The Bunker Diary (23 page)

So much.

I don’t know where to start.

It’s unbelievable.

Maybe when I write it all down it’ll
make some sense.

I’ll start at the beginning.

Tuesday morning, just gone eight
o’clock.

The coldest day yet.

I’m lying on the floor, too cold to
sleep, but too cold to get up. My stomach hurts. I raise my head and look around.
Jenny’s bed is empty. I don’t know where she is. I suppose she’s in
the bathroom, or maybe the kitchen. We still have a few tea bags left. She’s
probably making a nice hot drink. I rest my head on the pillow and imagine cupping the
tea in my hands, breathing in the steam, sipping the liquid heat …

And then the door opens and Jenny comes in,
tea-less and agitated.

‘Get up, Linus!’ she says.
‘Quick, get up.’

‘Uh? What –?’

‘Come on, hurry!’

Her face is white and her eyes are
shocked.

I sit up. ‘What’s the matter,
Jen? What is it?’

‘Anja,’ she says, and her voice
breaks into breathy sobs. ‘I don’t know … Fred
said … she was … she’s …’

I get out of bed and put my arms round her.
‘Hey, come on. It’s all right –’

‘No it’s
not
.’

‘What’s the matter? Tell me,
Jenny. What is it?’

She can’t speak, she’s too
upset. She can’t stop crying. I hold her for a while then gently sit her down.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘You
stay here, OK? I’ll go and see what’s happening. I won’t be a
minute.’

I leave the room and shut the door. Down the
corridor, outside Anja’s room, Fred and Russell are talking quietly. As I approach
them, they stop talking.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask
them.

They look at me with grim faces.

Fred says, ‘Where’s
Jenny?’

‘In my room.’

He nods, then elbows Anja’s door open.
‘You’d better take a look.’

I go inside.

Anja is lying face up on the bed. Naked. Her
throat is ringed with heavy bruising and her face is discoloured and swollen.

She’s dead. Strangled.

‘Shit,’ I say.

Fred and Russell come in and stand beside
me.

Fred says, ‘I found her like that
about ten minutes ago.’

I look around the room. It’s a mess.
Sheets and pillows on the floor, dirty clothes all over the place, the bedside cabinet
knocked over.

I shake my head, too numbed to know how I
feel.

Russell puts his hand on my shoulder. It
feels as light as a feather.

‘Where’s Bird?’ I say.

‘Here.’

I turn round. Bird is standing in the
doorway. He’s barefoot and dressed in his suit. Underneath the suit he has a sheet
wrapped around his chest. His head is tilted stiffly to one side, almost resting on his
shoulder. He’s staring past me at Anja’s body, his eyes full of nothing.

I look questioningly at Fred. ‘What
happened?’

He scratches his head and sniffs. ‘I
don’t know. I was up until six this morning. Didn’t see anything.
Didn’t hear anything.’

‘Then what? After six?’

‘I don’t know. I fell
asleep.’

I look at Bird. ‘Did you do
this?’

He doesn’t answer me.

‘Hey, Bird.’

He blinks and looks at me.
‘Hmm?’

‘Did you kill her?’

‘Did I what?’

‘Did you kill Anja?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’

He cricks his neck and twists his mouth into
an unnatural smile. ‘Why would I kill her? She loved me.’ He grins, staring
at me. ‘And besides, it’s not
me
who’s got a proh-per-pensity
for vi-oh-lensss, is it? I mean, who’s the street-fighting man round here, eh? Is
it me?’ He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so, do you? I don’t
think it’s
me
that goes round –’

Fred steps forward and hits him hard in the
belly. Bird groans and sinks to the floor.

Next thing, we tie his hands with a belt.
Then me and Fred wrap Anja’s body in a sheet and drag it out to the lift.
It’s about eight-thirty now. The lift isn’t down yet, so we leave the body
by the door.

Fred grabs hold of Bird and we go down the
corridor and gather at the table. Bird has clammed up now. Hasn’t said a word
since Fred hit him. His mouth is clamped shut and his jaw clenched tight. His face is
alive with twitches. His skin is trembling.

‘You know,’ Russell says,
‘he probably didn’t know what he was doing. In the state he’s in,
he’s not really accountable for his actions.’

‘So what?’ says Fred.

Russell shrugs. ‘I was merely
saying –’

‘Well don’t.’

Russell looks like a living dead man.
Colourless, frail, spiritless. There’s nothing left of him.

‘What are we going to do?’ I
say.

No one answers.

I look at Bird, then at Russell. ‘How
long has he got?’

‘Who?’

‘Bird. How long has he got?’

‘I don’t know,’ Russell
says. ‘I’m not a doctor. I don’t even know what’s the matter
with him.’

‘You said he was infected –’

‘No. I said as long as he
doesn’t
get infected he should be OK.’

‘But he’s not OK, is he?
He’s sick and crazy.’

‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly. He
may be suffering from some kind of personality disorder … his symptoms may be
exacerbated by the pain and infection of the wound –’

‘I wish you’d shut up,’
says Fred.

We all lapse into silence.

At this point I’m still trying to get
my head round what’s going on. I don’t understand it at all. The cold shock
of death, this strange aftermath, full of confusion …

And as I’m thinking about that,
something really strange starts happening to me. I suddenly find myself – or some weird
part of myself – floating up out of my body … up, up, up … and when
I get to the ceiling I kind of twist around, and then I’m looking down at the
scene below. I’m looking down at four tattered figures slumped round a table. Four
barely-human beings, all dirty and tired, with sunken eyes and sick-looking skin. I see
a big man with thick brown hair and a raggedy beard. I see a skeletal old black man, his
skin hanging loosely off his frame. I see a bloated man with his hands tied together,
dressed in a lunatic suit, all crazy and twisted. And I see a boy, a pathetic-looking
thing with ropy hair and junkie skin and the baggiest clothes in the world.

And I think to myself – what are these
people
doing
?

Well
, says a voice in my head,
three of them are discussing the presumed act of the fourth. Three of them – a
villainous drug addict, a dying man, and a vagrant kid – are discussing what to do
about a purple-skinned fat man who they assume has murdered a rather distasteful
woman.

And with that thought I float back down into
my body just in time to realize that we’re all just sitting there, so wrapped up
in our own futility, that we haven’t noticed Jenny coming
out of
my room and crossing over to the lift. We haven’t done anything to prevent her
from seeing the sheet-wrapped corpse on the floor. And I hate myself for that.

I don’t hate myself for much, but I
hate myself for that.

We’re all just sitting there, lost in
our own sick heads, and poor Jenny’s standing alone with a dead body under a
sheet.

And then the lift comes down.

G-dung, g-dunk
,
whirr
,
clunk
,
click
,
nnnnnnnnn … nnnnnnnnnnnnnn
 … 
g-dunk
 –
mmm-kshhh-tkk.

I get up and go out into the corridor and my
heart stops at the sight of Jenny stepping into the lift. She stoops down, picks
something up, and steps out again holding a piece of paper. She reads it. Looks up,
looks over at me, smiles awkwardly, then glances at the shape under the sheet, comes
over to me, and hands me the sheet of paper. I see printed words.

I look at Jenny. ‘Are you all
right?’

She nods.

‘You sure?’

She nods again.

I smile at her, then read the note.

It says:

I read it again. And again, and again. And
all I can think is –
what?
WHAT?
And then my brain kicks in and I think – shit, what am I going to do with
this? Tear it up? Screw it into a ball and eat it? Or do I put my trust in the others?
Russell,
Fred, Jenny … do I have enough faith in them to
trust me? Do they have faith in me? Do they
trust
me?

Of course they do.

Jenny follows me back to the table. We sit
down and I pass the note to Russell. He reads it, looks at me, then passes the note to
Fred. Fred reads it, looks at me, throws the note on the table.

‘Well?’ I say to no one in
particular.

‘Well what?’ says Fred.

‘What do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘The note, for Christ’s sake.
What do you think?’

‘What do you
think
I
think?’

I shake my head.

He says, ‘It’s bollocks.
Bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself for even asking.’

A tingle rises in my throat.

But then Russell says, ‘Now, hold on a
minute …’

And that’s when he starts jabbering on
about stuff – justice, guilt, truth, innocence … the need for objectivity. At
first I just assume there’s nothing to it, he’s just rambling. He’s
confused, sick, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

‘We mustn’t jump to
conclusions,’ he says. ‘We have to listen to all sides of the argument. We
have to lay aside our emotions and limit ourselves to the facts. And we
have
to
consider the words of a witness, even if we mistrust his intentions. We have a duty to
consider his testimony –’

‘What
witness
?’ Fred
says. ‘What are you talking about?’

Russell says nothing, just looks up slowly
and points at the ceiling.

Fred frowns, not getting it.

I still don’t get it either, but then
a worrying thought suddenly creeps into my head.

I look down at the note on the
table.

‘Is this what you’re talking
about?’ I ask Russell, picking up the note. ‘Is this what you mean by
“the words of a witness”?’

Russell just looks at me, and it’s
clear from his silence that I’m right.

‘Oh, for God’s
sake
,’ Fred snorts, suddenly getting it. He glares at Russell. ‘You
are
joking, aren’t you?’

‘I’ve never been more serious in
my life,’ Russell says.

Fred snorts again, shaking his head in
disbelief.

Russell goes on. ‘Look, I’m not
saying we have to
believe
His testimony –’

Fred laughs dismissively.

Russell remains calm. ‘Who else apart
from the killer saw what happened?’

Fred shakes his head again. ‘This is
ridiculous. Linus didn’t kill Anja, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I’m not saying he did. All
I’m saying is …’

As Russell and Fred carry on arguing (and
Jenny slopes off quietly to my room), I just sit there in silence, too miserable and
bewildered to do anything. I know that Russell’s lost his mind, and I know he
doesn’t know what he’s doing, but that doesn’t make it any easier to
accept. He’s doubting me. Sick or not, he’s doubting me. And that hurts. So
I just sit there, not
really listening to him any more, just trying to
empty myself of all the bad stuff I’m feeling …

And then another thought creeps into my
head, a questioning voice that says:

Maybe he does know what he’s doing?

Or at least, he thinks he does.

Maybe he thinks he’s trying to help you?

And then I start thinking about the other
note, the killing note –

– and I remember when Russell tried to
persuade me to go along with it. All you have to do, he’d told me, is ‘Kill
me or Bird, or both of us if you want, and He’ll let you go.’ And now
I’m thinking that maybe the reason Russell is trying to convince Fred and The Man
Upstairs that I killed Anja is because he thinks it’ll get me out of here.

In his twisted state of mind, he actually
believes
that Anja’s killer will be freed, and he thinks (in his
madness) that if he can persuade both Fred and The Man Upstairs that I’m the
murderer The Man Upstairs will let me go.

But, of course, The Man Upstairs
knows
it wasn’t me. He sees everything, he knows everything. He
is
the only witness. And He’s not going to let anyone go anyway.

But Russell can’t see that. His brain
is all messed up, his reasoning has gone. He’s lost it.

But I don’t want to say that.

I don’t want to say to Fred,
‘Hey, don’t listen to this crazy old man. He’s sick in the head. His
brain is mangled.’

No, I don’t want to say that. It
wouldn’t be right.

So I just sit there, not hurting quite so
much any more, and wait for Russell to talk himself out.

After a long twenty minutes or so, he begins
to lose track of what he’s saying. His twisted logic becomes even more twisted, he
starts getting really confused – mumbling, muttering, rambling incoherently – and
eventually he ends up just sitting there, staring at the table, his mouth hanging open
and his poor face lost in bewilderment.

‘I’ll take him back to his
room,’ I tell Fred.

Fred nods.

I take Russell back to his room, get him
into bed, then go back to the table.

‘What’s the matter with
him?’ Fred asks me.

I tell him about Russell’s brain
tumour.

‘He knows I didn’t kill
Anja,’ I explain. ‘He’s just got this mixed-up idea that if The Man
Upstairs believes I killed her, He’ll let me go.’