Escape

by David McMillan

  Luke then took work in the merchant navy. Lived port to port. A little hash from North Africa or a few sheets of acid from Amsterdam. Then the big move. Not to get too close Luke took on two grown waifs from Ghana, then stranded in Yemen. He flew them to Bangkok and spent some time getting them plausible documents.

  ‘But these guys were idiots, Dave. More than idiots!’ Luke had told me even though everyone could see at a glance. ‘Morons. I couldn’t even let them loose at the airport by themselves. They didn’t even know what country they were in.’

  All three were arrested in their taxi on the way to the airport by Sukhumvit city police who had fallen over the operation. Luke had been crippled by his brace of albatrosses from that day to this. His boys followed him everywhere, trailing a few metres behind, carrying Luke’s boxes and chatting happily to each other. As I spoke to Luke the pair halfwittedly prepared Luke’s evening food at the nearby charcoal-burner patch.

  ‘Don’t use plastic!’ Luke called from his deck chair. ‘It’ll stink up the fish. Use wood if there’s no charcoal left!’ He sank deeper into his already sagging chair.

  ‘You see, Dave. They can’t even feed themselves. Eighteen months here and they think this is all part of the plan. I can’t leave them. They’re fucked as it is.’

  ‘I don’t know how you thought Yahya would be any good,’ Sten said later. ‘What were you thinking?’

  I’d thought Luke might finally want to lift himself above all he’d seen for he had the strength. Instead he’d stepped back into this macabre adoption wearing some battered noble hat.

  ‘He’s making peace with his makers, Sten. Nothing we can do about that. It’d be a mistake to try.’

  Sten was not surprised. ‘I told you.’

  To give Sten some cheer I announced that I’d thought of a way to use our bookshelf plank to overcome the crumbling tiles beneath our window. So far we hadn’t found a way to hold the plank in place so that we could clear the two-metre awning.

  ‘We don’t need to build some massive siege-engine contraption inside the cell,’ I explained. ‘We’ve already got the strongest thing in the prison.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Sten leaned forward and looked around for something big yet in some way concealed in the office.

  ‘The bars, of course. The strongest steel around. You could hang an elephant from any one of them.’

  Sten sat back and held his chin. ‘You mean the bars we’re supposed to cut. Those bars.’

  ‘Okay.’ I stood and opened a drawer, peeling a small sheet of paper from beneath. ‘Look at this.’ I pointed to the diagram I’d sketched—the window bars with two missing and three intact. ‘The plank is two metres. We need one and three-quarters out the window. I can make a special block, out of wood, that’ll hold the plank tight in place between two bars and that flat bit in the middle, the strut, the spar, whatever you call it.’

  Sten squinted at the paper. ‘So, fifteen centimetres or less of the plank between the bars with us dangling fifteen-and-a-quarter metres off the ground, all held by a little block of wood—’

  ‘Actually the middle brace of the steel but—’

  ‘With nothing to stop it sliding right out?’

  ‘No.’ I tapped my diagram for support. ‘That little—ah, strong—pin there, at the end? That stops it sliding right out. And the plank is sideways, upended, you can see. That means it has the strength of a twenty-centimetre-thick log, not just a flat plank. It shouldn’t bounce about.’

  ‘Can we test this?’

  Sten’s question was fair. Yet I knew he wouldn’t like my answer.

  ‘No. Not practically. But I’ve worked it out. I’m sure.’

  ‘And numbers don’t lie.’ Sten folded the diagram and dropped it into the desk drawer.

  I picked up the paper, unfolded it, nodded, did a pantomime of certainty, refolded the paper small and into my pocket then winked.

  ‘No one lives forever, Sten.’

  From the back room Charlie Lao looked through a bead curtain to the shop. Small, with pale green walls, a cheap glass counter and three piebald maroon vinyl chairs. No other decoration beyond a dusty plastic bonsai-tree lamp on the counter and a calendar from the Xenshui Carbon Abrasive Factory No.3 and a dozen faded Xerox enlargements of once colourful banknotes. The shop was empty and few would imagine that this Chinese-run money exchange employed agents within hand-signalling range of the front window. If required these men and women could arrive with over a million baht within five minutes’ notice. Charlie turned from his chair to face his old friend and then looked down to the photograph newly laminated into the British passport.

  ‘This is a fine job,’ Charlie said in Cantonese.

  ‘As well as could be done,’ replied the older man opposite. ‘The original photograph was too small so had to be copied and resized. You will find the entry visa is dated from Friday and that all the passport details are now on the immigration computer. Naturally we wish your friend well but must say that we do not know of anyone who has yet been successful. The outcome may not necessarily be in your friend’s best interests. He should know that he now has twenty-seven days to leave the country. Do you think that is possible?’

  Whatever answer Charlie might have provided to his moneychanger friend, he was later that day too tactful to repeat as we met in the ambassadorial suite of the Klong Prem visits zone.

  To the same question I then answered, ‘I think I can do it, Charlie, but there’s not much time. Can that visa be extended? I’ve still got three or four court dates and I don’t want to rush.’

  Charlie assured me that there would be no problem extending the visa. Since he was returning to Vientiane for two months he would leave the passport in a small apartment he had rented in Lat Phrao.

  ‘I’ll put it in an envelope behind the bathroom mirror,’ Charlie said. ‘And I’ll bring you the key to the flat before I go. That way you’ll be able to send someone to get it if you need.’

  ‘Thanks, Charlie. And don’t look so sad.’

  Charlie spoke down to the table. ‘David, I have to speak something. I do what you say, don’t worry, but you have maybe ten percent, fifteen percent chance in this. That chance is not good. Don’t worry, if you stay, I’ll come to see you all the time. Help what you need.’

  ‘Charlie, I just need to stand on the other side of that wall.’

  The passport from Charlie was not the only one provided that week. Before Martyn had been taken to Bangkwang he’d brokered a deal for the one passport still in private hands. It had been issued to a British citizen who had managed to keep it in Building Two. During his time he’d become indebted to a Sri Lankan dealer in the building. Thursday afternoon the Sri Lankan’s servant arrived at our Building Six factory to deliver the passport with his master’s compliments.

  ‘It’s in good condition, as you can see,’ said the young Bengali as he was offered a drink. ‘Only the staple marks from when it was in evidence.’

  The passport had half a dozen Thai visas, entry stamps for Singapore and Hong Kong and bore a face that might pass for me on a dark night, although the name was half-Italian. It would serve as back-up identification should I be delayed finding Charlie’s flat.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the messenger.

  ‘Karim, sir. I’ve been in Lardyao for four years.’ Lardyao was an old name for the prison.

  I’d been told some of this man’s story before and now wanted to hear more without filters. Karim came from a family that could be seen as middle class by his native Bangladeshi standards. Karim had rejected his parents’ arrangements for a suitable marriage and had taken up with a girl who’d agreed to a love marriage. Apart from the cuff of disobedience, there remains in Indian ears something sinful and illicit in the phrase ‘love marriage’ even in modern times. To escape the shame Karim and his bride had left their town for the capital, Dhaka. They had been disowned by their respective families.

  Seeking better-paid work Karim flew alon
e to Bangkok, one of the few places his passport could take him. Here he found little work but did befriend some Pakistani thieves operating from Thailand. Karim said he was their cook. Perhaps he was. Within a few short meals Karim was arrested by local police who measured him for a handful of old shop burglaries. This was a housekeeping arrangement between the Pakistanis and the police.

  The police had not been fussy in their preparations for the case and charged Karim with several burglaries that had taken place before he’d arrived in Thailand. Karim pleaded not guilty at his trial. He produced his passport along with a passport clerk from the Bangladeshi Embassy who testified that both passport and exit stamp from Dhaka were genuine. The practice in Thai sentencing is to give the maximum and then reduce it for any mitigation such as a guilty plea. Burglary attracts an eight-year term. Karim left court with eight years.

  ‘What did the judge say?’ asked an incredulous Calvin who had arrived at the office in time for some background.

  I turned to Karim. ‘Did the judge explain away the fact your passport said you weren’t in the country at the time of the robberies?’

  Karim was matter-of-fact. ‘He said that criminals like me often keep other passports. That I might have come before.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you must be out soon then Karim?’ I sympathised. ‘Another year or two?’

  Not so. While serving time in Klong Prem Karim began working as a cook and gofer for the Sri Lankan in Building Two. Some two years ago, not long after Karim took his new position, his boss had had a dispute over payments with the guard who was supplying the dope. The guard worked in the visit pens. Twice each week Karim would walk to the gate to collect the Sri Lankan’s prison-shop food. This food is paid for by visitors and then packed by outside staff employed by the guards and issued by the guards themselves at the front gate. When Karim collected one of the shopping bags, a second guard stopped him for a search. Twenty grams of heroin were found stuffed inside a bread stick. As an object lesson for the Sri Lankan dealer, Karim was arrested.

  ‘I’d give up being a cook, kid,’ Calvin suggested. ‘A dangerous game.’

  Again, the police were not fussy with their preparations for the case and there was no evidence that Karim had any opportunity to touch the bread, which had been sealed at the prison bakery. Karim pleaded not guilty at his trial. He produced a receipt for the prison-shop bag bearing another prisoner’s name and called a clerk from the prison to testify that prisoners did not select or pack the goods. The practice in Thai courts for sentencing is the same for all crimes and possessing twenty grams of heroin attracts a twenty-five year term. Karim left the court with a further twenty years.

  ‘Must’ve taken five years off on account he didn’t do it,’ suggested Calvin.

  ‘I had a very top lawyer,’ Karim mournfully tried to explain his stubbornness.

  ‘Hired by his boss,’ Calvin suggested to me as an aside.

  The boy from Bangladesh nodded.

  ‘Cheer up, fella. I’ve got some good news for you.’ Sten had walked through the factory huts to our office. ‘The Queen’s birthday amnesty reductions have just been announced. Robbers get their time cut in half.’

  Sten sat on the edge of a table and put a hand on Karim’s shoulder. ‘If it wasn’t for the fact you’re a drug kingpin you’d be happy back in Bangla in a month’s time.’

  ‘You’re in a good mood,’ Calvin said with cautious sarcasm.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Sten squeezed the contents of a green tetrapack into his mouth with one crushing fist. ‘Thanks to our wonderful Western embassies, we now get the same as murderers:only a seventh off our sentences instead of half.’ Sten potted the empty carton into a distant rubbish bin.

  Calvin was unaffected. ‘I don’t think it means anything on a transfer to the States.’

  Neither Sten nor Calvin need have concerned himself. The now meaningless amnesties benefited only those prisoners who had been in Klong Prem for more than two years and had purchased the ‘excellent behaviour’ status of trusties. However, the lifers were pleased. Most had their sentences reduced to ninety-nine years.

  20

  Since American DEA operations with the Nigerians had ended far fewer airport cases arrived at Building Six. However, the rise of budget airlines had produced a cloudburst of anaemic and tattered foreigners charged with minor thefts, drunken aggression or feebly sordid acts of public disgrace. These newcomers, even whiter and trashier that most, were doing only what they did habitually in their own countries but now during the northern winter, even bums could take a vacation. Vacate, they could—stop being bums, they could not.

  Fiorenzo Bustamenti had been at Klong Prem for two years and was the most travelled professional beggar we knew. He’d begged in Brazil, scrounged in Seville, touched sleeves in Geneva, sponged in the Adriatic and optimistically cadged in Cairo. Fiorenzo could profile the alms-giving attitudes of twenty nations and had a wardrobe tailored to meet every prejudice. Now serving twenty-five years for possessing a few grams of his personal supply, any begging Fiorenzo might work in the future would be in piteous circumstances. Yet he still had his pride.

  ‘David, have you seen what they’ve just brought in?’

  Fiorenzo was affronted by the amateurishly dishevelled newcomers. ‘This man, English—this does not surprise me—was caught stealing whisky from a supermarket. Disgraziato!’

  I located one of Fiorenzo’s untouchables sniffing the laundry drying in the breeze behind the charcoal pits. A Scot, his name was Sorley and he’d come from Manchester where he lived. Flying to Thailand was not just globetrotting for Sorley. He had planned to return to England with seventy-five grams of heroin which he’d packed in three condoms before departure.

  ‘Maybe I should’ve bought a six pack, you know,’ Sorley considered. ‘And I shoved them up a wee bit early the day before—just to be safe.’

  This security measure proved insufficient protection against a late night of chilli-sauced food and two klom bottles of rice whisky. ‘I had a call of nature come on before I could get back to me lodgings and damned slippery things in the dark, I can tell you. I could paint you a picture.’

  Sorley then provided enough detail for a large fresco—all of which I shall expunge other than to report that the repercussion of Sorley’s spate was a complete loss of baggage. ‘The fellas back in Manchester wouldn’t be too happy me coming home empty handed, as it were.’

  Staking Sorley to a meal at the coffee shop I heard that the Mancunians awaiting the dope were not hardmen from some firm or wily subcontinentals but ever-so-slightly organised criminal friends of Sorley. By his account there exists in Britain today a tramp network that curls its tentacles to any fast-earning enterprise that can be accomplished while drunk. Their success rate was exceptionally low but repetition and numbers brought stories of occasional triumphs.

  Before I could learn more of this hobo mafia Calvin arrived, seated himself and told me that one of the servants was looking for me.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I dunno, Dave. You know how I am with these names. The stringy looking one who lopes around in the prison uniform. A bit fruity, if you ask me.’

  I squinted in recollection. ‘Has a head looks like wood?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s him, sure.’

  ‘Lok’s his name.’

  ‘Right. What’s he do anyway?’ Calvin asked.

  ‘Jet hired him as a chimney sweep, so he said.’ I had no idea, although he could have been a bed-warmer for the carpenter in the days when they both had all of their parts.

  As we walked to the office leaving Sorley to eat, Calvin and I stopped at the two stone lions at the entrance to the accommodation block. It was said that one of the lions would roar every time an innocent man walked past. Calvin pointed to a pair of new arrivals splashing at the water tank behind the cooking shed. ‘I shouldn’t point but take a look at those two. How do you suppose that happened?’

  The two men appeared European
and seemed healthy except for their legs. Both had limbs that had been broken and then set badly. More than that: broken in many places and not set at all, like crushed drinking straws unable to straighten.

  Yet there was something oddly confident about their manner, despite the heavy chains around their ankles. I turned to Calvin.

  ‘Any idea where they come from?’

  ‘They’re Israelis someone said.’ Calvin lifted his eyebrows, recognising this as unusual. ‘Came down from Chiang Mai.’

  As we passed I saw that their chains’ ankle rings had been welded fast. Never to be removed.

  ‘What’s the matter, Dave?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said slowly. ‘They’ll be here for a while. We’ll find out what they’ve got to say later.’

  Welded chains meant one of two things. Either that the death penalty had been imposed—and that didn’t square as they were in the open at Klong Prem, not chained to a wall—or that they’d tried to escape and had been caught. Inevitably Sten would see these two before long. I wondered how he might react to the appalling sight of their misshapen legs.

  Lok was still drifting around our office when Calvin and I arrived. He shyly asked if it was all right if he might give me something.

  ‘For what?’ I was puzzled.

  ‘For your court tomorrow.’ Lok lurched forward his hand upon whose long fingers rested a miniscule packet made from leaves and bound with twine. ‘For good luck with your punishment.’

  While it was true that I was due in court the next day, Lok mistakenly believed that I was due for sentencing. I thanked our chimney sweep and locked the talisman in the cupboard with my court togs. I’d seen some of these little wraps before and had opened one. It contained nothing but tiny pebbles and grit that had been prayed over. Perhaps some Asian compromise was shown by the chosen contents: in the event that prayer failed to move mountains, it might just dislodge a grain of sand. Still, it’s worth honouring a gesture and a superstition if neither cost a thing so I would take the tiny parcel.