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 running the sounds of the chasing officers begin to fade. Despite the freezing water sapping my strength, I surge forwards with renewed belief, now so close to my temporary bolt-hole and potential safety. But then, without warning, from over the brow of the hill comes the sound of helicopter blades, and the police chopper flies at speed just above the treetops directly over me with a great shaft of light projecting downwards. Shit, Shit, Shit, surely they must have seen me. The helicopter turns and starts a second pass, but just a second before the beam of light illuminates my presence, I dart behind a fallen tree trunk and scramble into my bolt-hole, cracking my forehead on the low ceiling as I enter. My head begins to throb and blood drips into my eyes, but this discomfort is the least of my worries.
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 tunnel, approximately half a metre wide and half a metre high. It’s just large enough for me to crawl into; there’s little room for manoeuvre or to turn round. The conduit runs several feet underground and connects two nearby streams, but only ever comes into use after heavy rain or thawing snow. The walls and floor consist of loosely arranged and irregular pieces of stone. From above, I’m completely hidden from the searchlights and infrared camera of the helicopter, and at ground level the entrance at the lower end is obscured by fallen tree trunks while the top end is completely blocked by the rocks and earth that have accumulated since I played here as a kid with my friends many years earlier.
As the minutes turn into hours, for the first time since leaving the bedsit my emotions aren’t running at fever pitch. I begin to feel some small degree of relief as the sounds of the police presence become quieter and more infrequent and my pursuers move further away. With a long and hopefully undisturbed night ahead I attempt to get more comfortable; no easy task, with the low ceiling, hewn of rough stone, making sitting upright impossible. Fumbling in the confined space, I find the tarpaulin sheet and bin liner that I’d dropped off the night before, and I lay out the former to cover the damp ground. I then open the water-tight bin liner containing a rucksack, and begin unpacking the contents: spare clothing, walking boots, toiletries, a small radio, a few tins of baked beans and three large bottles of drinking water. The task becomes increasingly difficult with my cold, numb fingers, and I begin to shiver uncontrollably. My clothes are soaked with sweat, rain and blood, and with the adrenaline rush from the chase subsiding, the effects of hypothermia are setting in with a vengeance. As quickly as I can in the tight space, and with my awkward frozen fingers, I strip off the wet clothes and trainers, replace them with the dry clothes from the rucksack, and then crawl into the sleeping bag. I pull its insulating hood over my head and then tie the draw-cord tight.
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 planned meticulously and practised swinging the blade at a pumpkin, a substitute for Musgrove’s head, but had not rehearsed pulling the blade from inside my jacket. But despite my frustrations, I have sufficient insight to acknowledge that I also had bad luck: the police arriving outside the pub at the wrong time, and then being witnessed by WPC Shaw later on. Gradually, as my post mortem continues, my irritation begins to dissipate. I suppose I have to be grateful for the foresight of my rigorous planning and the inbuilt contingencies such as the bike stashed in the toilets along with the spare clothes – and, of course, the current bolt-hole. I suspect that if it wasn’t for my current hideaway, I would be in police custody by now, facing a murder charge.
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.