Bolt-hole

I leave the path and run through the adjacent ice-cold, knee-deep stream, hoping to hide my scent from the tracker dogs that no doubt will soon follow.  I picture the TV images from those fly-on-the-wall police documentaries, of a hapless criminal viewed brilliant white against a black background with the infrared camera as a police dog takes a bite out of his genitals.  There’s no way I’m going to let it happen to me.

After a few minutes of hard ru

I lie motionless in the hideaway, barely daring to breathe for what seems like hours, though when I check my watch I find that it has been less than thirty minutes.  The helicopter continues to sweep overhead, clearly audible above the driving rain and swollen streams but never seeming to linger directly over the bolt-hole.  There is the occasional raised voice accompanied by barking dogs, presumably police German Shepherds attempting to track my scent.  My heart continues to pound, in part due to my exertions of the last few hours but mainly, I suspect, on account of my fear of discovery.

After a further thirty minutes I cautiously switch on my small torch, all the time keeping my hand over the lens to limit the scope of the light-beam. The bolt-hole is a five-metre-long drainage tu

As the minutes turn into hours, for the first time since leaving the bedsit my emotions aren’t ru

As my expired breath warms the sleeping bag, the shivering of my aching body finally comes under control.  After thirty minutes, I loosen the cord around the hood and breathe the relatively fresh air of the bolt-hole.  Feeling more comfortable, I begin to reflect on the events of the previous few hours.  I’d hoped, of course, that things would have been so different and that I’d be tucked up in bed at the airport hotel by now in readiness for my flight in the morning, but that’s not going to happen.  It has always been my nature to be self-critical, often to a degree that’s counter-productive, as Helen would argue, and my first instinct is to direct the anger at myself.  I curse my stupidity in cutting my neck and surely leaving behind DNA evidence.  I’d pla

By 3:00 a.m. and after close to four hours in the bolt-hole, the shouting police and barking dogs have gone silent and the drone from the helicopter blades has ceased.  In the solitude and silence I begin to feel the first pangs of hunger, and realising that I’ve not eaten for close to twenty-four hours, I dig out my small camping spoon from the bottom of the rucksack and devour cold baked beans from the can and some dry crackers.  Not the greatest meal I’ve ever had, but I still feel better for it.

I lie back down in the sleeping bag and listen to the driving rain and the wind blowing fiercely through the trees.  It remains near pitch black in the drain, with the only light coming from the illuminated face of my watch.  Although I doubt much natural light will ever permeate the bolt-hole, for the world outside it will be dawn in a couple of hours.  In the darkness and current weather conditions I’ve been able to evade capture, but I fear that, with the daybreak, it may well be a different matter.

Chapter 4

Crammed inside my tiny bolt-hole, I’m mentally and physically exhausted but ever conscious of the slightest disturbance from the outside world. I suspect there is little chance of meaningful sleep.  With sunrise now just a couple of hours away, I close my eyes knowing that I should at least try to get some rest.  Within a few minutes my consciousness begins to ebb from the present and my thoughts drift back a few months.

WPC Shaw drove me from the morgue to arrive home a little after 5.00 a.m.  It was still dark but the milkman had already started on his rounds and bottles were waiting on the doorstep.  Shaw had tried to start a conversation, perhaps attempting to ease her own discomfort as much as mine, but I was in no mood to chat and she quickly realised that her efforts were futile.  I suspected that she was relatively inexperienced and doubted that she’d ever been involved in anything like it before.  Ironically I began to feel almost sorry for her, believing that in some way I was responsible for her current discomfort.  She’d offered to come in to make a drink but I declined for both our sakes.  I wanted to be alone with my thoughts and attempt to rationalise the events of those last few hours.