s here.’

‘They want me to talk at a meeting there, brother. Can I come? My name is Reverend Khumalo.’

‘You come to talk to the criminals, Father?’

‘They not criminals now, my brother.’

The look on the guard’s face suggested that could be a matter for debate. ‘There’s never too many in the evening, just a few, seven, eight, maybe ten. That American lady comes.’

Dlomo tried to smile. ‘Yes, Beloved.’

‘That’s the one. What a name, Father.’

‘Very beautiful name,’ Dlomo said. ‘She’s here?’

‘Not yet. She comes half past six, seven o’clock.’

‘Thank you, my brother.’

The watchman stood aside to let Dlomo enter. He started down the long drive that skirted the building, putting down his feet carefully to keep the pain under control. He kept the injured hand in the pocket of his pants. Dlomo walked in a way that was purposeful, but unhurried. He had long since realised that this was a style of walking that raised no alarms in policemen, prison officers or watchmen. It was the way officers, managers, business owners and reverends walked. Like his adopted identity, his walk had served him well.

A light was on downstairs in the Freedom Foundation. It came from a small meeting room that seemed to be empty except for a white boy of maybe twenty, who was sorting brochures into piles, perhaps in preparation for the evening meeting. None of the other lights were on.

The door was open. He was in the hallway before he saw the constable asleep on a chair. The door to the meeting room was on his left, but it was closed. Ahead of him was another closed door and on his right a steep staircase led to the floor above.

Killing the constable would have been simple, but there had been too much killing already. This Beloved had to die. That was different. The young policeman could be allowed to live.

He climbed the staircase carefully and stopped on the landing. From the only window he could look down into the driveway and perhaps halfway up the drive. He would be able to see anyone arriving or leaving. There was always the possibility that someone would come upstairs, but if they did, he would have three advantages. He would be prepared, the clerical collar had worked so far and it would give him at least a momentary advantage, and finally, whoever came would probably be some pathetic social-worker type who would give him no trouble. He took the Makarov from his satchel and tucked it into his belt at the back where it would be easily accessible to his right hand. Then he took up his position a step back from the window in the shadows, where the deep brown of his face would be almost invisible from the driveway below.

Some ten minutes later a small car came down the drive from the direction of the gate. It seemed well looked after, but Dlomo recognised it as a model that was already on the roads when his sentence started. Through the windscreen he caught a momentary flash of blonde hair in the light from the meeting room. He was surprised by the car. He had expected a newer, more expensive model. It stopped in front of the building and he took another step back.

The woman who got out of the car was dressed in
T
-shirt and jeans that had once been white, but were now a tint of grey. Dlomo lost sight of her as she entered the building. A door opened, most likely the one leading into the meeting room. He did not hear it close. Then she was speaking, a gentle female voice, too soft for him to make out the words. The white boy’s voice replied, but it too was muffled by the distance and the walls between. The constable was silent. Perhaps he was still asleep.

Dlomo hated himself. He hated all he had done in the forty-four years of his life. He hated the life he had lived and his memories of it. At unguarded moments, the killing of Ruth Khumalo had often returned to him. He remembered the look in her eyes that seemed to suggest that what was happening was impossible to believe. He remembered also the face of a supermarket manager the moment he realised he was going to die. And, more than any other part of it, he hated what he knew must have happened to Jenny. Oliver Hall had killed her, but so had he. He knew she would still be alive if she had never known him. And now he hated the knowledge that he was going to kill this woman. But the fact that he hated it changed nothing.

Other voices reached him from outside the front door. Two men, one in his early twenties, wearing a
T
-shirt, jeans and sneakers, and one about Dlomo’s age, wearing a cloth cap, leather jacket, grey slacks and black shoes, had stopped outside and were in conversation. Former convicts, Dlomo thought. He had never seen the two of them before, but he had lived among men like them most of his life.

Another, also in
T
-shirt and jeans, his hands in his pockets, was coming from the gate to join them. As the newcomer reached the first two, Dlomo became aware of someone moving on the staircase. It was the woman. She was coming quickly up the stairs, carrying a sheaf of papers in both hands. The blonde hair swung loosely down to her shoulders. He had beaten Oliver Hall. And Hall had all the advantages. He had to break out while Hall had been paroled. He had won. When he arrived back in C-Max, he would be the big man.

Dlomo slipped into the shadow of a doorway that would place him behind the woman when she reached the landing. The gun would not be necessary.

The boy’s voice came from below. This time he was in the open door of the meeting room and Dlomo could make out the words ‘don’t forget the stapler’.

‘No, I haven’t forgotten.’ Then she was coming again.

As she reached the landing, Dlomo moved forward. His left hand closed round her mouth while the right drew her into the shadow of the doorway, then moved up to her throat.

Amy Morgan died silently. The few convulsions as her spinal cord disintegrated and her nervous system shut down were soundless. Dlomo had lifted her clear of the floor and the kicking of her feet struck nothing except his shin. After it was over, he gently lowered her body to the floor. For the first time he saw the face. She was older than he expected and not as good-looking. On the ground floor the constable was breathing deeply through his open mouth. He had not moved. The door to the meeting room was open, but the boy was on the far side with his back to the door.

As Dlomo came out of the building, the three former inmates turned towards him. He was sure he had never all his life seen any of them. The one with the cloth cap took it off and held it in both hands. ‘Good evening, Father,’ he said. The other two echoed him with ‘How’s it, Reverend?’ and ‘Hi, Reverend.’

He nodded to them and started towards the gate. ‘You not staying for the workshop, Father?’ the one in the cloth cap asked.

‘No. I must go. I came to see Beloved.’

‘Beloved’s not yet here, Father.’

Dlomo stopped and turned just enough that he could see the speaker. ‘She came.’

‘No. That lady’s name is Amy.’

‘That blonde lady—’

‘That’s Amy. Beloved’s the young one.’ As he spoke, the expression on the man’s face was changing to one of wonderment.

Speaking was not easy, but Dlomo managed to say, ‘I mean Amy.’ He continued towards the gate. Jesus Christ, was that possible? And could he come back later for Beloved?

All the sounds of the night seemed to have gone silent, but he heard something that was little more than a whisper. It was the voice of the older man of the three. ‘Fuck me, the reverend is Elia Dlomo.’

He glanced back for the second time. Now all three were staring at him. Jesus, he thought, that little bastard with the cap must have been with me in some jail.

A young man in suit and tie was coming away from the gate. Dlomo had never seen him before, but he knew him with the same certainty that he knew the three ex-convicts. He recognised a boer when he saw one. His brown skin did not hide what he was. And what was he doing here tonight? Maybe he was just checking on the mob at Freedom Foundation. They were always checking on ex-convicts. They never left you alone.

Louis Moloi had come to a stop and was looking straight at him. He knew the man and he knew that kind of look.

Without warning, Dlomo turned and ran for the shelter of the Freedom Foundation, the pain bursting through him at every step. ‘Stop there,’ he heard Moloi shout. ‘Stop right there.’ The three ex-convicts all stepped back, one dropping into a crouching position. They did not need a dose of another man’s trouble.

Dlomo crashed through the front door, stopping just inside the glass panel. He could feel the Makarov against his spine. The constable had finally woken up and was on his feet. His fire arm was still holstered. ‘Reverend? What’s happening?’