Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (12 page)

The women both looked British and roughly the same age as me, and were blonde and pretty. I don’t know why, but I was so happy to see them that I jumped up from my interrogation seat and ran to greet them both.

They’re here to see me, how wonderful.They’ll probably get me out.

‘A friend of ours told us you were here.’

Panting like a Labrador I was so relieved to see someone who wasn’t Thai that I began rambling on hysterically.‘They want me to sign papers that are written in Thai.What do you think, should I sign? Will I sign? What do you think? How long will I be here? What…’

Both of them said that in the same situation they probably wouldn’t, but asked me what my lawyer had suggested.

‘Lawyer? What do you mean?’

I didn’t have a lawyer. I hadn’t even thought about a lawyer. Had I phoned home or anything? No, I hadn’t. I hadn’t thought about that either.

The officer-in-charge told one of his deputies to take me downstairs and the two women followed. We were allowed to stand and talk. I stood on one side of a set of bars and they stood on the other.Their names were Victoria and Olivia. One worked for Radio Four and the other said she worked for the
Guardian
.

Before long I had told them everything about myself, where I

was from and how I had loved horses and how silly I sometimes was and how I came to be in Thailand and how the hell I had ended up here. I showed them all my family photographs, told them about the baby that had just been born into our family and how I couldn’t ask my family for money because things were diffi- cult at home too.

I thought they had just popped in to visit me. It never dawned on me that they were there for a story. When Victoria asked if I would mind if she took a couple of pictures, I felt embarrassed, but they had been so nice that I said,‘Why not?’

She paid the policeman some money and opened up her bag containing lenses, different flashes and several cameras. I stood there, hands behind my back, then hands out front and hands holding onto the bars, hands clutching my face.Whatever she sug- gested, really.

Victoria snapped and flashed while I prayed no one would ever see those pictures of me behind bars. I have not seenVictoria since
1993
but I have seen those photographs repeated scores of times in newspapers over the years.

The following day both Olivia andVictoria came to the police station and brought huge bottles of strawberry milk, a large bag of cookies and a small bag of oranges. The penitents’ gifts. I drank some of the milk, leaving the cookies and fruit until I got to court. Food for photographs, it was a fair swap.

‘Do you remember those two girls from Birmingham that were arrested years ago?’ I said to Robert. ‘I’m sure it was in Thailand and they got a lot of press coverage. Jean Sharpe said the press might be interested in this case.What do you think? Do you think the press might be at court tomorrow?’

Karyn Smith and Patricia Cahill, two young girls from Birmingham, had been given
18
- and
25
-year sentences respec- tively, after they were found guilty of attempting to smuggle over
60
lb of heroin, worth £
4
million, out of Thailand in
1990
.

Fortunately, they avoided the death penalty despite the high quan- tity of heroin they were carrying.

I remembered seeing them on television when I was in England, but had left the country three months before they were sentenced and never found out what sentence they had received. Before I left for Thailand an old man from a local pub warned me about going. ‘You don’t want to go over there, mate,’ he sniffed. ‘You’re going to end up in that prison with those two Brummie girls.’ Just over two years later, when I was taken to Lard Yao prison, one of the first faces I saw the following morning was Karyn Smith’s.

‘Seriously though, Robert,’ I continued, ‘you don’t suppose there’s going to be any press when we go to court, considering the amount of coverage those two got?’

‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, Sandra.’

He made a bet with me that there would be little or no media interest in this case.A bottle of champagne, he wagered, if there are any reporters there. I wanted to believe Robert but felt sure his champagne would be going on ice.

On the Thursday following our arrest we were taken to court. The night before court I was told to have all my stuff together and that I would not be returning to the police station.
Thank God
,I thought,
nowhere could be as awful as this place
. Once again the cell door was unlocked so I strolled outside into the corridor and hung my Thai dressing gown on the bars outside the cage.

In the morning I went to get it down before having a wash. Shit, I couldn’t believe it.Through the gate at the end of the corri- dor were a large group of men with television cameras while others buzzed around with notebooks and pens, looking, poking and prying.The press had arrived.

For a minute I stared blankly, before racing back to the cage. Hurriedly, I began hanging clothes on the bars where the police had been looking in some days earlier. The press would be up there, I was sure, trying to take pictures of me in this stew of a cell.

No, no, no. My family and friends would see me like this, scamper- ing about like an animal. I didn’t want anyone seeing me there at all.
Please, just leave me alone.

At around half past eight, one of the policemen came to the cell, smoothing his hair down, then combing it.‘Come on, we go.’ Grabbing all my clothes from the bars, he shouted at me again. Everything that was still on the floor he was shoving into my bag. I was prodded out, with Robert not far behind, and we found ourselves in the middle of a horrendous media scrum.

I had not slept and, apart from the milk, had still not eaten. Earlier I had washed my hair with water from the septic tank, hoping that I would not look as bad as I felt in front of the judge.A pair of blue polka-dot culottes, a white shirt and a pair of green court shoes might also make an impression, or at least help me appear respectable.

The police returned my bag and, to my surprise, the officer who lived up the stairs gave me back, in a brown envelope, the rest of the money he had taken from me earlier. Although not very much, it later proved very useful. Some friends of Robert’s were at the station and he signed over his Walkman, camera and electronic chess game to them. Ignoring me, they talked in whispers.

Some days earlier, when I had written the letter to my parents, it had been a strange kind of relief to do so. From that point on I had told myself I was no longer the person that I had been and I no longer had a family. It would be so much easier this way, to do this on my own. Somehow I had convinced myself it was possible to survive this ordeal, but the only way to do it was to do it alone.The only way to do this would be to lose my past; if I could cut myself off from my past then whatever happened in the coming weeks, months or, God forbid, years, wouldn’t really matter.

All this changed when I saw the press. I remembered everyone at home. Now they were going to know about me and I didn’t want anyone knowing who I was, or anything about my family. I didn’t want anyone laying any blame at the door of my family.

One of the cameras had ITN written in large letters down the side and all I could think of when I saw that camera was my grandfather. He had always watched ITN news and I knew he would see me being bundled to court byThai police.The shock of it all would give him a heart attack and probably kill him.
Get that fucking camera out of my face!
I screamed to myself. I was pushed forward, while trying to hide my face.
Don’t worry, Pa-Pa
, I said to myself,
I’m fine
.

Much later, people would tell me that as they watched me they could see how emotional and shaken I was. But I wasn’t crying for myself, instead it was for my grandfather.The last time I had seen him he was already frail, already an old man.

‘I am so sorry,’ I shouted above the crowd.‘Please, wait for me, Pa-Pa! Please don’t die.’

‘How do you feel?’‘What’s the charge?’‘What’s it like in the cells?’ ‘Why did you do it?’ ‘Whose idea was it?’The reporters shocked me.They had not come to the police station to see me, but to look at me. Pushing and shoving for positions, they continued to fire stupid questions at me. How did they think I felt?

The cameras rolled and flashed. I was an animal in a zoo. I was somewhere between dead and alive. Did my parents know? What did I think of the death penalty for drug smugglers?
Jesus, what’s wrong with these people?

‘Mum, I love you,’ I sobbed at no one in particular.‘Dad, I love you.’ I felt obliterated. I missed them so much. I just wanted to be at home with them and say sorry for all the stupid things I had done over the years.
Dad, you were right about me, I did always have to have the last word.
Now look where I had landed myself.
Mum, I’m sorry for being so selfish.
Now look where I was. I hated myself.

Robert was sitting in the back of an open truck, his head in his handcuffs, but he said nothing except,‘No comment.’ I had heard people say that in films, but I never imagined I would hear it for real.Trying to separate himself from what had happened, his words

sounded vaguely guilty and confused, as if they had succumbed to the pressure of some kind of truth much too great for him to comprehend.

‘Granny, and Pa-Pa, I’m so sorry.Wait for me, wait for me.’ My words sounded terribly hollow and so weak.

We were put in a rusting pick-up truck. I sat in the front, without handcuffs, while Robert was placed in the back, alongside two policemen. He was handcuffed.We were driven through Bangkok and it took roughly an hour and a half to get to the court. Although I didn’t look like a prisoner, I certainly felt like one.

We drove past the Palace of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and it was very surreal. So many times I had strolled past it over the previous two years and now I was being driven past it in a prison van.There is an area of farmland to the rear of the palace, with iron railings and gardens around it. The king gives over most of his grounds for agricultural purposes and fat cows graze lazily in the sun. Much of the land is peppered with green- houses.

The truck rolled on. I watched children going to school, people going to work on buses and bicycles, people selling things on the street. Some people were shouting, others wagging their fingers. Hard- and soft-faced men strolled by. All of a sudden I loved the country all over again.

What have you done, Sandra? What have you done?
I couldn’t stop the tears welling in my eyes. I couldn’t help thinking that if we had not been stopped at the airport I would probably have been flying back to the UK that day. It was such a strange feeling knowing I could so easily have got away with it. But I felt different now. In a way I almost felt happy; I wouldn’t be returning home with a secret. I doubt my conscience would have kept it safe for very long.

The truck came to a stop at a set of traffic lights. Nearby someone was selling Buddhist prayer beads that are made from

little flowers; they usually hang on a string from car mirrors and around the small spirit houses that are set up to guard people from evil spirits. I bought two sets and later carried them into the court, hoping the flowers would grant me some kind of special dispensa- tion from my crime. I needed something to say I was sorry. I needed to pray. I also needed all the help I could get.

We were taken through a back entrance at the court, passing a massive cage full of men, who were shouting and screaming.‘Look at the Westerner,’ shouted one. Beyond the cages were the pris- oner’s families and the noise was unbelievable as everyone was desperately trying to communicate.There seemed to be cages and bars everywhere.The whole place was a teeming mass of bodies; it looked like a swirling Goya or Bosch creation.The noise was deaf- ening. Everything was so dark and venomous. All the prisoners wore muddy-brown coloured shorts and T-shirts. The prisoners looked like beasts.The brutalities in here were not done in secret.
This isn’t happening.
It just wasn’t possible that I was involved in all this. It must be happening to someone else.
It must be a mistake.

Yes, that’s it; it’s all a big mistake.They can’t possibly put me in there; we must be just passing through.

We continued walking past the front of this horrendous cage,

between the visitors and the prisoners, into a brightly lit, air-con- ditioned room. At one end there was a glass partition with counters and wooden benches placed in a row. Robert and I were told to sit down together, more or less at the back. I sat down, placed my bags on the floor, and then proceeded to peel an orange, which I had with me.A group of Thai faces turned around towards me and gave me a horrified look.

‘What are you doing?’ they seemed to say.‘It’s not a picnic.’

I kept peeling, though a little nervously. I just didn’t know what to do, or how to act. I was unable to make sense of anything. I looked at the orange and felt like a fool. I ate it and felt the juices choking my throat.

The guards, in their dark beige uniforms, were dotted around

the room.Then another two of them walked in. In between them, flanked by their sides, was a loose-looking figure, wearing a sickly brown, heavy T-shirt and the same coloured shorts. He was burned dark from the sun.The poor soul looked hellish. He had a face like cancer under a microscope.

MostThai people, unless they work in the streets or on building sites, are light-skinned; they do everything possible to keep out of the sun in order to keep their skin as light as possible. His hair was shorn off and he was shackled with a pair of elephant chains around his ankles.

The chains have large iron rings that double over on them- selves, and the rings are roughly three-quarters of an inch in diameter. In between the rings is a length of chain, roughly three feet long and an inch thick. In the middle of this chain the pris- oner ties a heavy string so that he can hold the chain up and walk without tripping over it. It makes a heavy clanking sound as it is pulled along.The prisoner cannot walk properly while wearing it and is forced to shuffle, dragging one foot at a time.