The Bunker Diary (5 page)

It doesn’t make things any less crap,
of course. Or less scary. Or less anything, really. But it’s all right.

It’s just gone 9 p.m. now. The lift
has gone up.

Jenny’s reading the bible.

I’m sitting in my nest, talking to
you, to me, to you …

Now there’s a thought. Who
are
you?

Who
am
I talking to?

I don’t know.

I have no one in mind for
you
. I
know you’re somewhere, but right now you’re nowhere, and I’m talking
to myself.

I have to think about the cameras.

Midnight, lights out.

This morning the lift came down with most
of the stuff we’d asked for. No torch or candles (and obviously no radio, TV, or
mobile phone), but we got the kettle, an aluminium saucepan – both brand new – and all
the food and drink we’d asked for, except the chicken. I don’t know what
that means. Nothing, probably. There was also a new plastic fork to replace the one I
chopped up and melted.

The kettle is one of those old-fashioned
whistling things that you boil up on the cooker. There aren’t any electric sockets
in here. The cooker and the fridge are bolted to the floor, so I can’t tell how
they’re connected. I expect the cables are threaded through the wall. I’ll
have to look into that. There’s a lot of things I need to look into. Like how to
get out of here, how to sort out the cameras, how to keep things from getting too
manky.

The smell, for instance.

Things are starting to stink a bit.
We’ve both been washing fairly regularly, but it doesn’t matter how often
you wash if you wear the same clothes all the time. You can’t help smelling bad.
And anyway, with the cameras watching us, it’s not easy to feel good about
stripping off to have a good wash. The rest of it is bad enough. Jenny won’t go to
the lavatory unless the lights are out. I don’t know how she manages. I just try
to ignore the cameras. Ignore him. Pretend he’s not there. No
cameras, no one watching. Close your eyes, imagine you’re somewhere else,
believe it.

Believe it, that’s the thing. Believe
your own lies.

The smell of unwashed bodies isn’t
very nice, but I don’t mind it too much. I’m used to it. I always kept
myself pretty clean on the streets, but a lot of them don’t bother. I don’t
think Lugless
ever
washed. It’s understandable. So you smell a bit, so
what? Everyone smells. It’s no big deal. And once your body odour reaches a
certain level it doesn’t really get any worse anyway. So why bother trying to keep
clean? What do you get out of it? Not much. I only made the effort because, for some
reason, when I look dirty I look
really
dirty. Nasty-dirty, like something
that’s crawled out from under a rock. My hair is quite long, and if I don’t
give it a brush now and then, or at least run my fingers through it, it mats up into
ratty old ropes and makes me look like a mad person. And if I don’t wash, my skin
gets kind of greyish, which gives me the sickly look of a junkie. I don’t
particularly mind looking like a mad junkie, but it doesn’t help when I’m
busking. People don’t mind giving money to a sweet-looking homeless kid, but when
they see a wild-haired loony on the street they tend to assume he’s going to blow
the cash on crack or heroin or something, and to them that’s
bad
.
That’s
wrong
. W-R-O-N-G. It’s bad enough begging for fags and
booze, but drugs? Oh, no. I’m not giving
my
money to a drug addict.

Take Windsor Jack, for example.
Windsor’s not that handsome, kind of beaky-nosed and mean-looking, and he’s
only got one leg. Well, one and a half legs, actually. He fell asleep one night when he
was mashed out of his head, slept for twenty-eight hours with his leg all twisted up
under his
body, and when he woke up it was dead, useless, no blood.
Lost it from the knee down. Anyway, Windsor just sits on the street all day holding out
his hand. He doesn’t say anything, no cardboard sign, nothing. Just sits there
showing off his stump and holding out his hand, hoping for sympathy cash. But he never
gets much because he looks so mean and ugly, and he’s
always
off his
head. Staring eyes, blank face, zombified. He might as well have DRUG ADDICT tattooed on
his forehead. Someone gave him a sandwich once. A sniffy old lady in a beige raincoat. I
was busking nearby and I saw her lean down and place a pre-packed sandwich in his hand.
She told him to lay off the drugs and get some food inside him. Windsor stared at the
sandwich like it was a dog turd. Then, as the old lady walked off, he looked up and
chucked it at the back of her head.

Later.

Things have changed. They changed at noon.
Jenny was in the kitchen eating a bowl of cornflakes, and I was sitting at the table
staring at the grille on the ceiling, trying to work out how to kill the cameras without
getting a face full of poison. Everything was quiet. Everything was normal. Everything
was routine. There’s always a routine, wherever you are. You soon get used to it.
Lights on at eight, lift down at nine. Lift up again at nine in the evening, lights off
at twelve. Long hours of doing nothing. Waiting, thinking, sitting around, lying down,
standing up, walking in circles. I don’t like it, but I’m getting used to
it, and once you’re used to something it never feels quite so bad.

So there I was, sitting at the table,
staring at the ceiling, deep in thought, thinking of plots and plans, hats, masks,
shields,
covers, when all at once the lift door closed –
tkk-kshhh-mmm
 – and the lift whirred into action.

Nnnnnnnn
 …

I looked at the clock.

Twelve o’clock?

The lift doesn’t go up at twelve
o’clock.

Not routine.

Not good.

Jenny came out of the kitchen wiping milk
from her chin. ‘What’s that noise?’

‘The lift.’

She glanced instinctively at the clock.
‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know.’

I got up from the table, went over to the
lift door, and listened. The humming had stopped. The lift had reached the top.

I turned to Jenny. ‘Get back in the
kitchen.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it, please.’

‘Why? What’s
happening?’

‘I don’t know. Please, just get
back in the kitchen.’

From above I heard the sound of the lift
starting up again –
g-dung, g-dunk
,
clunk
,
click
,
nnnnnnnnn …

Jenny’s eyes grew frightened.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told her.
‘It’s probably nothing. Just wait in the kitchen while I see what’s
happening. Shut the door, OK? I’ll call you out in a minute.’

She hesitated, staring at the lift door.

‘Go on,’ I said.

She backed into the kitchen and shut the
door. I turned to face the lift. It whirred down and
g-dunk
ed to a halt. My
heart
was beating hard now and my hands were sweating. I wiped them on
my shirt and took a deep breath. The lift door opened –
mmm-kshhh-tkk …

There were two people inside. A woman in the
wheelchair and a man slumped on the floor with his feet bound and his hands tied behind
his back. The woman was unconscious. She’d been drugged, just like me and Jenny. I
could smell the stuff on her breath – bitter, sweet, horrible. Her make-up was all
smudged and a dribble of sick had dried on her mouth. The man was awake, but he
didn’t look too good. His mouth was tied with a bloodstained gag, his nose was
bleeding, and his left eye was swollen shut. The right eye stared furiously at me.

‘
Unh!
’ he muttered
through the gag. ‘
Furngehissoh!
Nunhh!
’

I was pretty shocked, but nowhere near as
stunned as I’d been when Jenny arrived. I’m not sure why. They were adults,
I suppose. It’s different with adults, isn’t it? When you see an adult in
trouble you still feel bad, but not half as bad as when you see a child in trouble.
It’s the helplessness, I suppose. It gets to you. Whacks you in the heart. Or
maybe not. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve just got something against
adults.

Whatever.

I wasn’t paralysed this time.

I wheeled the woman out first, then called
Jenny and went back for the man. He was big, too heavy to drag, so I started on the
ropes round his wrists. They were knotted tight.

Jenny came over and cautiously approached
the woman.

‘Get some water,’ I told
her.

‘Who is she?’ she said, looking
at the woman. Then she looked at the man. ‘And who’s
that
?’

‘I don’t know yet. Get some
water, please.’

She went back into the kitchen, and I carried
on struggling with the ropes. The man was kicking his feet.

‘
Nunh uhh
uhh …
’

‘Keep still,’ I told him.

‘
Norighfurnge … nunh …
’

‘Keep
still
, for
Christ’s sake.’

After a couple of minutes I finally got the
knots untied. The man whipped his arms free and yanked the gag from his mouth.

‘
Fuck!
’ he spluttered,
shaking some life into his hands. ‘Why didn’t you take the fucking
gag
off first? Shit! I couldn’t fucking
breathe
,
man!’

He’s big. A
very
big man.
Tall. Solid. Hard as nails. Greasy hands, short dusty hair. Work jeans, boots, a faded
sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off.

He sat up and started to untie his feet,
tugging at the ropes and looking around with his one good eye.

‘What is this shit?’ he said.
‘Who are you? Where’s the fucking wanker –?’

‘Hey,’ I said.

He stopped talking and glared at me.

‘I’m on your side,’ I told
him. ‘I’m trying to help. Why don’t you just shut up a minute and let
me deal with the lady. All right?’

He gave me a hard look.
Very
hard.
He sniffed a dribble of blood up his nose and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Then he looked over at the woman in the wheelchair. She was beginning to come round now,
groaning and mumbling and holding her head. Jenny was standing beside her with a cup of
water in her hand, staring wide-eyed at me and the big man. Scared to death.

The big man said, ‘Shit,’ and went
back to untying his feet.

I went over to the woman. Jenny was helping
her to drink some water, holding the cup to her lips. As I approached, the woman pushed
the cup away, lurched forward in the wheelchair, and threw up on the floor.

The big man’s called Fred.

‘Fred what?’ I asked him.

‘Just Fred.’

Right.

The woman’s name is Anja. Pronounced
Anya
, like Tanya without the T. Anja Mason. She’s one of those
confident women who always get what they want. Late twenties, well-spoken, honey-blonde
hair, a fine nose, sculpted mouth, perfect teeth, silver necklace round her neck.
Dressed in a sheer white top, short black skirt, tights, and high heels.

My dad would love her.

She says she’s ‘in
property’, whatever that means. Selling houses, I suppose. That’s how he got
her. She’d made an appointment to show a Mr Fowles around a luxury ground-floor
flat in a secluded avenue in West London. Ten o’clock this morning. She turned up
alone. Parked her car. Mr Fowles was waiting for her on the front step. He smiled, said
good morning. She opened the door and showed him in. He seemed pleasant enough.

‘Did he say anything else to
you?’ I asked her.

She thought about it. ‘No, not really.
Not that I can recall.’

‘Nothing?’

A hint of annoyance crept into her voice.
‘I can’t
remember
, OK?’

She showed him the hallway, she told us, showed
him the living room, then took him into the kitchen. While she was pointing out the
parquet flooring, he got her with the chloroform. She says she knows it was chloroform
because her husband works ‘in chemicals’.

At this, Fred laughed. ‘You
what
?’

‘What?’ said Anja.

‘
How
do you know it was
chloroform?’

‘My husband,’ she repeated.
‘He’s a company manager with a multinational chemical company.’

‘What, in the fucking
chloroform
department?’

She gave him an icy look.
‘What’s your problem?’

Fred didn’t answer, just grinned hard
and scratched his arm.

I know what his problem is. He’s a
junkie, a heroin addict. I can tell from the way he walks, the look in his eyes, the way
he holds himself. The track marks on his arms.

‘How long has it been?’ I asked
him.

He sniffed and jerked his head.
‘What?’

I mimed injecting a needle.

He shrugged and rubbed his arm again.
‘This morning, couple of hours before the van hit me.’

He says he’s a panel-beater at a place
in Camden Town, and I’m sure he is, but I don’t think that’s the whole
story. I know a thief when I see one. Thief, dealer, hard man, crook. You name it,
he’ll probably do it. He’s that kind of man. Last night, he says, he was out
and about somewhere in Essex. Doesn’t remember where, he says. Got lost, he says.
Someone stole his car.