The Top Prisoner of C-Max (8 page)

With a tilt of his head, Freek indicated to Yudel to follow him. They found Sergeant Motsepe talking to a fellow warder, the resident of a neighbouring flat. ‘True’s God, I heard nothing,’ the neighbour was saying.

‘Thank you, friend,’ Freek said to the neighbour, waving him away. He spoke to Motsepe. ‘You need to find out what’s in his bloodstream.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the sergeant said. He was standing upright in almost military fashion. ‘It’s already done. When they took the wife away, the medics took a blood sample from the husband. I sent it to Silverton.’

‘Good man,’ Freek said. ‘This is a big one. I want to know what happened here.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The sergeant looked pleased with himself. Why not? The deputy commissioner was pleased with him.

Yudel’s attention was drawn by a movement at the bottom of the passage. To his great surprise, the minister was coming towards them at a quick, purposeful walk. Behind her and doing her best to keep up was Miss Moseke, her
PA
, followed by her chief of staff and another functionary whom Yudel did not recognise. ‘Mr Gordon, this is a frightful thing to happen,’ the minister said as she came within earshot. ‘Where is Mrs Dongwana?’

‘She’s already in hospital.’

‘Good. Very good.’ Her eyes fixed on Freek. ‘Who is this man?’

Inwardly, Yudel translated the question to mean, not another old, white guy? ‘Deputy Police Commissioner of Gauteng Freek Jordaan,’ Yudel said.

‘Oh,’ she said, shaking Freek’s large, heavily veined hand. ‘I didn’t expect you here.’

Yudel translated that to mean, you old white guys stick together, don’t you? ‘It’s a police matter, ma’am,’ Freek said, then he added warmly, ‘Of course, I’ll see that your office is kept informed at all times.’

‘Thank you,’ the minister said. ‘Where is Member Dongwana?’

‘Inside,’ Yudel said. ‘I’ll take you to him.’

The minister stopped in the doorway of the flat. ‘Mr Gordon, I want you to take responsibility for something else.’

‘Madam Minister?’

‘I want Mrs Dongwana to receive the best reconstructive surgery available, whatever it costs. I will give you written authority. But I want you to monitor the process personally.’

‘Madam Minister?’ Yudel had never received an instruction anything like this.

‘You’re a healer, aren’t you?’

‘Well, Madam Minister …’ Yudel thought about it. He was not in the habit of seeing himself that way. ‘… I suppose so.’

‘You’ll have the written mandate today. If the cost exceeds one hundred thousand, you’ll need further authority from me – and you’ll get it.’

‘I’ll do as you say. I’ll keep an eye on the process.’

‘Thank you, Mr Gordon.’ She had turned towards the door, but stopped halfway, seeming to reconsider. ‘Yudel,’ she corrected herself.

THE LENGTH
of passage that connected A-Section to the offices and interview rooms was almost always empty at this hour. Senior officers and professional staff had not yet arrived, and the kitchen was cleaning up after breakfast. It had cost Elia Dlomo two hundred to get past the gate from A-Section and to have a suitable message delivered. But that was as far as he would be able to go. There were still two gates between him and the main entrance. But this was far enough. It would serve his purpose.

The part of the passage that fell within his field of vision was empty, as he expected. And there was no sound from it. He was hidden by the open door of a cupboard that should not have been there. It had been positioned against the passage wall some three months before as a temporary measure, but had been forgotten there.

Dlomo, the prison’s highest-ranking member of the Twenty-Six Gang, should have been mopping the passage beyond the gate that led to the communal area, where the entrances to Sections B and C were located. He should have been supervised by Member Peme, but it had been ten minutes since he had last seen the warder.

The bucket and mop had been left down at the end of the passage to show any other passing warder that he was busy and would not be far away. Perhaps Peme had taken him away to attend to some other chore.

Dlomo had been waiting too long. His message should have found its destination minutes ago. So why had nothing happened? No one hesitated when a message came from the prison’s director to say that he had a visitor.

While he waited, six or seven other prisoners passed at the end of the passage. He had not counted them. All were moving in the direction of the hall and gymnasium. A warder by the name of Sebenza followed a few minutes later, probably to ensure that no one loitered in the passage. None of them even glanced in his direction.

In his right hand Dlomo carried the kana-kana that he had spent the last month preparing. Apart from Peme, the warders in A-Section had followed their instructions conscientiously in dealing with him. His reputation for violence was well known. Over the last six months, since an incident with a member of the Twenty-Eights, all material that could have been used to make a sharp instrument had been taken away from him. He was allowed to work on his scrapbook though. The authorities assumed that, if the pictures were folded and torn out and the glue came from a flexible plastic dispenser, there was nothing that could be used to manufacture a weapon.

They were wrong about that. From time to time, he received glossy magazines for his scrapbook. The pages were sharp-edged, though far too light to cut anything. The process required to turn them into a weapon was a long one. It had been taught to him by an older convict on his first stay in prison long before.

Dlomo had started with a single page. This he had rolled more tightly than seemed possible. After that he allowed it to unroll in order to spread a thin layer of glue across it, then he rolled it again, as tightly as the first time. After that, it had to be allowed to dry for a few days. The process was repeated with another page, this time wrapped tightly around the first, but set back a fraction of a millimetre from the tip of the first to start forming a point. By the time the glue had set on page two hundred, he had a kana-kana with which he could easily punch a hole through his mattress. The skin of the solar plexus and the flesh between that point and the heart would offer more resistance, but that simply meant that the strike would have to be faster. It also meant that there would not be a second chance. He knew that if he struck with his weight right behind it and if his hand speed was fast enough, the blow would be fatal, but the moment before he died, the victim would know who had killed him. That was important. He wanted his face to be the last Oliver Hall ever saw.

He was holding the kana-kana just above his right knee. With his thumb along the length of it on the upper side, the strike would come from below. While the other man was held by his eyes, even for a moment, the kana-kana would be coming at him from beneath his line of vision.

Dlomo changed position slightly, moving closer to the cupboard into a position where he was even less likely to be noticed. In making the move, he accidentally touched the open door, moving it only a millimetre or less. Then he was again unmoving, waiting.

The man Dlomo was waiting for had been watching from the end of the passage for almost five minutes. Oliver Hall had no visitors for years now. His son-of-a-bitch brother had stopped coming and, despite what he had said to that swine Gordon, those bastards who had been with him in the freedom struggle did not even want to talk to him. Eventually, in disgust, he had cancelled all names off his visitors’ list, making it impossible for anyone from the outside to see him. It was a rule of the department that no one was allowed to visit a maximum-security prisoner without his consent.

So who was this visitor? And what was that bucket and mop doing at the end of the passage? They had been there too long unattended. And why was the door of the cupboard standing open? And who might be waiting behind it?

And why had the message been brought by a member of the Twenty-Sixes? The messenger’s name was Luther and he was a little moffie who would do nothing himself. He should have been working in the kitchen at that moment. He was one of the few that the brown boers who were in charge of the prison trusted with sharp pointed objects. Instead he was running a message.

Then he remembered whose wyfie that one was. The story that had been told to Kruger was that Elia Dlomo had paid to have Luther moved to his cell. No one seemed to know how much money had been paid, only that Dlomo had paid it.

He saw the movement of the door, so slight that it could almost have been a trick of the light. If Dlomo was waiting for him, he would be armed, probably with a kana-kana that he had made or that his wyfie had made for him. They may have got hold of a piece of wood and sharpened it. A dagger could be made of almost any wood. He would be waiting behind the door and holding the weapon low to strike upwards. He would have it in his right hand. That would be his stronger arm and the natural hand in which to hold the knife.

He needed to move before anyone else came into the passage, especially one of the boers. He slipped off his shoes and placed them on the floor.

Hall moved forward on his bare feet, staying close to the wall on the side of the passage where the cupboard stood. The man behind the door would have to step well clear of his hiding place to see him approaching.

He reached the cupboard and paused for only a moment. Then he slipped round the front of the cupboard and slammed into the door, driving it open as far as it would go. He heard the other man’s grunt of pain, then he was around the door and reaching for Dlomo’s right wrist, while the knuckles of his other hand drove at Dlomo’s throat.

Dlomo had been taken by surprise, but his recovery was rapid. He could not avoid Hall’s grip closing on his wrist, but he swayed out of the way of the strike aimed at his throat. For a moment Hall’s torso was unprotected and Dlomo’s left knee struck upwards, digging into the other man’s testicles. Hall staggered back, his hands reaching down to the epicentre of the pain.

The kana-kana was spinning across the floor. Dlomo lunged for Hall’s throat with both hands. He felt his thumbs dig into the hard ridges of the larynx. Hall fell, but Dlomo still had his throat and his thumbs were digging deeper into the windpipe. At almost the same moment, Hall clawed upward with both hands. Dlomo felt fingers in his eyes and now he could not see. He drove his thumbs still deeper into Hall’s throat. He felt the other man’s grip start to weaken. His eyes were free of the fingers. Through a blur of pain he saw Hall’s gasping for breath.

At that moment, a blow across the back of Dlomo’s head sent his consciousness spiralling downwards. He tried to finish the job he had started, but what little awareness remained was destroyed by the second blow.

YUDEL
’
S
pleasure at seeing Beloved again was like nothing he remembered. Her beauty had something to do with it, but what he felt was something other than sexual desire. She was not wearing her virginal white this time. Her pants and shoes were a powder blue. The only part of her outfit that was white was her ruffled blouse. And here I am, grinning like an idiot, he thought.

‘Yudel, it’s wonderful to see you again.’ Other people said that sort of thing, but when Beloved said it, it sounded real.

Yudel said nothing. He was afraid of sounding and looking foolish.

‘I’m so glad to be with you again.’ Her lips touched a cheek so lightly that Yudel was not sure contact had been made.

‘Miss Childe,’ he managed at last.

‘Oh, Yudel. I never thought you’d be so stuffy about your dignity. Do you never relax?’

‘Beloved,’ he corrected himself.

‘That’s so much better. And that’s what I love about my name. When anyone speaks to me, it always sounds so beautiful. Whatever is being said, my name makes the most beautiful prefix. It also has an effect on those using it. As a child, schoolteachers were kinder to me, friends treated me as someone special.’

‘And so you always felt that you were?’

‘That’s right.’ There was less of the blushing modesty in Beloved than had been the case the day before. She spoke seriously and looked directly into Yudel’s eyes.

‘And now you’re here.’

They were sitting on either side of the plain Public Works desk that filled much of the floor space in the small office. ‘And I want you to teach me about rehabilitation, your programme in this prison.’

No, Yudel thought, that’s not what you want. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that. For the first time, he believed that Beloved was not telling him the whole truth. The realisation was a shock. He had not expected anything but simplicity from her.

Again she used her smile on Yudel. ‘The important thing is that I want to learn everything I can in the little time that I have.’

‘Little time?’

‘Very little,’ she said. ‘What is the first thing I should know about rehabilitation?’

‘You already know that it has to come from within the prisoner.’

‘You taught me that, through your papers.’

‘Then you should also know that prison is just about the least suitable place for effecting a behaviour change in any human being.’

‘And yet that is what you do.’

‘Because there is no alternative.’

‘The relationships in prison and the effect they have fascinate me. I can see so little difference between warder and prisoner.’

And now he knew that she was just talking for effect. ‘Explain that to me.’

‘Is there really a difference between the road and the traveller, the singer and the song, the desire and the deed or the warder and the prisoner? I’m not sure there is a difference. They are all one.’

Beloved’s hands were on the table in front of her. Yudel found that he had leaned forward and taken one of them in his. She made no effort to withdraw it. ‘Listen, kid,’ he said. ‘That kind of philosophy-babble doesn’t work with me. The difference between warder and prisoner is that one is part of society and the other is in rebellion against it. One serves the greater good and the other seeks to destroy it. One goes home at night to his spouse and the other stays here, suffering the agony of freedom denied. They are not the same in any way.’ He released her hand and slowly sat back in his chair.