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JACK

confused. ‘You could easily have had contacts since you were a kid.’

Jack was like that; one minute coming down and crying, the next minute running around completely absorbed in something different. He would probably puzzle over that problem for the rest of the day, but at least he’d forgotten how sad he had been feeling.

Jack’s main problem was that he smoked base, which made him paranoid. There was only one other inmate in Alamos who smoked more base than Jack: an inmate who went by the name of Cámara Lenta. I didn’t know his proper name, because almost no one in San Pedro was known by his correct name. The foreigners were always referred to by their nationalities; I was always inglés, Jack was called méjico. The Bolivians usually had nicknames based on the town they came from. This meant you could see someone every day for several years and only realise when he’d left prison that there was little chance you would ever meet him again. What were the chances of tracking down someone named Cochabamba in the city of Cochabamba, population one million?

Cámara Lenta’s nickname meant ‘slow motion’. He lived on the ground floor in my section, but I only saw him twice during my whole time at San Pedro. The reason for this was that he smoked so much base he had become too afraid to leave his room.

It was rumoured that several ghosts flew about our section at night, although I had never seen any. There was also a surprising correlation between those inmates who claimed to have seen the ghosts and those who smoked loads of base. Because of these ghosts, inmates like Jack and Cámara Lenta rarely emerged from their rooms after dark, except in an absolute emergency, or in Jack’s case if there was free coke on offer. Jack had an ensuite bathroom, one of only two in Alamos, so he rarely needed to go out. Cámara Lenta wasn’t so fortunate; although he kept buckets in his cell to piss in, he had to leave his room in order to empty them from time to time.

On my way downstairs one evening, I encountered Cámara Lenta several metres from the bathroom door. He was hunched over with his head forward and back arched, carrying his two urine buckets, one in each hand. I assumed that he was resting, since he didn’t appear to be moving. I went into the bathroom and came out five minutes later to find him in exactly the same position. He appeared to have progressed only a few steps closer to the bathroom.

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