The Top Prisoner of C-Max (35 page)
‘Not a pimp.’ Moloi looked affronted. ‘I’m going to be an adult-entertainment executive.’
Freek glared at him, then threw back his head and laughed loud from deep in his chest. ‘Maybe I’ve lived too long. I no longer understand anything.’ He reached out a hand to Moloi who took it tentatively. ‘Good luck, my man. I’m sure your business will entertain plenty of adults, the male kind.’
‘Thanks, General. Any time you want to drop by and—’
Freek pointed a warning finger at him. ‘Stop right there. You’re on the verge of going too far.’
Beloved returned home within a month of killing Hall, her enthusiasm for studying African prisons having evaporated with his death. After she and Abigail had made statements to the police, the National Prosecuting Authority had informed her in writing that she was not a suspect and that they had no objection to her leaving the country.
She hoped to say goodbye to Yudel, but whenever she called he was in the prison, beyond the reach of telephones. She left a number of messages, but he never answered any of them.
In the months that followed the killing of Oliver Hall, Yudel thought about the three women who had dominated that week of his life. The way he saw his relationships with them, Abigail had always captivated him and he admitted to himself that Beloved enchanted him. The proximity of either was intensely stimulating. But he never doubted that Rosa was the centre of his life. She was the very rock on which his existence was anchored. She was the one he would always go home to.
Drinking coffee at the kitchen table of the Scarborough home next to Beloved’s bungalow, Abigail had waited for a moment when they were alone and when Beloved’s crying for Amy Morgan had stopped. Looking at her, she understood for the first time what had happened. ‘You were waiting for him,’ she said.
Beloved said nothing.
‘How did you know he would come tonight?’
‘I can’t say. I expected he wouldn’t wait long.’
Another matter was perhaps of greater importance. ‘I found out about your father.’
‘Is that why you came?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you include it in your statement to the police?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you.’
Half an hour later, Abigail was in the street outside the bungalow, talking to Yudel, when her cellphone rang. The voice of the woman on the other end of the connection sounded familiar. She was crying.
‘Thandi, is that you?’
‘Abigail, Abigail, Abigail,’ Thandi whimpered.
‘What is it, girl? Tell me.’
‘It’s Robert.’
‘What about Robert?’
‘He died.’
‘He died?’
‘There were complications and he died.’
Yudel had seen the expression of disbelief on her face and moved closer. Abigail reached to him for support, finding a sleeve of his jacket and holding onto it. ‘But he was improving,’ she told Thandi.
It seemed that there had always been infection and the improvement had been his body fighting back. It took all his strength, until there was nothing left.
On the trip home and for days afterwards Abigail felt a numbness that went beyond any possibility of emotion. It was only after she arrived home that she was able to think about Robert at all. He had not been hers for a year now, but he was the man who had brought her out of the darkness of a fear that extended to all men. She would probably never again love any man quite the way she had loved Robert. And now he was gone, at the age of forty-three, slaughtered by an assassin who may never be found.
His file still lay on the table next to the telephone, almost untouched. There were not many things Abigail regretted in her life, but not having read Robert’s file immediately was one of them. She knew she would have to give it her attention now, more attention than she had ever given anything.
Since Abigail’s return from exile, she had never even considered leaving the country. Now she had to fight the impulse. No, she thought. This touches me, but it is not the whole country. It’s never the whole country.
Sitting in the darkness of her study with the light switched off, her cellphone signalled that a message had arrived in the voicemail. She lifted the phone to her ear and accepted the message. It was Robert’s voice. It must have been waiting in some digital memory bank on the premises of the service provider and only reached her now. There was no doubt that it was Robert, but it seemed impossible that she could be receiving a message from him. The shock of hearing his voice was too great for her immediately to comprehend the meaning of the words. It had been sent from his phone at two in the morning on the day he died, perhaps in the last hour of his life. She had to play it three times before the words meant anything.
‘Hello, my love.’ His voice was weak and crackling with the effort he was making. ‘Are you still awake?’
The October Killings
Wessel Ebersohn
D
RUM
M
ANEESHA
G
OVENDER
,
D
AILY
N
EWS
Abigail Bukula is a brilliant lawyer in the South African justice department. For twenty years she has closed her mind to the past, trying to forget the defence force raid when a good man, fighting for an evil cause, saved her life. Or the night that followed when an evil man, fighting for a noble cause, saved her again.
But she can no longer ignore the past when she learns that on 22 October every year, since the 1985 raid, a member of the original defence force hit squad is murdered. This date is now nine days away. Only two members of the squad are still alive: the man who saved her, and a man behind bars in the country’s highest security prison. The days slip away too quickly as Abigail tries to stop the murders, facing forces that she does not understand. She finds an unlikely ally in the eccentric prison psychologist Yudel Gordon.
The October Killings
sees this popular hero of three of the author’s earlier books making a formidable team with Abigail Bukula, the sharpest heroine of the new South Africa.
ISBN:
978-1-4152-0074-2 (
PRINT
)
ISBN:
978-1-4152-0283-8 (
E
P
UB
)
ISBN:
978-1-4152-0284-5 (
PDF
)
Fiction | June 2009
222 mm x 146 mm | 256 pages
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code to scan with your cellphone, or go to
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Wessel Ebersohn
T
SHEPO
T
SHABALALA
,
STAR
When seven activists go missing in Zimbabwe, brilliant young lawyer Abigail Bukula is called in. Among those missing, believed to be held at the notorious Chikurubi prison, is Abigail’s cousin – a gifted writer and the child of an aunt who died in the Gukurahundi massacres of the early 1980s. Reading her cousin’s work and trying to understand him, Abigail turns to eccentric psychologist Yudel Gordon, whom she hasn’t seen in years. Yudel follows Abigail to Zimbabwe where she wins the court battle for the prisoners’ release, but at Chikurubi there is no trace of them. In the days to follow, Abigail and Yudel search for the missing activists in a race against time. They uncover a relationship no one could have anticipated in a country struggling to throw off a brutal dictatorship, where success and tragedy sit like Siamese twins.
ISBN:
978-1-4152-0119-0 (
PRINT
)
ISBN:
978-1-4152-0335-4 (
E
P
UB
)
ISBN:
978-1-4152-0336-1 (
PDF
)
Fiction | August 2010
222 mm x 146 mm | 272 pages
To buy online, choose a
QR
code to scan with your cellphone, or go to
www.kalahari.net
or
www.exclus1ves.co.za
Exclusive Books