The Top Prisoner of C-Max

by Wessel Ebersohn

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Now he’s on his way to Beloved Childe.’

  ‘Michael called his kid Beloved?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why’s he going there? Do you know?’

  ‘No.’

  Lekota downed what remained of the whisky. It was an impulsive movement, little more than a reaction to the presence of whisky in the glass. He rose, poured himself another and sat down. ‘I wish you hadn’t come,’ he said. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I need to understand the connection.’

  Lekota shook his head. To Abigail the gesture said that, if he did understand, he would rather not. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘She’s on a study tour. She’s an expert on American prison systems and has come to study ours.’

  ‘She’s a clever kid then?’

  ‘Very.’ But that was not what Abigail had come to talk about. ‘Uncle Nathi, tell me what happened in Quatro.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly.’ And this time she knew he was telling the truth. ‘I’ll tell you what I do know.’ He was staring angrily at Abigail again. She was taking him back to a time and place he would rather have forgotten and that he hated visiting after all these years. ‘After Michael died his wife disappeared with the baby. I saw this kid for the last time when she was maybe six months old. I assumed the woman had got out of Angola and gone back to the States, but I didn’t know.’

  ‘Tell me how Michael Childe died.’

  ‘You’ve got to know that things went seriously wrong in Quatro in those days.’

  ‘How wrong?’

  ‘Very wrong. Your dad tried to bring sanity to the camp. I tried too. But eventually we both tried to organise transfers away from there before we also became victims of the Stalinists among us.’

  To Abigail it seemed that Lekota was still avoiding her. ‘How wrong did things go?’

  ‘Comrades were executed without proper trials. Our intelligence unit, Mbokodo, was practically running the camp. If they said someone was guilty then it was taken as fact. Members of Umkhonto who were loyal comrades were executed for imaginary crimes. A man might die because he took a girl off the wrong officer or complained if an officer forced his girlfriend.’

  ‘And Childe?’

  ‘He and I tried to get transferred out of there. I made it, but he didn’t. He was one of those who was executed. He came all the way from the States to fight in our revolution and that’s where he died. His crime was that he was guilty of speaking out about some of the executions and naming those responsible. I never heard what name they gave his crime. I was away at our head office in Luanda when it happened. I arrived the day afterwards. I’m one of those who complained.’

  ‘And Hall, how did he come into it?’

  Lekota swallowed down the second whisky, then rocked forward in his chair, his head held low and his face covered by his hands. ‘Most of us were ashamed of how the revolution had been perverted in that place. And, most of all, we were ashamed of the role Oliver Hall played in it. Jesus, we were so ashamed, but we were also afraid. The worst part was the murder of Childe. Our intelligence section was at the core of the paranoia that permeated the place. They put Childe in our cells when he criticised the way they were running the camp. They said he was a counter-revolutionary.

  ‘I saw Michael’s body afterwards. Three others had been executed that day. The others had been shot in the back of the head. Michael had his throat slit. That was Oliver Hall’s speciality. He was supposed to use a gun, but he did it for pleasure, so he used a knife instead. We could all see that he preferred using the knife.

  ‘He only lasted six months at Quatro. By that time, the camp was changing, reforms were being implemented and a lot of us wanted revenge. He knew he was running out of time. One night he disappeared with one of our Jeeps. We never saw him again.’ The words had been rushing out of him. Now he stopped suddenly, too suddenly for Abigail and before he had finished.

  ‘Uncle Nathi, can this all be true?’

  ‘I was there, Abigail. He was the one who did the killing while he was with us. And our intelligence section was right behind him. They told us we should remember that this was not a tea party. We were fighting a war. But Oliver Hall was never a freedom fighter. He was just a murderer.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Beaufort West

  THE KID was walking along the pavement, rubbing his hands together to warm them, his shoulders slouched. He was probably no more than eighteen, but he was broad-shouldered and Hall reckoned that his clothes would fit well. Wherever he had been spending the night, it had been a long one.

  What interested Hall most was his yellow jacket and tan pants. Both were made of a material that seemed almost luminous. It was the kind of thing worn by township boys trying to look good, even in a sleepy little dorp like Beaufort West.

  Hall moved closer, holding up a hand to stop him. He knew that he should not be so close that it might be troubling and not face to face or he might seem confrontational. ‘Nice clothes you have,’ he told the kid.

  ‘Thanks. I saved up for them.’ His head was tilted slightly to one side, the eyes narrowed. What did this guy want from him?

  ‘How much did your suit set you back?’

  ‘Three hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Does the shop have more?’

  ‘For sure. Moosa’s, in Church Street.’

  ‘I’ll give you four hundred for it – right now.’

  The kid turned to Hall in genuine surprise. ‘You can get it for three hundred and fifty. They’ll be open nine o’clock.’

  ‘I give you four hundred, you can get the same suit and have fifty to spend on a girl.’

  ‘But if you wait—’

  ‘I need it now. You can take mine. Four hundred, cash.’ Hall took the cash from his pocket and held it so the kid could see it.

  ‘Make it four fifty,’ the kid said. He was looking at the money.

  ‘Right.’ Hall took another fifty from the side pocket of his pants. ‘Where can we swop?’

  ‘Behind the sports club.’ The boy tilted his head in the direction of the rail tracks. ‘There by the back of the station.’

  ‘Can they see us from the station?’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  The place the kid led him to was sheltered on three sides by the back of the sports club and a garden wall. On the open side a little-used, unlit street promised its own share of anonymity. Beyond that was the back of a storage shed inside the station’s property. A few lights were burning in the station yard, but they were too far away to have any real effect.

  ‘Here,’ the kid said. ‘Nobody’s going to see us here.’

  ‘Get the clothes off,’ Hall said, unbuttoning his shirt at the same time.

  The kid glanced in the direction of the freight yard, then put aside his jacket. The shirt soon followed, then his pants. Hall’s eyes followed every movement. He saw the pants slip to the ground. The kid was wearing jockey shorts. As in every other human being, his femoral artery ran along the groin. If it was severed the victim lived at most another two minutes. Hall had slipped off the holster with the knife in it in when he took off his shirt. To retrieve it and cut the kid’s artery would be the work of a second. The question was which would be the greater risk: trusting the kid to keep quiet about what had just happened or leaving his body here where it would probably be found as soon as it was light.

  The kid followed the direction of Hall’s eyes and he misinterpreted the look. ‘You want sex? That’s going to cost more. Another fifty.’

  No, Hall thought. What I want is to make sure that you shut up. ‘Yes, I want sex,’ he said, ‘but not from you.’

  ‘I know a girl.’

  ‘Forget it, kid.’

  By the time they were dressed in each other’s clothes Hall had made up his mind about what to do with the boy. He reached out with his left hand in a movement that was too quick for it be avoided, took him by the front of the sh
irt and pulled him close. The knife was in his right and touching the skin of the kid’s throat. ‘Now you listen to me,’ he said. ‘You forget that you ever met me. If you talk about this to anyone I will know and I will come back and kill you. Do you understand me?’

  The kid nodded. He was looking into Hall’s eyes and he had no doubt that this man who wanted his clothes so badly meant what he said. ‘Just one word about this,’ Hall said. ‘Just one.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the kid mumbled.

  Hall released him and watched him stumble away across the sports club’s parking area. The kid would keep quiet. And Hall knew another body left here would make it too obvious that he had passed this way. He chuckled softly. The kid got away with it this time. Next time might be another story.

  The man at the ticket office looked boredly at him. ‘You lucky,’ he said. ‘We on’y get two trains a day an’ one’s coming in half a hour.’

  ‘How much to Cape Town?’

  ‘Three hundred if you go premier class. Otherwise it’s one fifty.’

  Hall thought about what he was wearing. He would stand out among the passengers in the lower class like a rent boy in a cathedral choir.

  ‘Well, what you want?’

  ‘Premier class.’

  ‘Three hundred then.’

  Hall paid, took his ticket and went out onto the platform. Beyond the station he saw that the freight train had been moved to a side track, no doubt to let the passenger train through. Perhaps an hour had passed since he had jumped from it. It was light enough to see any cops who may be patrolling the station, but there was no sign of them. Because they had not found him on the train there was a fair chance that the search had now moved to the road and the trains would be safe.

  With ten minutes to go before train time, three other passengers, all men, came out of the ticket office. They were wearing jackets against the cold of the desert night and had their hands in their pockets to keep them warm. By their clothing Hall reckoned that they were definitely not premier-class passengers. The three seemed to know each other, standing close together and talking. He moved away down the platform. The less contact he had with anyone, the better.

  A man in uniform appeared at the far end of the platform. Hall stepped back into the nearest shadow. But the uniform was that of the railways and the man was carrying a signal lantern. He came past Hall without glancing at him.

  The train rumbled into the station on time. It stopped just long enough for one passenger to alight and Hall and the others to come on board, before moving smoothly on its way. Inside one of the premier-class coaches Hall found a conductor who directed him to a compartment he shared with one other man. ‘Dining car will open in an hour,’ the conductor said, ‘but you can get coffee or a drink if you want one this early. It’s two cars towards the front of the train.’

  When he reached it, four passengers were already in the dining car. Two white men were sitting together at the far end, drinking coffee. Closer to him a middle-aged coloured man and woman seemed to be waiting for breakfast. He found a table as far from the others as he could. A solemn-faced waiter came over to ask what he wanted. ‘Coffee,’ Hall told him.

  As the waiter went away to fetch the coffee, the door of the coach behind Hall opened, letting in a brief blast of cold air, then closed again. He felt his arms and shoulders stiffen. Immediately he was sorry that he was sitting with his back to the door. There were doors at both ends of the coach, but more of the train was behind him, so that was the door people were likely to use. It was not reasoning that had caused the tension in his arms and shoulders though. He also felt that this was no time to turn round.

  A big man came down the aisle, brushing past him. He was wearing a dark suit and what seemed to be a clerical collar. But there was something about his way of moving that was familiar. He moved easily, but with the slightly ponderous way of many big men.

  The newcomer sat down with his back to Hall. The unsmiling waiter returned and took another order for coffee. It was as the waiter left that the new arrival turned towards a window and, for the first time, just for a moment, Hall saw his face in profile.

  It was impossible. Elia Dlomo could not be here. The bastard was still inside C-Max. He had no parole coming up. It couldn’t be him.

  Hall forced his eyes away from the man in front of him. He believed that if you stared at the back of a man’s head long enough he would turn round and look straight at you. If you did not want him to spot you, you had to keep your eyes under control. You had to trust to peripheral vision. And yet he had to get a better look at that face.

  Hall felt the haft of the knife against his side and the straps of the holster where it fitted around his shoulder. If this was Dlomo, Hall felt he had the advantage, a very big advantage, of knowing that he was on the train, while Dlomo knew nothing of Hall’s presence.

  But I have to move, he thought. I can’t stay here. If he turns round, everything will be fucked. On the other hand, if I go back to my compartment and know he’s on the train, but I don’t know where he is or when I might run into him, that too could be trouble.

  The door at the end of the coach had a glass panel and the space beyond it where the coaches were coupled was lit by perhaps one weak globe, while the dining car was brightly lit. If he waited there he would be able to see Dlomo – that is, if the man in the clerical outfit was Dlomo – while he would be barely visible.

  Hall rose and moved slowly towards the back of the coach. Hurrying could lead to disaster. The temptation to look back and ensure that Dlomo had not seen him was strong, but to look into his face would be certain disaster. He passed through the door and into the semi-darkness beyond. In the relative shelter beyong the glass pane he allowed himself to look back. As far as he could see, Dlomo had not moved. And yes, it was Dlomo. He was sure of it now. Or was it his imagination? he asked himself.

  If he surprised Dlomo, doing a job on him would only take a moment, but was this the place to do it? In the next coach there was an outside door and plenty of windows. As long as there was not too much blood, getting rid of the body should be easy. He looked down the passage, but it was empty. The passengers were in their compartments, most of them still asleep. That was not the case in the third compartment though. Its door was open. Someone there was awake, perhaps more than one, and would be able to hear sounds from the passage.

  He turned back to the dining car. Dlomo was on his feet, but still facing away from him. He’s coming, Hall thought. The son of a bitch is coming. He tried to surprise me, now he’s going to see what a real surprise is.

  The knife was in Hall’s right hand. The strike would come from low down. The knife and the hand that held it would be hidden till the last moment. The point of the knife would enter just below the rib cage and pierce the heart a moment later. It was a strike he had used before. They never expected it to be coming from that angle. Dlomo had tried the same thing on him. Now he would show the bastard how it was done.

  Dlomo dusted something off the front of his pants, then he was moving, but away from Hall without looking back. He traversed the length of the dining car and left it by the far door, the opposite end from which he had entered. The knife found its way back into the holster and Hall breathed deeply. But this did not mean that it was over, he thought. It could never be over, not after Warrenton.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  YUDEL called the warder in the control room to make sure that his voice was steady. It was essential that he be in control of himself and his emotions before he did what he knew had to be done. He had to confront the real killer and he had to do it now.

  The poor, sad bastard who had fired the shot that killed the director was no more than an extension of Enslin Kruger’s will. Yudel had to face him now because he knew that Kruger would be in a state of heightened excitement. If there was a chance for him to say something that would incriminate him, this was the moment.

  It took ten minutes for Kruger to be brought to him. By that time the hi
dden recorder was running. Even in his physical condition and despite the warders on either side of him and the furtive movement of his eyes, Kruger tried a swaggering walk, shoulders back and head held high.

  You phoney bastard, Yudel thought. ‘You’ve gone too far this time,’ he said.

  Kruger was still standing between the two warders. He swayed slightly. ‘You going to let me sit down?’

  ‘No.’

  Kruger turned his head slightly to avoid looking directly at Yudel. ‘I know what you doin’. Don’ try that on me. I was in my cell when this nonsense started. It’s not my game.’

  ‘We both know the truth about that.’ Yudel’s tone was flat and without any trace of emotion.

  ‘Don’ tell me what we both know. I know you, Gordon. From the beginning you had it in for me. You a bastard. I was in my cell when some other bugger pulled the trigger on the director.’

  ‘You’re not getting away with that.’

  Kruger’s voice took on a jeering note. ‘I’m awready in for life. What you going to do to me?’

  ‘You know damned well what I can do to you.’

  And Kruger did know. He had never met a convict who had been in Kokstad and was now a free man. A ticket to that place was one way only. Prisoners who were sent there spent the rest of their lives in solitary. There were those who said that by going to prison for life, your life was over. In Kokstad it was true. ‘That’s not right. Sending me to Kokstad is not right. You been looking for me from the beginning. I know you. I’m a tired old man, but you keep me here. You coulda let me out on compassionate groun’s long ago.’

  Now that Kruger realised what could still be done to him, Yudel was ready to take the matter further. ‘Tell me one thing: why? This is not an escape attempt. So why do it? You didn’t think you were going to take over the prison, did you? You know better than that?’

  ‘I tol’ you it wasn’ me.’

  Yudel ignored his protestations. ‘Sam Nkabinde was better to you than most directors have ever been. I told him he was wasting his time on you.’