Hotel Kerobokan by Kathryn Bonella Read Free Book Online

was also searched several times. They found nothing. But still they were unconvinced.
    Every morning Nita went through the same humiliating procedure – being handcuffed and marched to the office to spend another five or six gruelling hours with yet another team of specialist officers from Jakarta hurling the same questions and insults at her. ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything,’ she wailed for six days straight, until they finally gave up on her. The rest of the women were also suffering, cooped up in their cells, banned from visits, unable even to walk around the women’s block to stretch their legs.
    During the next few weeks about two dozen more prisoners were recaptured, but only one hundred and thirty of the two hundred and eighty-nine were ever caught. Many of the recaptured prisoners were temporarily held at police stations and another local jail while the destroyed cellblocks were repaired. The anger and embarrassment had escalated, and returning escapees were now being beaten with rattan whips until they bled. Their open wounds were doused in water mixed with fresh chilli to exacerbate the pain, before they were put into isolation cells without food or water. Their remissions, or days cut from their sentence for good behaviour, were automatically cancelled. Hotel K tightened its security, building wire fences around every block, so that prisoners could no longer wander freely around the jail. It was a move to prevent another prisoner coup, after an investigation found the lack of fencing had been a major factor in the great escape’s success.
    Nita would never see Tony again, though when his brother, Saidin, returned to jail about a year later, he organised a phone call between the former lovers. Tony was living as a fugitive in Malaysia. Relationships in jail were fickle, and Nita had swiftly moved on to a new lover; conveniently, another power player who she had a lot in common with. They would work together selling drugs.

    289 inmates break out of Bali jail

    Jakarta – A total 289 prisoners escaped from a jail in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali following a mass breakout, a report said here [on] Monday. The prisoners escaped from the Kerobokan Jail in southern Bali at about 5:00 pm Sunday after breaking the main gate. Fourteen jail wardens on guard at the time were outnumbered and unable to stop the prisoners, the Jakarta Post Daily said .
    – Agence France-Presse , 6 December 1999

CHAPTER 5
LET’S PLAY

    For many months after the great escape, Hotel K’s security was tight. All inmates were kept in their cellblocks, only allowed out for visits or for an occasional ten minutes of sun if they slipped the right guard about 70,000 rupiah ($10). New fences had been built around each cellblock, the usually unmanned watchtowers were active and two additional inmates were designated as tampings in every block. Despite her former love affair with notorious great escape mastermind Tony, Nita was given the job as tamping in Block W. It gave her more freedom in Hotel K, freedom she’d soon use to deal drugs, utilise outside contacts and network within the jail.
    Before being in Hotel K, Nita had been a drug trafficker, working Asia for three European bosses. She spent years jetting around, making good money, until the day her luck turned. That morning she kissed her four-year-old daughter goodbye in their apartment in the Philippines, unaware they would be separated for years, and drove to the airport with only a small travel bag. She breezed through immigration, completely free of any sense of dread, and boarded the plane as innocently as any other traveller, looking forward to having a drink. Her first stop was Singapore. That’s where the risks began.
    But Nita was smart. She always took the standard precautions and was never blasé or arrogant. She was acutely aware that a wrong move could end with a noose around her neck or a bullet through her heart. But the risks were minimal on this