Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton - Softcover

Gregory, Sandra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782192247 ISBN 13: 9781782192244

Publisher: John Blake, 2013

Synopsis

Sandra Gregory seemed to have the perfect life in Bangkok - until illness, unemployment and political unrest turned it into a nightmare. Desperate to get home by any means possible, she agreed to smuggle an addict's personal supply of heroin. She didn't even make it onto the plane. In this remarkably candid memoir, Sandra Gregory tells the full story of the events leading up to her arrest, the horrific conditions in Lard Yao prison, her trial in a language she didn't understand and how if feels to be sentenced to death. Sandra finally resumed her journey home some four and a half years later, when she was transferred to the British prison system and had to adapt to a new, yet equally harsh, regime. Following relentless campaigning by her parents - who refused to forget they had a daughter - she was pardoned by the King of Thailand and released in 2000.

About this title

About the Author

Sandra Gregory has since gained a degree at Oxford.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Forget You Had a Daughter

Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton

By Sandra Gregory

John Blake Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2003 Sandra Gregory and Michael Tierney
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78219-224-4

Contents

Title Page, 
Dedication, 
Introduction by Martin Bell OBE, 
1. 'Boom! In Thai, You Die', 
2. Class Act, 
3. Opium Mountain, 
4. In Sickness and Health, 
5. Nothing Like the Sun, 
6. Suicide is Painless, 
7. Prisoner 228/36, 
8. The Bodysnatchers, 
9. Domestic Violence, 
10. 'Little girl, they're gonna eat you alive ...', 
11. Making Trouble, 
12. House of Horror, 
13. Jailbirds, 
14. 'So Long, Farewell ...', 
15. Holding the Keys, 
16. The Legacy of Lard Yao, 
Plates, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

'BOOM! IN THAI, YOU DIE'

6th February 1993

To my dearest parents, grandparents and brother,

I am going to ask you the hardest and very last thing from you all. I do not want you to forgive me, what I have done is not excusable and above all else I knew better than to do what I did. I have not been wise and I am asking you all to please forget that you ever had a daughter, granddaughter or sister. I know that this will come as a shock. I am so very sorry for the shame I have brought on you all.

I needed to come home with my pride and this seemed the easiest and quickest way to do it. I have not been well for months now and have been so terribly homesick. I love you all and God, I do miss you, but please never mention my name again. Try to do as I say and act as though you never knew me and throw any photographs of me away. I cannot do five, ten or twenty years like this. You produced a wonderful human being who wanted to change the world, but has instead messed it up.

I am so very, very sorry.

Sandra

Every few minutes the evening trains slip in and out of the darkness in Hualumphong Railway Station in Bangkok and I watch them roll on their tracks, bursting with commuters. Masses of dark faces emerge, like spectres, from the carriages and they stare at me as they amble through the station. Except for the grind of metal and iron the only thing I can hear is the sound of my own heartbeat. I am sticky, wet and very tired.

It is rush hour at Hualumphong and the effort of standing here alone, while waiting for Robert is unbearably painful. My thoughts stray to home, in West Yorkshire, and to my mother and father and grandparents in Scotland, and how I will be seeing them all soon. I run my fingers across my new travel bag. The bag and also my new clothes – a white cotton shirt with tiny blue, purple and green flowers on it, a pair of baggy cotton trousers and a pair of green suede court shoes – help disguise the way I am feeling. In a way they have turned me into someone else, someone innocent.

I pace up and down the small stretch of platform, flexing my legs, sensing the light bead of perspiration on my upper lip. Does anyone have any idea what I am planning? Can they see it in me? Does every glance I make, searching for Robert, give me away?

'It's not really you carrying the drugs,' I repeat over and over like a mantra. 'Just a few more days and you will be home.' I am 27 years old and I almost believe it.

Where is Robert? He is late. For an hour I have been standing here at the express train ticket point, where we have arranged to meet. Ruth, his girlfriend, is coming with him and we will all fly to Tokyo together. What will I do if they don't appear? One thing's for sure: I won't go to the airport by myself.

The light is fading as the last express train pulls away. It is well after 6pm and we should have been on it. A knot the size of a small child's fist appears again in my stomach and I sigh nervously. A small man walks by me, staring. I'm sure he knows.

On the platform next to where the trains are leaving, I feel completely alone and I want to abandon the plans I have made. It would be so simple. All I need to do is walk away from the station, and return to my apartment. I still have time to throw this terrible stuff out of my body, away and out of my mind and my life for good.

Suddenly, frantically, Ruth is running towards me, waving her arms. My stomach heaves again. Ruth, with her bleached-blonde hair and rugged features, is wearing a pair of very tight jeans and a T-shirt, and she looks more frightened than me.

'Where have you been?' she demands, as she gets closer, her face contorting with mild fury.

'I've been here for over an hour waiting for you and Robert,' I reply, slightly annoyed by her tone.

It turns out there are two express train ticket offices and we have been standing at different ones. Robert, meanwhile, is frantic and angry, his face like an exit wound. He virtually ignores me when we catch up and I sense he blames me for the mix-up. Things are not going well but I'm in too deep to back out now so I suggest we get a taxi to the airport.

'No!' he snaps, picking up his bags, 'we'll get a train.'

Robert dashes around the station, across the rails and up the tracks while Ruth and I trail behind, like useless acolytes. Eventually he finds a train that is going to the airport area of Bangkok. The three of us, hardly saying a word, clamber aboard. Faces, heads, hands, elbows are hanging out of the windows and there is little in the way of air.

Again, I wonder if anyone suspects anything. Have they any idea what I'm attempting? I can feel the packages inside me. Do these people – who are brushing against my legs, touching my hands, breathing on me, breathing on windows – do they have any idea I am carrying heroin? Would they care?

Chunks of metal grate against the tracks, and the train crawls onwards, stopping at each station; perhaps, more hopefully than anything else, I think we will miss the plane. I still have time to walk away and my family will never know. No one need ever know. I will have to live with the secret.

Leave them, Sandra. Leave them.

Weeks earlier I developed acute pains in my abdomen, which were excruciating, and now they are intensifying. It's a monster pain, like nails splitting through my flesh, and it's getting worse as the train rattles to its destination. It had been high in my stomach but now it has travelled down my right-hand side towards the bottom of my ribcage. I lean over the back of a seat with one of my bags rammed into my ribcage because the pain is so bad and I barely have the strength to make a fist. I can hardly stand up straight.

The train might slow down, Sandra; it might even break down.

The heat inside the train rolls back and forth across my face while the number of passengers multiplies at every stop; they become my co-conspirators. They do nothing to stop me.

'Get off the train,' I whisper to myself. 'Take a taxi, a motorbike, a tuk-tuk taxi, anything, but just go.' I want to be braver than I have ever thought possible, but I can't.

Halfway to the airport a scuffle breaks out and the train comes to an unscheduled halt. A group of men jump off, grabbing a young man who is fleeing and he is dragged back to the carriage. They sit him down in a window seat, while one man from the group sits next to him and the others surround him. It's a citizen's arrest.

Eyes popping and scared, the young man is very agitated. I look at Robert, but he just stares through the grimy windows, so I shut my eyes and try to forget the thoughts I am having. The packages concealed inside my body are becoming increasingly uncomfortable. What will happen if one of them bursts? Will it kill me? The thought of death didn't concern me. I was so desperate and had been so terribly ill and lonely in the previous months that death almost felt like it would be an easy escape from it all. I wipe another bead of sweat from the top of my lip.

It feels like I'm watching an old movie where I already know the ending, where I can actually see it, even feel it; it is swimming inside me, but I pretend it's all new and that I'll still be surprised by the outcome. I know what is going to happen. So I pretend and imagine it will all work out – although I have a strange foreboding it won't. If I can just do this, get to Japan, and take the money that Robert has promised me, then travel back to Bangkok ... After that I will have enough money to buy a plane ticket and return home. I have even made a list of all the presents I will buy my family and friends and their children.

I think of my dad. Whenever he went away on a business trip he always returned with presents for my mum, my brother and me. I want to do the same. Everyone will be amazed that I have stayed away so long, but they will welcome me back with open arms, and there will be no questions. Then I'll regale them with tales of my adventures over the previous two years, about my life in a tropical paradise, with beaches on numerous islands too beautiful to describe – it almost hurts to imagine them again. The only difficult questions I will face will be my own. And I can dream away the bad bits.

Eventually we reach our station. We get off. Robert and I begin arguing over the direction we should go. Finally, for some reason my logic prevails and we skip over a bridge, and arrive in the airport terminal. Our flight is leaving in 20 minutes but we are so late getting there that all the other passengers have already checked in and are sitting on the plane.

'We'll check in, then separate,' Robert says.

'Okay,' I reply. 'Fine.'

We reach the check-in counter but just as we are about to present our tickets three or four men arrive. All of them are wearing casual shirts and trousers. Each hides behind somewhat ominous-looking, gold-rimmed mirrored glasses; they possess an efficiency and urgency that is immediately unsettling. Who are they?

'Mr Lock,' says one man, 'you've come already. Please come this way.'

'Are you with him?' another man asks.

'Yes,' I reply, 'I am.' I bite my lip and nod.

For some ridiculous reason I think they have a list of all the passengers who have booked on our flight and who are late in arriving at the terminal. I imagine they are going to expedite our journey to the plane. The expression on Robert's face scares me. It seems to be telling me that he doesn't see it my way and he has the vacant look of a child who has been caught doing something wrong.

'Come this way.'

We follow them, walking at pace through the airport, past passengers checking in, past people milling around and past others waiting for the arrival of recent flights. No one pays much attention to our group. As we walk, the moment seems to be increasing into something more spectacular; the officials are walking with the confident air of those whose purpose is a great deal grander than that of any airport check-in staff. We are walking way too far and not in the direction of the gates at all.

Finally we come to a door and find ourselves in a hallway with a pale green and yellow linoleum floor. The small room smelt of hot dust, disinfectant and cigarette smoke. Ruth speaks quietly to Robert but I can't quite hear what they're saying. The familiarity of the airport has gone, and we are now in a small room further away from any terminus activity. There are more linoleum tiles on the floor. It's a seedy little space, sheathed in regularity and dirty convention; a real sense of foreboding chokes the air.

No sooner have we stopped walking than more people descend on us and both Robert and Ruth find themselves surrounded. Quickly and abruptly, the contents of their bags are strewn across the floor. The Thai officials look like vultures fighting over a dead carcass. Robert is suddenly barefoot.

To my left is a large, grubby pinboard and above it a sign: Customs Seizures. On it are many big, glossy photographs, mainly of African men holding small blackboards, with a number of packages containing drugs placed in front of them.

Oh my God! Oh shit, Sandra.

We are in the customs room. My heart booms; it is beating out of my chest.

None of this is making sense. Robert assured me there would be no hitches. Everything was supposed to have been cleared with customs officials; there would be no searches and no one would be caught. At least that's what he had told me. That's what I was promised.

'I need to go to the loo,' I blurt out. By now I really do need to go, but I also want to flush away all the evidence.

'In a minute you go.'

They begin conducting a serious and diligent search of Robert and Ruth while I stand by the door, vacant and a little grotesque, doing nothing at all except staring. Slowly, I am going into shock. My eyes dart around the room. I have never really intended to smuggle heroin, and they will understand this. Of course they will. I'm just a mule. I'm just carrying it – it's not mine.

The men remove Robert's belt; Ruth is also barefoot. For some reason no one pays my bags or me any attention. Minutes pass and I think about the presents I will buy for everyone at home.

'Here,' someone barks, 'come here!'

Robert is taken behind what looks like a hospital screen but soon reappears. He makes a dark sound in his throat, which he directs at Ruth, quickly explaining that he has just been X-rayed.

Oh shit!

The word explodes in my head. They can't X-ray me. One official shoots an occasional glance in my direction as I look at Ruth, who is shaking. I don't know much about her. I have met her only once before and she seemed pleasant enough. Ruth is taken behind the screen. Like Robert, a few minutes earlier, she quickly reappears and I presume she has also been X-rayed. Quietly, without much fuss, the customs men begin replacing the contents of Robert and Ruth's bags. I look at Robert. He stares blankly in my direction.

'Come this way, please,' says a woman I have not even noticed standing there.

My breathing gets massively heavier and I can sense myself trembling.

Be polite, I tell myself.

'Come here,' the woman says again, and I am led behind the screen. The X-ray looks like a torture chamber.

'We need to X-ray you,' she says.

Slowly, I raise myself up onto the table, like some shapeless vegetable. Suddenly, and enormously, I am involved in something that has lost all sense of proportion. My head is spinning and, for an instant, I am back in my apartment staring at the black packages of heroin that Robert gave to me only hours earlier. Why have I done this? I want to throw up.

'Okay,' says one of the men, 'you can go now.'

'What?'

'You can go now.'

His words explode in my face. 'You can go now.' I hear it again.

Oh my God! I scream to myself. Oh my God!

Did I hear him correctly? The heroin couldn't have shown up. I am bursting with relief. Nothing has shownup.

Christ, I've made it!

Was it right that they didn't see it? I don't know, and I don't care. Immediately I feel guilty but I stay quiet. Back in the customs search room, Robert, his face cold-set like a statue, and Ruth, more animated than before, are kicking up a fuss about how they have missed their plane and doesn't anyone realise how inconvenient all this is?

The customs men assure us the plane is waiting; the pilot has been told to wait. Robert and Ruth continue.

'Don't you realise we are British citizens?'

'Shut up, Robert, you prat,' I think to myself.

We move quickly from the room while Robert and Ruth quietly mumble to each other. At the bureau de change we pick up some Japanese currency and are joined by a woman from the airport authority who begins talking, via a walkie-talkie, with the pilot on the plane. We have made it.

Our escort points to the toilet some 30 metres away from where we are standing, then asks if we still need to go. I look up. If I really want I can get rid of this stuff, I can flush it all down the toilet and there will be no more worries. But what's the point? I have made it this far; I have earned £1,000.

'No, it doesn't matter,' I tell her. 'I'll go on the plane.'

She smiles; then, through the walkie-talkie, reassures the pilot we are almost there and I can hear the sound of the plane's engines gunning. Robert and Ruth walk ahead. Time to gather my thoughts.

Suddenly I hear the sound of rushing footsteps behind me and someone grabs my shoulder while another hand vigorously grasps the handle of my brown leather bag. I look around in a panic, complaining, half-heartedly, that he is making a mistake.

'What's all this about?' I ask, looking for Robert.

'I don't know,' replies the woman with the walkie-talkie, sounding a little upset. 'I'm very sorry. I think they want you to go back.'

They march me briskly back to the customs room and the official who appeared to be in charge, who had been waiting for Robert at the check-in counter, looks straight at me.

'We know you are trying to leave my country with heroin.'

The man looks up at one of the walls where an X-ray has been attached to a light box. Instantly I know that the X-ray belongs to me. Shaking my head, I take a step backwards and my heart sinks. Transparent, endlessly relevant and guilty, it's a picture of my lower abdomen. He points and I look up. There are four packages containing heroin and they are identical – it's the heroin Robert brought to my apartment. Robert, his face a mask of beetroot anger, and a panicked Ruth are hauled into the room and he is screaming the place down.

'I've got a plane to catch,' he snarls. 'What the hell's going on? It's disgraceful!' His voice is fighting, almost in pain.

Can't he see? Can't he see the X-ray on the wall?

'Count the packages, Robert, and you'll see why they're making all this fuss.'

My head is spinning around the room, and all I can hear are the shouts from the customs men. My body feels like it's been wedged under something heavy, something unpleasant. I look at Robert, and point at the evidence on the wall.

'Robert,' I whisper, almost crying, 'they know. They know!'

When Robert sees the X-ray his face buckles, and he turns away from me.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Forget You Had a Daughter by Sandra Gregory. Copyright © 2003 Sandra Gregory and Michael Tierney. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: John Blake
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1782192247
• ISBN 13: 9781782192244
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336