Escape (5 page)

After just one month in the Cure I saw that not every prisoner in Klong Prem was resigned to his fate.

Four Thais and a Singaporean had managed to control their dormitory long enough to cut their way out to try for the wall. Their attempt failed but alone deserved a silver medal for silencing the informers for nine hours. This is how they went:

The escaping prisoners’ dormitory was as fully packed as the others of Bumbudt were. It held over one hundred, including some trusties. The rules were clear that any prisoner noticing an escape attempt had to call out. For trusties, a near-sacred duty. Many things in Klong Prem were tolerated as mischief: cash handling, the possession of radios or porn magazines. Even drug dealing and gambling were negotiable as long as kept in-house. Escapes, however, cut to the core of the prison’s existence. Mere attempts threatened the safety, incomes and careers of staff from tower guard to superintendent. For the guards the consequences of escapes were so fearsome that they saw any attempt as utter betrayal. Betrayal of the loyalty they had earned for allowing some prisoners to eat well and run small businesses. The guards’ cut in this commerce was not seen as a bribe. More of a tribute, a token of respect; a share of the food at the table. For any prisoner to endanger this fine co-operation would be madness or treachery. Any officer would sooner answer to the chief for beating a prisoner to death while drunk than to account for fleeing prisoners.

As it was, the night-duty guards usually slept throughout the small hours in peace. Great care was taken by trusties to prepare their beds, linen and refreshment. Should any prisoner’s laughing, singing or crying penetrate the guards’ mosquito nets as they slumbered under the cool of the buildings, the disturbed sleeper would stumble upstairs to exact punishment. Noisemakers would extend their hands through the bars for caning.

The group’s escape plan had been only days in discussion. Included were three whose cases were sure to bring death penalties. Their leader, a muscled Thai experienced with running street gangs, had practiced terrorising others of their dormitory. Another Thai was included not only for supplying a saw and wire cutters but for the certainty he would otherwise talk. Most importantly a Chinese-Singaporean; a man with money. Of the five he had been the last to have his chains removed, just one week earlier. Quan had been buying services and favours since the day he found himself in the New Petchburi Road police station. He had every reason to believe that if anything went wrong he would be able to pay his way out of trouble. Even so, his earlier failure to buy off the Thai trial court should have told him something.

A week before the big night Quan had engineered a high-stakes dice game in the dormitory to include the least-trusted trusty and the keyless key boy. He’d let them win for a few nights to make them careless. Then when they lost, they lost big. Quan promised to forgive their THB9,000 debt and to reward them with five times that amount if they co-operated. Quan would have said fifty times but he had feared they might then doubt his word.

All prisoners in Bumbudt are locked in their dormitories by five in the evening. On the day of the jump, four hours later, from behind a huddle of blankets, the cutting began. With top prisoners it was not unusual to see a blanket tied to the window mesh and the other end tied at forty-five degrees to the floor making a one-man tent. These tents were more often occupied by two and dormitory etiquette ignored sounds of straining from within.

By ten that evening the mesh had been cut but it would be another three hours before the second of two bars could be hacksawed through. Those few who noticed the five whispering prisoners creep beyond the narrow gap were so paralysed with fear that they then willed themselves into an exhausted sleep.

Over the weeks leading up to this night Quan had extracted enthusiastic promises of help from criminal acquaintances in Bangkok. More than one promised to drive to Klong Prem and park near the highway flyover to wait throughout the weekend nights. In addition two of the Thais had promised to arrange a mobile phone to co-ordinate the pick-up. Despite these assurances Quan felt certain that nothing and no one would materialise. Nothing had and his private plan was to separate from the others at the first dark corner. Then to speed to his girlfriend’s house by taxi. He, after all, had the money. The others should be grateful he was getting them out, especially the younger of his case partners who Quan thought was responsible for their arrest at the hotel, way back when.

Yet there remained the wall.

The group moved quietly behind the prison kitchen. They began crawling over an old two-metre plank that bridged the sewer canal. The heaviest among them cracked the plank causing the final crawler to fall with a mucous splash into the septic black water. He climbed out spluttering and retching with slime and wrinkly plastic bags clinging to his clothes. In his haste to climb from the sewer the young Thai had waded back to the jail-side bank, so had to step back through the mire.

By then at the wall Quan peered up to the electrified runs of barbed wire atop the wall. They had brought a blanket to shield themselves from the current. A blanket now wet. A blanket Quan could now see would serve only to catch the barbs and make the climb more difficult. The team leader decided to cut the blanket to make their rope longer. He soon gave up, frustrated with the dull knife and wet blanket.

For fifteen minutes the team wandered along the wall boundary searching for long poles or a ladder. The older among them knew that this was the most unlikely place to find such things. The questions began.

‘Quan,’ growled the large Thai. ‘What time do the kitchen workers begin, mister know-it-all?’

‘Six,’ Quan guessed. ‘Do you think you can take two on your shoulders?’

‘Two? Easily. But what about me?’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll pull you up by the blanket!’

The moment soon arrived when the emptiness of promises and assumptions echoed with danger. Such words had once been a comfort. Now they were ever so pointless.

With the strongest forming a base and the combined height of two more shaking and grabbing at air, their human scaffolding reached no more than half the height of the wall. After trying a few more combinations, the five found themselves breathless and panting, huddled below the final barrier. One spoke for them all:

‘Okay. Now at least we know what we need. Better we get back inside and try again tomorrow night.’ The speaker was praying for the dull simplicity of a morning doughnut and coffee, as would happen any normal day.

Without further words the group began walking along the roadway back to their dormitory. The prisoner caked with shit paused near the kitchen to run his head under water from a tap. From the distance came the unmistakable sound of a key unlocking a gate. The group reacted to this without speaking and oddly slowed in their mournful return walk.

Arriving at Building Four they saw the night guard sitting up on his night-duty bed, smoking the first of the day. He stared ahead, oblivious to the creatures that should not be there. They looked at the tree they must climb to their dormitory. They should have been thinking about the rope that needed re-attaching to the window ledge but they were not. They looked at the cut stumps of the bars and thought of the questions and calamity from their former roommates.

Quan kept his eyes on the sleepy guard as he spoke softly to his confederates. ‘It’s up to you guys what you want to do. I’m going to talk to Samang.’ To himself Quan said, ‘This is going to cost me.’ He hoped he could now separate himself from the others. Drained by fear the others would not easily separate themselves from Quan, the one with the money.

‘Sounds good,’ murmured a voice.

‘Looks better if we turn ourselves in,’ seconded another.

‘I’m with you,’ joined a third. ‘I’ve got to wash. I stink!’

A minute later the five stood silently before Samang, the guard. The images of cut bars and twisted mesh fogged in their minds but not to Samang whose eyes widened in shocked pulses. He looked at the gang in disbelief, yielding to fear as daylight rose.

‘Samang. Something crazy’s happened,’ Quan reasoned. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. I know you’ll want to help ...’

Samang was not listening. The moment of uncertainty had passed. The guard knew that even after wringing every last coin out of Quan, he would barely survive this treason with his small world intact.

Big Bill got out of bed and dressed. That meant standing up from the floor and pulling on a T-shirt. He then felt under his blanket for the yellow form he had been worrying about as he fell asleep the previous night. It was a questionnaire from Amnesty International.

‘Dave, take a look at this, will you?’

‘Just a moment.’ I was at the dormitory bars trying to find out why we were an hour late being let out. Trouble in another building was all the key boy would say.

Bill had put the forms aside as I sat next to him. He was inspecting his ankles for damage, a leper’s daily routine. ‘Look at those questions: Can you name the person who tortured you? Give the location and address where this took place. These people want names! I’ll bet the Thais would like me giving names. And to think of the trouble I had sneaking my letter out to Amnesty.’

‘You weren’t tortured, were you Bill?’ Calvin asked.

‘No. But, you know.’

We didn’t and Bill was disappointed to hear that Amnesty International did not involve itself easily in individual cases. It wanted data for its reports. The lobbyists would not fund his legal representation.

‘Don’t worry,’ Calvin reassured Big Bill. ‘If the Thais kill you for sending back the questionnaire, Amnesty’s sure to be severely critical in its next report. Every little death helps.’

It was almost eleven that morning before we were allowed downstairs. The cooks began speeding about, not just to make up for lost time but in unspoken fear of some sudden end to the day. I found the Captain already lounging on his beach recliner. The Captain was a Thai skipper scooped from the Gulf by the navy with his fishing trawler loaded with almost a tonne of heroin. Already five years under trial with no sign of an end. He told me of the escape attempt from Building Four.

‘They’re crazy guys,’ the Captain spoke to the sky. ‘They turned themselves in. Better they died on the wire. They’re upstairs in the
soi.’
The
soi
referred to the five-foot long, two-foot wide steel boxes that lined the corridor of the top floor. The term
soi
, meaning street, came from early days when punishment cages were kept in the jail’s open streets. These days too many outside visitors passed within those streets.

‘They give them elephant chains. Then they kick the shit out of them till they no shit.’ The Captain let a hand drop to the ground in waves of defeat. He rarely sat upright and mostly let his arms complete descriptions.

Soi
prisoners could spend up to three months in the lightless boxes, trying to survive on a bowl of rice each day with a litre of water for drinking and washing. A one-gallon paint tin was a toilet, supposedly emptied every third day. Rather than the
soi
, most prisoners would readily accept an alternative of even some humiliating, painful and often permanently damaging public torment by cane, boot or truncheon. Such options were not available to these would-be escapers. For them the very worst of everything was considered too good for those threatening the livelihoods of the guards.

Any fascination with torture is utterly exorcised from those exposed to its reality. Describing its detail becomes an anathema as prospective torturers listen keenly from a million black corners of the earth. Yet as with a sudden car crash, the shutter may fall on the images but the sounds remain. The image carries only haunting dread. On the soundtrack, a warning calls.

That morning an intrusive quiet rippled through the hundreds massed at ground level. The escapers had been brought to the
soi
boxes above Building Two. We heard the sound of a boot on the thin steel wall of a
soi
box. Then, a rising triple tap with a club on box One. Then upon Two through to Five. Whose turn would it be? Key sounds: the drop of a padlock then a steel creak and the clunking drag of heavy iron links. Links scraping over the doorframe of a box. Some muted words. Silence.

Then the air being cut with a cane: a wide, low whistle that only the longest sticks create. A breathless pause before the scream.

Down among us there are whisperers. Coffee sipped quietly. Workers working smoothly, not wanting to mask the top-floor sounds with the clatter of the bosses’ industry. I can see pity in some workers’ hands. They fold their paper boxes with a special speed and care. There is a system to it and so there can be an end.

The key boy—a trusty who has given many punishments and witnessed many more—steps lightly downstairs. He sits on a step almost at the bottom. He looks aside and then inspects his keys. Even he has been sent away.

The sounds of both impact and scream change. The cane no longer makes the handclap or the slapping sound. It is muted as though sharply angled, striking with tip into something soft. The report multiple, divided, close to a mashing. The scream high-pitched, so high it must go beyond our range. But I’m wrong, it does go higher, then becomes strangulated, and then ceases. Now only blows are heard. A silence arrives although hard to say when.

Professional boot steps. A kick and a thud at once. Again the same. Then a last slicing of air from the cane. No scream, although there was some living sound.

I looked to Calvin. He was white with rage and fear. I felt bloodless and heavy. The key boy is called up and springs to his feet. The guard has met him halfway and whispers instructions. The trusty strides upstairs, his long fingers gripping his keys. I moved closer to Calvin. He spoke first.

‘Jeez, Dave. It makes you sick.’

‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s Thai business they’ll say.’ It seemed right just to babble at Calvin. A familiar voice. ‘This is different from normal. Remember last week with Martyn and the picture?’