Edited Extract from ‘The Bunker Diary’ by Kevin Brooks

Thursday 19TH August 2013

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.

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. It’s as dark as the night itself.
There’s a clock on the corridor wall. Tick-tock…..tick-tock….
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.

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.

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?