Escape by David McMillan Read Free Book Online Page B

courgettes in the Michelin Guide. I know I can fix your case, even bail. It’s only money. Not my lawyer, you won’t want to use him. You’ll need a fixer. Can you be sick? The doctor here can write reports for the court. Doesn’t cost much.’
    From the stairs a thin, grey-skinned prisoner staggered down. Paint tin of shit in hand, he had no energy to lift the chains that dragged around his feet. This sight presented a break in Dean’s presentation.
    ‘Isn’t that one of the five?’ I asked.
    ‘No. Just a soi boy. One of the regulars.’
    ‘Dean, do you know of anyone who’s succeeded where they failed?’
    For the first time Dean’s pace slowed. ‘No, David. That doesn’t happen here. There was something a couple of years ago from the court but that was a disaster in the end. Now look—don’t worry. It’s Thailand. Everything’s possible with money.’
    The soi boy was, by then, over by the water tanks, cleaning his paint tin. Some of the foreigners were examining him from a distance. His skin was a dry rubber, the tattoos of Buddhist luck phrases faded to a smudged blue. From my compatriots’ faces I could see thoughts of escape had been buried. Eddie came over to remark upon the soi boy declining any food or help.
    ‘He wouldn’t even answer me,’ noted Eddie.
    ‘Oh, that one,’ Dean said of the grey prisoner, ‘he hasn’t spoken a word for months. I don’t think he ever will.’

4
    Another day of a court appearance began as usual standing in a queue to have chains fitted. Ahead, a brawny Thai sat on a low stool surrounded by a pile of half-metre lengths of rusting chains. Beside him was a box of C-shaped ankle rings.
    Prisoners would sit opposite, looking away as the chain-man hammered tight the ankle ring resting on a small anvil. His aim was usually true and improved when given a few cigarettes.
    There was a brief delay in the line while arrangements were made for a one-legged man. A compromise was finally settled with the real leg chained to the artificial limb, although he was then permitted to use his crutches so that he could walk. Unfortunately this caused such difficulty he then had to remove the prosthetic leg and carry it under one arm. To the guards this seemed a stretching of the rule but he was allowed to go, providing he promised to keep one end of the chain attached to the leg carried under his arm.
    A packet of Krong Thip filters bought me a set of polished chains and by eight in the morning I was with the others waiting for transport, squatting at the internal roadway. I was seated with Daniel, the only other foreigner due for court that day. Daniel, when he spoke at all, would talk of distant and irrelevant things. Today it was of the sour week held in the police station. He was speaking of a small grill that covered a lightless window high in the cell.
    ‘It had some bolts holding it in place,’ Daniel said as he stared at his feet. ‘Rusted, of course, and unmoved since being tightened what, thirty years earlier. They were covered in a fuzz of dust. Held there—the dust I mean—by the oils from body heat rising over time. Never touched in all those years. Never brushed.’
    ‘Well, they’re not big on cleaning in police cells,’ I said before moving back on the guttering to allow a heavy sand truck to pass in front.
    ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Daniel began.
    Whatever he meant was silenced by the sudden action of a small Thai man with a deeply pockmarked face. As the heavy truck slowly passed the old man, he dived forward. Hands flat to the ground, he turned his head sideways to face the twin rear tyres grinding toward him.
    From where we sat a ribbed tyre briefly seemed to spin faster and the truck rose a little. Then the sound of a sumo wrestler falling on a watermelon. Eerily quiet yet powerful. The old man’s shoulders twitched, his left arm flipping up from the ground before disappearing. When the truck passed it seemed his head was facing the wrong way. An