The Bunker Diary (2 page)

So there I was, just hanging around, minding
my own business, when a couple of platform staff came out of a side door and started
walking towards me. One of them was a regular, a young black guy called Buddy
who’s usually OK, but I didn’t know the other one. And I didn’t like
the look of him. He was a big guy in a peaked cap and steel-tipped shoes, and he looked
like trouble. He probably wasn’t, and they probably wouldn’t have bothered
me anyway, but it’s always best to play safe, so I put my head down, pulled up my
hood, and moved off towards the taxi rank.

And that’s when I saw him. The blind
man. Raincoat, hat, dark glasses, white stick. He was standing at the back of a
dark-coloured van. A Transit, I think. The back doors were open and there was a
heavy-looking suitcase on the ground. The blind man was struggling to get the case in
the back of the van. He wasn’t having much luck. There was something wrong with
his arm. It was in a sling.

It was still pretty early and the station
was deserted. I could hear the two platform men jangling their keys and laughing about
something, and from the sound of the big guy’s
clackety-clack
footsteps I could tell they were moving away from me, heading off towards the escalator
that leads up to McDonald’s. I waited a little while just to make sure they
weren’t coming back, then I turned my attention to the blind man. Apart from the
Transit van, the taxi rank was empty. No black cabs, no one waiting. There was just me
and this blind man. A blind man with his arm in a sling.

I thought about it.

You could walk away if you wanted to, I told
myself. You don’t have to help him. You could just walk away, nice and quiet.
He’s blind, he’ll never know, will he?

But I didn’t walk away.

I’m a nice guy.

I coughed to let him know I was there, then
I walked up and asked him if he needed any help. He didn’t look at me. He kept his
head down. And I thought that was a bit odd. But then I thought, maybe that’s what
blind people do? I mean, what’s the point of looking at someone if you can’t
actually see them?

‘It’s my arm,’ he
muttered, indicating the sling. ‘I can’t get hold of the suitcase
properly.’

I bent down and picked it up. It
wasn’t as heavy as it looked.

‘Where do you want it?’ I
asked.

‘In the back,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’

There was no one else in the van, no one in
the driving seat. Which was kind of surprising. The back of the van was pretty empty
too, just a few bits of rope, some carrier bags, a dusty old blanket.

The blind man said, ‘Would you mind
putting the case up by the front seats for me? It’ll be easier to get
out.’

I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy now.
Something didn’t
feel right. What was this guy doing here? Where
was he going? Where had he been? Why was he all alone? How the hell could he drive? I
mean, a blind man with a broken arm?

‘If you wouldn’t mind?’ he
said.

Maybe he isn’t completely blind? I
thought. Maybe he can see enough to drive? Or maybe he’s one of those people who
pretend they’re disabled so they can get a special parking badge?

‘Please,’ he said.
‘I’m in a hurry.’

I shrugged off my doubts and stepped up into
the van. What did I care if he was blind or not? Just get his suitcase into the van and
leave him to it. Go and find somewhere warm. Wait for the day to get going. See
who’s around – Lugless, Pretty Bob, Windsor Jack. See what’s happening.

I was moving towards the front seats when I
felt the van lurch on its springs, and I knew the blind man had climbed up behind
me.

‘I’ll show you where to put
it,’ he said.

I knew I’d been had then but it was
already too late, and as I turned to face him he grabbed my head and clamped a damp
cloth over my face. I started to choke. I was breathing in chemicals – chloroform,
ether, whatever it was. I couldn’t breathe. There was no air. My lungs were on
fire. I thought I was dying. I struggled, lashing out with my elbows and legs, kicking,
stamping, jerking my head like a madman, but it was no good. He was strong, a lot
stronger than he looked. His hands gripped my skull like a couple of vices. After a few
seconds I started to feel dizzy, and then …

Nothing.

I must have passed out.

The next thing I knew I was sitting in a
wheelchair inside a large metal box. My head was all mushy and I was only half awake,
and for a moment or two I genuinely thought I was dead. All I could see in front of me
was a receding tunnel of harsh white light. I thought it was the tunnel of death. I
thought I was buried in a metal coffin.

When it finally dawned on me that I
wasn’t dead, that it wasn’t a coffin, that the large metal box was in fact
just a lift, and that the lift door was open, and the tunnel of death was nothing more
than a plain white corridor stretching out in front of me, I was so relieved that for a
few short seconds I actually felt like laughing.

The feeling didn’t last long.

After I’d got up out of the
wheelchair and stumbled into the corridor, I’m not sure what happened for a while.
Maybe I passed out again, I don’t know. All I can really remember is the lift door
closing and the lift going up.

I don’t think it went very far.

I heard it stop –
g-dung,
g-dunk
.

It was nine o’clock at night now. I
was still sick and dopey and I kept burping up a horrible taste of gassy chemicals. I
was scared to death. Shocked. Shaking. Totally confused. I didn’t know what to
do.

I went into one of the rooms and sat down on
the bed.

Three hours later, at twelve o’clock
precisely, the lights went off.

I sat there for a while in the petrified
darkness, listening hard for the sound of the lift coming back down. I don’t know
what
I was expecting, a miracle maybe, or perhaps a nightmare. But
nothing happened. No lift, no footsteps. No cavalry, no monsters.

Nothing.

The place was as dead as a graveyard.

I thought the blind man might be waiting for
me to fall asleep, but there was no chance of that. I was wide awake. And my eyes were
staying open.

But I suppose I must have been more tired
than I thought. Either that or I was still suffering from whatever he drugged me with.
Probably a bit of both.

I don’t know what time it was when I
finally fell asleep.

It was still dark when I woke up this
morning. I didn’t have any of that ‘where am I?’ feeling you’re
supposed to get when you wake up in a strange place. As soon as my eyes opened I knew
where I was. I still didn’t know
where
I was, of course, but I knew it
was the same unknown darkness I’d gone to sleep in. I recognized the underground
feel of the air.

The room was blacker than anything.
Lightless. Sightless. I groped my way to the door and went out into the corridor, but
that was no better. Dark as hell. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut.
Couldn’t see a thing. Didn’t know what time it was. Couldn’t see the
clock. Couldn’t even guess what time it was. There’s nothing to guess from.
No windows, no view, no sky, no sounds. Just solid darkness and that unnerving low
humming in the walls.

I felt like nothing. Existing in
nothing.

Black all over.

I kept touching the walls and tapping my
foot on the floor to convince myself that I was real.

I had to go to the bathroom.

I was about halfway along the corridor,
feeling my way along the wall, when all of a sudden the lights came on.
Blam!
A
silent flash, and the whole place was lit up in a blaze of sterile white. Scared the
life out of me. I couldn’t move for a good five minutes. I just stood there with
my back against the wall, trying hard not to wet myself.

The clock on the wall was ticking.

Tick tock, tick tock.

And my eyes were drawn to it. It seemed
really important to know what time it was, to see movement. It somehow seemed to mean
something to me. A sign of life, I suppose. Something to rely on.

It was five past eight.

I went to the bathroom.

At nine o’clock, the lift came back
down again.

I was poking around in the kitchen at the
time, trying to find something to use as a weapon, something sharp, or heavy, or sharp
and
heavy. No luck. Everything is either bolted down, welded to the wall,
or made of plastic. I was looking inside the cooker, wondering if I could rip out some
bits of metal or something, when I heard the lift starting up –
g-dung, g-dunk
,
a heavy whirring noise, a solid
clunk
, a sharp
click …

And then the sound of the lift coming down –
nnnnnnnnnn
 …

I grabbed a plastic fork and went out into
the corridor. The lift door was shut but I could hear the lift getting closer –
nnnnnnnnnnnn
 …

My muscles tensed. My fingers gripped the
plastic fork. It felt pathetic, useless. The lift stopped.
G-dunk
. I snapped
the
end off the fork, rubbed the jagged end with my thumb and watched as
the lift door opened –
mmm-kshhh-tkk
.

Nothing.

It was empty.

When I was a little kid I used to have
recurring dreams about a lift. The dream took place in a big tower block in the middle
of town, right next to a roundabout. I didn’t know what the building was. Flats,
an office building, something like that. I didn’t know what town it was either. It
wasn’t my town, I knew that. It was a big place, kind of grey, with lots of tall
buildings and wide grey streets. A bit like London. But it wasn’t London. It was
just a town. A dream town.

In my dream I’d go into the tower
block and wait for the lift, watching the lights, and when the lift came down I’d
step inside, the door would close, and I’d suddenly realize that I didn’t
know where I was going. I didn’t know which floor I wanted. Which button to press.
I didn’t know anything. The lift would start up, get moving, and then the
dream-panic would set in. Where am I going? What am I going to do? Should I press a
button? Should I shout for help?

I can’t remember anything else about
it.

This morning, when the lift came down and
the door slid open, I kept my distance for a while, just standing well back and staring
at it. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Just to see if anything happened, I
suppose. But nothing did. Eventually, after about ten minutes or so, I cautiously moved
closer and looked inside. I didn’t actually go inside, I just stood by the open
door and looked around. There wasn’t much to see. No
controls. No
buttons, no lights. No hatchway in the ceiling. Nothing but a perspex leaflet-holder
screwed into the far wall. Clear perspex, A4 size. Empty.

There’s a matching leaflet-holder
fixed to the corridor wall outside the lift. This one’s filled with blank sheets
of A4 paper, and there’s a ballpoint pen clipped to the wall beside it.

???

It’s nearly midnight now. I’ve
been here for nearly forty hours. Is that right? I think so. Anyway, I’ve been
here a long time and nothing has happened. I’m still here. Still alive. Still
staring at the walls. Writing these words. Thinking.

A thousand questions have streamed through
my head.

Where am I?

Where’s the blind man?

Who is he?

What does he want?

What’s he going to do to me?

What am I going to do?

I don’t know.

All right, what
do
I know?

I know I haven’t been hurt. I’m
all in one piece. Legs, arms, feet, hands. Everything’s in working order.

I know I’m hungry.

And frightened.

And confused.

And angry.

My pockets have been emptied. I’d had
a £10 note hidden away in one of my socks, and now it’s gone. He must have
searched me.

Bastard.

I think he knows who I am. God knows how,
but he must do. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He knows I’m Charlie
Weems’s son, he knows my dad’s stinking rich, he’s taken me for the
money. Kidnapped me. That’s what it is. A kidnapping. He’s probably been in
touch with Dad already. Rung him up. Got his number from somewhere, rung him up and
demanded a ransom. Half a million in used notes in a black leather suitcase, drop it off
at a motorway service station. No police or he’ll cut my ears off.

Yeah, that’s it. It has to be.

A straightforward kidnapping.

Dad’s probably speeding down the
motorway right now, whacked out of his head on brandy and dope, tired and grouchy,
pissed off with me for costing him big again. I can just see his face, all scrunched up,
his bloodshot eyes squinting through the windscreen at the glare of motorway lights,
muttering madly to himself. Yeah, I can see him. He’s probably wondering if he
should have tried bargaining for me, offered 150K, settled for 300.

First thing he’ll say when he gets me
back is, ‘Where the hell have you been for the last five months? I’ve been
worried stupid.’

The lights have gone out.