El Infierno

by Pieter Tritton

  I still wonder whether we were used as test subjects to trial TB drugs on as the medication changed at least four times during the years I was taking it. The fact that so many people contracted TB after supposedly being inoculated against it was incredibly suspicious. Surely that’s not right? I will never know or be able to get to the bottom of it, but I will forever live with the consequences – unlike several of my friends whose lives it claimed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE MOST PAINFUL LOSS

  ‘SOMETHING’S WRONG. I can feel it.’

  We always had that kind of a bond, she and I. We would call at exactly the same second, having not spoken in days. We would think of the same things, randomly, and come up with identical comments in conversation. She often knew if I was sick even when I wasn’t around, and vice versa. So it was that day. Both my sister and I tried to phone my mother and, getting no answer, phoned her former long-term partner within an hour of each other, even though I hadn’t spoken to him in years. He had rushed her to hospital that afternoon with a perforated stomach ulcer.

  ‘But how is she?’ I stammered, waiting for those dreaded, life-changing words to be uttered. They didn’t come this time. She was alive. I wept tears so long held back. She’s alive! I hardly heard the next sentences through my tears. He repeated them. She had received treatment very quickly, which is what had saved her life. They had operated and repaired her stomach. That wasn’t the problem now.

  ‘So what is it?’ I cried, the cold fear rushing back through me, twisting my stomach. She had vomited while unconscious and had inhaled a large amount of vomit into her lungs, choking her. Again the doctors fought to save her and again they did, but she was now in an induced coma and the doctors were not hopeful that she would survive more than three or four days as she was so weak and her organs were shutting down. My world collapsed. I hardly dared ask the question, knowing what the answer was going to be. It always was the answer.

  ‘Had she been drinking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is that why she vomited and the cause of the stomach problem?’

  ‘Yes.’

  So it was the fucking alcohol that was killing her. It was always going to be linked to alcohol abuse in one way or another. She had had a drink problem for years, her preferred drink being whisky. She had started on this path to oblivion when I was young, five or six, maybe even earlier. She would change quite dramatically if she had been drinking, so much so it was almost as if she became another person. This other woman was not a happy individual, nor did she have much patience or sympathy. She would often become aggressive, even physically violent. She was angry and tearful, but worst of all were the horribly hurtful things that she would shout and scream at my young sister and me. We knew it was this other person ranting and that she would doubtless not remember those words the next day, but we could not forget. There they stuck like a painful thorn from a beautiful rose.

  The person she really was cared for us both immensely, and would have done anything for us, and we in turn adored the real her. That was who we wanted to be with. The beautiful Cumbrian woman with long brown hair, so kind and caring. She loved to read and write, paint and draw. She used to love long walks in the countryside, but not so much lately; the damage from heavy smoking and drinking had made that difficult for her.

  My sister Sarah had been on holiday with her boyfriend in the house in France when she heard the bad news, so she flew back as soon as she could to be at her side, to talk to her and hold her hand; to watch the woman we both loved so dearly slowly slip away. I wanted to be there too, so very, very badly. I was nearly due to be released, or so I thought.

  I had submitted my parole application and the result was due any day. A sure thing, everyone said. I was already passed the date at which I could apply for it by some six months. Six years was enough surely, to keep me in this hellhole. I was costing their impoverished country money, there was no rehabilitation, so what was the point in keeping me longer? At the very least deport me, kick me out of the country, but just let me out.

  It had been my worst fear that someone very close to me might die while I was in prison. All I wanted was to be there for her, to help her out and look after her, provide for her so she no longer had to worry or struggle or feel obliged to anyone. But I wasn’t there. I was 5,000 miles away behind steel bars and concrete walls. It was tearing me apart, the thought that she was dying and I hadn’t seen her for over six years. Why? Why now, when I was due to be released any day? I prayed, pleaded, begged, offered my life for hers; please don’t let her die, please!

  My dear friend Margarita came in to see me, having been told by my family what was happening. We sat around the small table in my cell and she prayed and consoled me as I wept uncontrollably. If there really was a God, then why did He seem to keep taking the good people from me? I had already lost countless friends, starting at the age of 14 when one of my best friends died suddenly. Then a very dear girlfriend was killed in a car crash when I was 17, and another died a few years ago in Quito.

  So very many good people had died around me. My friends called me the ‘Grim Pieter’. If only it had been a joke. Everywhere I went people died. I had been surrounded by death nearly my whole life. When I was released from prison in England, within six months my stepbrother, with whom I lived in the family home, killed himself. It had been just me and him in the house that day. Four weeks later his cousin did exactly the same, so both my stepmother and her sister lost their firstborn in the same month. This had followed the death of their mother, also in the family home, three months earlier.

  Sarah called me from the hospital once she arrived at our mother’s side. I could hear the heart monitor bleeping out the rhythm of her heartbeats. The doctors had reiterated their opinion that she probably wouldn’t survive more than three days. I refused to believe it. There must be a slim chance she could recover, surely. No, they said. I discovered later that they had put her in this induced coma just to keep her alive long enough for my sister to come and say her goodbyes.

  Sarah asked if I would like to say anything to her. She could hold the phone to her ear and I could talk to her from 5,000 miles away. I wanted to be there so badly, not only for her, but also for my sister, who was having to deal with this on her own. Through my stupidity and selfish actions, I had ultimately let down the two women in my life I most cared about. I told my sister I would have a think about what I wanted to say and call her back later on. For the moment, she held the phone to my mother’s ear just so that I could say hello and send her my love and tell her to keep fighting, and not give up. I tried not to cry, to be brave, but I couldn’t help it. I thanked Sarah and told her to call me should there be any deterioration. With that the line went dead and I was alone again in my tiny room.

  Memories kept coming to me of happier days when all was good and nothing went wrong. They were distant memories though, followed by many sadder ones. A couple of friends called in to see if I was OK, and to offer words of support. I washed my tears away with cold water and told them I was fine and that she had been ill for a while. I couldn’t say that alcohol was the cause: it just hurt too much.

  I phoned Sarah, having prepared some things to say. I asked her to watch the heart rate monitor as I spoke to see if there was any reaction as I spoke to her. This I thought might show she was responsive and could indeed hear us. My sister held the phone to my mother’s ear and I told her how much I loved her and how sorry I was for what I had done. I explained how much I wanted to be there with her. I promised that if I ever got married I would wear a kilt in her family colours. I asked her to please stay with us as she would miss seeing our children. Neither Sarah nor I had any children yet. I told her to fight with everything she could muster, as we still had so much to do and live for. I finished and asked my sister if there had been any increase in her heart rate at any points. She said yes, there had, when I had mentioned having children and also wearing a kilt if I got married. I feel sure
by her reaction that she heard those words.

  That weekend was the longest ever. I sat and willed her to get better. I sent her energy and prayed for her to pull through. She was a strong woman, but her will to live had diminished over recent years and she had sunk further into depression. Life just seemed to be too much for her to deal with.

  It was on Monday that the phone rang and it was my father. I knew what he was going to say and broke down in tears.

  ‘Pete, it’s over. She’s gone. It’s finished.’

  I wept for hours, maybe days. I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just wanted to be left to myself. I have never felt as lonely in the world as I did then. Thousands of miles from home and my mother had just died; no family here, no really close friends, just me in my cell on my own.

  I stayed that way for nearly a week. My whole world stopped. I didn’t want to know about anything. The only calls I took were from family and friends back in Britain. My father thought they might push through my parole application and release me on compassionate grounds so I could be back home in time for the funeral. I explained that life and death meant nothing in this country. Death, and violent death at that, was so commonplace that it didn’t really mean a great deal. He said he was going to contact the Foreign Office and see if they might be able to do something. I told him to go ahead and that it would do no harm.

  My sister and my mother’s long-term partner were left to make arrangements for the funeral. They decided to have the service at the Quaker hall in the town she had lived in for the greater part of her life. She had helped in the restoration of the stained-glass windows with her partner – they had repaired nearly all the windows in the church over the years – and had always loved spending time around churches. Her remains were to be cremated, which I wasn’t happy about as I don’t like the idea of it. Sarah promised to keep some of my mother’s belongings for me, not that she had much, but I wanted her papers so I could look into our family background on her side, which wasn’t very clear to us. Apart from that I wasn’t bothered about having anything. Sarah offered to send me some photos but I told her they would be safer kept with her. She said she would send me a copy of the order of service for the funeral.

  It was a while before the funeral could take place as there were some complications with the hospital. When the day came, nearly 150 people came to pay their respects. She was well liked. Such a shame she died young, not having even reached 60. I prepared a speech for the day, which my father was good enough to read out for me. We did talk about trying to set up a computer link on the day so I could speak myself, using my friend’s laptop through Skype, but we didn’t quite manage it, so my father did me the favour instead. The speech was generally well received apart from by her partner, who openly blamed me for her death in front of quite a few people and said I should have apologised in my speech. I had already apologised to my mother when my sister held the phone to her ear and that was between me and her. I felt he should have apologised for having split my parents’ marriage up and consequently our family, which caused everyone a great deal of pain. Sarah and I had lived with our father, there not being enough room for us in her partner’s flat.

  My sister had collected a pair of urns with our mother’s ashes in, one for each of us to spread where we wanted to. Some of her ashes were spread around the beautiful little church near to the River Severn where her funeral was held. She loved spending time there. She would sit in the warm sun with the fresh breeze blowing through her hair, gazing out across the waters of the river and on over to the Forest of Dean, eating her lunch.

  A few days after the funeral I received the results of my parole application. When I finally clarified exactly how much remission they had actually given me, I was glad that I didn’t have to tell my mother, as the shock probably would have killed her. It nearly did me. They told me I would be inside for a further five years.

  This all happened while I was becoming very ill with TB but before it had been officially diagnosed. Very soon after my mother’s death I heard that my aunt, my father’s only sister, was terminally ill with lung cancer. I chatted to her on the phone while she was staying at my dad’s.

  During this period, I was at the lowest ebb of the entire time of my sentence. Coping with my mother’s death and then finding out that I had so much longer to do after the failure of my parole application, led me to pretty much give up hope of ever getting out alive, particularly now I had chronic TB.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SIMON

  ‘CUENTATE, CUENTATE,’ the guards and caporal were shouting. It was the count or roll call, at 8am as usual. I quickly put on some clothes and emerged from my cell, bleary-eyed and heavy-headed, having had a few drinks the night before. It was a couple of months after the TB vaccinations and I was starting to suffer from the effects, although I didn’t know it at the time.

  Monday morning, the beginning of yet another day in another week in another month in what I had hoped would be the last year. I was still reeling from having been told a week earlier that I was now faced with being locked in this never-ending nightmare for a further five years. As I passed Simon’s door, three cells down from mine, I gave it a knock to make sure he came out for the count. I did this every morning as his cell was situated at the point in the wing where we would have to pass the guard in order to be counted. We would all then have to wait at that end of the wing while they checked that the numbers tallied and that no one was asleep in a cell, or missing. For this reason, Simon tended to wait until the very end of the count, drinking coffee in his room, watching the early-morning TV, rather than standing around waiting for everyone to be counted. On a few occasions he had missed the count and this really annoyed the guards, as it meant they had to start all over again and re-count everyone until they got the right number. Missing the count could result in them taking you to the punishment block for up to a week, but usually meant you had to bribe them with five or ten dollars to leave you alone. So I always knocked and he would return the favour and make sure I was up, as I was prone to oversleeping. I knocked and he emerged with his usual cheeky grin.

  ‘Morning Pete, you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, not bad. Bit hungover but all right.’ Simon used to find it funny when I sometimes appeared at the count still drunk as hell and I would amuse everyone with my wit (I thought I was witty anyway) while we waited. We filed through together and on the surface he seemed to be fine, cracking jokes with people, saying hello, but I knew him well and I could tell he was subdued. He didn’t have that spark this particular morning. His usual energy seemed depleted.

  Simon had been in this same prison for nearly nine years by now. He was initially sentenced to 25 years for his part in a major case, involving some 400 kilos of cocaine, which had been seized in Britain in containers that had arrived at Avonmouth docks near Bristol and originated from Guayaquil. Simon had not been present in Britain or arrested there as he had lived in Spain for nearly 25 years. He was arrested when he arrived in Ecuador on the basis of an English arrest warrant. He was not found to have a single trace of cocaine and the evidence was tenuous at best. After pressure from the British authorities, Simon was sentenced to the maximum of 25 years in prison in Ecuador.

  Simon had for years been trying to get his sentence reduced to 16 or even 12 years. For some reason, sentences were always in a multiple of four apart from the exceptional cases of 25 or 35 years. It always struck me as odd that there were no in-between lengths of sentence. When Simon was first arrested, someone had introduced him to a supposedly excellent lawyer who guaranteed he would secure his release or, in the worst-case scenario, a short sentence. This was similar to what had happened to me with the first lawyers I had in Quito. These kinds of promises were commonplace, particularly when foreigners were involved who usually couldn’t speak the language and would assume that Ecuadorian lawyers were of the same calibre as European ones who had studied for years and had degrees. Not a bit of it – nearly ever
yone I met in Ecuador had been robbed by a ‘lawyer’. Undoubtedly, the person who introduced Simon to this character purporting to be a lawyer had been in on the scam.

  In total, Simon handed over $120,000 and still received the maximum sentence, as the lawyer kept stringing him along. The problem was that once they had you on their hook wriggling around for your freedom they could keep making demands. For example, a story would be concocted that the judge was asking $50,000 to give you a 12-year sentence, so you would perhaps try to make a deal that you would pay half up front and the other half once you had the result. You would pay the $25,000, the lawyer saying yes, that was fine, and then after a few weeks he would come back saying the judge had refused and now wanted all the money up front. What do you do? You’re not going to get your $25,000 back if you say no and you will then run the risk of a high sentence, so you pay because that’s the only thing you can do and they know it. The scam artist ‘lawyer’ would then come up with numerous reasons for needing more money, such as having to pay off the deputies, the secretary of the court, to get documents stamped … There were a hundred and one different reasons that could be used to extort money from the victim.

  By the time Simon realised that this lawyer was robbing him, it was too late. After the first one vanished with his $120,000 he managed to come up with further funds to pay another lawyer. Using this second lawyer he set about trying to fight the sentence. Part of his problem, like mine, was that the British police were keeping an eye on the case and making sure he wasn’t going anywhere. However, after nearly nine years in prison, the lawyer finally managed to get his sentence reduced to 16 years. Simon had been hoping for 12, which would have meant he would go free immediately. Now he was in the same position as me and we were both applying for parole at exactly the same time. His papers were in the same batch as mine, which was dispatched to Quito under the new system.