Escape Read online

  ‘Why don’t you shower at the tank like everyone else?’ asked Pornvid without moving from his recliner.

  ‘I’m shy,’ I suggested, giving Pornvid an envelope.

  The guard understood and throughout the negotiation, Pornvid’s trusty was servicing his boss with a deep-fingered leg massage, given in utter silence. When I looked down at this toady he returned with the most theatrical expression of rapture-in-servitude, as though the pleasure were all his. Charlie was different. He bought his rank outright and attached himself to no guard.

  Charlie’s new uniform had all the trimmings: the braided lanyard, an engraved nametag, extra flaps and sewn creases, even the aviator’s wings and a parachute-regiment badge. For all that Charlie was not to become an extortionist or sycophant.

  ‘I’m going to work on the visit area.’ Charlie dropped a banana into the hip holster where other trusties kept a baton. ‘This will be good for you. I can help you. Anytime you get a good visit.’

  As we left the tailor shop I explained to Charlie that I needed to make a secret phone call. He then took me to the secret phone booth, a stack of rice bags behind a curtain in the coffee shop.

  I dialled a pager number in Adelaide. The pager was one of many kept by Harvey Oldham and would have been silent for months. Harvey did not keep many friends so we could each have unique numbers.

  Harvey Oldham had been a professional bank robber since quitting his job as a clerk in his twenties. He had been behind the counter of the Commonwealth Bank one afternoon when three men entered the bank with guns. They’d left five long minutes later without the money from the time-locked safe and had made a mess of the manager. Harvey thought he could do a better job of it.

  Fourteen stick-ups later (one conviction had set Harvey back a few years) and he vowed never again to work with anyone other than a driver. He had since been successful and was living under a carefully constructed identity that included membership of a respected gun club. Such was his fine reputation that the renamed Harvey had been granted a license for a machine gun so he could participate more fully in the club’s sporting events.

  After fifteen minutes among the rice sacks the mobile phone I’d been given vibrated. Harvey must have found a phone booth. He spoke as soon as I opened the line.

  ‘I was wondering when you’d call.’ Harvey’s interest in small talk was limited and even that was greater than his interest in flamboyant living or intoxicants. Even food Harvey regarded as mere fuel. It is rare to find someone who enjoys his work for the simple pleasure of a bad deed well done rather than for the celebrity life.

  After giving an outline of my position I asked Harvey to fly to Thailand and make an appearance in the courts of justice.

  ‘I’ll have more detail after another court date or two,’ I said. ‘In a month there’ll be a lemon letter for you at your postbox.’ We had been using ultraviolet ink for many years now to conceal messages under plain text letters but the old lemon name had stuck.

  ‘How’s the traffic outside those courts?’ Harvey often worried about the getaway.

  ‘Shitful. But if all goes well, it won’t be an issue.’

  ‘If all goes well—’ Harvey paused. ‘I’ll do a bit of research. Let you know.’

  Ten days later the steel bus taking me to court was packed. I could barely see daylight as each lurching stop jerked my head from someone’s pimply ear to another’s rancid armpit. The bus stopped at the old city prison to collect more prisoners due for hearings.

  A guard shouted, ‘Make room. Get back. Plenty of space down the back.’ Those at the rear whose faces were pressed into waffles by the mesh might have argued, if they’d been able to speak. With a little nuzzling from the guard’s machine gun, half a dozen more prisoners clattered their chains up the steel steps. One of them, a paleface, tripped but merely fell into the press of bodies.

  Over the next hours of fuming traffic he introduced himself as Roddy Keyes, an Englishman who was awaiting trial in an airport case concerning just less than a hundred grams of heroin. He had a case partner. Nothing unlawful had been found on Roddy but the young woman had been undone during an X-ray of her lower body. Cassie was arrested; Roddy and his girlfriend were allowed to board their plane. Cassie held out for a solid five minutes before implicating Rod, who had barely buckled his seat belt before being hauled from the Tokyo-bound flight.

  ‘So is Cassie going to stick to her story?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s not in her interests to say a word in court.’ Roddy was trying to sound confident. ‘The only thing is that she’s had a good moan up and that’s been all over the London papers. The BBC films our every court date. All that can make a person want to stand up and sing.’

  ‘I hear you’ve got some well-known lawyers.’ I wanted to know if using the high rollers would make any difference. ‘How are they calling it?’

  ‘Fifty-fifty. Which is what all lawyers say. I suppose it’s all down to how the Thais see the publicity.’

  Roddy told me more of the way Thailand’s big lawyers operate and that when it came to foreigners, few of their usual tricks work.

  A year later Roddy would be acquitted. Cassie received thirty years but was home in England within two years using the prisoner-transfer scheme. In many ways she found life in British prisons harder, although she did well with a coquettish book of her adventures. Roddy gave up smuggling after that, although I don’t think he felt a lot better for it. He had been lucky the cameras had been there and that there was someone to take the fall.

  The evidence presented against me that day was thin. Literally. It was a newspaper cutting taken from a Melbourne tabloid the day after my arrest in Thailand.

  ‘It seems your embassy has decided to assist in your case,’ my lawyer, Montree, said with sarcasm.

  The story quoted two local narcotics policemen giving their idea of the inside story. ‘Caught with just a sample,’ said one. ‘Would have been one of the biggest dealers in this part of the country by now,’ pronounced another. To give it authority, a translator from a university read the story into the court record.

  Surely a second-hand bite of hearsay from a distant scandal sheet could not be held against me. ‘Well that was a waste of time,’ I said to Montree, dusting my hands.

  My lawyer looked down at his papers, and held his hands over his head, not wanting to say more.

  By the time I climbed into the van to return to Klong Prem I had the best part of a plan in mind. At my next court appearance I would be escorted as usual to the eighth-floor court by one or two guards. I would be in leg irons but without handcuffs. The previous afternoon Harvey, by then in Thailand, would have gone to the court wearing one of his banking outfits: suit, wig, briefcase and an identity tag claiming something diplomatic. From the seventh floor—at that time still vacant—he would’ve let himself into the emergency stairwell that runs adjacent to the small lift that moves prisoners to and from courtrooms.

  Harvey’s large briefcase would hold quite a lot. A mobile phone, a gun, two pairs of handcuffs, large cable ties and duct tape; a set of foldable bolt cutters with extendable handles, another wig and a suit. The suit, my size, and the wig, blond, to contrast with my dark hair. Being thoughtful Harvey would include some sandwiches and a flask of coffee, for he would be spending a long night camped in that stairwell waiting for my arrival. A dusty stairwell upon which I’d seen no recent impression of human feet, although more than a few from birds alighting from the open windows.

  An accomplice would be needed for Harvey. Someone to note which courtroom I had been taken to—any of nine spread over the upper three floors. That someone should phone Harvey to tell him when I was on my way out and who would be with me. Nothing more. As soon as the guards closed the single door from the courtroom corridors, Harvey would appear from the stairwell as we waited by the lift. Harvey would have the gun in his hand. A brief conversation would ensue.

  Harvey and I would then lug the trussed up and by-then peaceful guards t
o a stage landing of the unused stairwell. Harvey would sever my chains and I would try on my new shoes, adjust my tie and straighten my wig. Harvey and I would then take to the main stairs and walk from the courthouse steps to the roadway. Any accomplice with half a brain would be on his way to Rio so I suppose Harvey and I would have to catch a cab to the domestic airport. From there south to Hat Yai, then across to Satun and the short ferry to Langkawi Island, Malaysia.

  On my five-centimetre foam mattress that night, under the condensation of these freshly baked plans, I could see nothing that might deflate this simple recipe.

  With the loss of Albert of Johannesburg there was a gap to fill in our room. Building Six provided many candidates as all newcomers went there first. The worthy Thais who arrived were usually snapped up and who could blame them for not wanting to share a room full of crazy foreigners. Foreigners who either spent the night in a morbid funk or would flop about laughing at absurdities.

  Among a new batch of foreigners was Sten from Sweden. While his English was perfect he was not inclined to speak of family, his youth in Uppsala or lost loves. So, having met these initial conditions for entry to room ha-sip jet (room 57), big Sten was welcome.

  However, we were all eager to hear any unsentimental recollections and Sten had plenty from his last decade bumming around Asia. His first local mischief saw him running gold from Singapore to Bombay in the days when India levelled a weighty tariff on imported bullion. The pay wasn’t so golden but the flights were short and the turnaround quick. Apart from the ability to step on a plane, some skill was needed in moonwalking, for the gold was packed in the soles of large shoes. Airport metal detectors are less perturbed by non-ferrous pure gold and quite untroubled at the base of the walk-through detectors then in use. So the trick was to glide through without appearing to shuffle.

  ‘How the hell did anyone work that one out?’ Rick wanted to know.

  ‘Ah, trial and error, Mister Rick,’ replied a polite and wistful voice. ‘Trial and error. Too many times.’

  That was not Sten but Bruce the Pakistani speaking. Bruce was also new to #57. Bruce knew all the India scams. His room name had been immediately christened after he had voiced his Bollywood ambitions to remake Die Hard in the Indian film capital. To be titled Dying Hardly, the all-singing, all-dancing action thriller would not star Mr Willis but a new heart-throb of the subcontinent. At that point in telling the dream, modesty would demand Bruce the Pakistani to lower his head and shyly look away. Bruce was serving seven years in KP for drugging tourists on board Thailand’s trains and had been made a foreigners’ trusty.

  Sten demonstrated some gold-footed moonwalking before recounting elements of his next job. So impressed were Sten’s rich employers with their young Swede they promoted him to tour manager for packages of illegal emigrants hoping to leave Asia for a new world.

  From China groups of a dozen or less would trek into Laos to quietly cross the Mekong River to northern Thailand. Assembling in Bangkok their photographs would be laminated into European passports stolen or sold by penniless backpackers. They would be given tickets to fly from Thailand to Japan and onward to the USA. Although the US Embassy kept twenty-five staffers in the capital to thwart illegal immigrants, the Chinese had moulded a silent army of corrupt officials at Don Muang Airport who would be blind to the small exodus of hopefuls.

  These Chinese wisely assigned the task of dodgy paperwork to the Indians and Sten’s job was to shepherd the emigrants and to safeguard the passports. The documents had to be collected at Tokyo once the passengers had been issued with boarding passes for Honolulu. These passports would be recycled with new faces until their bindings disintegrated.

  ‘I’d take them to Bangkok Airport in a minibus,’ Sten explained. ‘Collect all their little bags of food they wouldn’t need and point them to the right counter for check-in. That would go all right. We had half a row of the passport clerks under control. The worst part was at Narita. They’d all wander off shopping and I’d have to round them up or they’d miss the next flight.’

  Once found, Sten would redirect a Mr Landsburger to the correct gate or empty a Mr Stanley’s bag of the two dozen free travel guides and airline timetables. There had been the moment when one of Sten’s travellers had objected to being asked to abandon a stack of paper cups before boarding. ‘But I be businessman,’ protested Mr Tarkington. ‘Don’t worry,’ assured Sten, adjusting the gentleman’s tie. ‘Anyone can see that.’

  Within minutes of the final call Sten would move his huddled mass to the boarding gate, collect their passports and wish them well. On arrival at Honolulu the first-time air travellers could be themselves: lost and confused. They would do what the law asked, fudge their origin, nationality and previous route; request sanctuary and freedom from hardship, persecution and fear. Their unknown status would see them sent to immigration detention prisons for questioning by distrustful officials.

  ‘I’d have to turn around and go straight back to Bangkok,’ Sten complained of his boss. ‘Not even a night on the town in Tokyo.’

  ‘How did the Chinese get on in the US?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Who knows? In those days they mostly did all right. They were shitting themselves. But, you know, thrilled to bits.’

  7

  Having settled in Building Six it was then time to do a grand tour of Klong Prem to survey the openings. Eddie and I thought our cell bars in Six were sufficiently narrow at just over an inch but the building was deep within the prison, very far from the outer wall.

  Calvin and Martyn had lately arrived from the Cure so we set out with trusty Charlie to roam the grounds. Our pretext was a bogus survey of Easter religious needs. We set out walking along a main road that fanned with others from the central administration block. This square building had a twenty-metre concrete post topped with a large glassed watchtower.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone in there.’ I directed Martyn’s gaze to the top.

  ‘Probably never is,’ Martyn said. ‘Too many stairs.’

  While Eddie and Calvin compared vices I asked Martyn how his case was going.

  ‘Oh, I had another day of hearings last week. All day spent chewing over two photographs.’

  Martyn’s case was full of holes, now being heavily filled by his trial judge. The claim was that two Canadians had been plotting to export fifteen kilos of heroin by some unknown means. One of the Canadians was later revealed as an undercover narcotics policeman. He had long returned to Canada and since died from heart failure. The other Canadian, a well-known villain, had also returned to Canada charged in another case and was not expected back for twelve years, if at all. This left only Martyn and a driver to face trial in Thailand. The dope, if it ever existed, had disappeared although a fuzzy Polaroid of a white bag resting on a coffee table had earlier been accepted as evidence. With the undercover agent sadly deceased only the Thai police captain on the case remained alive for the prosecution. This captain had been transferred to Udon Ratchathani and was fully occupied with a new girlfriend near the Cambodian border.

  The photograph at issue during Martyn’s last hearing had been a black-and-white picture of four people at a table outside a café. Supposedly taken by the Canadian agent (remotely, perhaps, as he was in the frame) it was made an exhibit through a police sergeant who worked in the office of the missing captain’s deputy.

  ‘Well, Martyn,’ I said with a flat sarcasm, ‘not much to worry about with that.’

  Martyn assumed his trial judge’s manner and quoted: ‘The photograph as exhibit number twenty-three clearly shows the suspect, Martyn, translating for the Canadian drug syndicate as they planned their strong crimes.’ Adding, ‘If I get less than the lot I’ll have done well.’

  Our conversation then turned to old Cure friends and I told Martyn of American Dean Reed’s visits and promises.

  Martyn sympathised. ‘Well I don’t have to tell you his reputation, although you can’t fault his enthusiasm, whatever he really intends. Sometime
s the thirst for sweet lies must be quenched before there’s strength for bitter truths. Feeling stronger these days?’

  We had walked past Building One which held Klong Prem’s ladyboys and kathoeys, their partners and other oddballs. Thai law has no provisions for altering the sexual status listed at birth so the prison for men held many transsexuals in various stages of transformation. When illicit supplies of female hormones ran low Building One could be a hairy old place.

  Almost all of the ninety Western foreigners in Klong Prem lived in Building Two. The building’s small grounds were filled with ramshackle huts grouped by nationality: English, American, French, Dutch, German and Australian. The Scandinavians seemed to mingle.

  ‘I’m told they’re not much,’ Martyn said of these huts. ‘Like deserted trading posts in the old Congo. But I’ll move over there when I’m due. Apparently there’s a small electrics workshop.’ Then turning to me, he added, ‘And I don’t have your ambitions. I know I’ll be here for quite some time.’

  As Building Two appeared near the outer wall Martyn promised to give me a detailed report on his new home. We moved on to Building Four, the higher security building for people considered a risk. Its grounds were cramped with almost no yard space as so few were let out for more than an hour or two each day. It had been built mostly as tiny single cells, each with heavy slab-like and impenetrable bars. Whey-faced prisoners shuffled about in chains.

  ‘It would take only one word, just a little whisper,’ Eddie looked about morbidly. ‘Any of us could be put in here.’