goes well—’ Harvey paused. ‘I’ll do a bit of research. Let you know.’
Ten days later the steel bus taking me to court was packed. I could barely see daylight as each lurching stop jerked my head from someone’s pimply ear to another’s rancid armpit. The bus stopped at the old city prison to collect more prisoners due for hearings.
A guard shouted, ‘Make room. Get back. Plenty of space down the back.’ Those at the rear whose faces were pressed into waffles by the mesh might have argued, if they’d been able to speak. With a little nuzzling from the guard’s machine gun, half a dozen more prisoners clattered their chains up the steel steps. One of them, a paleface, tripped but merely fell into the press of bodies.
Over the next hours of fuming traffic he introduced himself as Roddy Keyes, an Englishman who was awaiting trial in an airport case concerning just less than a hundred grams of heroin. He had a case partner. Nothing unlawful had been found on Roddy but the young woman had been undone during an X-ray of her lower body. Cassie was arrested; Roddy and his girlfriend were allowed to board their plane. Cassie held out for a solid five minutes before implicating Rod, who had barely buckled his seat belt before being hauled from the Tokyo-bound flight.
‘So is Cassie going to stick to her story?’ I asked.
‘It’s not in her interests to say a word in court.’ Roddy was trying to sound confident. ‘The only thing is that she’s had a good moan up and that’s been all over the London papers. The BBC films our every court date. All that can make a person want to stand up and sing.’
‘I hear you’ve got some well-known lawyers.’ I wanted to know if using the high rollers would make any difference. ‘How are they calling it?’
‘Fifty-fifty. Which is what all lawyers say. I suppose it’s all down to how the Thais see the publicity.’
Roddy told me more of the way Thailand’s big lawyers operate and that when it came to foreigners, few of their usual tricks work.
A year later Roddy would be acquitted. Cassie received thirty years but was home in England within two years using the prisoner-transfer scheme. In many ways she found life in British prisons harder, although she did well with a coquettish book of her adventures. Roddy gave up smuggling after that, although I don’t think he felt a lot better for it. He had been lucky the cameras had been there and that there was someone to take the fall.
The evidence presented against me that day was thin. Literally. It was a newspaper cutting taken from a Melbourne tabloid the day after my arrest in Thailand.
‘It seems your embassy has decided to assist in your case,’ my lawyer, Montree, said with sarcasm.
The story quoted two local narcotics policemen giving their idea of the inside story. ‘Caught with just a sample,’ said one. ‘Would have been one of the biggest dealers in this part of the country by now,’ pronounced another. To give it authority, a translator from a university read the story into the court record.
Surely a second-hand bite of hearsay from a distant scandal sheet could not be held against me. ‘Well that was a waste of time,’ I said to Montree, dusting my hands.
My lawyer looked down at his papers, and held his hands over his head, not wanting to say more.
By the time I climbed into the van to return to Klong Prem I had the best part of a plan in mind. At my next court appearance I would be escorted as usual to the eighth-floor court by one or two guards. I would be in leg irons but without handcuffs. The previous afternoon Harvey, by then in Thailand, would have gone to the court wearing one of his banking outfits: suit, wig, briefcase and an identity tag claiming something diplomatic. From the seventh floor—at that time still vacant—he would’ve let himself into the emergency stairwell that runs adjacent to the small lift that moves prisoners to and from courtrooms.
Harvey’s large
Ten days later the steel bus taking me to court was packed. I could barely see daylight as each lurching stop jerked my head from someone’s pimply ear to another’s rancid armpit. The bus stopped at the old city prison to collect more prisoners due for hearings.
A guard shouted, ‘Make room. Get back. Plenty of space down the back.’ Those at the rear whose faces were pressed into waffles by the mesh might have argued, if they’d been able to speak. With a little nuzzling from the guard’s machine gun, half a dozen more prisoners clattered their chains up the steel steps. One of them, a paleface, tripped but merely fell into the press of bodies.
Over the next hours of fuming traffic he introduced himself as Roddy Keyes, an Englishman who was awaiting trial in an airport case concerning just less than a hundred grams of heroin. He had a case partner. Nothing unlawful had been found on Roddy but the young woman had been undone during an X-ray of her lower body. Cassie was arrested; Roddy and his girlfriend were allowed to board their plane. Cassie held out for a solid five minutes before implicating Rod, who had barely buckled his seat belt before being hauled from the Tokyo-bound flight.
‘So is Cassie going to stick to her story?’ I asked.
‘It’s not in her interests to say a word in court.’ Roddy was trying to sound confident. ‘The only thing is that she’s had a good moan up and that’s been all over the London papers. The BBC films our every court date. All that can make a person want to stand up and sing.’
‘I hear you’ve got some well-known lawyers.’ I wanted to know if using the high rollers would make any difference. ‘How are they calling it?’
‘Fifty-fifty. Which is what all lawyers say. I suppose it’s all down to how the Thais see the publicity.’
Roddy told me more of the way Thailand’s big lawyers operate and that when it came to foreigners, few of their usual tricks work.
A year later Roddy would be acquitted. Cassie received thirty years but was home in England within two years using the prisoner-transfer scheme. In many ways she found life in British prisons harder, although she did well with a coquettish book of her adventures. Roddy gave up smuggling after that, although I don’t think he felt a lot better for it. He had been lucky the cameras had been there and that there was someone to take the fall.
The evidence presented against me that day was thin. Literally. It was a newspaper cutting taken from a Melbourne tabloid the day after my arrest in Thailand.
‘It seems your embassy has decided to assist in your case,’ my lawyer, Montree, said with sarcasm.
The story quoted two local narcotics policemen giving their idea of the inside story. ‘Caught with just a sample,’ said one. ‘Would have been one of the biggest dealers in this part of the country by now,’ pronounced another. To give it authority, a translator from a university read the story into the court record.
Surely a second-hand bite of hearsay from a distant scandal sheet could not be held against me. ‘Well that was a waste of time,’ I said to Montree, dusting my hands.
My lawyer looked down at his papers, and held his hands over his head, not wanting to say more.
By the time I climbed into the van to return to Klong Prem I had the best part of a plan in mind. At my next court appearance I would be escorted as usual to the eighth-floor court by one or two guards. I would be in leg irons but without handcuffs. The previous afternoon Harvey, by then in Thailand, would have gone to the court wearing one of his banking outfits: suit, wig, briefcase and an identity tag claiming something diplomatic. From the seventh floor—at that time still vacant—he would’ve let himself into the emergency stairwell that runs adjacent to the small lift that moves prisoners to and from courtrooms.
Harvey’s large
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