The Bunker Diary
Authors: Kevin Brooks
PENGUIN BOOKS
Kevin Brooks was born in Exeter, Devon, and
he studied in Birmingham and London. He has worked in a crematorium, a zoo, a garage and
a post office, before – happily – giving it all up to write books. Kevin is the
award-winning author of eleven novels and lives in North Yorkshire.
B
EING
B
LACK
R
ABBIT
S
UMMER
T
HE
B
UNKER
D
IARY
C
ANDY
I
B
OY
K
ILLING
G
OD
K
ISSING THE
R
AIN
L
UCAS
M
ARTYN
P
IG
N
AKED
T
HE
R
OAD OF THE
D
EAD
‘Kevin Brooks just gets better and better, and
given that he started off brilliant, that leaves one scratching around for
superlatives’
–
Sunday Telegraph
‘He’s an original. And he writes one
hell of a story’
– Meg Rosoff, author of
How I Live
Now
‘A masterly writer’
–
Mail on Sunday
10.00 a.m.
This is what I know. I’m in a
low-ceilinged rectangular building made entirely of whitewashed concrete. It’s
about twelve metres wide and eighteen metres long. A corridor runs down the middle of
the building, with a smaller corridor leading off to a lift shaft just over halfway
down. There are six little rooms along the main corridor, three on either side.
They’re all the same size, three metres by five, and each one is furnished with an
iron-framed bed, a hard-backed chair, and a bedside cabinet. There’s a bathroom at
one end of the corridor and a kitchen at the other. Opposite the kitchen, in the middle
of an open area, there’s a rectangular wooden table with six wooden chairs. In
each corner of the open area there’s an L-shaped bench settee.
There are no windows. No doors. The lift is
the only way in or out.
The whole place looks something like
this:
In the bathroom there’s a steel
bath, a steel sink, and a lavatory. No mirrors, no cupboards, no accessories. The
kitchen contains a sink, a table, some chairs, an electric cooker, a small fridge, and a
wall-mounted cupboard. In the cupboard there’s a plastic washing-up bowl, six
plastic dinner plates, six plastic glasses, six plastic mugs, six sets of plastic
cutlery.
Why six?
I don’t know.
I’m the only one here.
It feels underground in here. The air is
heavy, concrete, damp. It’s
not
damp, it just feels damp. And it smells
like a place that’s old, but new. Like it’s been here a long time but never
been used.
There are no light switches anywhere.
There’s a clock on the corridor
wall.
The lights come on at eight o’clock in
the morning, and they go off again at midnight.
There’s a low humming sound deep
within the walls.
12.15 p.m.
Nothing moves.
Time is slow.
I thought he was blind. That’s how he
got me. I still can’t believe I fell for it. I keep playing it over in my mind,
hoping I’ll do something different, but it always turns out the same.
It was early Sunday morning when it
happened. Yesterday morning. I wasn’t doing anything in particular, just hanging
around the concourse at Liverpool Street station, trying to keep warm, looking out for
Saturday night leftovers. I had my hands
in my pockets, my guitar on my
back, my eyes to the ground. Sunday morning is a good time for finding things. People
get drunk on Saturday night. They rush to get the last train home. They drop stuff.
Cash, cards, hats, gloves, cigarettes. The cleaners get most of the good stuff, but
sometimes they miss things. I found a fake Rolex once. Got a tenner for it. So
it’s always worth looking. But all I’d found that morning was a broken
umbrella and a half-empty packet of Marlboro. I threw the umbrella away but kept the
cigarettes. I don’t smoke, but cigarettes are always worth keeping.