Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (62 page)

"Excuse me
Sire", the Dutch policeman had said, "just give us a
minute".

They had taken my
passport and verified its authenticity, then they had returned it to
me.

This time around,
strangely enough, I didn't feel too distressed. Even though the real
Raja Morgan Chelliah was born in 1987 and was almost 20 years younger
than myself, nobody had ever bothered to inquire about my age; people
always tell me that I could be 30-something.

After a short while,
the officer spoke.

"Follow me",
she said politely, holding my passport in her hand.

I was taken to the
airport's police holding bay, then a police officer walked in and
spoke.

"We believe
that you have used a forged document to get into Finland", he
said, "and that you have entered the country illegally by
providing false information about your identity".

The police escorted
me to another office where my fingerprints were scanned and sent to
authorities in Singapore, then I was returned to the holding bay.
Somehow the Finnish police knew about my passport and that my real
name was not Raja Morgan Chelliah.

About half an hour
later another policeman walked in; he was holding a picture of me in
his hand; a big, A4-sized picture. I couldn't recognize the T-shirt
that I wore in the photo.

"Where the fuck
did I get that T-shirt from?" it looked like an old picture.

The officer examined
the photo carefully, then began scrutinizing me.

"This is not
the guy".

Old photo.

Someone had been
saving this old photo of me for this... But who?

He checked for a cut
on my forehead; I have a little scar just below my hairline, but the
officer couldn't spot it.

"No, no, no",
he shook his head, "this is not the guy".

But the police in
Rovaniemi insisted that they hold on to me, so there I was, sitting
in the Vantaa Helsinki airport's holding bay.

On the previous day,
the police had ambushed the wrong Indian guy in a Rovaniemi hotel.

"Hey, are you
Wilson Raj Perumal?"

"I'm Perumal",
the man had raised his hands over his head, "but I'm not Wilson
Raj".

Someone had given
the Finnish authorities all of my true details: Singaporean, Indian
origin, my real name, my picture. The police had called all the
hotels in town.

"When he checks
in", they demanded, "please contact us immediately".

By then I was pretty
sure that it hadn't been a random check. I played the scene of my
arrest back in my head: Zeekay was walking right in front of me and,
when they stopped me, he just kept on walking as if nothing had
happened; he didn't even turn around to look. Maybe he knew that it
was going to happen. Dan could have told him, but why would Dan want
to do something like that to me? Also, I didn't think that Dan would
have risked getting me arrested with Zeekay by my side; a ricochet
and he could have been busted too. We were in Rovaniemi to fix
matches, not on a holiday.

I stayed in the
police holding bay until six thirty in the evening, when they put me
on a flight back to Rovaniemi. During the trip, I spoke to the flight
marshal that was escorting me.

"Do you guys
have the death penalty here?" I asked.

"No", he
replied, "we're a civilized country".

"In Singapore",
I pointed out, "we hang people like we hang balloons".

Twelve hours later I
was back to square one in Rovaniemi. It was so damn cold; minus 35
degrees Celsius. They put me in a car and I shivered uncontrollably
during the entire trip to the local police station where I was locked
up in a cell; just myself and four walls. I paced up and down from
one wall to the other thinking about who could have tipped the
Finnish police off. I remembered the telephone call that I had
received from my travel agent in Singapore a couple of months
earlier.

"We are calling
from the Hong Kong airport and we would like to know what passport
Wilson Raj Perumal is using".

"Wilson, be
careful", my travel agent had said. "Somebody is out to get
you".

Yes, but who? My
head was spinning as I tried to figure out who the mother-fucking
snitch was.

"It must be
Benny", I resolved. "It must be fucking Benny and nobody
else".

"I know what
name and what passport you are using", he had written the night
before.

"It must be
this mother-fucker".

But how could he
have pulled this off so quickly? And why would he want to do this? If
I am arrested, he's not going to get his money back. It's
match-fixing we're talking about; you'll be out there making money;
just a few matches, and then you pay; settling outstanding debts was
never a problem. I paid him 800 thousand already, it didn't make any
sense for him to fix me up.

Early in the morning
of the day following my arrest an immigration officer came to see me.

"We're going to
bring you to court in the afternoon, at two o'clock", he
informed me. "Be ready by then. You will be charged with using a
forged document to enter Finland".

The officer then
began playing mind-games with me; depicting the worst-case scenario.

"You are
probably going to be charged for entering the country with a false
document", he said. "Then, in one or two days, you'll be
sentenced and deported back to Singapore. If you put up a struggle,
we have ways and means of putting you on the flight. We have a
special equipment that can lock your hands and feet".

I
reckoned that the
Finns
didn't have the slightest idea of who
I really was and what I was doing there. They could have looked me up
on the internet; my name was all over the place by then, but I
figured that they were not in the least interested. The immigration
officer just kept on rambling.

"There will be
no bail for you", he continued. "We don't practice the bail
system in Finland and you don't have a permanent local address. You
may hire a lawyer or the court will appoint one for you; he will tell
you that he can get you out but, let me be frank with you, he won't
be able to do a thing. No bail, no appeal, nothing".

I asked the officer
about applying for asylum.

"Of course, you
can apply for asylum if you like", he said with a smirk. "You'll
get an answer within 48 hours. If your application is rejected, you
can appeal against the decision, but we have the right to deport you
before you even get an answer".

The fucker was
slapping the door in my face every time that I asked him a question.
The image of my deportation back to Singapore, where a five-year
sentence was waiting for me, flashed in my mind.

"What kind of a
fucked up country is this?" I felt the walls closing in on me.
"I thought that you guys exercised human rights. How can you
send me back before my appeal is even heard?"

"Well",
the officer replied, "the law grants us the power to deport you
before the appeal. And if you give us a headache, we have this gadget
that we can put on you to lock your arms and legs".

The fucking gadget
again. This guy was such a fucker that I wanted to punch him straight
in the face, and I think that I would have, if not for the thick
metal bars between us.

My mind was racing;
two days left before going back to Singapore. I needed a plan.

"There are no
direct flights from Rovaniemi to Singapore", I thought as the
officer babbled on, "nor from Helsinki. Any flight out will have
to stop in Frankfurt, Germany. While on the flight to Frankfurt, I
can create some chaos and be arrested by the Germans when I land
there; then I'll see what happens".

Shortly before two
o'clock, two policemen, one of them a woman, escorted me out of my
cell to the parking lot, where a police car was waiting to take me to
the local courthouse. The city outside was peaceful, quiet and
covered by a soft blanket of snow and ice. I examined my captors; the
guy had somewhat of a tummy and I reckoned that he couldn't have
chased me, had I started running. The officers accompanied me
outside; they didn't even cuff me or anything. I climbed inside the
police car and off we went.

Rovaniemi is a very
small town and the courthouse was very close to the police station.
As we rode in the car, I paid careful attention to the buildings and
sites that I could recognize, trying to figure out exactly where I
was. I saw the Hotel Cumulus and a number of other spots that I had
come to know during my sojourns in town. When we reached the
courthouse, I was informed that the authorities in Singapore had been
lightning-quick and had already confirmed my true identity based on
my fingerprints.

"This man is
Wilson Raj Perumal", they had communicated, "a Singaporean
citizen and a fugitive from the law".

The
judge informed me in accordance
with
what the
immigration officer had anticipated.

"We will charge
you for forgery and for providing false information on your
identity", he stated. "We will offer you no bail because
you are not a resident of Finland. The session is closed. You will be
escorted back to police lock-up and I'll see you here again in two
days from today".

The
immigration officer hadn't lied; the
Finns
were ready to deport me even as I
applied for asylum. I desperately needed to extend my stay in
Rovaniemi; there was no way that I was going to let them send me back
to Singapore. Five more years in prison? No fucking way.

As the police
officers that had accompanied me to the courthouse escorted me back
towards the car I tried to slow down my racing mind.

"Fuck, I have
to do something", I thought, "I need to buy time. I need to
stay here longer than the two days that they are offering me".

As we made our way
in the thick snow towards the police car, I considered my options. I
could try to run, then I would try to find Musonda and ask him for
some financial support or for some help in getting away from the
scene and hiding from the police. They might have known by then that
I had links with football players, so I had to be quick: get some
money into my pockets and disappear. Yes, that was the plan. The
first thing that I needed to do was run, then find a place to hide:
below a car or in the bathroom of some building. I would have surely
found a safe hiding place; in a city, it's quite simple to locate
one. Then I needed to get properly equipped. I would have broken into
a house and stolen a jacket or something; I was fucking freezing. If
they had caught me, it could have meant an additional burglary charge
against me. In life, you have to give it a try to find out what's
next, if you don't, you'll never know what could be waiting for you
down the line. Just like in the movies: the protagonists try and try
until there's a breakthrough because, if they don't try, then their
story-line cannot evolve. I reckoned that I had everything to gain
and nothing left to lose. I didn't want to hit the officers; I don't
like to hurt people. It's not in my nature to harm somebody unless I
am forced to. I gazed at the officer walking beside me; he looked
like an innocent bloke, I could have never punched him. I was wearing
a pair of Adidas sneakers and there was a thick mantle of snow all
around me but I just had to give it a go. I dashed forward: one step,
two steps, my shoes were sliding, entirely out of control. I fell
with my face in the snow. It was like skating on ice. I got up, puff,
I slipped again; there was no way that I could run. Had I been able
to run, they would have never caught me, but I just took those two
steps and there I was on the ground with both officers already on top
of me. Just two steps: from here to there, my escape had been less
than five meters long. The chubby officer held me down as the
policewoman flooded my eyes with pepper spray. The spray was no
fucking joke; my eyes were on fire. Take my advice, never fuck around
with pepper spray. Within minutes, extra reinforcements had arrived
on the scene.

"Fuck. OK.
Let's go back", I moaned as two officers lifted me out of the
snow.

I was driven back to
the police station where I was allowed to wash my eyes and face, then
I apologized to the policemen.