The third in the group, known as ‘Leni’, is shorter and lean. In the tape enclosed there is no record of his background, although he speaks English and carries an American passport. He has close, fierce eyes and a stub for a nose. His thick black hair is pushed back from a low forehead, with greasy product. Leni is the smoker of the five and favours pungent Cuban cigars.

Number four is a forty-year-old Cuban-American, Ferdinand Castro, with the biggest nose I have ever seen. Whenever he speaks it bends forward. He is shorter than the others, but fit-looking. There were hints on the tape that he had spent about a decade in a Peruvian jail for armed robbery. Castro claims a marriage to a Venezuelan beauty queen, who he blames for most of his six children and all his woes. Gets laughs telling everyone he has to do three jobs to keep them all happy. Castro boasts he was an actor in his twenties and was cast as an Arab sheik, whenever they wanted a nasty one! He makes a joke that it was either his nose or big cock that secured him parts. Whatever the truth, he ended up circumcised, in the celluloid sense, and on the cutting-room floor.

The fifth character is 38-year-old Frenchman Gerard Jean Dubois, or at least that is his nominated nationality and name on a passport, according to the tour organiser, Colin Geoffreys. Dubois claims to be a former member of the French Foreign Legion, which, despite its name, did take in a minority of Frenchmen. But he is fluent also in English and German. Narrow of shoulder and wide of hip, this laconic individual is a little under six feet tall and a fit eighty kilograms, without being a weights fanatic. His hair is longish, as if clinging on to the 1970s, when he was first incarcerated in the UK. He has distinguishing eyebrows that almost have no break between and need trimming. The nose has a serious bump on it. He has long arms and walks with a strange ape-like gait.

On closer examination, his brown eyes are the main feature. They are cruel and soul-less with a tendency to stare or hold another’s gaze for longer than necessary, perhaps in an attempt at intimidation. The face is pinched and that of someone who has sampled some of the illegal drugs in which he tells the rest of the group he has dealt with for over twenty years. Dubois’ mouth is thin-lipped and ever-ready to utter a cynical or vicious remark, if he speaks at all. He has had a life of crime, which has seen him jailed in several countries for drug smuggling, and never for his most outstanding skill, which is assassination, as you’ll deduce from the tape conversation. Dubois is one of just two Westerners to ever escape from Thailand’s notorious ‘Bangkok Hilton’—Klong Prem prison.