No More Tomorrows (28 page)

When we finally screamed off in the police van with sirens blaring and photographers chasing us on motorbikes, I felt relieved. I was finally going to hospital.

But I didn’t get there. I was slammed into another monkey cage at the prosecutors’ office, fully exposed to the media. At least fifteen photographers stood holding their lenses through the cage bars, furiously clicking. I couldn’t breathe. What was happening? Why wasn’t I at hospital? I hid in the toilet, shaking, crying and refusing to come out. But they got their shots.

New prisoners were slammed in, one of whom asked to use the toilet, forcing me out. The bars were full of lenses and faces. I was trapped. I stood uselessly, sadly, as they clicked away. I felt like a freak show. It was like I wasn’t a person, like I had no feelings. I heard one of the photographers say ‘Thanks, Bli!’ to the prisoner who had forced me out of the toilet, as I scrambled back in. It was a set-up. I suspected he’d been slung some cash for his trouble. When he tried it again later, I refused to come out. ‘You’ll have to wait!’

Most of the photographers left a little while later to go to a press conference. Nine Australians had just been arrested on drugs charges.

A couple of cameramen hung around, one politely asking if there was anything I’d like to say. I felt a bit lighter, not so under siege, and decided to take the chance to speak.

‘I’ve received quite a few letters and I’ll reply to them when I get home,’ I told them. ‘But it’s been fantastic – they’ve really, really kept me strong. It’s absolutely everything: it keeps me going. And I just want to thank them so much for everything. I mean, the strength of a nation, which hopefully should overcome anything, any problem.’

But I didn’t get to hospital that day. After four sweaty hours, I climbed back in the police van, wistfully asking, ‘Hospital?’

‘No, Kerobokan!’

I slumped back in the seat, closed my eyes and sobbed. I was exhausted. The whole day was just a stupid media stunt.

What a day. Are they trying to make me more stressed and tired? I came back to my cell today, my whole body shaking. I had to endure those four hours for nothing. Today I heard news of nine Australians being arrested for trying to smuggle eleven kilograms of heroin out of Bali.

Diary entry, 18 April 2005

It was take two the next day, and the entrance to the hospital was seething with waiting reporters and photographers, all running towards the police van as we pulled in. How the hell did they know? It was ridiculous. Everything was being leaked. Nothing was private.

Many, many reporters huddled around the paddy-van door. The guard called for me to get out, but I refused, so he told the media to give me some room. I finally got out but was completely mobbed. The police hurried me into the doctor’s room. Cameras were pressed up against the windows; the curtains were drawn but not enough, the nurses had to tape paper up. But they kept trying from all angles, sticking their lenses in at the window, even trying to poke them through the door as I stripped half-naked, taking off my top and bra. I was so embarrassed, so worried they’d somehow sneak a shot. A nurse held up some more paper. The doctor monitored my heart and did blood and urine tests. Then, strangely, four white-coated psychiatrists walked in to do some tests. I asked the doctors to give me their word that any tests would be kept quiet and not leaked to the press. ‘Of course!’ But it was a mistake. I couldn’t even trust the doctors. I didn’t get any test results, but the press did. A story was even headlined: ‘Psychiatrist’s secret diagnosis of Schapelle’.

A shattered Schapelle Corby is so drained by her drug trial that she sees herself as a desperate figure without a voice to defend herself, her psychiatrist said yesterday. Just three days before her judgment, Dr Conny Pankahila told of how Ms Corby had sketched a person with eyes, a nose and other facial features but no mouth.

‘Schapelle said, “Yes that’s me, no voice,”’ Dr Pankahila said. ‘The picture looked like somebody who has lost hope, who has lost the future. Desperate.’

Daily Telegraph
(Australia), 24 May 2005

During the hours at the hospital, I did something once so normal and everyday, now so refreshing. I used a Western toilet. It was clean. It was unbelievable. I stood looking into the bowl, watching the water swirl as I flushed it three times. I got over whelming pleasure from washing my hands in a clean basin with warm running water. It was only a toilet and basin, but it was ‘wow’. It represented so much of what I’d lost. It spun me back to a life I was forgetting. It was the first and last time I’ve used a Western toilet since my arrest.

My new life was thrust back in my face as soon as I left the hospital, struggling through the pack to the police van. I climbed in quickly, but we didn’t move. I sat there with camera lenses prying through the windows. I started to shake, my lip quivering. I was just an object to these people.
Come on!
I knew what was happening. The driver couldn’t start the van, but I was sure he wasn’t turning the key the whole way. My pulse was racing. How much had he been paid?

Back at Hotel K, there was a new drama. A guy called Benny was found hanged from a toilet window. He was three years into a life sentence and had a wife and kids. As usual with suicides, everyone suspected it was murder. Everyone was saying his hands were tied behind his back.

The following morning, I took one of the five tablets the doctor had given me. He’d advised me to take one an hour before court to calm my nerves, but I wanted to find out their effect on me first.

It knocked me out cold.

I went down fast: I swallowed the pill sitting at my cage door and within ten minutes I was crawling on my hands and knees like an uncoordinated baby to my mattress. I didn’t quite make it, but I slept solidly for the next four hours on the floor.

I woke up disbelieving. It was so ridiculous. The doctor had given me sleeping tablets. I did not take anything the next day, or any day after that during my court hearings. This was my life. I wanted to be alert, not a zombie and definitely not asleep.

Ron phoned the prison from Australia later to assure me that all would go well in court the following day. I would be acquitted; I would go home. ‘Take it easy, it’s going to be OK. Everything is going to be fine; it’s all under control. You’ll be going home. No problem. It’s OK.’ He was confident.

Robin was in Bali but Ron was stuck in Australia after speaking publicly about Balinese prosecutors asking for bribes. I couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid and was angry with him for potentially jeopardising my case. I still wanted to believe he knew what he was talking about, but was losing faith. And Lily didn’t inspire much hope.

Lily took me aside and was crying, telling me she’s sorry and that she’s done all she and the team could possibly do. OK, so tomorrow I won’t be having any good news that I’ll like. All I can do at this point is pray.

Diary entry, 20 April 2005

I was cuffed to myself on the way to court, as after the crazed drama last time, no one wanted to be attached to me. The media were still all there, but I wasn’t so trampled as in the past. I could actually see the ground I was walking on.

It seemed the judge had finally brought some order to his courtroom, too. Instead of being strewn haphazardly across the floor, the media were lined up against the wall and outside at the windows. And my five-minute photo session in the hot seat before the trial started had been cut.

Then, in the stifling heat, I sat for a very difficult two and a half hours as the prosecutors read through all the points of the case. Eka was only translating parts but enough for me to learn that they held practically none of my witnesses’ testimony as credible: not that of my brother James, Ally, Katrina, Professor Paul Wilson or my lifeline, the brave John Ford. None of it would be taken into account by the prosecutors.

I prayed almost the whole time I was sitting there. I knew that if the prosecutors weren’t listening to any of my defence witnesses, they could surely request the death penalty, and in Bali when death was requested the judge could pretty much only give either life imprisonment or death by firing squad. So I prayed for anything other than death.

As the main prosecutor kept reading, I was sinking. ‘We state that the defendant Schapelle Corby is legally and convincingly guilty for having committed crimes . . . importing narcotics. The defendant’ sactions can ruin the image of Bali as a tourist destination. The defendant’s actions can make Bali look like a drug haven and affect young people’s lives.’

The judge then told Eka to stop translating for me, for some strange reason. So I sat listening to the prosecutor request his sentence with no idea of what he was saying, except for the clue from the many faces around me in shock and tears, staring at me in sorrow. It definitely was not good news. Even one of the female prosecutors started crying. Then I recognised a word I’d learnt in church:
hidup
– life. That’s what the prosecutor had requested.
Life
. In Indonesia, life meant the age you were when arrested. I was twenty-seven years old, so he had requested twenty-seven years’ imprisonment.

I felt panic. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I was trembling inside. I was just so scared. The room was spinning. I whispered to Eka, to myself, ‘My life is over.’

I felt dazed, weak, light-headed. I felt like I was going to fall. My chest was heaving, I was trying not to scream, not to get hysterical in court. I was gulping back sobs, trying to force back hysteria, with tears pouring down my face. I turned to look at Merc. She looked sick, pale and shocked. I ran across to hug her.

‘Merc, it’s not fair. It’s so unfair, Merc!’

She was hurting, trying not to cry, trying to be brave, to be strong. She hugged me tight. ‘It’s OK, Schapelle, it’s OK.’ But she was sobbing.

Nothing was OK. Nothing.

Photographers mobbed me as I was dragged back to the holding cell. I hurt all over. I was convulsing, shaking. I couldn’t keep it in. I cried and screamed a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream tearing straight from my broken heart. My life was finished. Cameras were being pushed through the bars, wanting to catch my agony. I didn’t care.

Robin Tampoe came to the bars. I didn’t want to see him. What did he want? I’d told everyone not to come, no matter what happened.

Then I saw my beautiful cousin Melissa, who’d brought me a bottle of water. She started stroking my face through the bars as tears poured down my face.

I cried hysterically all the way back to Kerobokan. I was so down. I was a mess. In my cell, I screamed, furiously smashing my bag against the walls. I kept screaming and screaming until I collapsed in an exhausted heap onto my mattress and sobbed for all the injustice, for all the pain and hurt this was causing me and my family. It was all such bullshit. It was all so unfair. I should have been able to go home. I had done
nothing wrong
. I was innocent, but I couldn’t change this sick, twisted, bitter turn in my life.

The girls in my cell were all a bit scared of me, as I howled like an animal. I didn’t tell them how many years the prosecutors had demanded. I couldn’t bear to say it. They were all keeping their distance, which was good, as it gave me some space. But they stood looking and whispering. They didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do either. I couldn’t believe it, twenty-seven years, my whole lifetime over again in this shit hole. It might have only been a guideline, but I’d learnt that the judges usually stuck closely to it.

What can I say? He didn’t request death, so I’m still alive; the sentence can only get lighter. My world sucks!

Diary entry, 21 April 2005

Later that day a guard came into the women’s block and handed me his mobile phone. It was Chris Packer, who was now sailing his boat to South Africa and had followed my day on the Internet. He wanted to advise me to change to his lawyer, who had successfully got him and Chris Currall freed.

Changing lawyers was something Merc and I had talked about often, but we just didn’t know how to say ‘Piss off, Lily and Vasu’ halfway through my trial. We were scared. Would we get better or worse? We’d also given them almost $80,000 and couldn’t afford to switch, as despite Ron continually telling the press he was bankrolling my defence – ‘whatever it costs, whatever it takes’ – he wasn’t.

We’d been worried about our legal team for a long time. I now rarely spoke to Vasu, as I found him belligerent and arrogant, and Lily was out of her depth. The two were close, but Lily was under Vasu’s bombastic, bullying thumb. She didn’t ever brief me on strategy, she didn’t advise me on what would happen in court, even on the day I was asked to speak. She knew but didn’t bother to tell me. She and Vasu flew to Jakarta for some reason on the day I was due to get the prosecutors’ demand.

And the fact is that Lily was lame in court. She often cried but rarely stood up to ask questions. Merc and I were always scribbling notes to her, trying to get her to fire up, challenge a witness, say something, do something. She usually just sat there, often on her phone sending text messages. I was praying the texts were strategies or questions from Vasu or Ron or Robin. But they weren’t. I realised how little focus she had when I glimpsed a text message as I sat next to her at the bench. An important witness was up, and I was willing her to get up and fire questions.
Come on, Lily, please. This is my life.
Then the text came through. I saw what appeared to be a flirty message from Ron. I went numb. I couldn’t believe it. I slumped back in my seat, thinking,
You’re kidding! This is my life and you’re sending fucking lovey-dovey text messages?
She got all hot and bothered and started fanning herself. I just sat there, very scared and very, very alone.