Escape and Evasion

by Christopher Wakling

Planning? He’s already done it! Nothing more to add.

  Remind himself why he’s here, then. Think of all those lucky people he’s helped with the bank’s money.

  $1.34 billion!

  Ha.

  As in: really?

  Stop it.

  But actually? That’s still realistic, is it?

  Yes. Of course it is. Think of the Caymans; think of Milton Keynes.

  In fact, let’s not.

  Go over the entrance again instead. How is that supposed to work?

  Well …

  69

  Joseph dreams of portcullises, pinging elevators, drawbridges and oven doors.

  Which, as ever, wakes him up in a sweat. He’s way too hot. Of course he is: never mind the oven, he’s fully dressed, he’s in a heavy-duty sleeping bag, and he’s wrapped in a plastic tarpaulin. Result: he’s horribly thirsty again. He drinks half his remaining water in one go, noting that the greys above him are a clearer mesh now, three-dimensional, dawn coming through.

  Time to set to work.

  First, make sure this is the right spot.

  Yes, it’s high up on the slope, deep within the closed canopy of mature trees, with plenty of smaller rhododendrons and other assorted brambly bushes crowding in, cover within cover. The crater itself has a couple of clumpy things growing in it, and a sapling, possibly a birch? Doesn’t matter: just cut the lot down. Joseph unsheathes his hand axe and takes the tree and bushes out at ground level, the purplish blade soon dull with earth. He drags the bushes up out of the pit and looks around. With the shape of the spine, the gully, and the hill, most of the surface water should run down there to the east, where, look, the sky is pinking up.

  Okay, so this hole. Dig out the leaves, take the thing right back to the soil. As he remembered, it’s sandy, loamy: also good for drainage. If he builds a little lip on the upper side of the slope, he can keep the den drier still. Because that’s what this is, right, a den?

  Or lair.

  Big Beast.

  Ha.

  Joseph spends a good hour clearing the bomb hole of mulch. He uses his short-handled spade. Once he’s stripped out the debris, he stands in the lowest point of the depression. The ceiling won’t quite be above his head height, but he can always dig down and, in any event, there will be enough room above to sit comfortably on the cot-bench he’ll build … there, across the up-slope end of the hole. He stretches out his arms. There’s a metre or so between his fingertips and the pit sides. Which means he’s going to need longish boughs for the frame.

  Smells good in here, quite garden centre.

  He pulls the felled bushes over his kit and heads out to find the right wood.

  It needs to be green, not dead.

  A hundred or so metres to the southwest, he comes upon something suitable, a coppiced ash, birch, whatever-tree that has grown back with lots of true boughs, thicker than his thumb, spearing straight up.

  He chops a bundle.

  Rubs mud into the exposed white stump-flesh.

  Carries the lot back up the hill and trims them down next to the camp.

  The offcuts will come in handy.

  Two trips later he has more than enough lengths of sturdy stick for the frame. Back in the day they just plonked branches across the bomb hole, but he’s not eleven now, he’s a grown-up ex-soldier, skilled! He lashes the poles together with snips of cord, making a square big enough to cover the entire hole, quartered with two boughs, then cut into eighths with four more. He has a few poles left over so he weaves a couple of them into the frame too, making sure to leave one of the edge squares unobstructed. That one, there. Using the cord, he measures its sides. Roughly two and a half feet by two and a half feet. Big enough for a door.

  Right, let’s make that next, then.

  He sits back on his heels. Pops another sugared almond. They’re addictive. Mid-morning sunlight is filtering down through the canopy, dappling everything. Wow. It’s actually quite good fun doing this, making the door, a frame within the frame, just a few inches bigger all round, subdivided with thinner little offcuts, tied together snugly, there, satisfying: something you can see.

  Because you won’t see it later, with any luck.

  Next, cut a couple more lengths of cord to make a hinge, tying the little square over the frame edge, like that, a trap door, the wrap-around knots good and snug.

  Now pick up one end of the whole big lattice-structure and give it a shake, double-checking all the poles are secure, which they are, because he’s not an idiot, and drag-lever-lift it into place to check that, yes, he measured correctly, and the roof covers the hole. Or will, at least, when he’s …

  Joseph stands back, hands on hips. His trousers definitely feel loose. As he’s running his finger around the inside of his waistband, a bird caws somewhere in the trees above. He looks but can’t see it, even when the noise comes a second time. Sandpapery, a saw cut. Possibly the voice of a crow. They do that to warn each other about predators, don’t they? Which could mean that someone is coming.

  Joseph crouches down, checking this way and that, through the undergrowth uphill to the north, over the spine to the east, down the southerly slope and through the densest stretch of brambles to the west.

  He stays very still.

  Minutes tick by.

  But the crow doesn’t caw again and he can see nothing moving in any direction, not even a leaf.

  Probably the crow saw a bird of prey en route to somewhere else.

  Still, crack on: the sooner he’s completed this roof and camouflaged it the sooner he’ll be able to relax.

  Remember that God-awful away day, early on at Airdeen Clore? The instructor with the shapely hips. ‘Once you’ve built your raft and rowed it across the lake, then you can relax.’ It wasn’t even a real lake, more of a big pond, ducks included: it would only have taken a minute to stroll round to the other side. Lancaster was there. He’d just joined the bank’s security team. Within eighteen months he was head of it! Anyway, standing before the pond, the womanly instructor pointing out the logs and twine, Joseph said to Lancaster: ‘You’d think an army stint on the CV might exempt us from this …’

  Lancaster didn’t reply, just walked straight off to join his team, who of course won a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot each at the end of the day.

  70

  Anyway.

  Time to stretch the tarpaulin over the frame. Joseph takes the big plastic sheet he covered himself with during the night, unfolds it completely, pulls it out flat on the ground, as best he can, given the brambles. Then he lifts the frame up again and manhandles it to one edge of the tarp. Carefully, he lays it down. Good: the tarp is more than big enough to wrap over the outer edges of the frame. He fetches his roll of duct tape from – sod’s law – the bottom of his pack. Wonderful stuff, duct tape: in the army he learned you can fix pretty much everything with it, even a bullet wound. Working methodically, he folds each edge of the tarpaulin back over the side pole and tapes it securely to itself. He even runs two great long strips of tape right the way across the middle of what will be the underside of the roof, for good measure.

  There, a giant square-drum-skin-billboard-artist’s-canvas!

  But it’s not finished yet. Because he still has to cut out the small square section of tarpaulin around the door, and tape that to the little frame. Hurts to think the roof will be less watertight because of it, but how else is he to climb in and out? No way else, that’s how. The fact that the door panel overlaps the frame hole helps things, and he’ll position it so that the door opens facing down the slope.

  Considering how best to manhandle the roof into place, he pauses.

  Think ahead.

  Once the roof is on, some things will be harder to do inside the den. The most important? Well, that’s what these leftover poles are for, foresight-wise.

  Which is?

  Some sort of raised thing.

  Yes, to stand a chance of being comfortable, he must make a shelf on which to lie, som
ething suspended a foot or so off the ground, in the hole, down at the end furthest from the door.

  What’s the best way to do that?

  Use what the hole has: edges.

  Take this first pole, dig-jab one end of it into the bank edge, and push the sharpened, cut-to-size other end into the opposing wall. Make sure this first beam is properly secure. And repeat with a second, third, sixth, ninth, thirteenth length, each one a little longer than the last and lashed to the next, and the next, and the next. This takes some time, but it would take a whole lot longer if he were trying to do it under the lid. Joseph saves the thickest, strongest pole until last, and really digs that one in extra deep, tying it off super tight.

  There!

  Where’s the bedroll?

  Joseph ferrets it out of his stuff, allows it to inflate, and tapes it tight to the top of the shelf. Faithful duct tape! That’ll hold the whole thing more firmly to itself, won’t it?

  Yes.

  Still, he sits down very gingerly.

  The bed sags a little, clicks and creaks, the sticks working themselves deeper into the walls. Look at that earthworm, wriggling for cover. Never having liked worms much, Joseph leans the other way. Is this end of the cot higher than that end? A little, but the shelf, which is, yes, just about as wide and long as he is himself, holds firm!

  For now.

  If he needs to he can always make some legs to buttress the thing in the middle later on, can’t he?

  Yes, he can.

  Joseph puts the rest of his kit in the hole, leaning tidily against the foot of the cot bed.

  He feels absurdly proud of what he’s made!

  But he’s not finished yet.

  He has to manhandle this roof into place next, doesn’t he.

  Right, then: let’s do that now.

  Carefully.

  Don’t jab a hole in it.

  You’d have to try: the tarp is made of pretty strong stuff, a sort of woven plastic.

  Joseph lifts up one corner of his roof, walks it gingerly into place, lays it down tenderly, as if it were a work of art.

  Which it is!

  Because it represents the first of the four challenges for any survivalist, which are, in order: shelter, fire, water, food.

  He checks that the entrance works.

  It does, sort of.

  He can slide in feet first through the hole and down the internal earth bank at a comedy angle, dropping the trap door satisfyingly shut behind him. Won’t be a problem to cut a steeper chute later, and that hollow within the hollow just there will double as a fire pit, which should work well with the raised door above it, which, excellent, is also a chimney.

  Inside, with the roof shut, the crater is now dark, save for a few cracks of light where the edges of the roof don’t sit flush with the ground. He’ll soon sort that. Out he climbs again and digs and cuts and scrapes and settles the roof panel more firmly in place. Has to go deepest on the southwest corner, where an unhelpful root is forcing the thing proud, but the axe takes care of that in the end, and by 4 p.m. he has the roof properly embedded over the hole.

  The fall of the land, the fact that the bomb hit a gentle slope, is helpful, because it means the roof slopes, so water won’t pool on it. Joseph isn’t too worried about collecting rainfall that way as he has point three on the list – something to drink – covered: he knows there’s a stream not far to the east, where these old woods meet the Scots pine plantation.

  He wipes the sweat from his forehead with a hand he subsequently sees is streaked with mud. Camouflage!

  That’s the next job. He uses the leaf mulch already cleared from the crater first, scattering that all over the dark green plastic. When it’s exhausted, he takes a bin bag and pushes through the brambles, gathering up more leaves and twigs, and strews that on top of the roof too. If, as he did after all, someone was to push through the woods to this point, they’d still see a bit of a clearing, an unnatural flatness over and next to the ex-hole. He sorts that by carefully laying the undergrowth he cut from the crater on the roof edge, bushiest bits facing outwards, and he cuts down more of the thorniest bushes he can find and drags them to cover the roof, the gap between these two beech trees, and there, next to the spine, too. In time these bushes will wilt, the brambles shrivel, but he can add more. He stands back, skirts the outer edge of his camp, ducking under branches here and pushing through this clutch of holly. Ow, or rather – man up! – ticklishly unpleasant. He unhitches a leaf from the branch, marvels at its defensive waxy stiffness, goes on, dragging leaves over a footprint here, kicking up some dirt mulch there, checking that he’s not left obvious signs of himself round and about in constructing the hide.

  Which, as far as he can see, he hasn’t.

  Not that he’s some Navajo tracker.

  He pauses, Big Chief Joseph, and does the patting-your-open-mouth-while-exhaling-a-whispered-but-sustained-‘ah’ thing.

  He’s done a pretty good job.

  So now he picks his way carefully back to the bomb hole, lowers himself inside and pulls the door-hatch nearly shut. This offcut will act as a kind of prop, for ventilation, a little light, et cetera.

  Not that there’s much day left. He’s been working more or less flat out since dawn. Bar that false crow alarm, he’s not been disturbed. Which is good, isn’t it? Yes. And now … he’s exhausted.

  71

  And hungry, and thirsty.

  Very!

  These two urges have a different shape here in the half-dark, under the pole roof, the tarp, the dirt and leaves and camouflaging undergrowth. Yes, down here with the worms, the aching emptiness in his stomach and the taut dryness of his lips take on a sort of holy significance. He is in exile. Earthly possessions (his, plus a chunk of the bank’s) offloaded. A husk of himself and atoning, he is supposed to feel this way …

  Pah!

  Joseph digs out his water bottle and finishes what’s left. He’ll strike out for the stream after dark. He still has at least half of his sugared almonds, but best ration them. Instead, he twists off the lid of a tin of what looks like – yes, he holds it to the stripe of grey light to check – Gentleman’s Relish, and with his spoon-fork, which takes a while to find, he tucks in.

  Here he is: Joseph Ashcroft, top-level Airdeen Clore executive, eating gourmet relish off a spork, straight from the tin, in a hole in the ground.

  Top level.

  Well, almost.

  Stop it.

  He was bound for the top, wasn’t he? Steinmann-Jones said as much on that clay-pigeon day with the guy from B&Q back in February 2015. Steinmann-Jones was wearing actual plus fours and appreciated Joseph’s commitment to the team, because that’s what he said, in his little nasal voice.

  ‘You’re a safe pair of hands, Joseph.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘With a little more zing …’

  Pah.

  Forget that.

  Smell the salty dirt, the cut stick-stems, the empty plastic water bottle, the goddamn relish tin.

  Listen to the hush of treetops, the distant birdcall, the earth-sigh (which, possibly, is far-off traffic).

  Feel the weight of his body spread out on this stick-and-bedroll contraption. If his hair was longer it would brush the sandy wormholes, while his boots press in at the other end.

  He has never felt safer.

  Or more trapped.

  Both halves of this one feeling are yoked, precedent-wise. Think of bed. That’s right, the one he and Naomi shared for twenty-two years. For twenty-one and two-thirds of those years he had the exact same safe feeling last thing at night, no matter what had gone on during the day. Even when the kids were tiny and sure to wake up within an hour: that moment of closing out the day in their bed, curtains shut and lights off and darkness pressing in, was a safety so secure it felt like abandonment.

  The last third of a year, until she found out, not so much: that was the trapped bit.

  And after she did, boom.

  All – his
– fault!

  What a moron.

  Yes, well. He’s doing his best now, isn’t he.

  He can be proud of the den, at least.

  Plus this cat.

  Cat? Cot.

  Surprisingly comfortable, all things considered, though admittedly not what he’s used to: seven bedrooms nestled in the Surrey Hills, or two thousand square feet of round-the-clock portered mezzanine in Cleveland Square. Which, admittedly, might have been an ill-advised extravagance.

  Why?

  You have to look the part!

  Within reason.

  Well, he got what he deserved. Look around!

  What goes around, comes around, and …

  Goes to ground.

  Round and round and …

  72

  When he awakes it’s properly dark and he’s forgotten where he is; confused, he sits up quickly and hits his head on a roof strut. It doesn’t hurt. In fact, he smiles with pleasure, thinking: still safe! He checks his watch. It’s 3.15 a.m. He’s slept a solid six hours, which isn’t bad for a first night in the shelter. The thirst is back, though, a cardboard ache behind his tongue.

  He has what, an hour and a half before dawn?

  Get a move on, then!

  With the hatch fully opened, there’s a little starlight to see by. As his night vision strengthens, half-tones creep in, silvery-grey bracken here, charcoal tree trunk there. And all around the crosshatched rhododendron stems. It is very quiet in the wood, a fact he only realises when an owl hoots, making the silence loud. He finds his empty bottle and the deflated water carrier. Thank you, Charlie. Stuffing both into his satchel he climbs out, shuts the hatch, drags the cover bush back into place and sets off, through the tangled wood towards the stream.

  Which, sadly, has moved.

  Or rather, isn’t where he remembers it to be.

  On the plus side: neither is the Scots pine plantation.

  Has he gone the wrong way?

  He retraces his steps.

  Wow: here’s the spine already.

  What with all the sidestepping and soft footing, he’d actually gone no distance at all.