The Bunker Diary (8 page)

I don’t know what kind of teeth I
expected him to have. Maybe tattooed ones, or fangs or something.

Before he left he gave me a friendly pat on
the arm. You know, one of those man-to-man/see-you-later-mate pats. I don’t think
anyone’s ever done that to me before.

It felt pretty good.

I’m beginning to like him.

About ten minutes after Fred left, Anja came
in. She brought me a cup of tea. First thing she said was, ‘I can’t stay
long.’ Like she’d got somewhere really important to rush off to. I nodded at
her. She just stood there holding the cup of tea. I think she wanted to thank me for not
telling the others about our little secret. You know, the peeing-in-the-bowl thing. I
could see it in her eyes. Uncertainty, guilt, conflict. She
wanted
to thank me,
but when the moment actually came, she chickened out. Her breeding got the better of
her. She smiled a tight smile, put the tea on the cabinet, and scuttled out.

I sighed to myself and reached for the
cup.

The tea was disgusting.

Now we’re five.

When the lights came on this morning the
lift was already down and a fat man in a grey suit was asleep on the floor. Fred found
him. He’s got his appetite back now and he was up early looking for something to
eat. He heard a snoring sound coming from the lift. He saw the fat man, dragged him out,
then yelled for us to come and see.

We went and saw.

Jenny first, then Anja, then me.

I don’t know if it was just because
I’d spent the last day in bed, but the image of the three of us stumbling out of
our rooms and crossing to the lift really got me down. Our appearance – bedraggled and
pale, heavy-footed, weary-eyed – and the way we walked, with the passionless excitement
of death-row prisoners …

God, we all looked so weak, so hopeless.

Fred was standing proudly over the fat man,
like a cat with a dead mouse.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Look what
I got.’

We looked. The man was in his late thirties,
fat, with curly black hair and dandruff on the collar of his suit. He was lying on his
side, snoring loudly, with the tip of his tongue poking out from between his lips.

I bent down to check his pulse.

‘He stinks of booze,’ I said.

Fred sniffed. ‘Drugged?’

‘Maybe. I can’t smell any
chloroform though.’

I leaned closer. The fat man opened his
eyes, coughed once, then puked up.

His name is William Bird. He’s a
commuter. Lives in a village near Chelmsford, works in London, in the City. Management
consultant or something. Yesterday evening, after work, he met a man in a bar at
Liverpool Street station. An unremarkable-looking man, he said. Suit, raincoat, glasses,
moustache. This man was also going to Chelmsford. They shared a few drinks, talked about
money and cars, then got on the train together and shared a few more drinks from the
trolley.

‘I remember getting on the
train,’ Bird said. ‘But after that …’ He shook his head.
‘It’s all just a blur. I must have passed out.’

‘Pissed?’ asked Fred.

‘Not
that
much.’

Fred looked at me. ‘Roofies, probably.
Or Special K. Something like that.’

I nodded. Roofies is the street-name for
Rohypnol, a drug that knocks you out and makes you forget everything. Stick a couple of
roofies in someone’s drink and they won’t know
what’s
going
on. Special K is ketamine hydrochloride, an animal tranquillizer.

Bird looked at me. ‘Don’t I know
you from somewhere?’

Yeah, I thought. You’ve probably
walked past me at Liverpool Street about a hundred times. You’ve probably given me
a hundred dirty looks, or ignored me, or chucked your empty fag packet in my guitar
case.

‘I don’t think so,’ I
said.

Bird loosened his tie and looked around.
‘What the hell
is
this place anyway? What’s going on? I’ve
got a meeting at three.’

I left the others to give him the good news
and went back to my room for a lie-down. I wasn’t feeling too bad, but I still
didn’t feel up to much. I certainly didn’t feel up to explaining to a fat
commuter that he was imprisoned in some kind of underground bunker by an unknown man
with unknown intentions, that there was no way out, nothing to do, no privacy, no life,
no hope, no
NOTHING
. That we could all be here for years …

We could be here for years.

No, I didn’t feel up to that.

I’m going to sleep.

Woken by the sound of shouts and crashing
metal, then the lights went out and a high-pitched whistle screamed through my head. The
loudest, most agonizing sound I’ve ever heard. It probably only lasted about
thirty seconds or so, but it felt like eternity. I thought my skull was going to
crack.

I still had my hands clamped over my ears
when the lights came on again and Jenny rushed in and told me what had happened.
Apparently, Fred attacked one of the cameras with a saucepan. To protect himself from
getting sprayed, he’d covered his head with a sheet and wrapped his hands with
bits of torn T-shirt.

‘What happened to him?’ I asked
Jenny. My ears were still ringing and my voice sounded muffled.

Jenny waggled her hand. ‘He got a
couple of good hits in,
then the spray came on and soaked through the
sheet and he started yelling.’

‘Any damage?’

‘What?’

‘Any
damage
?’

‘Not to the camera.’

‘How about Fred?’

‘His eyes and his face got burned and
he hurt his arm when he fell off the chair. His ears are bleeding too.’

‘From the whistle?’

She dug a finger in her ear.
‘What?’

‘The
whistle
.’

‘It hurt my ears.’

‘I know.’

There didn’t seem much else to say.
Jenny looked at me. I shrugged. She gave her ears another dig, then winced.

‘Why’s he doing this to us,
Linus?’ she said, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘Why’s he so
bad?’

‘I don’t know. Some people are
just like that, I suppose. They like being bad.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

A couple of months ago I got beaten up by a
bunch of stockbrokers. I think they were stockbrokers anyway. Stockbrokers, bankers,
traders, something like that. There were about six or seven of them. Young men in sharp
suits and expensive haircuts. It was a Friday night, about eight o’clock. Cold and
drizzly. Damp. I was busking around Prince’s Street. There are loads of wine bars
around there and they always get really busy on a Friday
evening. You
know, end of the day, end of the week, start of the weekend, let’s all go out and
have a good time, that kind of thing. Anyway, I thought I might get lucky, tug a few
drunken heartstrings, get some cash. So I found myself a nice little sheltered spot in
the doorway of an office building, got my guitar out, laid the case on the ground, and
started to play. And I was doing pretty well too. A nice pile of 50ps, pound coins, a
few two-pounders. I’d even got a screwed-up fiver from someone.

Then they showed up – the stockbrokers, the
men in sharp suits. They were all good and drunk and working hard to enjoy themselves.
Loud-mouthed, red-faced, laughing and pushing each other around. As they walked past me
one of them tripped over the kerb and stumbled into the doorway, crashing into my guitar
case and knocking it over. The coins tumbled out and rolled all over the place – along
the pavement, under people’s feet, into the rain-soaked gutter. I stopped playing
and looked down at the drunken idiot crawling around on his knees at my feet. He had
gelled hair and neat little sideburns and he was laughing like an idiot and grabbing at
the coins, throwing them at his mates.

‘You stupid shit,’ I said to
him.

He stopped laughing and glared at me.
‘You what?’

‘That’s my money you’re
chucking away.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

He picked up a pound coin. ‘You call
this money?’

I was beginning to wish I hadn’t said
anything now. His friends had shuffled over and were standing in a semicircle behind
him, egging him on, looking for trouble. He was getting to his feet now. He was drunk,
he couldn’t back down.

It wasn’t a good situation.

‘Look,’ I said calmly, ‘just
forget it, OK? It doesn’t matter.’

He stepped towards me, holding out the pound
coin. ‘You call this
money
?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t want any
trouble.’

‘You want this?’ he said,
holding out the coin to me.

I didn’t say anything.

‘You want it? Here …’ He
lobbed the coin into a puddle. ‘It’s yours. Now pick it up.’

I looked at him.

He smiled. ‘Did you hear what I
said?’

I glanced behind him at the others. They
were quiet, tensed, waiting for it to start.

‘Hey,’ said the drunk.

I looked at him again.

He moved closer, grinning. ‘I said
pick it up, wanker.’

It was beyond words now. The line had been
crossed. There was only one thing to do. So I did it. I unclipped my guitar strap and
moved towards the puddle, holding the guitar by the neck. I heard a snigger, an arrogant
snort, then I spun round and hammered my guitar into the drunk guy’s head. It made
a pretty good sound – a big hollow
boing –
but
I don’t think it
hurt him that much. If he hadn’t been drunk he probably wouldn’t have fallen
over. But he was drunk, and he did fall over, and that was too much for his mates. They
all piled in and kicked the shit out of me.

It’s late evening now. I
couldn’t get back to sleep after the whistling episode so I spent a while just
walking around, thinking and looking, looking and thinking. There’s got to be some
way of getting out of here, but I still can’t see it.

While I was walking around, Anja and Bird
were talking
together at the dining table. I heard Bird telling Anja
that the police were looking for her. They’d found her car, searched the flat
where she’d been abducted, checked the phone records where she worked, etc.

‘And?’ said Anja.

‘Last I heard they didn’t seem
to be getting anywhere.’

Anja shook her head. ‘Useless
bastards.’

I carried on wandering around for a while
and then I went back to my room.

And here I am.

I’ve been thinking about Dad, trying
to imagine him at one of those press conferences you get when a kid goes missing. The
room full of journalists and TV reporters, the cameras, the microphones, the parents (or
parent) flanked by serious-looking policemen. The parent/s looking stern, trying not to
cry, trying to stay calm. The mother/father’s lip quivering as she/he reads out a
statement appealing for information …

Then I suddenly realized – Dad won’t
know that I’m missing. Of
course
he won’t know. I’ve already
been gone for five months. The only people likely to miss me are Lugless and Bob,
Windsor Jack, a few other lowlifes, and they’re hardly going to lose any sleep
over it. On the street, people come and go all the time. Nothing lasts, no one stays
around for long. They might have wondered where I was for a day or so, but after that
they would have just nicked all my stuff – blankets, guitar case – and forgotten all
about me.

Dad thinks I’m safe. I sent him a
letter a couple of days after I left.
I’m all right
, I told him.
I’ve got money. I’m staying with friends. Please don’t call
the police. I’ll come back when I’m ready. Love Linus.

I sometimes wonder what Dad thought when he
read it. I imagine his face as he opens the envelope. His mouth twitching beneath his
grey moustache, his eyes squinting as he unfolds the paper and reads the letter. I
wonder if he thought,
Yeah, well, maybe it’ll do him some good. Teach him to
appreciate what he’s got
. Or did he think,
Shit, what’s the
matter with him? Stupid kid.
Or maybe he just thought …

I don’t know.

My brain is spilling over at the moment.

I don’t know what to think about
anything.

I realize that I haven’t fully
explained myself yet. I haven’t told you what you might (or might not) want to
know – my history, my story, the details of my life. But you have to look at things from
my point of view. You have to understand what you are to me.

To me, at the moment, you’re just a
piece of paper. At best, a mirror. At worst, a means to an end. The truth is, all
I’m doing is talking to myself. I’m talking to Linus Weems. And I know
everything there is to know about him. I know what he’s done and what he thinks
and what his secrets are. So I don’t
need
to explain anything. I
don’t
need
to tell his story.

I don’t
want
to tell it.

I’m sick of it.

11.45 p.m.

I’ve just been to the bathroom. Arse-
and belly-wise, everything seems back to normal.