statements. That took the best part of two hours. Then we were back in the captain’s office. He read through the statements while Sen sat in the corner, glaring daggers at me. Eventually the captain tossed the statements into a metal tray on his desk.
‘You must tell us where the car is, then we can decide how much money you owe,’ he said.
Sen let out a sharp yelp of triumph, but the captain silenced her with a cold stare.
I offered to go and fetch the car but the captain said no, under the law he couldn’t let me go until the car was returned. I knew that I had no choice other than to give him the keys and tell him where I’d left the car. I said that the apartment car park was full so I’d left it at the nearby hotel. Two uniformed cops took me upstairs and I was placed in a small waiting room while the captain sent one of his men to fetch the Honda. It was three o’clock in the morning. Two hours later the captain came upstairs. The older sister had taken possession of the car, he said.
I hit the roof and shouted that it wasn’t her car, that she’d been paid a 100,000 baht for it.
The captain said that the car’s papers were in order and showed Sen as the owner. And that for the moment, I was to remain in police custody. With that, he turned and left. A uniformed officer gripped my arm and took me to a holding cell. There were twenty men in there. No bunks, no pillows, no blankets, just a bare concrete floor, a foul-smelling bucket to piss in and a tap with a short length of hosepipe attached for washing. Several of the men already there were curled up on the floor, trying to sleep. The overhead fuorescent lights were on. Rats were scurrying around the edges of the cell, and there were cockroaches all over the walls.
A couple of Thai men with tattoos came over and asked what I’d done. I told them about the car. They were in on drugs charges. One had been caught with several kilos of amphetamine tablets in his truck and would almost certainly get the death penalty. I squatted against a wall and cursed the day I’d offered to help Dave out.
At eight o’clock in the morning there was a change of shift and two uniformed officers arrived with a small plastic bowl of rice for each of us, a bowl of hot, rancid soup and a bottle of water. I asked one of the guards if I could talk to the duty captain but I was told that he’d gone home.
‘Who else can I talk to about my case?’ I asked, scratching one of the dozen or so mosquito bites I’d acquired during the night.
‘Only him,’ said the guard.
‘When is he back?’
‘Ten o’clock tonight.’
I cursed. I’d have to stay in the hellhole for at least another fourteen hours. I asked if I could phone the New Zealand Embassy but was told that I wasn’t allowed to make any phone calls. I drank from the bottle of water and gave the bowl of soup to one of the scrawnier-looking prisoners. It was going to be a long day.
There was nothing to do but talk to the other guys in the holding cell, so during the course of the day I got to hear most of their stories. One young guy who was in for attempted rape kept telling everyone that his father was rich and that he was paying 50,000 baht and that he would be released that afternoon. He was, too. Others were shackled and taken away to be sentenced. Most were there on drugs charges. I felt really sorry for one guy. Gung his name was. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. He was almost in tears. He’d been in the holding cell for almost a week and reckoned he was going to go to prison for at least three months. He had no money so he hadn’t even been able to phone his mother to tell her where he was. He gave me a scrap of paper with his mother’s name on it and begged me to phone her when I got out. He said I was his only hope.
I had a few hundred baht on me so I was able to buy a can of Coke and a packet of crisps. I tried to sleep but it was almost impossible on the hard concrete floor, even using my trainers as a makeshift pillow. One time I opened my eyes to see Gung scoffing the last of my crisps. I screamed at him and he burst into tears, telling me that he was starving. I ripped up the piece of paper he’d given me. I was damned if I was going to call his mother after I’d caught him stealing from me.
I waited until five minutes after ten before asking one of the guards if the captain was in yet. He frowned and said it was the captain’s weekend off and that he wouldn’t be back until Monday. I almost passed out. Monday? I had to spend another forty-eight hours in the holding cell for no other reason than that the captain was away playing golf or snooker or shagging his minor wife.
My T-shirt and jeans were already caked in dirt and sweat and I itched all over. I couldn’t bear the thought of two more nights. I wanted to shout and scream but I knew that there was nothing I could do to change the situation. I forced myself to stay calm. Jai yen yen , as the Thais are so fond of saying. Cool heart.
As it happened, the duty captain put in an appearance the following night. Manacles were slapped on my wrists and I was taken down to his office. He seemed to be in a good mood and he listened patiently as I said that it was the older sister who should be behind bars, that I was an innocent third party, that I wanted to speak to my embassy and to my lawyer. When I finished speaking, he cracked his knuckles, picked up a toothpick and flicked it with his thumbnail as he outlined the case against me. The case he would be presenting the judge. The car wasn’t mine. The paperwork for the car was in the older sister’s name. She had not given me permission to take away the vehicle. And the money that I was claiming was payment for the car was in fact a dowry that Dave had paid as an engagement gift.
That stopped me in my tracks. What?
The captain said that Dave had been sleeping with Nong’s younger sister and the 100,000 baht was to compensate for the time she wasn’t studying, for her university fees, for her food and her keep. As an act of good faith, the older sister had lent Dave her car.
I started to appreciate just how much trouble I was in. And that maybe, just maybe, Sen had been telling the truth. It could well have been the case that Nong had been too embarrassed to tell Dave that the family was demanding a dowry, and that she’d spun him a line about the money being a payment for the car. And even if it wasn’t the truth, in my experience Thai courts tend to take the word of Thai nationals over the word of a foreigner. Plus it would be two against one, their word against mine. And as things stood, I had stolen the car.
The captain smiled at me sympathetically. ‘I know you are not a thief, Khun Warren,’ he said, He shrugged. ‘The problem is, I have already done the paperwork. I would be very difficult to make any changes at this late stage…’
He looked at me expectantly. I knew exactly what was happening. He was giving me the chance to buy myself out of the hole I was in. ‘I don’t have any money on me,’ I said.
‘But you have an ATM card,’ he said.
I did a few quick calculations in my head. I figured I probably had about 40,000 baht in the account. I told him that I was a teacher and that I had hardly any money, but that I could probably get him 30,000 baht.
‘Fifty thousand,’ he said.
I told him that all I had left in my account was 40,000 baht, and that he could have it all. I pulled out my wallet and took out my ATM card. ‘If you take me to the nearest machine, I’ll withdraw all the money.’
He held out his hand for the card. ‘You have to stay here while you are charged,’ he said. ‘Give me the pin number and I will see what I can do.’
I wrote the pin number down on a piece of paper with my manacled hands and the captain told one of his men to take me back to the holding cell.
I was dog-tired and I sat down with my back against the wall, my knees drawn up against my chest. I closed my eyes but stayed awake, hoping and praying that my name would be called and that I would be let out. The call never came. I dozed, and when I woke up I was sprawled on the floor and it was daylight. Breakfast had been served while I was asleep and someone had eaten my rice and soup. When a guard appeared I was told that the captain had gone home and wouldn’t be back until the evening. Now I was really worried. The captain had taken my card and probably emptied the account, but I had no way of knowing whether or not he would honour the agreement. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. I’ve had guns pointed at me, I’ve had guys pull knives on me, I’ve had bargirls threaten to cut off my private parts and feed them to ducks, but none of that compared with the terror of knowing that I was facing months if not years in a Thai prison. People die in Thai prisons. Lots of people. They get sick, they get knifed, they get raped, they commit suicide. And if they survive their incarceration, they’re never the same. My three days in the holding cell had been just a taste of what lay ahead of me if the captain didn’t keep his end of the bargain.
I kept looking at my watch and prayed that the captain would come back. He did. And at eleven o’clock I was taken to his office. The manacles were removed and a bottle of Thai whisky appeared from his desk and he poured two glasses. We toasted each other. Then he waved a typed report in front of me. ‘I have made a small alteration,’ he said. ‘A small but important alteration. It now says that you borrowed the car from the older sister. Borrowed
