A small newspaper report said that two Italians had been arrested for drug possession. Next day the embassy telephoned to say that one of them was travelling on a British passport. So it was that Anna became my responsibility. I went to visit her in the police station where she was being held with her partner. Anna was an attractive girl of thirty, suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms. This is what she told me in broken English.

Yes, she was a heroin addict and she had been to Chiang Mai several times before. This time they had come to buy a container load of furniture. She had asked the guest house owner, whom she knew, to get her a sample of heroin. She rejected it as sub-standard. Meanwhile she had left $20,000 at reception. Next day they went swimming and on their return at five o'clock, they found the police waiting in their room. In the middle of the room was a bag - which they had never seen before - containing two kilos of heroin and all the money they had deposited at reception.

I visited her several times over the next few days and arranged for a lawyer. The police were remarkably relaxed and once, when she wanted to telephone her lawyer, they opened the cell door and told her to go across the road to a public phone box. I was therefore not very surprised to read a few days later that they had escaped - apparently the guard had failed to close the padlock and then fallen asleep - he was transferred to Om Goi. Stupidly they were so desperate for a fix that they went up the mountain to a Hmong village they knew. Next day they came back to Chiang Mai and got a rot song taw to take them to Lampang, but by this time their photo was in all the papers, the driver recognized them and drove straight to the nearest police station.

They were transferred to the main prison and there they tried to commit suicide by slashing their wrists with broken glass. Dr Ed said she was in bad shape, her wrists septic and she was in withdrawal shock.

Next week her sister arrived. She told me that Anna and Mario married five years ago and were very happy until their son died, whereupon they took up heroin again. Anna's father was British Indian, when she went to visit him a year ago she learned that he was dead. Her mother had died of cancer. When next I visited her she was much more cheerful as a result of her sister's visit. She had offered her ticket back to Europe to her but she had decided to stay on - which was fortunate, as the flight was the ill-fated Air Lauda!

Anna wrote to tell me that she and Mario had both tested HIV positive nine years ago. She had no symptoms but Mario had a constant fever. Mario had asked the Italian Embassy to request a Royal pardon and she now asked me to do the same. The British Consul came from Bangkok and promised Anna that she would be pardonned soon after her trial. They were sentenced to twenty-five years plus an additional two for attempting to escape.

I have no doubt that they were guilty. Their furniture probably had hollow legs. They had probably upset the drug dealer by rejecting his sample, so he had called in the police. One year after their arrest their pardon came - they are the only people I know who were glad that they had Aids. When one of the missionaries visited them in Rome a few months later they were well and living in luxury.