El Infierno

by Pieter Tritton

  I started to pull myself back together. I started cursing myself for being so weak and self-pitying. Around 8pm a kind, friendly woman who worked in the prison’s healthcare team came around wishing everyone a happy Christmas. When she got to me she could see I was upset and she tried to reassure me, which made me cry once again. I told her I was OK, thanked her and wished her a happy Christmas and she left. At that point I broke down and wept until I could weep no more and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  BACK INTO THE FRAY

  IN JANUARY, I was moved back to my wing. One day I was stood by the entrance gate on to the wing, which was made of cast iron or steel bars. I hadn’t realised it was unlocked and another inmate suddenly pulled it open, catching and cutting my big toe in the process, as I was only wearing flipflops. It was only a small cut, but within a couple of days of bathing in the open-air showers in the exercise yard it became infected. The infection rapidly spread to the skin surrounding the nail which became intensely painful and full of pus. It was agony. I left it at first, thinking it would clear up on its own, then a couple of people gave me various liquids and creams to apply to the area. None of these had any effect and it kept getting worse. I pleaded with the guards to allow me out to go to the clinic, which was only 100 metres away, but they were being bastards and wouldn’t let me go.

  The infection kept spreading, until the whole foot became swollen and inflamed. My body was losing the fight; I was no longer able to walk up and down the stairs. I finally snapped and got myself down to the main gate again, now on a Saturday. By chance I found it to be open so walked straight out of the wing. At this point a guard challenged me. Luckily on this particular day I knew both the jefes de guia and was on good terms with them. I point blank refused to return to the wing and told the guard to call his boss. I was in so much pain it had to be seen to. He eventually gave in and accompanied me to the clinic.

  The doctor took one look at it and said had I left it another two or three days he would have had to amputate it. In order to save the toe, he had to pull the nail out then and there. Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of having my toenail torn away from the nerves by lifting it and then yanking it out was my idea of fucking torture. This is what I had expected to happen if I ever ended up on the bad side of a deal and was kidnapped.

  Added to this, I had been sniffing coke for the last 24 hours and this was going to require an anaesthetic. I asked the doctor casually what the anaesthetic was. He told me it was lidocaine. Oh dear! Lidocaine is derived from cocaine and the fact that my body was full of it probably meant my tolerance was going to be through the roof, meaning the anaesthetic would have little effect. The doc came back with his small black case of tools.

  ‘I am going to have to inject underneath the toenail, which will hurt quite a bit, and then also two further injections, one being directly into the main nerve which runs up the side of the toe.’

  ‘OK, doc, fire away.’

  Why the fuck does this only happen to me? I wondered as I lay back and gritted my teeth. At this point my good Russian buddy Ruslan appeared. Being a field-trained military doctor from the Russian infantry and a qualified chiropractor, he had quickly been taken on as an orderly in the already overwhelmed healthcare centre.

  ‘Hi Ruslan. Dobroe utro.’

  We chatted and joked, which was a welcome distraction from the pain that was about to be inflicted on me. I clenched my jaw as I saw the doc preparing a bloody great long syringe right in front of me. He pushed the needle into the vial of clear liquid that was lidocaine, then held the needle up and squirted a little into the air, clearing any bubbles. The thought of this foreign body being driven under my toenail was almost enough to make me faint. In went the first injection and it wasn’t too bad as I was in such great pain already. It was the second injection directly into the main nerve that hurt like a bastard. My cold sweat spread from my forehead down across my chest and stomach. I lay back and the pain slowly receded from my foot. The doc started probing. Sure enough, I could still feel it when he poked around because of my high tolerance to cocaine and therefore to lidocaine. He gave me a couple more injections, up to the maximum level permitted, glancing at me occasionally to make sure I wasn’t dying.

  ‘If this fails to completely numb the toe, then you will have to come back another day and try again.’

  Luckily it worked. By now my toe felt as if a giant was squeezing it with the pressure caused by all the extra fluid under the skin.

  ‘Right, here we go,’ said the doctor, putting almost his entire bodyweight on my leg and another inmate holding me down at the shoulders. There was a bit of a tug and a cold feeling where the nail had been. It was out. I heard the doc open the metallic bin and then a ‘ting’ as my toenail landed in the bottom. I could hear the pat-pat-pat of my own blood hitting the floor. Ruslan looked like he was about to faint.

  They poured iodine directly over the exposed nail bed and bandaged it. I was warned to take great care that no one stand on it or that I accidentally bump it. As I was about to leave, the doctor enquired, with a glint in his eye, ‘Do you have any other problems with your nails?’

  ‘Why? Do you want to pull them all out?’

  ‘No, just checking.’

  ‘I thought you might have been starting a collection.’

  During the next couple of months, I was called to the offices out of which all the functionaries for the medium-security zone worked. I had to undergo a series of psychological examinations in order to fulfil the criteria for repatriation. I also had to go through a long medical examination to ensure I was no longer contagious with TB. If I had been, that would have stopped the entire process dead in its tracks, probably along with me shortly afterwards. I also had to have interviews with various social workers and administration staff.

  On one particular day, my room-mates had convinced me to smoke some potent skunk with them. I generally don’t touch marijuana as I don’t like the effect, but on this day I thought it might change my perspective a little bit and pass the day more quickly. A few lines of coke followed and then suddenly I could hear my name being called. Shit. Was it me being paranoid? Had I finally lost the plot? Another inmate appeared at the doorway and said I was being summoned to the offices and that there was a social worker waiting at the main gate. Just what I needed while I was stoned!

  I limped down the stairs, my foot still being bandaged, and left the wing with the social worker who seemed to be looking at me more than normal – or was this just my paranoia? I tried to stay cool and collected. Once we arrived at the office, it transpired that she was one of the psychologists and had a barrage of questions awaiting me, which were going to take a couple of hours to wade through, including me having to draw pictures such as a house, a tree, a face – all the usual psychobabble. I laughed internally as I knew my answers were going to come out somewhat skewed and would probably have the shrink scratching her head. As we proceeded, the effects of the drugs gradually began to wear off, thankfully, and I relaxed and got into the questions. I never did see the results of that or any of the examinations, much as I would have loved to.

  Upon my return to the wing, everybody started saying, ‘Oh, you’re going soon. Good luck! Stay in touch.’ I wasn’t so sure and managed to put in a call to Isabel to ask for an update on what was happening with the process overall. I received the usual response.

  ‘A couple more months. You know we can’t give you the date.’

  ‘But is it going to be soon?’

  ‘I can’t say,’ she replied, as my hopes and dreams of freedom slowly headed west along with the setting Ecuadorian sun.

  A couple of weeks after having moved back to the wing, there was a commotion at the gate, so I went to see what was happening. Someone told me that they had just overheard one of the officer’s radios reporting that one of the wings in the low-security zone, which was situated next to ours, had started to riot and there was a mass breakout taking place with dozens
of people scaling the chain-link fence out of their exercise yard and over into the medium-security zone. I stood by the entrance to the wing. All of the wing entrances were double-gated. The idea was that the guard could let you through the first gate into a holding area, close that gate behind you and then open the outer one, or vice versa. Thus no one could suddenly rush out of the wing. Some of the other inmates on my wing had slammed shut the outer gate and unravelled the fire hose located in this holding area. They had then pulled the hose into our exercise yard, slammed shut the inner gate and stood waiting to blast anyone that attempted to gain entry to our wing.

  The next thing we see are a couple of guards and police running across the open area in front of the wings where the football pitches were meant to be. As one of the policemen is running from the mob that we can hear approaching from our left, he turns with handgun drawn aimed towards the pursuing inmates. He must have thought better of it, as how many people can he hit with one clip before they are on him tearing him apart? In his panic, he fumbles the gun and drops it. Having no time to retrieve it he high-tails it following the rest of the guards to where they had locked themselves in an area on a wing to our right.

  Within seconds, dozens of people went racing by, all carrying weapons from knives and machetes to iron bars. Jesus Christ! The guys manning the fire hose opened up at anyone who attempted to even get near our gate. By now the mob had managed to rip the gate off its hinges behind which the guards were cowering. They started to beat the hell out of the guards and police officers with whatever they had to hand as they ran back across the open ground in the direction of the office buildings, seeking shelter. The mob were smashing and breaking anything they could. They managed to break into the shop and looted everything. They also tried to break into the clinic to steal drugs but the security there held. A police helicopter was now circling overhead and a cordon of police had encircled the entire prison in readiness to prevent an escape.

  The guys at our gate maintained a defence against the marauders who tried to break into our wing and pelted the guys manning the hose with rocks, clods, mud and sticks. After a while, hundreds of police in riot gear came charging in, releasing tear gas. The police managed to chase everyone back to their wings and brought the situation under control. Miraculously, no one was killed but quite a few were injured. All the ringleaders were transferred to other prisons, having been identified on the cameras. That was the only actual riot I witnessed in all the years I was imprisoned in Ecuador. There had been the protests or paros, but never a riot like this – up until then.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ADIOS

  SIX MONTHS HAD passed. It was November 2014. Payano was trying to get my attention. Payano was a Dominican who saw himself as a bit of a politician or revolutionary and liked to get involved in the daily running of the wing however he could.

  ‘They’re calling you into the offices,’ he told me with a knowing look in his eye and a wry smile.

  Isabel the vice consul from the embassy had been in touch and told me that I was going to be transferred any day now but she couldn’t give a specific date because of security. They were concerned I might attempt an escape mid transit. I was on tenterhooks, barely able to sleep with the anticipation.

  I had kept news of my ongoing repatriation bid reasonably quiet as people were extremely envious here and just loved to cause you problems if they thought you were doing better than them. I had seen other people, over my many years in prison, keeping their release date a closely guarded secret, so that one day they would be there and the next gone; disappeared as if dead. I used to think it strange when people kept their release date secret, but I learned over the years that it was in fact the best thing to do, just in case someone wanted to get you into trouble at the very last moment.

  I was now seen as one of the bosses on the wing. Even most of the guards treated me with a degree of respect. The gang knew I was someone dependable, with whom they could do business. I was involved in the sale of cocaine on the wing and helped to oversee the running of everything else as a whole. But that could also make me a target for someone who was jealous of my status. I had seen on numerous occasions that when someone started doing well for themselves other people on the wing would become envious, and it often ended in trouble for the one doing well. Quite often someone would cause a problem just out of pure spite. I was worried that someone would try to get me busted with 50 or 100 grams of coke. That would quite easily get me another 12 years.

  However, what was worrying me even more was the prospect of being arrested upon arrival in Britain and charged with conspiracy to import some 85 kilograms of cocaine. The memory of the threat the British police had made when I was first arrested, of a 20-year minimum sentence in the UK, still hung over my head. Fuck that! There was no way I would accept that without a serious fight. I had been mentally preparing myself for this coming battle for several months now, ever since it was confirmed that I would be getting repatriated to Britain where I would complete the remainder of my sentence.

  My friends in Britain were divided on the issue, half saying I was going to get stuffed if I came back and the other half of the opinion that, seeing as I had served nearly ten years and gone through all the traumatic events I had, the British authorities would consider it sufficient punishment and call it a day. My stepmother had managed to speak to one of the police officers who had been involved in my case. He had more or less said to her that they considered the case closed and I had been sufficiently punished, so they wouldn’t be pursuing me any further. I wasn’t sure whether to trust that or not.

  I had no idea what was going to be the actual outcome, but whatever happened at least I would be home in my own country, in my own culture and near my family and friends, who I hadn’t seen for nearly a decade. God, it was going to be strange.

  The thought of seeing my family was actually making me feel quite nervous. I knew my own face had changed drastically. When I looked in the mirror the face that stared out at me was one that bore signs of extreme mental trauma. My eyes appeared anguished and constantly on the verge of tears. They were eyes that had witnessed horrific scenes of death and torture. Where once I had longish hair I now had a shaved head. I was also looking gaunt and ravaged from the effects of the TB, which had nearly killed me, and the minimal prison diet.

  Nearly ten years had gone by since that day I had left my father standing on the French train station platform. My sister had told me he had aged quite a lot and now had a full head of grey hair and had lost a tooth or two. I tried to envisage a gap-toothed, decrepit, bent old man, but found that impossible to imagine, as he had always been such a big, strong person.

  In the time I had been away, my sister had got married and had a child, so I was now an uncle. I had only seen photos of my new nephew and couldn’t wait to meet him in person. She had named him after the character in a story I created when we were children. I would ad-lib it to her in the evenings or if she was feeling upset, so it had stuck with her. When I found this out it touched me deeply to know these stories had left such an impression on her. She was now a woman and mother, not the little sister I had left behind.

  I went over to the offices with the inmate dispatched to find me, wondering what they needed to know now. Over the previous weeks, I had been called to the offices on a number of occasions so that they could gather all the information necessary for my repatriation. I had to undergo psychological examinations, talk to social workers, have medical checkups, compile a dossier of what I had been doing with myself for the last nine years and have a security check in order to make sure I wasn’t preparing to escape during transit. This check was basically once again a series of psychological tests for risk assessment and a couple of interviews. No doubt they had their informants on the wings letting them know exactly what was going on. They took my fingerprints and photograph several times, and I don’t know how often I had given my details and those of nearly all my family members.

 
The whole process of repatriation was expected to take about a year; however, it quite often took a lot longer, with some people having waited up to three years. It wasn’t guaranteed that you would be accepted, either. First of all, the Ecuadorian government had to agree in principle to my repatriation, then the British government had to do the same. All my prison history would then be sent from Ecuador to Britain for them to take a better look at me and my case. This was then returned to Ecuador with anything the British had to add, such as my criminal record and British prison history. The Ecuadorians then had to make a final decision and approve the transfer. At this stage I had to pay the fine I received as part of my sentence, which in my case was $8,000; I couldn’t be transferred until this was paid. I then had to cover the cost of the airfare back to the UK, which would be quite high as they informed me they were not able to purchase the ticket until the last moment because of the way they operated. The prison service uses normal airlines but has to get special clearance from the company due to the possible risks involved in transporting convicts. After all this was done they would go ahead and make the arrangement for British prison officers to come from Wandsworth Prison in London to escort me home. This could take a good few months to sort out as there is only a small group of prison officers who travel around the world bringing prisoners home.