The Top Prisoner of C-Max Read online

  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.

  TEN

  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.

  Beloved was smiling. The longer his little speech had continued, the broader, yet shyer, the smile had become. ‘I love it when a man is passionate about the things he believes in.’

  She’s doing it to me again, he thought. Perhaps he could find relief in a change of subject. ‘You also expressed interest in a prisoner by the name of Oliver Hall.’

  ‘Riveting case, I thought, when I read about it, a freedom fighter who went bad.’

  ‘He never was a freedom fighter,’ Yudel said. ‘As far as I can see, he was expelled within a few months of joining the liberation movement.’

  ‘But the authorities are paroling him on political grounds.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some view him as a serial killer, but most serial killers murder women, to exercise power over the victim. There’s usually a strong sex element.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Hall’s not like that.’

  ‘There may be a sex element, but his victims seem to have been both men and women.’

  ‘Seem to have been?’

  Yudel was aware that Beloved was looking searchingly at him. This time there was no coquetry, no artificial shyness. ‘He hasn’t been found guilty of them all. In fact, the police do not have enough information to investigate everything he’s suspected of.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  It took Beloved a moment to recover. When she did, it was with one of her usual devices. She allowed a lock of hair to tumble over her eyes, then she tossed her head to remove it and smiled at Yudel. By the time the exercise was complete, he hardly remembered his question. ‘He really is a fascinating case,’ Beloved said. ‘After today, I may never get the chance to interview him. Please let me.’

  Beloved was not accustomed to having her wishes refused by men and Yudel was no more resistant to her than other men had ever been. By the time Oliver Hall was brought in, Yudel had moved his chair to Beloved’s side of the table, ready to be her protector, should that be necessary. He was aware that the role of protector was not one that suited him well.

  Yudel had not heard about Dlomo’s assault on Hall earlier that morning. So when a warder brought him in and directed him to the waiting chair, Hall’s bandages and neck brace were a surprise. Yudel rose more quickly than he would have chosen. ‘What the hell have you been up to?’

  ‘Please don’t do that, Mr Gordon.’ Hall’s elegant voice was a painful croak now. ‘Don’t use this as a device against me. I was the victim of a brutal attack and I was saved by one of your excellent staff members. If he hadn’t come, I should certainly have been dead by now.’

  ‘Who did it?’

 
; ‘I made my statement and explained everything at that time.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your friend, Mr Dlomo.’

  Yudel did not believe that Hall thought of Dlomo as his friend, but it gave him a weapon in his dealing with Yudel, if only a feeble one. Yudel had no doubt as to Dlomo’s capacity for violence, but he suspected there would be more to the incident than Hall’s version of it. He had seen too many such incidents to be disturbed by any of them. It was Beloved’s interest in this man he found disturbing. She had not explained her interest, at least not in a way that Yudel found believable.

  ‘I’ll look into the matter of your disagreement with Elia Dlomo,’ Yudel said. ‘In the meantime, my colleague, Miss Childe, would like to ask you a few questions. Of course, you don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to.’

  Hall smiled at Beloved. ‘I haven’t been introduced to Miss Childe,’ he croaked. The snorting sound rumbled gently as he spoke. ‘Please forgive my voice, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It’s my adenoids. I’ve had the condition since childhood.’

  ‘Beloved Childe,’ Beloved said, holding out a hand to Hall.

  Hall glanced at the warder who was just inside the door. ‘No physical contact with the inmate,’ the warder said. Beloved withdrew her hand.

  ‘After tomorrow we can shake hands,’ Hall said, glancing at Yudel as he spoke. The look said, Yes, Gordon, tomorrow I can touch her and do anything else I want with her and you will not be able to do anything about it. ‘Is it in order if I call you Beloved, miss?’ He was doing his best to be the gallant gentleman.

  ‘I don’t think—’ Yudel started.

  ‘Of course,’ Beloved said, ‘and may I call you Oliver?’

  ‘Yes, Beloved.’ Again, the triumphant glance was directed at Yudel. So how am I doing with this chick, Gordon? it said.

  ‘Oliver.’ Beloved was looking at him in that direct way she had, but without any of the affected modesty and flirtatiousness Yudel had come to associate with her. ‘I want to tell you that the sound you make adds character to your voice. Is it the result of an injury?’

  ‘No. I’m told it’s genetic.’

  She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. ‘You were a soldier of the army of liberation, yet you turned to crime although the country is now democratic. I don’t understand why.’

  Hall was waiting for the question. Yudel knew that Hall’s entire life was made up of an alertness that never left him. Every man, warder or prisoner, was a possible attacker or a prospective victim. Every woman he had contact with, and there were few of those these days, was an opportunity that could be exploited. ‘Beloved, people from your country don’t understand what it was like for people like me under the oppression of the apartheid system. We were nothing. The authorities did with us what they chose. I was not a man to them, I was a thing to be manipulated as they thought fit.’

  And since the end of apartheid, Yudel thought, what about your activities since then?

  ‘I made mistakes, but I made honest mistakes. I’m not an evil man.’

  Yudel had the photographs of what remained of the Du Toit family after Hall had finished with them and decided to show them to Beloved when this was over.

  But she had seen the weakness in his protestations. ‘Some of your crimes were committed after 1994 though.’

  ‘They tell you everything changed in this country, but not much changed. You’ve heard the expression: the more things change, the more they stay the same.’

  Beloved directed the discussion along a new path. ‘Oliver, how did you come to be in Camp Quatro?’ she asked gently.

  This time it was Hall’s turn to be surprised, but he looked into her eyes with the directness of a man who had nothing to hide. ‘I was sent there. I was an Umkhonto we Sizwe soldier and the movement deployed me there.’

  A male voice spoke from the door. ‘Yudel, I need to speak to you.’ Director Nkabinde was in the doorway.

  Yudel looked from the director to Beloved, and then to Hall. She read the uncertainty in his look and spoke before he could. ‘I’ll be fine. I really will.’

  The warder who had brought Hall in took a step forward. ‘I’ll be right here, Mr Gordon. You don’t need to worry.’

  None of this was working according to Yudel’s intentions. He had still not moved. ‘It’s all right, Yudel,’ Beloved was saying. ‘Really, it is.’

  Only Hall seemed to have no need to advise Yudel. The smallest, mocking smile revealed what he felt.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ the director said.

  Yudel rose uncertainly. ‘You don’t move from here,’ he told the warder.

  ‘I’m right here,’ he said. ‘I’m right here all the time.’

  Yudel paused in the doorway for a last look at Beloved’s serene, untroubled face and Hall’s arrogant one, before following Director Nkabinde to his office. ‘We found how they got in. They cut the perimeter fence behind Central. We think it happened while we were changing officers on the watch towers. They must have had inside information. And Dongwana’s here,’ he said, before they sat down. ‘He came to work.’

  Yudel’s surprise was obvious. ‘Already?’

  ‘What the fuck is going on here, Yudel?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you seen the wife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The bastards fucked her up badly. Not much left of her face.’

  ‘The minister said she’ll pay for surgery.’

  ‘Good. Penny needs it. But why? That’s what I want to know. Has this got anything to do with us?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I think Dongwana knows.’

  Director Nkabinde bit down on his teeth before replying. ‘This Dongwana, you’ve had dealings with him. Is he an honest man?’

  Yudel held a hand parallel to the ground, the fingers spread, then waggled it slightly. ‘Yes, but he’s no fanatic.’

  ‘I’m fucking going to get the truth out of him.’

  The director had already started for the door when Yudel reached out a hand to stop him. ‘Can we follow him first and see where he goes? Maybe we’ll learn more that way.’

  ELEVEN

  MEMBER DONGWANA was leaning against an industrial washing machine for support. He had struggled into his uniform as soon as Yudel and Freek had left. The shirt he was wearing had been worn before and was creased as if he had slept in it. His tie knot was too tight and lay at an irregular angle. He had remained in the hospital for only a few minutes and cried at the sight of Penny, still unconscious, her face heavily bandaged.

  The drug had not worn off completely and Dongwana was struggling to focus on the man in front of him. Enslin Kruger was seated on a working surface used for stacking laundry. A few inmates were busy at the far end of the room. ‘You want something from me now, Alfred?’

  ‘I just don’t want Penny to get hurt some more.’ Dongwana was sobbing. He was speaking English. It provided common ground. Kruger could not understand Zulu and Dongwana had only the most basic understanding of Afrikaans, Kruger’s home language.

  Kruger was appalled at the idea that anyone might want to hurt Penny. ‘We want the same thing. I look after my people. Don’ you know that, Alfred?’

  Yes, Dongwana nodded. He knew that.

  ‘When you help me in the past, I look after you. You remember that?’

  Dongwana nodded.

  ‘You make good money helping me. You got a nice TV, a nice car, everything nice for you. And why? Because you my friend. Nothing bad happens to you. Nothing bad happens to the missis. I look after my friends. Nobody hurts my friends. Nobody fucks my friend’s wife. I see to it.’

  ‘They hurt Penny too much,’ Dongwana said.

  ‘But you not my friend no more,’ Kruger explained patiently. ‘How can I protec’ you when you not my friend no more? In Africa, when you eat the king you stay hungry. Did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What then?’ />
  ‘I was scared.’ Dongwana’s lower lip was quivering. ‘I need my job. I can’t afford to lose my job.’

  ‘Lose your job? You not going to lose your job. If you my friend, you not going to lose your job. When the brown boers that think they run this place find out about my plans, do I tell them Alfred Dongwana helps me?’

  Dongwana was studying the floor in front of him. Meeting Kruger’s eyes was not possible now. He said nothing.

  ‘Speak, Alfred. Do I tell them you help me?’

  Dongwana managed a single word. ‘No.’

  ‘Who does the time?’

  ‘You.’ His voice was barely audible.

  ‘Who? I’m not hearing you.’

  ‘You, Mr Enslin.’

  ‘That’s right. I do the time and I look after you so you don’ get into no trouble. Never forget that.’

  ‘I won’t forget.’

  ‘I protec’ you. No one squeals on Alfred Dongwana. You know that?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Enslin.’

  ‘Good, Alfred, then we understand each other again.’

  ‘And Penny?’ It was the one matter that troubled Dongwana more than anything else, more than coherent thought could allow.

  ‘No one touches Penny no more. We friends again.’ Kruger’s voice had regained that patient, explaining tone. ‘We friends again, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dongwana forced out the word.

  ‘Good. You better go now, Alfred. But see you come to work every day. When the time comes, I’m going to need certain things, then I’m going tell you what you mus’ bring me. But don’ worry. I look after my friends.’

  By the time Yudel got back to the office where he had left Beloved and Hall, the room was empty. He looked at his watch. He had been away little more than twenty minutes.

  He paused only a moment in the office, then turned and hurried down the passage to the first gate on the way to the front entrance. The warder on duty came to attention at his approach. ‘That American lady—’ Yudel started.