The Top Prisoner of C-Max

by Wessel Ebersohn

  An hour and an orgasm later, as his victim lay sleeping on his double bed, April opened the front door and the security gate to let in the gang’s three other members. In the next ten minutes the gang moved two television sets, a DVD player, a hi-fi, a digital decoder, two cellphones, various rings, cufflinks and watches to the front door, ready for loading. It was not planned that the businessman should wake up as quickly as he did or that he should find them at work. Two members of the gang held him down while a third fired a single shot that made a neat hole in his forehead.

  April had watched in horror. He felt that he had been recruited to make the businessman come and so put him to sleep, not to set him up to be murdered. When the police picked him up at a homosexual brothel a few days later, he confessed immediately and told what he knew about the other gang members. Because of his cooperation and his passivity during the killing, he received ten years, as against the life sentences of the others.

  As a moffie who was routinely poked by other men and spilled his guts to the boer, prison would probably have been very difficult for him, had it not been for his relationship with Enslin Kruger.

  Even that did not stop him from gathering information for Yudel and the director. April had long before realised that to survive, he would have to do what the powerful wanted and, in this case, there were powerful men on both sides.

  Yudel had been waiting for half an hour before April arrived. He closed the door behind him. Both knew that April had not come by the most direct route and that great care had to be taken to ensure his safety.

  ‘Sit down, Jacky,’ Yudel told him.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I hope Sir is feeling all right.’ He sat straight up in the chair, his hands on his knees.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you. I hope you’ve got something for me.’

  But April was less forthcoming than usual. ‘Not today, sir. Sir must know that things are very quiet in the prison now.’

  ‘Really? Is that what Enslin Kruger told you to tell me?’

  ‘No, sir. True’s God—’

  ‘Don’t take the name of the Almighty while telling a lie.’ Yudel, who was altogether irreligious, looked sternly at him. He knew where April’s weaknesses lay. ‘Do you want to go to hell?’

  A look of panic crossed April’s face. ‘Sir must know I—’

  ‘You tell me the truth and the Lord will forgive you.’

  April looked searchingly into Yudel’s face. Was it possible Mr Gordon knew about who would go to heaven and who to hell? He remembered clearly the many threatening sermons he had been forced to listen to as a child. Life had been bad enough without having to endure hell afterwards. ‘They going to make shit now,’ he said.

  ‘Are they going to take blood?’

  ‘I think so. Sir must know Mr Enslin doesn’t tell me everything.’

  ‘I think he tells you enough. Those nights when you help him out, on nights like that he tells you everything. I know he does.’

  April hesitated for too long. Not only did he have the threat of God’s wrath hanging over him, but Mr Gordon could see when he was lying. He found the smallest loophole. ‘If Sir knows, then Sir doesn’t need Jacky to say.’

  ‘I know something is happening. I don’t know what. You need to tell me.’

  ‘True’s God,’ April said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. ‘The Lord’s my witness, I swear. I don’t know what’s it.’

  ‘Your boyfriend, Enslin Kruger, has something to do with it.’

  ‘Sir must know it wasn’t my idea to set up house with Mr Enslin. He told me to.’

  ‘Are you happy with him?’

  ‘He’s my baba. He looks after me. He protec’s me.’

  Yudel nodded. He knew that Kruger’s protection inside the prison was more effective than anything he could offer. ‘But, the things that happen … he on’y tells me some things …’

  ‘Who’s involved in this thing that’s going on now?’

  ‘True’s God, sir—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ollie Hall.’

  ‘Of course. And does your boss have plans for Elia Dlomo?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s the game.’

  ‘What about Dlomo? Will he try to nail your boss now Hall is gone?’

  ‘True’s God, sir, I know nothing about what Elia and those Twenty-Sixes want to do.’

  Yudel nodded. That was probably true. ‘And is Kruger stupid enough to try a break out now that he’s got Hall on the outside?’

  ‘Sir must know I don’t think that’s the game.’

  ‘What is the game then?’

  ‘Please, sir … I on’y know Elia had a meeting with Mr Enslin.’

  ‘They had a meeting?’ This was a surprise to Yudel. The power struggle between them left no room for common ground. In the exercise hall they were usually as far from each other as they could get.

  ‘Who else is involved?’

  ‘I think Dongwana.’

  ‘The warder?’

  ‘Yes, Member Dongwana.’

  ‘I see.’ And Yudel did see. In that moment he understood why the warder had felt he had to come to work the same day his wife was attacked. ‘Who else is involved?’

  ‘Sir must know I don’t know exac’ly—’

  ‘Who else, Jacky?

  ‘I think the lady.’

  ‘What lady? What are you talking about?’

  ‘The lady, the one who was here by Sir, the one with the long blonde hair.’

  Yudel looked at the prison queen as if he had, in a moment, become insane. ‘That’s absurd. She’s not going to help any of them.’ But as he said it he remembered her wanting to be alone with Hall and the way she had left so suddenly, without explanation. ‘In any case, I’m told she’s in Cape Town. She’s more than a thousand kilometres from here.’

  ‘Maybe not, sir. Maybe she’s not so far.’

  But Jacky April’s guesswork was not accurate in that respect. Beloved had arrived in Cape Town on an early flight that morning and gone straight to the Freedom Foundation. Before the morning was over, the director had taken her on a tour of the premises. The meagreness of the organisation’s resources had surprised her.

  Ex-convicts whose families did not want them around and had nowhere to go could find a food parcel at the foundation on most days. The parcels were donated by a grocery chain that made them up from food that had just reached its sell-by date. They were also given a locker on the foundation’s premises to keep what few possessions they had. If a locker was ever found to store stolen goods, the ex-con in question was permanently barred from the premises.

  The only other benefit the foundation’s clients received was counselling and encouragement in the form of evening gatherings, which often resembled revival meetings. Usually the counselling meant that the ex-con who wanted it was lonely and needed a sympathetic ear. The gatherings dealt with matters like finding a job and starting the kind of business that would not result in them returning to the care of the prison authorities.

  The foundation’s resources did not extend to a bed for the night or someone to help you find a job. In earlier days they had set up an employment agency, but after the third time one of their placements robbed an employer of substantial value in cash or goods, they closed that aspect of the organisation.

  Despite its limitations, the Freedom Foundation was the only option many of the city’s ex-convicts had. None of their clients ever said a bad word about it. To them, the foundation represented food, a friendly reception and a locker to call home. It was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

  When Beloved arrived at the foundation in her rented A-Class Mercedes, the director and his team all looked surprise. None of them drove as expensive a car and they did not expect an unpaid intern to be driving one. They were also surprised by her name and by her looks. By then Beloved expected people to be surprised by her.

  ‘What is it you want from us?’ the director asked.

  ‘I just want to spend some time with you
r clients. I hope to compare their lives with those of criminals in my own country. I also hope to inspire them to live better lives.’ It had been said in the simple, guileless way that had so captivated Yudel.

  ‘My girl, they are criminals, not children,’ the director, a middle-aged former minister of religion, told her. ‘Inspiring them is almost out of the question.’

  ‘I’m glad you said “almost”,’ Beloved said.

  The director sat in on her first interview with one of their regulars, an old blue jacket who was never out of prison for more than a few months, and watched Beloved weave her magic around him. At the end of the interview, he told Beloved and the director that his sister had a flower stand near the station and he was sure she would allow him to help. Maybe he could get his own stand in time.

  Walking her to her car later that day, the director asked her what she was doing for dinner. ‘I’m afraid my boyfriend has already reserved a table for us at the Mount Nelson,’ she told him. And Beloved lied as beautifully as she inspired convicts. There was no regular boyfriend and the only thing she knew about the city was that the Mount Nelson was its most revered, and one of its most expensive, hotels. Its prices would not fall within the director’s range. ‘Also,’ she said, ‘Amy Morgan has asked me to give a talk tonight to some of your people. She said something inspirational was needed.’

  Leaving the foundation in the early afternoon, she made her way down the peninsula’s west coast to the seaside hamlet of Scarborough where she would be living. It took her more than an hour to get there along a road that wove its way through some of the most lovely scenery she had ever seen. On the left, the mountain was bathed in warm afternoon sunshine, while on the right the boulder-fringed Atlantic was a deeper blue than any stretch of ocean she remembered ever seeing.

  Scarborough itself was no more than a cluster of bungalows, a convenience store and a restaurant perched among the brush-covered sand dunes above the beach and scrambling up the steep slope of the mountain. Of some one hundred dwellings only a few were permanently occupied. The rest belonged to city people fortunate enough to be able to afford a seaside place to get away to at weekends.

  The bungalow had been lent to her by an elderly British billionaire, who had shown considerable enthusiasm for a closer relationship with her. Beloved had accepted the bungalow, but not the billionaire’s enthusiasms. The rooms were large and comfortably furnished. The windows had blinds that would allow her complete privacy when she desired it.

  Yes, she thought, walking through it for the first time. This is exactly right. Nothing could suit me better.

  NINETEEN

  THE INSULT Oliver Hall suffered by being given a job as a caretaker and being restricted to the city limits of Pretoria would have been more keenly felt except that he did not see his present position as permanent. He saw it only as a brief stopover.

  His flat, perched on the roof of the building that was to be the new police headquarters, consisted of just two rooms, a shower and a kitchenette. It had some basic furniture, but no television set or radio. There was a phone, but it could only receive calls, the facility of calling out having been disabled. He had been told that its purpose was to give the building’s management a way to reach him. It was not for his convenience.

  The flat was depressing, even by the standards of someone who had spent years in C-Max, but the roof of the building was not. As he paced its length and breadth, the sounds of the city came at him from every side. Hall walked from corner to corner, looking down into the busy evening streets of Pretoria’s city centre. Just ten years before, when he had last been out of prison, there had still been a fair sprinkling of white faces on the inner city’s streets. Now there were none. He longed to be down there among the restless masses, searching for the particular sort of excitement from which he had been cut off for so long. But this was not the time to break his curfew. That would come quickly enough and there would be a purpose to it. He had waited so long, he could wait a little longer.

  In the building below, the cleaning contractor’s team was at work. According to what Hall had been told of his position, he was supposed to inspect their work before the offices started opening each morning and report any slackness. It was not an activity that interested him. What did interest him were the visitors he was expecting. And they were only important in what they would be bringing him.

  Kruger’s messengers were to come in wearing the uniform of the cleaning company and meet him in the toilets on the top floor. That was where the cleaners started their work. By midnight the cleaners would be down on the fourth floor or lower and they knew better than to ask questions about a team they had never seen before.

  Hall was waiting for Kruger’s men when they got there. There were just two of them, a stocky individual who had a broken nose that had healed at a marked leftwards angle and an older, hollow-cheeked, unshaven man, who did the little talking that was needed. ‘Here it is,’ he said, handing Hall a brown paper bag.

  Hall started opening it, but the other man held out a hand, without touching, to stop him. ‘You can open it later. The cash is there and the clo’es and the knife you wanted. You only wanted the knife, right?’

  ‘That’s right. Is there anything else I should know?’

  ‘We didn’t have to tell you nothing else.’

  Hall felt that both men were studying him, making their own assessment. ‘What about travelling? Nothing about travelling? A ticket, a car?’

  ‘Just the cash and the clo’es and the knife. We got nothing else.’

  And you know nothing else, Hall thought. Good. ‘Just that?’

  ‘Yes, I said so. Jus’ that.’

  ‘Don’t fucking tell me I said so,’ Hall said. ‘You’re just a messenger boy.’

  The two men were turning to go, but the one who had done the talking stopped. ‘Don’t fuck with the boss,’ he said. ‘That’s his money.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ Hall said. ‘In C-Max I was Enslin’s main man.’

  ‘I’m jus’ saying,’ the man said.

  ‘You don’t need to say.’

  They turned again and this time they went down the corridor to the lift. ‘He better watch out with money that belongs to the boss,’ the hollow-cheeked one said to the man with him, but loud enough for Hall to hear.

  Bastards, Hall thought. Who the hell are they anyway? ‘Fucking messenger boys,’ he said to their retreating backs.

  After they had left, he opened the bag and counted the money. There was only a thousand. That was not enough for an air ticket or even a train ticket. Enslin Kruger was not such a fool as to give him so little for the job. The bastards had probably stolen the rest.

  They think they’ll be safe, Hall told himself. They’ll fucking find out their mistake when I come back.

  Alfred Dongwana spent half an hour at his wife’s hospital bed. Her face was so heavily bandaged that the only visible skin was in the places where the bandages had been arranged so that she could breathe and be fed. The bandages covered her eyes and the doctor had told him that she was probably going to lose the sight in one of them. She was under heavy sedation and barely responded when he spoke to her.

  When he left the hospital, he drove slowly through the busy evening streets. He found the café he was looking for in Marabastad, a suburb of Indian shops, small businesses and petty-criminal activities. It had the distinction of having survived the apartheid authorities’ determination to move all who were not white out of the cities. Somehow, Marabastad had kept its character in the face of the Group Areas Act.

  Dongwana ordered coffee and a sandwich at the counter, then sat down to wait. Half an hour later, the two men he was expecting entered through the front door. They noticed him immediately and came to sit down opposite him. He had no way of knowing that they had just made the delivery to Oliver Hall or that both had been active participants in the violation of his wife.

  ‘Here,’ said the one who had done the talking with Hall.
‘My boss wants it tomorrow.’

  The parcel he handed Dongwana was what seemed to be a large, transparent plastic lunch box. Inside, it was lined with kitchen foil so that you could not see what it contained and the prison’s X-ray equipment would not reveal the contents. It was heavier than Dongwana expected. ‘And if they check?’ he asked.

  ‘Work it out. You take dagga in every day. It’s no problem for you. This is your lunch box. Put some bread on top. We left space.’

  But it’s so heavy, he thought. If someone checks and feels the weight, they will know.

  But arguing with these men would be fruitless. They were not interested in his problems or the dangers to which he might be exposed. He had to take it into the prison or something else might happen to Penny, something even worse.

  The bunk Enslin Kruger was sitting on had more than one plastic foam mattress, one on top of the other. By C-Max standards, it was as comfortable a place to sleep as you were going to find.

  Kruger was a man at peace with the world. He had no doubt that Hall would have received the money and would do as he had been told. He was equally certain that Alfred Dongwana would have received the parcel he was to smuggle into the prison. He would now not dare refuse Kruger anything. And for him to smuggle something through the X-rays at the gates was no problem. By lunchtime the next day, he would have the goods. Then there was Elia Dlomo. Kruger doubted that the wild man from the Twenty-Sixes would be able to do what he promised, but let him try. It was all right to have some insurance.

  Tonight Jacky April was the only other occupant of the cell. He was sitting on the bunk opposite Kruger. April was not feeling good. He had his head in his hands and was wiping away strips of congealing blood from his mouth. The job Kruger’s men had done on his front teeth had not been a careful one. ‘Get your lips out the way,’ one had said. ‘Otherwise they go too.’