The Top Prisoner of C-Max (31 page)

Dlomo got dressed slowly and with difficulty, using only his right hand. He left the bloodied shirt and jacket in the cupboard. Something had to be done about replacing them. The only part of the shirt he kept was the clerical collar. He picked up the satchel and, moving slowly and carefully, stopped in the doorway. In the passage a nurse was pushing a trolley, moving away from him. Without pausing, she rounded a corner and was gone.

He took a few steps down the passage, stopping at the next ward. From within, the erratic sound of snoring reached him. The blinds were down and the men in both beds seemed to be asleep. In the cupboard he found a shirt that was a little small and had no collar. He struggled into it, pulling the cotton tight to get the buttons into their holes. When he was done, it stretched tightly across shoulders and chest, but it hid the bandaging and carried no blood stains. Then he added the clerical collar and looked at himself in the room’s only mirror. The result looked natural enough. The collar had worked so well that leaving it behind would be foolishness.

A voice from the nearer bed crackled painfully. ‘That’s my shirt. You got the wrong shirt.’ Without answering, Dlomo turned away, stopping in the doorway to make sure that the passage was empty. ‘Listen, man,’ the voice crackled at him again. Clearly, talking was not easy. ‘That’s my shirt you got.’ Then, seemingly to himself, he mumbled, ‘Where’s that fucking bell?’

Dlomo walked down the passage as quickly as he could. From the front a nursing assistant, wearing the pink uniform that distinguished them, was carrying a bucket that contained a few scrubbing brushes and cloths. She nodded boredly at Dlomo. ‘How are you, brother?’ Without waiting for an answer, she moved on down the passage.

He was out of the section. The lifts were ahead. A large 2 painted on the wall told him that he was on the second floor. But the lifts were where he expected anyone following him to look first. The stairs were just beyond the lifts, but they would be the next place to look. Another twenty or thirty metres away a sign indicated the fire escape. Nice people did not use the fire escape. They would think of it last.

He descended the steel steps of the fire escape, holding onto the banisters and moving even more carefully. Now that discovery seemed to have been averted, he felt the pain in his back and hand more intensely.

The fire escape ended in a narrow alley. Once on the ground he stopped to look at how much remained of his money. He counted six hundred. That should be enough for a taxi that would take him the rest of the way. At the end of the alley, a car passed in the street. He could just make out the letters ‘ill lat’ in the illuminated signage of what seemed to be a small convenience store. By the time he reached the end of the alley, he could see that the sign read ‘8-till-late’.

Inside the store, a tired-looking man in late middle age was seated behind the till. He looked at Dlomo without speaking. ‘Good evening,’ Dlomo said. ‘I need a taxi.’

‘Reverend, you just walked past them. They’re always right out in front of the main door. Were you in for your eyesight?’

A single cab was parked where the shop assistant said they would be. Dlomo crossed the road and made his way to the front entrance, still moving slowly. The pain in his back was a sharp, repetitive thrust, but not as bad as it had been on the train. He leant against the cab and spoke to the driver. ‘Observatory, Cape Town.’

‘Seven hundred and fifty.’

‘All I got is six hundred.’

The driver looked past him. ‘Seven hundred and fifty is the rate.’

‘Please, my brother, I got six hundred.’

‘They don’t take you home by ambulance?’

‘No. They say take a taxi.’

‘The bastards. All right, get in.’

‘Six hundred is all right?’

‘Yes, why the fuck not?’ And I might as well, the driver thought. I’ve been waiting for a fare for two hours now. ‘Sorry, Reverend, I didn’t mean to say it like that. A man gets into bad habits.’

‘It’s all right, my brother.’

Five hours remained before the scheduled time for Abigail’s flight. The drive to the airport took less than an hour. Two earlier flights were booked solid, but she reasoned that if she was at the airport early and there was a cancellation, she could save an hour or two.

The drive along a highway dotted with clusters of intermittent traffic went by quickly. Only one thought chased itself through her mind. What was he trying to do? He had killed the father, was his ambition to wipe out the entire family?

After she had booked in at the airport, she registered on the standby list. The girl who took her name looked to be no more than seventeen. ‘This is very important,’ Abigail told her. ‘Please take special care.’ Despite the choice of words, it came out as a command.

‘Don’t worry, ma’am. If there’s a cancellation, I’ll keep it for you.’

‘How will I know?’

‘The next flight is in an hour. If you come back in forty-five minutes, I’ll tell you.’

Abigail found an unoccupied seat near the boarding gate and opened her laptop. For the first time, she wondered what she was going to do when she got to Cape Town. The obvious answer was that she would take the police with her to the Freedom Foundation. Face to face, they would not be able to refuse her. If only Freek were there. Yudel had introduced them some years before. She had seen him in action since then and she knew he was the man she needed.

Abigail spent the forty-five minutes on her laptop, reading a police report on the wife of a senior politician accused of drug running, and glancing continually at her watch. The author of the report had built a case that relied largely on the testimony of criminals. Abigail doubted that it contained enough to secure a conviction. When the time was up, she returned to the registration desk and spoke to the girl who had placed her name on the standby list. ‘I’m very sorry, ma’am. There were three cancellations, but the police took them all.’

Abigail raised both hands, her fingers spread in exasperation. ‘My business is also official, more important than theirs.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but we can’t refuse the police.’

Abigail was turning away in disgust when a new thought came to her. She moved forward so quickly that the girl drew back, fearing she might be attacked. ‘What did these policemen look like?’

‘Two old white ones and a young black one.’

‘The white ones, was one big and the other small with wild hair?’

A look of panic crossed the girl’s face. ‘Aren’t they really policemen?’

‘They’re policemen all right. Do you have their names?’

The girl scratched through papers pinned to a clipboard. She stopped at the page that carried the information she was looking for. ‘F. Jordaan, L. Moloi and Y. Gordon.’

‘Excellent. Tell the flight I need to speak to them before they take of.’

‘They’re taxiing already.’

Abigail had to take more than one deep breath before she could speak. ‘You told me the next flight was in an hour.’

‘That was a different airline.’

‘Christ Almighty, kid.’ Abigail had run out of restraint. ‘I don’t give a rat’s arse what airline. I just need to get to Cape Town fast.’

Nothing was going right for the girl. This awful woman was dissatisfied with everything she did. It was typical of rich people. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ she began, ‘I thought—’

‘No, you didn’t. You didn’t even begin to think.’

Cape Town suburb of Lansdowne – ten kilometres from the Freedom Foundation

The mountain passes had used up what little stamina remained in the old Datsun. It had boiled crossing the coastal mountains to reach the
N
2 coastal highway. He had to wait for it to cool and then, using a cold-drink bottle, had filled the radiator from a mountain stream.

After that he had filled the bottle and kept it on the seat next to him. The Datsun had kept going along the rolling coastal hills, but the Houwhoek Pass, rising a thousand feet to the top of the Elgin Plateau, had almost destroyed what remained of the engine. It had boiled halfway up the pass and then again near the top. The radiator had to be topped up twice. The traffic on the highway had slipped by without slowing. No one stopped to help the driver of a thirty-year-old Datsun.

The bastards, Hall thought. They would’ve all stopped if I’d been driving a late model Merc.

Crossing the Cape Flats, he could see Table Mountain and knew that he was almost within walking distance of the city. She was within reach, he told himself, and he was going to have her. None of them had ever been able to stop him before, and they would not be able to now. He was going to have her and he was going to have her in every way a man could have a woman, and a few ways other men could not even imagine. He was going to leave nothing for Gordon or any of them. The pretty white dresses and the pretty speeches would mean nothing now.

As he passed through the first cluster of suburbs, the van finally died amidst a screeching of red-hot piston rings scraping against well-worn cylinders. With two wheels on the pavement, Hall brought the van to a halt outside an enterprise that carried the name, Dignified Funerals. Next to it his attention was drawn by a small tyre-repair shop. He got out slowly and thoughtfully.

A man in overalls came out of the workshop door. He leant against the doorframe. With one hand he tapped a spanner in the palm of the other. ‘You going to need more than tyres, my man,’ he told Hall.

He was a lean, wiry character, his face deeply lined. Like so many from this part of the country, including Hall himself, his features looked European, but his hair and skin colour were African. Hall could see no one else in the place. This guy would have a car and probably some cash too. Hall approached him, shaking his head. ‘My damn car’s finally had it.’

The other man nodded. ‘Sounds like it. Prob’ly not worth fixing. You’ll get a few hundred from a scrap dealer. That’s the best you can do.’

Hall stopped close enough to enable him to keep his voice down, sounding almost confidential. ‘Maybe you can help me, buddy.’ He was again using his working-class Cape Coloured way of speaking.

‘Not with that.’ He inclined his head towards the old Datsun.

‘I got a address I got to go to. Maybe you can tell me where it is.’ From his pants pocket Hall took out the computer printout Ashton had given him. He handed it to the tyre-repair man.

‘My friend, you got a distance to go.’

‘How far?’

‘I’ll show you on the map.’

Hall followed him into a small office in which papers, telephone and everything else carried smudges of tyre dirt. A road map of the city hung on a wall. A car key dangled from a hook next to it. ‘You work alone?’ Hall asked.

‘All by myself. It’s the best way. When you got staff you always got problems. I say, be your own staff and you can rely on your staff.’ It had been intended as a joke and he laughed.

Hall joined in briefly. ‘So show me where this place is, buddy. That’ll be a big help.’

‘This is where we are and this is the suburb you want. You got a distance to go.’

Hall moved in behind him. He glanced towards the window, but it was grimy with dust and partly covered by a calendar. The day was still bright outside. It would be impossible to see into the gloom of the little office. ‘What road should a man travel?’

‘If you can get a car, this is the way.’ His forefinger was tracing a route on the map. ‘Like this.’

The tyre man was studying the map as if he had never seen it before. This was all too easy. Hall moved up close behind him. He lifted the elbow of his knife arm so that it would not be easy to ward it off. The slice was so clean that the pain came only a moment later. Hall’s main problem was to avoid the blood pumping out of the carotid and to see that the tyre man fell where the body would not get in his way. It was just too easy.

THE BOEING
taxied unhurriedly to a position opposite a boarding gate in a temporary wing of Cape Town International Airport. The airport had been undergoing an expansion programme for some months and part of the concourse was now inside a tented structure. Freek had spoken to the captain of the flight and he, Yudel and Lieutenant Moloi were allowed to disembark before the rest of the passengers.

Moloi had been reluctant to accompany them, telling Freek that he was in the middle of developing a drive to promote greater client satisfaction at the Lodge. He said that the girls were all enthusiastic about his plans and he needed to be there to see that the plans were properly implemented.

‘I need you in Cape Town,’ Freek had told him. ‘Let’s remember what your real job is.’ To Yudel he had said, ‘This is a smart young guy and I don’t know what we’re going to find when we get there.’

The southeaster that blows across the Cape Flats off False Bay was strong enough to blow a kid off a bicycle. Going into the teeth of it, Yudel did his best to follow Freek and Moloi across the short stretch of tarmac to the temporary boarding area. Just before they reached it, Moloi turned back to take his arm above the elbow and first drag him, then push him into the building. They entered with Freek leading, a flustered Yudel just behind him, still suffering Moloi’s assistance.

Four men were waiting for them, two in the uniform of police inspectors. The two older ones wore suits. One of them spoke. ‘You’re a long way from home, Freek.’ He nodded to Yudel. ‘And Mr Gordon, I think.’

Yudel looked from the speaker to Freek. ‘Good evening, Willem,’ Freek said. ‘I didn’t expect to be met at the airport.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t.’ The speaker was a small, hard-faced man, who, like Freek, had the reputation of suffering no nonsense and had the singular distinction of having grown up on the same streets as Oliver Hall.

Freek turned to Yudel. ‘Colonel Willem Muller, Yudel Gordon from Corrections.’

Yudel shook the colonel’s hand. ‘How do you do?’

‘I’m all right. I’m on my own turf tonight.’

Freek looked for Moloi to introduce him, but the lieutenant, who had been close behind Yudel, was no longer with them. He turned back to the colonel. ‘This is a surprise. What can we do for you?’