No More Tomorrows (11 page)

On the Sunday, Lily came to see me, and I met Vasu Rasiah for the first time. I wasn’t told how Vasu fitted in, and I didn’t think to ask. I just assumed he was a lawyer at the same firm as Lily – and I think he was happy for me to assume that. He never corrected anyone when they called him a lawyer.

The Australian media called him a lawyer for months, until he became known as a ‘case coordinator’. It took Merc and me a few weeks to realise he was actually a developer/designer/contractor/construction manager and ‘case coordinator’. At least that’s what it said on the various business cards he handed out.

Two days of hell had passed, and I still had high hopes of getting out on Monday.

6

The ‘Celebrity’ Prisoner

‘Y
OU
’
RE FREE TO GO.
H
AVE A NICE HOLIDAY!’
A
S THE
cell door swings open, I happily step out into the brilliant sunshine with a matching brilliant smile. Tears of joy wash down my cheeks and the darkness clutching at my heart vanishes, along with the deep pain and fear.
Thank God it’s over!
Now my biggest problem is deciding between a relaxing poolside beer and the revitalising surf . . .

That’s the way I pictured Monday. I’d seen it, dreamt it and convinced myself of it during the past forty-eight hours. This surreal, crazy madness would stop. My spinning world would beset back on its axis. They weren’t my drugs, I didn’t put them in my bag,
I didn’t do this.
Just a quickly faxed X-ray or boogie-board weight would prove it beyond all doubt. The police would say, ‘Yeah, look, it’s crazy, let her go. Let her go to her sister’s birthday.’

So that first Monday I sat anxiously waiting for the guards to come and unlock the cell to release me back to my normal, happy life. The moment I heard the guard’s keys jingling I leapt up, almost smiling with excitement. My pulse was pumping as I stood expectantly at the cell door.
Please let it be over – please!

But Monday reality was harsh. As the guard unlocked the cell, he murmured that he was just moving me to another cell. My gut twisted as it took the kick.

This was the start of my white-knuckle, roller coaster ride of hope and despair. I’m still on it. I get so hopeful that I might get out, then
bang
, bad news arrives, plunging me into despair. It hurts. The ride’s a bit flatter these days: no high expectations, no devastation.

That first Monday, my spirits took quite a plunge. No evidence had been faxed by anyone from the Australian airports. My panic and fear flew back with the terrifying thoughts:
What if they don’t actually have the evidence? What if we can’t prove the drugs aren’t mine?

What happens if they can’t prove I didn’t do this, then what . . . I stay here? That would kill my mum. It would be all my fault, even though I didn’t do it. This is all way too much, and it’s because
of me! How can I say I’m sorry, how do I start to say I’m sorry? I’m here. Why? Why am I here? It’s not me. I shouldn’t be here. And I’m sorry. Sorry for what? I didn’t do anything.

This is so surreal. A nightmare, not just for me, but for everyone who knows and loves me.

Diary entry, 15 October 2004

I felt sick as the guard hustled me out of the cell. I kept biting my quivering bottom lip to stop the sobs, and my heart felt even more tightly screwed with pain and a heavy blackness.

I started to take deep breaths, soothing myself by forcing new thoughts:
Just a bit longer . . . Maybe tomorrow, maybe a day or two more.
But I’d lost confidence in getting the evidence quickly, as shouldn’t it have come today? I was scared as the police marched me across the courtyard, past some pushy reporters and photographers and into a long cement passage to another cell.

Things were about to get worse.

The cell was a dungeon unfit for human life, with no windows, no daylight and no chance of a breeze. It was like a red-hot sauna and my clothes were quickly soaking wet. In the corner was a filthy squat toilet, so vile that it made the covered-in-shit toilet in the other cell seem not so bad.

Even worse than the cell itself were the people who came with it: two sicko, weirdo guards and a fat Balinese prostitute. The guards sat just outside the cage door, creepily staring at me and occasionally saying a slimy ‘Wow, sexy body.’ I was on display for these creeps, with nowhere to hide. I was very scared. And those sleazy guards were definitely interested in playing more than just mind games.

Sitting on a sarong inside was my first ever cellmate, Agung. At first, when she greeted me with a wide toothy grin, she seemed friendly enough. But after a bit of small talk, she was scarily friendly and just as creepy as those guards.

‘My name Agung, what your name?’

‘I’m Schapelle.’

For a second she looked at me, shocked; then she jumped up, laughing, as she ran to a pile of stuff. She pulled out a newspaper, pointing to a front-page headline that screamed ‘SCHAPELLE’ above my photo.

‘Ha, ha, Saphel, Saphel!’ she kept repeating, and pointing.

It was day three, and already I was a ‘celebrity’ prisoner – not an asset in a place full of criminals and petty guards. To Agung, it elevated me to a status worthy of adoration.

She’s making me feel super self-conscious. Keeps looking at me, lovingly. I try to read my book as much as possible. Keeps asking if ‘You like boy? You like big banana? Not banana. Not good.’ A couple of times she’s touched my breast and stroked my upper arm while she’s looking at me and not speaking. She made our beds up together. I was reading and she was lying on her side playing with my arm – staring. Yes, I’m scared!

Help! Get me out of here! I’m so paranoid now and she’s still saying, ‘Shower, you shower.’ I think she’s trying to get me naked. If anything happened, I can’t help but feel that help wouldn’t come. So I read my book until late, with her watching me, and pretend to fall asleep reading so I don’t have a shower.

Diary entry, 11 October 2004

The hours in ‘the Agung cell’, as I called it, were sheer hell. I felt so trapped and helpless. I’d expected to get back control of my life that day, but instead it just kept spinning further out of control: it was stinking hot, Agung didn’t shut up or stop touching me, the guards kept leering, Merc had been refused a visit and my lawyer hadn’t come. When I asked for permission to call her, it was denied.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip that cage door down and go crazy. I wanted to shut that mouth that kept saying, ‘Shower, you shower.’ What the hell was I doing here? I wanted to lash out. I’d had enough, enough pain, enough indignity, enough disappointment and frustration, enough of these pathetic little guards trying to make my life even more of a misery. Now they were even denying me my basic right to phone my lawyer.

I was losing it. I was shaking with rage. I had so much anger in me at that point. But there was absolutely nothing I could do to release it. I had to try to calm down. It was all I could do. I tried putting my hands on my hips and pacing back and forth, five steps forward and five steps back.
Breathe, breathe!
I kept telling myself. I was blowing hard in and out.
Be positive, be positive.
I was feeling like a trapped tiger in a cage. It took so much energy to calm myself down. What had happened to my life?

A lighter moment in that black day was opening a plastic bag Merc had dropped off and finding she’d slipped in a slice of her thirtieth birthday cake. Tears sprang to my eyes. It was a slice of my real life. I missed it so much. I shut my eyes, pictured Merc and sang her ‘Happy Birthday’ in my head.
I love you, Merc. I’ll be out soon and we can have another party.

A few hours later, I was lying down with a book flat across my face, pretending to sleep, when I heard Agung get up and walk over to the cage door, towards the guards. Then I heard an unmistakable sound. An unmistakable
sucking
noise. This couldn’t be happening, surely . . .

I didn’t dare breathe. I didn’t dare move. This was too sick, too disgusting. I tried to tell myself it
wasn’t
happening:
You’re just being paranoid, Schapelle. She wouldn’t . . . No way. This doesn’t happen!

A loud groan broke my thoughts. Then I heard Agung run to the toilet and spit.

For what seemed like the millionth time in three days, I asked myself what the hell had happened to my life. She’d done it through the bars in the cell door!

I woke to the sound of my name being called by one of the big police. ‘Corby, Corby . . . your sister.’ I start to get up and, well, what do you know, Agung rolls over and says, ‘Shower.’ Does she ever give up? I had to laugh.

Quickly I poured buckets of water on me, dried myself and tried to dress with my towel wrapped round me. Careful not to show anything to those eyes that sit ever so close to where I’m dressing, staring with what I take as love and wonder.

Quick . . . let’s go. Get me out of here!

Diary entry, 12 October 2004

It wasn’t yet even 7 a.m., but the moment I stepped outside, I was hit by the bright daylight and a media scrum.

‘Schapelle, how are you feeling today?’

‘Schapelle, are you being treated all right?’

‘Schapelle, did you eat yesterday?’

I tried to politely answer a couple of questions as the police yanked me through.

The guards were moving me early to try to outsmart the media, but they hadn’t reckoned on quite how obsessive they were. Apparently, while I was in Agung’s cell, they’d spent the entire day in the Polda car park waiting to catch a glimpse of me.

It was four days since my arrest, and I was finally being taken to my interrogation. I was really nervous, as my life would depend on me recalling every moment of the trip. And that was hard. I had nothing to cover up, but who clocks every tiny detail of such a casually good time as the start of a holiday, when you’re with your mates, drinking beer, joking around and laughing? Now it was vital to my freedom . . . or so I thought.

I did my absolute best, although in the end it didn’t seem to matter what I said.

When Lily and I were going through the interrogation transcript a couple of days later, she spotted a fatal, sneaky line just before I signed it: ‘Yes, the board cover, body board, fins and the plastic bag do all belong to me.’ There was zero chance it was just a typing error. It was the second time the police had tried to fool me into signing a confession. They’d clearly thought that among so many papers, it would slip our eyes. Despite popular belief, the marijuana just being in my bag wasn’t enough to convict me. They needed two bits of evidence. A signed confession would have made things perfectly simple.

I quickly learnt not to trust the police but to trust my instincts. During the interrogation, I suspected a policewoman was secretly taking photos of me with her mobile phone. I told Lily, but she said I was being silly. So I tested the woman by walking across the room. Her phone followed. I moved around a bit more to be sure. Now I was sure.