Free Escape by David McMillan Page B

the crafty Chinese be seen guiding the new white man, we could readily be called to the chief’s office to negotiate a donation to the building-repair fund.
    Beyond, the roadway led to a gated automobile-repair shop. There officers’ cars were tuned and serviced or those of officers’ friends. Some of these cars were in such poor condition that the plates and engine numbers had to be replaced. Factories in Building Six produced army boots, more ceremonial votive paper boxes, plastic fittings for bigger plastic fittings and, of course, inlaid portraits. I was assigned to a large umbrella factory producing pop-up brollies of many colours.
    Behind the factories Charlie took me to the thatched-roof ‘coffee shop’. It sold everything but cups of coffee yet kept stock adequate for a small-town general store. As Charlie was called away to speak with his Chinese friends who owned this concession, I bought a fried-egg sandwich and sat under a tree watching the queue at the bank. One window at the coffee shop had been remodelled as a teller’s cage behind which a round-faced man served a line of fifty customers. With a firm, clean script he would deduct up to THB1,000 from prisoners’ accounts in return for THB800 cash. The guards were blind to these transactions during banking hours but it would be no defence to point to the coffee shop if caught with currency.
    ‘David! Over here.’ Eddie was calling through the window of the umbrella factory. ‘You want to meet the guy who’ll do your work?’
    I walked around the water tanks to the factory entrance to meet the Thai boys Eddie had agreed to pay THB200 each to do our work. ‘For another two hundred we can get beach recliners.’ Eddie pointed to a small group of Europeans in a corner under a ceiling fan, reading books or playing chess.
    ‘I don’t want to sit around here all day,’ I said but would later buy a chair to establish additional territory. ‘Want some lunch, Eddie?’ I asked, waving my floppy egg sandwich at the coffee shop.
    ‘No thanks,’ winked Eddie with assumed cross-eyes. ‘I’ve had mine.’
    That night Eddie and I found temporary lodgings before opening negotiations with the chief for better accommodation. The chief was a short, chubby man who looked like Panama’s former master, Manuel Noriega, and smiled at least as often. In his office he began with the usual discussion of the limited funds available from the Thai prisons department. A deal was struck with the help of Rick, an Englishman who was renting a desk in the chief’s office. A dubious, tactical location I thought too close to the front line. Fortunately Rick also wanted to share a private cell.
    ‘It’ll come to about THB10,000,’ explained Rick. ‘Five for the boss here. And about the same to renovate a cell. We can’t get away with less than five or six of us to the cell but that’s better than the ten-to-twelve average for the regular Thais. See if you can scare up some other tenants. We’ll split the costs for the chief and share for the room fixings, okay?’
    Rick had lived in Pattaya for almost five years. He had fled his well-to-do parents and siblings from Southport, western England before finishing college to find new friends among the British deep-sea divers of southern Thailand. Now, more than nine years later, he had a Thai wife and daughter and earned a fair living selling grass to expatriates in his area. He had been arrested with fifteen kilos of weed a few months earlier while driving to the capital. His guess was that a man in his employ, another Englishman, had dropped him to the local police. Relatively this was all good for Rick. A minor case, no foreign entanglements and a Thai wife who would connive to have him released. Rick had money, friends and no serious enemies so his confidence was justified. Of the over one hundred Westerners I came to know in Klong Prem, he was the only one in this position, especially the having-friends part. By contrast