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Greater Klong Prem was for sentenced prisoners so a transfer required money or light pressure from embassy consulates. Eddie, being Swiss, found immediate compliance with a firm official letter, although British Martyn would have to wait for the weak gravity of imperial support. As I saw things, both men had something to offer. Martyn, his skills, and Eddie, his fearlessness.
    Calvin was reluctant to move. We spoke of it one night, my last week in the dormitory. He had been warned by Vice Consul Judy that heroin was cheap and available in the larger Klong Prem. ‘That Judy, she’s like a den mother and we’re her cub scouts. She doesn’t want me to get tangled up in the dope gain. She’s got all this money my mother keeps sending, bless her.’ Calvin told it like that but it was he who had asked the consulate to restrict payments to his prison account and to leave him in the Cure.
    ‘If I get back on the shit in here, I’m fucked.’ Calvin had said.
    Considering this I found myself absently staring at a tall Thai boy, new to the dorm and then being chained to the floor. That afternoon he had been sentenced to life. As the key boy locked him in place, the new lifer caught my stare.
    ‘It’s okay,’ he apologised. ‘Everything all right. This is Thailand. No problem.’ He even attempted a smile through some winces as he was held in place. What comparable apology might ever be heard in the West? A convict is being strapped into a Californian gas chamber. Some strangers appear. He feels a need to apologise to these witnesses for his own people’s cruelty. What creatures could these visitors be? Civilised aliens from Mars? And what did such a convict think of these aliens that he imagined he caused offence?
    Nearby a small circle of listeners had gathered to watch a weather-beaten country boy from Laos sing folk ballads. He wore a red and white checked blanket draped over his head and shoulders and sat holding a banana for a microphone. His earthy, natural voice carried soft and high sounds across the cell. The dialect was quite foreign to Bangkok ears and no one translated his simple songs of love and loss. A farmer’s son with a face aged by hard times, he added few sentimental contortions and held his notes. When he had finished his audience applauded and the tall boy set his plastic bottle aside to clap as well.
    Sharon, too, had met a singer during her brief stay in Bangkok. Her hotel had a bar where a Thai girl sang most nights. Having song in common, they became friends. Some afternoons May would help Sharon shop. May kept a polite boyfriend who was free some nights to watch her perform for the hotel’s customers. On Sharon’s last night in town May invited her to join in a duet on stage. That was when May’s boyfriend lifted Sharon’s credit card from her bag and stepped into the night to go to work on the ATMs near another hotel.
    Using the PIN number he’d been given that afternoon by May, the boyfriend withdrew the daily limit and waited until after midnight to try again. As it was my card I was unable to have payments stopped for three days. Sharon would never accept that her new friend had pegged her numbers while they’d shopped and when Sharon returned to Thailand a couple of months later, they resumed their friendship. However, I heard no more of duets in the Kiwi lounge of the Bang Sap Hotel.

5
    A last day in the Cure with lots of goodbyes and more than a few flawed promises. The one that rattled most was from Dean Reed. He cornered me as I was rolling half a kitchen into my blankets.
    ‘I spoke to my contact in the courts. He tells me it’s best if your judge nominates who should be your lawyer. And the best one is Khun Khanawat. He lectures at the university. Very respected.’
    ‘I don’t care if he works in the courthouse toilets checking zips. As long as he can make a deal.’ I hoped that I was not falling for all of this nonsense. Dean’s pitching was full of last-minute