The Top Prisoner of C-Max

by Wessel Ebersohn

  THE TOP PRISONER OF C-MAX

  ALSO BY WESSEL EBERSOHN:

  A Lonely Place to Die, 1979

  The Centurion, 1980

  Store up the Anger, 1980

  Divide the Night, 1981

  The Otter and Mr Ogilvie, 1987

  Klara’s Visitors, 1988

  Closed Circle, 1990

  In Touching Distance, 2004

  The October Killings, 2009

  Those Who Love Night, 2010

  The Classifier, 2011

  THE TOP PRISONER OF C-MAX

  A novel

  WESSEL EBERSOHN

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters and incidents, as described in these pages, are products of the writer’s imagination.

  Published in 2012 by Umuzi

  an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1966/003153/07

  First Floor, Wembley Square, Solan Road,

  Cape Town, 8001, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  umuzi@randomstruik.co.za

  www.randomstruik.co.za

  © 2012 Wessel Ebersohn

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2012

  987654321

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0179-4 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0490-0 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0491-7 (PDF)

  Cover design by Georgia Demertzis

  Cover photograph © Daniel R Burch/iStockphoto

  Author photograph by Michelle du Pisani

  Text design by 128 Design

  Set in Minion

  For Lanie, who is always there.

  ‘I believe that there are monsters born in the world to human parents.’

  JOHN STEINBECK

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  Also from Umuzi

  ONE

  Maximum-security correctional facility, Pretoria

  FROM WHERE he was standing at the railing, Yudel Gordon had a clear view of the exercise yard and the work team that was digging a drainage trench on the far side. They were some sixty or seventy metres from him. The team was made up of three prisoners with picks to loosen the hard ground, one with a spade to shovel away the dirt and one more, a supervisor. He followed a few paces behind the others.

  The nearest guard was almost as far from the five men as Yudel himself. From his box on the southern inner wall, the guard should have had a clear view of the men in the team, but he had his back to them. Something on the narrow lawn between the inner and outer walls seemed to have drawn his attention.

  Only one other guard should have been able see the work team from his position on the north-west corner. Yudel looked for him, but the box seemed to be empty. Across the intervening distance, he saw what he thought was a rifle barrel, pointing skyward, a short section of it visible above the protective barrier in the guard box. It was against regulations for him to have deserted the guard box without a replacement, and unforgivable to have left his rifle there. But it was some distance away and Yudel could not be sure. There were no guards in the yard itself.

  The three men with the picks were working to the steady rhythm of their own chanting, their voices deep and melodious. The picks were rising and falling to a beat as precise as that of the instruments in a symphony orchestra. The language of the chant was Zulu, and Yudel understood no word of it. Puffs of dust rose from the hard, sun-baked dirt every time the picks landed.

  As the men moved between the markers that outlined the position of the trench that was to be dug, the fourth man followed, shuffling the dirt into a pile that ran parallel to the trench. They would have to work the length of the trench at least six times before they were deep enough. Not that any of this was of interest to Yudel. He was far more interested in the make-up of the team and the choice of the supervisor. As Yudel watched, the supervisor trampled the stub of a cigarette to extinguish it.

  Further down the yard, well beyond the work team, another group of prisoners was gathered, thirty or forty of them. They were in the yard to exercise. A few of them were kicking an old, misshapen soccer ball back and forth without much enthusiasm. The others were watching the work team. At their centre stood a short, heavily built man. Yudel knew that his name was Enslin Kruger and that he was here because of the role he had played in organised crime. Just what his position had been in the hijacking and prostitution rings that formed the basis of the charges against him had never become clear in the trial. He offered no explanations, only a flat denial in the face of all evidence to the contrary. The sentence had been a surprisingly light two years, the judge explaining his decision by the fact that Kruger’s was a first offence and that it was not proven that he had been involved in any of the gang’s killings.

  The prison authorities did not see it that way. As a result of a single interview with Yudel, he had been brought straight to maximum security. Yudel’s report said that, although there was no trial evidence to support his view, he believed that Kruger was manipulative, amoral and dangerous. The department decided that, as long as he was in their custody, they were going to take great care to keep him there. There would be no minimum-security accommodation for him.

  Yudel had been part of the prison staff for less than a year and his entire experience of prisons was only five years more. Despite his relative inexperience, he found too many things wrong with the scene below him. He was not in favour of high-security prisoners being allowed to work with implements as potentially dangerous as picks and he was not in favour of one of their number being allowed to supervise them. In his view, the reasons they were in maximum security were real and needed to be respected.

  Also, if a prisoner had to supervise others, it should not be the man who was doing it. His name was Jackson Masuku and, according to warders and prisoners alike, he was the real authority among the prisoners. Some of them felt that he dispensed more power than the prison’s head warder. It was an open secret that considerable trade was conducted inside the prison and, according to Yudel’s sources, none of it without Masuku taking his share. Tobacco, dagga, food, pornography, new boys who could be shared among the top prisoners, and other luxuries: all were controlled by Masuku and his cronies. In Yudel’s view, allowing him to supervise a team of workers was playing into an already undesirable situation. Action should be taken to dismantle his power, not play a part in e
xtending it.

  Yudel had twice approached Colonel van Wyk, the head warder, a long-service officer nearing retirement, about Masuku’s role in the prison. ‘Mr Gordon, you haven’t been in the service long enough to understand the prison’s work properly,’ he had been told on both occasions. ‘When you’ve been here longer, you’ll understand better the way things work.’

  Since then, one of the warders had told Yudel that nothing was ever going to change. Masuku was no fool, he always saw to it that the colonel and some of the senior warders received their cut. It seemed that none of them ever refused the subsidy to their very modest pay packets.

  Among the group of prisoners of which Enslin Kruger was the centre, a movement, a ripple of attention, caught Yudel’s eye. He saw a number of faces turned towards Kruger as if waiting for a signal. While Yudel watched, a path was cleared to give Kruger an unhindered view of the work team.

  The men with the picks paused for a moment and the prisoner with the shovel turned. He was offering Masuku a cigarette to replace the one he had just finished. Superficially, it was a gesture of homage of a junior to the top man. The three men with the picks were watching the transaction. Masuku took a step forward to reach for the cigarette. The man who was offering it seemed to be looking in the direction of Kruger and the gathering around him.

  Masuku reached for the cigarette, but before he could take it, Yudel was going down the stairs towards the yard, two or three at every stride. On the landing halfway to the yard, he passed a warder, a farm boy whose understanding of his occupation extended only to the knowledge that the prisoners were bad and had to be kept inside. ‘Come with me,’ Yudel shouted. ‘Come quickly.’

  ‘Mr Gordon?’ He sounded puzzled, but Yudel could hear him following close behind.

  The gate into the yard was closed, but the man responsible for it was on his feet at the sound of the stampede from the stairs. ‘Hek,’ Yudel shouted at him. At the order to open the gate, he turned the key and swung it open in almost one movement.

  Yudel arrived in the yard, with the young warder close behind. The other warder remained at the gate, as orders stipulated. The work team was at least fifty metres away. ‘Stop,’ Yudel was shouting. ‘Stop immediately.’

  Yudel did not see the man with the shovel move. Neither did he see Masuku fall, but now he was down on his hands and knees. Exactly what had happened, how he had lost his balance, whether or not he had been pushed or even where the man with the shovel had been standing, had not been clear to Yudel afterwards. All that he remembered with any sort of clarity was that, within a moment of Masuku landing on his hands and knees, three picks had been driven into his skull, and power among the prisoners had passed into the hands of Enslin Kruger.

  TWO

  Pretoria, twenty-five years later

  YUDEL GORDON arrived at Poynton Building in central Pretoria fifteen minutes late for his meeting with the minister of Correctional Services. Throughout his career in the department, he had been stationed on the property of Pretoria Central Prison, most of it in C-Max, as maximum security was now called. He had successfully avoided an office at headquarters by pleading that he could do his job better if he was close to the prisoners themselves.

  Yudel’s lateness was the result of a struggle to find the entrance to the car park, then to find the bridge that led from the parking to the office building. He had been in Poynton Building only ten or twelve times in the last twenty-five years and his memory of its geography had gone the way of all matters that he saw as unimportant. He eventually found the entrance to the car park in a side street. An old attendant helped him find the bridge.

  ‘It’s Mr Gordon, I think,’ the attendant said.

  Yudel was certain that he had never seen this man before. ‘Oh, yes, how are you? Still here after all this time?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. I didn’t think you remembered me.’

  Yudel tapped his forehead with the tips of two fingers. ‘I never forget a friendly face,’ he lied.

  ‘Me also. But maybe you don’t remember bridges so good. It’s down there, one floor below, same place it was last time Mr Gordon was here.’ It was a joke and they both laughed.

  Yudel followed his directions to the floor below, crossed the covered bridge where the linoleum flooring was worn and cracking, and took the lift to the top floor. Seven years before, he had been retrenched in the interest of what the department had called ‘greater representivity’. In order to circumvent government policy while retaining Yudel’s services, the director of C-Max had entered into a contract with him a day after his retrenchment became effective. The contracted rate of pay was better than he had been earning as a regular employee, but now it had come to an end.

  This time he really did believe that his career in the department was finally over. He had approached the end of his contract with some dread. Over the last year, he had been trying to build a private practice, but had found that it was easier to find needy clients than paying ones. And he was aware that his investments, such as they were, would not be able to support himself and Rosa.

  The summons from the minister had come as a surprise. He was past the age at which professional consultants were normally considered by the department and, despite more than one departmental query, he still did not have a black partner. Yudel hated the idea of any sort of partner.

  Self-interest was unlikely to be served today, but he was glad of the opportunity to meet the minister. She had been in the job a few years and had built a reputation for being more enthusiastic about rehabilitating prisoners than simply punishing them. Occasionally correspondence that originated on her desk had reached Yudel, but he had never met her.

  The minister’s front-desk person, a plump girl, reminded Yudel that he was late. ‘I’ll apologise to the minister,’ he said.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she said. ‘The minister’s also late.’

  ‘Good, then she can apologise to me.’

  ‘The minister doesn’t apologise …’ She thought about that statement for a moment. ‘… unless it’s to the president.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Yudel said, ‘but I forgive her anyway.’

  To the girl’s relief, Yudel sat down. He had to wait only five minutes for the minister and she did apologise. She was in her mid-sixties, hardworking and expected the same of her staff. She had been an active part of the liberation struggle, at great personal risk, for many years. On the other hand, he had been part of the apartheid prison system. She would know at least as much about him as he knew about her. He shook her hand and sat down opposite her in an office that was of modest size by the standards of cabinet ministers and furnished with practical Department of Public Works furniture. ‘I’m glad to meet you at last,’ she said.

  Now that I no longer work for you, he thought. ‘Delighted, Madam Minister,’ he said. And Yudel really was glad to meet her. He hoped to discuss parole policy with her.

  ‘You’re probably wondering why I invited you here.’ She was smiling broadly.

  ‘The thought did cross my mind.’

  ‘The reason is that I want you here with me.’

  ‘With you, ma’am?’

  ‘Just down the passage. We’ve prepared an office for you.’

  ‘But my contract—’

  ‘Of course, your contract.’ She picked up the handset of her phone. ‘Patricia, bring Mr Gordon’s new contract here.’ A few seconds later, Yudel was glancing at the front page of his new contract. ‘It’s exactly the same as the previous one,’ the minister said. ‘Of course, we adjusted the remuneration to compensate for inflation. I hope you find it satisfactory.’

  Satisfactory? Yudel thought. A moment ago I was without a job. Yes, the remuneration was satisfactory, very satisfactory indeed, altogether satisfactory in fact. Thank God for it, or perhaps thank the minister. He would have accepted a contract that was a lot less satisfactory. ‘Yes, thank you, Madam Minister. It is entirely satisfactory.’

  ‘Good.’ She beamed. He sm
iled back at her. They were friends now. ‘I understand that you’re a close friend of someone I knew when she was still a child.’

  ‘You mean Abigail, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, Abigail Bukula. Her parents were involved in the struggle.’ When Yudel said nothing, she pressed the matter a little further. ‘You do know her, Mr Gordon?’

  ‘Yes, but we haven’t seen each other for a few years now.’

  ‘Oh? Any reason?’

  ‘We just haven’t had any reason to work together in that time.’

  ‘I see.’ She looked surprised and it was possible she did not see at all. ‘Anyway, I want you close to me because I’ve been aware of your work and I need the best help I can get for some of the difficult decisions I will have to make in the years ahead.’

  ‘Decisions, ma’am?’

  ‘We don’t have the money to run our correctional facilities the way I would like to see them run.’ Her face had become serious and she was leaning forward, her elbows on the desk. ‘As you know, on any day our prisons are overpopulated by some thirty per cent. We need jails for another thirty thousand people, but we don’t have the money. For good reason, government sees education, health, social welfare and housing as greater priorities. I want you to help me implement an early-release programme.’ She stopped speaking suddenly to study his face. ‘Mr Gordon, you don’t approve.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t approve …’ Yudel was looking for the words to explain his position. ‘Too often we have released the wrong people.’

  ‘That’s why I want you with me. I’ve been told by people I trust that no one has more knowledge and better insights into inmates and correctional facilities than you have.’ The minister was looking directly into Yudel’s eyes. What he saw was an honest person who was trying to do what she thought was best in what he knew to be an almost impossible situation.

  ‘Madam Minister, the one hundred and forty-seven being paroled this week—’

  ‘Political people that committed their crimes since apartheid ended, they fall into a special category.’