Escape by David McMillan Read Free Book Online

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