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After that, there were regular checks by guards. “Every two hours, they came to my cell and flashed a flashlight into my face.”

The journey from prison to the court house was about 30 minutes of driving, with bureaucratic shuffling at either end to secure prisoners into the prison vans. The vans, like the cells, are not built for comfort. Prisoners are seated on a metal bench in a cage. The flatbed of the truck where the prisoners are seated rests almost directly atop the wheelbase. “It had almost no suspension,” says Dotcom. “Every tiny bump on the road, a dent or a bump, shot right — boom — into that muscle area where I had the issues.”

On one return from court, Dotcom crabbed to the edge of the prison truck, captured by pain, and fell to the ground. “I was in so much pain I was screaming. I had to lie there on the concrete floor for two hours before I could even do anything. They couldn’t move me, they couldn’t roll me.”

One of the medical team came to try and massage the pain out. Strong painkillers were offered and taken. “I couldn’t move at all. They had to put me in a wheelchair. I was driving around in a wheelchair for a few days. I was just lying in my cell for the whole day, because I couldn’t move.”

In desperation, at the suggestion of Towers, he reached out to the former Auckland mayor John Banks, now an MP and the leader of the government’s Act Party coalition support partner. Having donated $50,000 to Banks, he knew the MP would remember his name. Furthermore, the prison was in Banks’ electorate, making Dotcom a constituent. He was sure it would be possible to have Banks visit as a local MP, or at least reach out, and get a slightly thicker mattress.

“I was in severe pain. I couldn’t sleep at night. It is the most crazy kind of pain. You go into a state of joy once the pain stops because it is so severe.” Banks was a “beacon of hope” but the overtures were rebuffed — making him another one of many who were so interested in Dotcom before the raid but showing such little interest after.

AS PRISON RELAXED its grip on his co-accused, the prospect of Dotcom enjoying freedom remained distant. It was right and proper the others should be bailed first, he said, but confinement without those he knew and trusted was even more oppressive.

He stayed in his cell as much as he could, although back problems tended to limit alternatives. Inmates who gravitated towards him for conversation found little reward — he didn’t allow conversations to

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