Escape by David McMillan Read Free Book Online Page A

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?’
    ‘Yeah. Scumbag was gonna deck him and he hadn’t done a thing.’
    ‘Sure. Mostly just happened to be there when the big picture fell over. Only scratched the lacquer. Not his fault anyway. He hadn’t touched it. A few baht and all’s forgiven. This—this is different. They embarrassed the guards. Holy wars have been fought over embarrassment.’
    Calvin stared at me blankly and then raised his eyes to the upper floors. ‘One of them was Quan, the Singapore guy.’ Calvin had played a chess game or two with the clever one of the escape team.
    ‘Maybe that’s good, an embassy and all,’ I suggested. ‘Except back home they would have hanged him by now.’
    ‘Fuck you, too, Dave!’ But Calvin wrenched a wan smile from somewhere looking for a cause.
    Of the five only Quan would survive. He had begun bargaining and paying from the outset but only as the others began to die did his keepers listen. Ultimately all he bought himself was a death sentence in Bangkwang.
    Quan’s misfortune provided an excuse to speak of ways out with Dean Reed. With those foreigners who live in Thailand, the more sophisticated the home country compared to the chosen land of exile, the weirder becomes the expatriate. American Dean was stranger than most. He claimed to have taught at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University and he must have been close to someone who had. Dean understood the confusion many Asian students feel when asked to write essays arguing against existing customs. Their sense of unfairness at having to devise ideas that had not been taught. Dean’s conversations would flutter from tree stump to garden post so it was difficult to steer him onward. Even so he was the one foreigner I was sure would soon be released. He knew the people of Thailand and had local contacts, even if they might happily lynch him for whatever blatant swindle he had last pulled on them.
    ‘I try to tell people but they don’t understand,’ Dean would usually begin. ‘That Quan. There won’t be much fluff left on his blanket. But anything’s possible in Thailand. You know the judges used to drive their Mercedeses to court but too obvious in the car park so now those big, curtained buses are for their Honours. Now don’t worry about how guilty everyone looks in court in chains and bare feet. It’s who’s standing behind you that counts. Be careful about royalty, too. You know even ministers had to crawl out backwards from His Majesty until the 1930s. Born not far from me in Cambridge before the War. Married in Switzerland then came back here to the palace and his brother was shot. All the servants locked up then executed. So you see? Don’t do anything embarrassing. Some tourist was arrested for lèse-majesté for spilling a drink on a plane near the princess. Did I tell you I had dinner once with a judge? At the Oriental. French chef, you know, and I’m sure it has two