Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  Robert – sometimes he was too much, I tell you. If he’s not drunk, no problem, but if he’s drunk, he’s such a fucking asshole.

  – Thomas

  For Thomas, guarding his smack was a full-time job. He even had to take it with him when he used the bathroom. A couple of times a week, Robert would sneak two or three straws to smoke with Mick and Chris. Mick would watch from his bunk Robert’s sleight of hand, as Thomas sat on his mattress, filling his straws, counting them, taking one out for himself; always busy with his stash. When Thomas turned away for a split second, quick as a flash Robert’s hand would dart across, snatch a straw or two and shove it under his own mattress. By the time Thomas turned back around, Robert would be slumped against the wall, pretending to sleep. Thomas often thought he’d miscounted his straws.

  One morning, Thomas almost lost the half kilogram stash that he had tucked under his pillow. It was almost 9 am, but the four cellmates were still sleeping after drinking and taking drugs until late the previous night. Mick was woken by a prisoner shaking him vigorously, saying: ‘Mick, Mick, wake up’. ‘Oh, shit.’ The cell floor was under a few centimetres of water. Mick yelled out to Thomas, whose mattress was soaked. The instant Thomas’s eyes opened, he grabbed his stash from under his pillow and leaped up, stepping straight onto a wet electrical cable. He got a shock and did a frenzied jig in the middle of the cell as he clung to his smack. A moment later, he turned and yelled abuse at Robert for his stupid cables. Robert threw back, ‘I’m not your baby-sitter. Watch where you walk’. It turned out that someone had left the bathroom hose running during the night.

  The events of that morning prompted Thomas to start stashing his drugs in a hole in the ceiling, which Chris had made one night during a drunken escape bid. Thomas employed Robert to stand on his shoulders and put his plastic bag of drugs through the hole, into the dark, dirty roof, pushing it out of sight, and tethering it by a piece of string to a nail he’d hammered on the ceiling. Whenever Thomas wanted it put up or taken down, he got Robert to climb on his shoulders. Robert would jump down, saying, ‘Okay, give me my wages,’ and Thomas would give him two or three smack straws. It was a good arrangement until Robert tried another prank. One afternoon, he was standing precariously on Thomas’s shoulders, blindly flapping his hands around inside the ceiling, trying to locate the string attached to the bag.

  He says, ‘Oh, it’s gone, it’s gone. Somebody took it, maybe.’ He was looking everywhere and saying, ‘Oh, it’s not here, I cannot find it. It’s gone’. He kept checking it and couldn’t find it. I thought, fuck, it’s better that I go up and check upstairs.

  – Thomas

  Thomas walked out and found a tamping prisoner with a key to unlock the small gate in front of a ladder to the roof. They both climbed up into the ceiling and found the bag of drugs about one metre from the hole in Room 13.

  I suspect it was Robert but I cannot say one hundred per cent, but it cannot automatically fly over there. He put it there, maybe, because in one week I was going free and he can take it.

  – Thomas

  Chris and Mick knew that Robert had tried to steal the smack. Chris had heard a clunk above his head while he was standing near the bathroom. As soon as Robert told Thomas that the stash was missing, Chris realised what the clunk had been. Thomas had been too busy concentrating on keeping Robert balanced on his thin shoulders to notice. Mick had heard a faint noise, but didn’t pay any attention. Chris told Mick about it later, and Mick told him to shut up.

  But Robert was the least of Thomas’s problems. The Laskars had started coming into the cell, asking for cash. Arman had found out about Thomas’s recent deliveries and was not pleased. He wanted Thomas to pay him the sales profit. Several times Thomas had obeyed the rules and given his new supply to Arman. But he’d become sick of giving his cheap, quality smack to Arman and making no profit, and was acutely aware that he’d need cash when he checked out shortly. But now Arman wanted the money he considered due to him.

  They came in my cell and asked, ‘When do you give us money?’ They asked and asked and asked. I said, ‘I don’t know, later on, later on, later on’. Every day they came and gave me headache. They beat me two or three times and say, ‘Okay, tomorrow we come back again’. Ah, make me a headache.

  – Thomas

  One morning, the talking was finished. Laskar heavies turned up in Room 13, telling Thomas that Arman wanted to speak to him over in his cell. Thomas knew this was bad news, but had nowhere to run. The Laskars walked outside, and waited for him out the front of the block. Thomas grabbed his plastic bag of smack, ran into Michael’s cell, where Mick was sitting and talking, and said, ‘Please hold this, Mick’. Of course, once Thomas left, Mick and the other cellmates opened the bag, saw the smack and started chasing the dragon.

  You cannot work against Laskar. If you work against Laskar, it’s a problem. Guards were afraid, everybody is afraid.

  – Thomas

  Thomas walked into Arman’s cell and four bulky Laskars started knocking the skinny Austrian around as Arman stood against the wall, watching. They were throwing punches and demanding money. Thomas was still defiant, ‘I don’t have, don’t have,’ he kept saying. He took blow after blow, in the face, in the neck and in the stomach. He didn’t try fighting back, as he didn’t stand a chance. He was surrounded; they were huge. They took turns smashing into him. Somehow he was enduring it until a fist struck his face especially hard. He felt his nose crack. Another fist hit it again fast. He fell down screaming, but they didn’t stop. It only got more frenzied as they smelled blood. Thomas was now crouching, trying to shield his broken face with his arms, with blood pouring from his nose. Fists and feet were coming at him furiously. ‘I want my money,’ Arman yelled angrily. It was enough. He was surrounded by thugs, it was not going to stop. ‘Okay, okay!’ he cried in defeat.

  You cannot fight back. How you fight against three or four people … and more coming? [You’re] fucked up if you fight back, you’re fucked up.

  – Thomas

  Thomas agreed to give Arman the rest of his stash as payment. Arman knew that Thomas was leaving in a week and agreed to accept the stash, as it was better than nothing. Arman sent a boy to go with Thomas to collect four grams of smack. Thomas left Arman’s Block E and walked into the sunshine, sore, dazed and bloody. He felt the tip of his nose with his fingers. It was squashed flat and he gently pulled it out, trying to straighten it. He could feel his eyes starting to swell.

  Thomas took the Laskar boy to Michael’s cell in Block B, where several inmates were now high on some of his smack. He grabbed his plastic bag off the table and gave it to the boy, and then went across to his cell. He was a shattered mess. One of the prisoners came into Room 13 and told him to put honey on his eyes to stop the swelling. He smeared it on his eyes and the rest of his face. When Mick came back into their cell, he wasn’t the slightest bit sympathetic.

  He knew what he was dealing with. He had the money, he had the drugs but didn’t want to pay.

  – Mick

  The next day, Thomas’s eyes were blue and his face was swollen. But he would be involved in a further drug drama before walking free. He got a call from an old friend asking if he could buy fifteen grams of smack. Thomas told him to come to a visit in the blue room later that day. He would ask Mick to go and pass over the smack, paying him with a bit for himself. Mick had done it before, taking drugs out in his sandals, and passing them to Thomas’s client. But this time, the client didn’t want to enter Hotel K. It was guard Pak Giri’s day off, so Thomas asked his tamping friend, who was a user and dealer, if he knew anyone who could go outside that day and make the delivery. He did.

  Thomas gave the fifteen grams to the tamping, and the tamping passed it to the courier prisoner, who walked out of Hotel K and straight into a trap. Thomas’s customer was already in police custody. He’d done a deal with police to set up two or three people for them, so that he could walk free after being caught with drugs himself. The m
oment the Hotel K courier handed him the smack, he was gone. At the police station, the courier inmate told them he was only the delivery boy for the tamping. The tamping wasn’t immediately taken to the police, but was thrown in cell tikus. Thomas had only a few days left in Hotel K, and was desperate to stay out of it. He asked the tamping not to mention his name, offering to give him drugs when he was free, and paid him 500,000 rupiah ($70).

  Thomas walked free before anyone breathed his name to the police.

  CHAPTER 21

  NO MORE TOMORROWS

  Scott Rush is a 23-year-old death row inmate at Hotel K.

  I got a letter the other day, it was just a little Post-it note, and this girl said to me, ‘I would rather get killed than be in jail in this place’. Well, sometimes that makes sense to me. Sometimes I think I would rather get shot than have to spend my life in here. Because if I do get life, it’s long life, life without remissions, which is here until you’re dead. And sometimes I think I would rather get the death penalty than that. That’s what makes it easier for me to cope with the death penalty hanging over my head. It’s just something to prepare myself for, I guess, mentally. I don’t want to go fully crazy before I get executed. I wouldn’t want to go out like that.

  Do you ever talk to the other three on death row about execution?

  No, I don’t talk to them about their case whatsoever.

  Why?

  I think it stresses them out.

  – Scott, death row inmate

  Being sentenced to many years in Hotel K, with only a faint light glinting at the end of a long, dark tunnel, is grim. But for those inmates living under the shadow of death, spending their empty days in Hotel K, trying to keep going and have some kind of life before they get a bullet through the heart, is souldestroying.

  Scott was sharing a cell in the so-called ‘death tower’ with another death row inmate, Nigerian man Emmanuel – the same cell that smiling assassin Amrozi was in before he was transferred to Nusakambangan Island and shot dead. Now the same fate loomed for Scott and Emmanuel, and two others in the Bali Nine, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, although all were still appealing their sentences. The four rooms in the death tower were filled with all eight men from the Bali Nine syndicate. One day blurred into the next. But somehow, they still got on with life in Hotel K.

  I’ve just got to keep myself prepared for what happens later. I don’t believe I should destroy myself, even though everyone mentally destroys themselves every once in a while. I like sport. I prefer to keep myself busy with things with my physical body, it keeps me mentally sane.

  – Scott

  Sometimes there was only crushing darkness for Scott; periods when he rarely left his cell, preferring to blow up hippos with aliens on his PlayStation. But other times he tried to live in the moment and make the most of the day. During these times, he would often play tennis all day, stopping only when the sun got too hot around midday. He would take a break in his cell, watch DVDs or cable TV and read self-help books.

  For most of the Australians, the day was often broken up by a visit in the blue room. Scott’s devoted parents came to Bali whenever they could, friends visited regularly and a Balinese friend came once a month to deliver him cash sent from his family.

  Scott had checked into Hotel K when he was a teenager. He was nineteen, the second-youngest of the Bali Nine. Life as he knew it finished the Sunday night that he took a taxi to Bali’s Ngurah Rai Airport, trying to look like any other tourist set to board a flight to Australia. Under a bright floral shirt and baggy pants, he had just over one kilogram of heroin taped to his legs. Three other Australians, posing as tourists on their way home in almost identical outfits, were also carrying heroin. But they didn’t make it to the plane. They were all busted after checking in.

  A fifth person, Andrew, then twenty years old, was already sitting comfortably on the plane when police grabbed him. He didn’t have any drugs on him but was one of two ringleaders.

  Another four, all in their teens and early twenties, were arrested in a hotel room in Kuta. Police found three hundred and fifty grams of heroin in a suitcase, as well as scales, tape, backpacks and mobile phones. None of them had stood a chance. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) had waited for them to leave Australia, then tipped off the Indonesian police, passing on their names, passport details, mobile phone numbers and even black-and-white photos of them, knowingly exposing them to death by firing squad.

  An AFP officer had quietly watched 19-year-old Scott check in at Sydney Airport and fly out, despite knowing a crime was going to take place, and despite Scott’s father, Lee, having asked the police to help stop his troubled son from leaving the country.

  Lee had received a phone call from Flight Centre the day before Scott flew out, asking him to ensure his son called their office as he hadn’t yet picked up his ticket from Sydney to Bali. An alarm bell sounded; Lee knew that Scott didn’t have any cash and that he was using drugs. He flew into a panic and called a friend, Bob, who was a barrister. ‘Look, they’re going to use him as a mule,’ Bob told Lee, who hadn’t yet even heard of the term ‘drug mule’.

  Lee desperately wanted his son to be prevented from leaving Australia. Bob rang an AFP contact, asking if Scott could be intercepted at Sydney Airport and stopped from boarding the plane. Lee was assured it would happen. That phone call took place at 1.30 am. At 10 am, Lee got a distressed call from Bob, saying, ‘Mate, sorry, he couldn’t be stopped, he’s on his way’. An AFP officer had watched Scott checking in and boarding the flight, but decided not to approach him. Instead, on that same day, after the Nine had left, AFP agent in Bali, Paul Hunniford, passed a letter to the Indonesian police, alerting them to the Bali Nine’s trafficking plan.

  They had waited until they had all left Australia. The letter gave specific details of a crime not yet committed: who the players were, where they would stay, when they would try to leave, even how they would strap the drugs to their bodies. The AFP had had the group under surveillance in Australia for weeks. Scott had seen a suspicious man watching him buy his ticket at Flight Centre in Sydney – he is now convinced it was an AFP officer. They knew they weren’t trafficking drugs into Bali, but were planning to bring them into Australia.

  They will be carrying body packs (with white powder) back to Australia with packs on both legs and also with back supports. They have already been given the back supports. The packs will be strapped to their bodies. They will be given money to exchange for local currency to purchase oversized loose shirts and sandals.

  – AFP Letter

  Scott Rush now says the AFP knew far more than he did at that stage about the trafficking plan.

  The letter also named the alleged leader as 20-year-old Andrew, and told them: ‘If you suspect Chan and/or the couriers are carrying drugs at the time of their departure, please take whatever action you deem necessary.’

  It also instructed the Indonesian police to arrest those at the Melasti Hotel as soon as the airport bust was done. Despite the AFP, when later defending its actions, claiming it wanted to expose the network, find the source and the ‘Mr Bigs’, the Indonesian police somehow missed the point of sale when the eight kilograms of heroin, worth four million dollars, was handed to the Australians.

  The AFP did throw us to the wolves and there’s a lot of pressure on them for it, and I don’t think they can make up [for] their mistakes. I suppose there’s nothing they can do to rewind the past.

  – Scott

  In a Bali courtroom, all nine Australians were convicted. Initially, seven of them got life, and the two ringleaders, Andrew and Myuran, got the death penalty. They all appealed, and their sentences then varied erratically between life, death and twenty years. The three at the Melasti Hotel had their sentences reduced to twenty years, but when the prosecutors appealed this leniency, they were increased to death. After a final appeal, they were reduced back to life. Andrew and Myuran remained on the death penalty. Scott was the only courier suddenly and inexpli
cably to be handed a death sentence after appealing. Although the other three couriers carried more drugs, Scott got death, while Renae Lawrence got twenty years and the other two got life.

  Don’t ask me why. Just sort of happened like that. It’s crazy. They haven’t even given me reasons why. We all had over five hundred grams, and the law is, if you go over five hundred grams you’re eligible for the death penalty. But they kind of just gave it to me.

  – Scott

  Scott’s Nigerian cellmate, Emmanuel, had a similar court experience. He was the first person ever to get the death sentence for drugs in Bali, despite having carried only four hundred grams. Initially, Emmanuel was given a life sentence, but it was upped to death when he appealed.

  Emmanuel went nuts. He felt like a victim of everything that was wrong with the justice system and Hotel K. He knew that while he had carried a smaller amount than everyone around him who’d been caught at the airport, they had had cash to buy a lighter sentence. Now he was facing death for drugs, while his captors were blatantly using and selling drugs in front of him.

  The hypocrisy of the system turned him into a madman. At nights, he woke angry and crying out like a wounded animal. Some nights he smashed the door, the bars, the bed, everything in sight, with a hammer.