Bolt-hole Read online

  After the funerals six months ago I’d come here almost daily, probably in an attempt to identify with happier, more settled times. Now, as then, I find the isolation and solitude reassuring. The vastness is a reminder that my problems in the great scheme of existence are perhaps not as overwhelming as I sometimes fear. As I walk, the stimuli to my senses, like listening to a well-remembered song, are linked inextricably with memories of my family. I shudder involuntarily when I think back to the few days leading up to their funeral. My emotions were completely flat and I was barely able to summon the mental strength to get out of bed. I spent the days lounging on the settee with the curtains closed and unwatched daytime TV in the background. There were relatively few interruptions to my self-imposed solitude. Debbie from work phoned a couple of times and then visited, bringing flowers and a sympathy card. I also spoke several times on the phone to DI Patel. His tone appeared a mixture of embarrassment and frustration, presumable because he’d not been able to move the case forward some three weeks since the hit-and-run. He certainly didn’t fill me with optimism that justice would be served. “Unfortunately no witnesses have yet come forward, despite our numerous public appeals. We’ve spoken to the owner of the vehicle, who claims it was being used by one of his employees at the time. But this particular employee is not what we would describe as a reliable witness and states that the van was stolen from outside his flat while he was asleep.”

  WPC Shaw also phoned a few times. She’d been assigned the role of family liaison officer and it was her job to keep me up to date with how the investigation was progressing. She’d been far more frank than Patel. “We’ve no doubt that the person driving at the time of the incident worked for the owner of the pick-up truck. We’ve interviewed him several times but he’s denying everything and claims the truck was stolen. Anyway, I’m sorry to say, with no forensic evidence or witnesses it’s going to be very difficult to bring charges.”

  Perhaps surprisingly, I wasn’t particularly upset by the news; I was lost in my grief and basically of the opinion that finding who was responsible wouldn’t bring my family back.

  In the immediate aftermath of the hit-and-run there had been massive interest from the media. Within forty-eight hours the local reporters had picked up the story, and a further twenty-four hours later the national papers were on my doorstep. One freelance journalist even pushed a business card through my door; on the back, written in red ink, “£5,000.” Needless to say, I didn’t call and the card went straight in the bin.

  Perhaps ironically, arranging the funeral became the single focus on which I could concentrate my attentions. But prolonging my agony in a sense, the release of the bodies and consequently the funerals were delayed by the coroner’s request that post mortems be performed on all the bodies. This delay seemed like the final insult, particularly to my sons, as their already crumpled bodies had to be subjected to further dismemberment. With the bodies finally released, though, I could begin planning the funeral in earnest. I’d considered having two separate services, one for my parents and a second for Helen and the boys, but ultimately I opted for a single funeral as I didn’t think my fragile emotional state would tolerate more than one battering.

  The service was held in the local church just a stone’s throw from the site of the hit-and-run. At first I’d had reservations about the venue, but in the end I decided that it was such a beautiful building that it seemed an appropriate place to mark the lives of my beautiful boys. The small church was packed with many of my parent’s friends as well as our neighbours, and also teachers from William’s school, attending to pay their respects. Even an old school friend, James Bosworth, attended, though I didn’t recognise him at first. He’d grown a ridiculous goatee beard and put on a good couple of stone since school days. I was shocked by his reaction: he cried through much of the service, which seemed a bit over the top given that he’d never even met Helen and the boys. I didn’t get the chance to speak to him: he disappeared before the end of the service. I was also aware of James Kentish shedding his crocodile tears. He’d been the headmaster at Helen’s last school before her maternity leave, and since I’d first met him at a school fundraising event several years earlier I’d never liked the slimy little man. There was just something about him, though nothing specific that I could put my finger on; and subsequent events were only to reinforce my intense dislike of him. Despite the numbness of my emotions, I was surprised by the intensity of my feelings at the sight of him, and I had the genuine desire to smash his face in.

  With the funeral over I sank back into a trough of emptiness. I didn’t necessarily feel depressed, just completely flat and devoid of feeling. Rarely leaving the house, my only company was daytime TV and my elderly well-meaning neighbours, who occasionally brought round plates of food for my evening meal, though with no appetite, they often remained untouched. Occasionally I would go to the boys’ bedrooms and lie on their beds, attempting to drink in the sweet smell from their pillows. But even that simple act of reassurance became a source of anxiety as I irrationally began to worry that I would very soon wear away the scent and that another link with them would be lost forever.

  It wasn’t until a week after the funeral that I opened the living room curtains for the first time, perhaps in recognition that I was ready to let the outside world into my existence. I was sick and frustrated with life but didn’t know how to climb from my emotional black hole and begin the rebuilding process. For thirty minutes I stood in the dining room looking through the French windows into the garden. It was a beautiful spring morning. The spiders’ webs in the grass were drenched in dew, and the daffodil bulbs my sons had planted were in full colour and doing their best to raise my spirits. For the first time in days I had the desire for a change of scenery. I needed fresh air and to be free of the confines of my isolation. Half fearing that I would change my mind or lose momentum, I ran upstairs and pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbed the car keys and got in the car.

  I began driving, but with no particular destination in mind – I just needed to get away. Lost in my thoughts and memories, after a few minutes I found myself on the outskirts of the city and heading through Holmsfield towards the Peak District beyond. I drove on the largely empty roads for close to thirty minutes before pulling into the car park of the Fox House pub, a popular restaurant with walkers visiting the surrounding countryside. I turned the engine off and sat in the car watching the hikers, represented by little more than dots on the far horizon.

  After an hour or so, on impulse, I left the car and began the walk up Burbidge Brook, a long shallow valley that climbs from the pub car park over a distance of two or three miles to a height of two hundred metres. Wearing just a lightweight sweatshirt, jeans and trainers, I barely noticed the freezing wind scything through to my skin and causing my eyes to stream. I passed numerous walkers but didn’t acknowledge them. I kept my head down, lost in my thoughts as I tried to work out how my life had gone so wrong. After an hour of hard walking I left the main path and waded through a short stretch of thick bracken to Burbage Rocks, a spectacular thirty-metre-high rocky ridge overlooking several miles of Hathersage Moor. Calmly I stood on the edge of the ridge, teetering on the edge, my toes hanging over the abyss, knowing that a single step forward, or even the slightest gust of wind, would gift me certain death. Normally far from comfortable of heights, for the first time in months I felt empowered by the ultimate luxury of having complete control over my life and my death. I stood almost motionless for probably close to thirty minutes, staring down at the rocky ground far below and contemplating whether to take that small step forward.

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  It was dusk and a light rain had started to fall by the time I got back to the car. Turning the key in the ignition, the dashboard display indicated 2oC and for the first time I began to feel the effects of the cold as I struggled to control my shivering body. With the car heater on full blast and gradually warming through me, I sat for several minutes trying to understand why I hadn�
��t taken that small step, knowing that it would have put an end to my misery.

  Even now looking back, it is still no clearer. I’ve always had a certain ambivalence towards my own existence. It’s not that I don’t value life, but the prospect of a break from myself has always held more than a little appeal. But maybe even in those early days I knew that there was unfinished business and I needed a form of justice before I could move on. Whatever the reason, that afternoon represented a turning point, and as I drove back home I had the reassuring realisation that if I couldn’t find a purpose or a reason to go on, my life had a get-out clause in the form of that small step off the edge.

  Chapter 9

  With daylight beginning to fail in the remoteness of the Peak District, the illuminated digits on my watch indicate 4:17 p.m. I’ve been walking for close to ten long hours and, not daring to rest for any longer than a few minutes, exhaustion is beginning to take hold. With the fatigue, coupled with the fever and the pain from my neck, I feel like death. But despite my suffering, the relief that I remain a free man tempers my mood. To my astonishment the police helicopter hasn’t appeared, and scanning the horizon in the gathering gloom I can see that there are still no pursuing officers on the ground.

  Reaching the ruins of Crookstone Barn, I’m now just a mile short of my ultimate destination. The final section involves a climb of around two hundred metres up an old Roman Road, a route I’ve taken many times before, including four occasions in the last month, when dropping off supplies. On what is probably one of the least demanding paths to the summit, I would normally stop and take the time to marvel at the views of the mysterious peak of Lose Hill away to the south, and the awe-inspiring reflections on Ladybower reservoir beyond. But of course today is different, and with darkness encroaching my only priority is to put one foot in front of the other and drive myself forward to my bolt-hole and to what I hope will be security.

  I stop briefly to dig out a Yorkie bar from the bottom of the side pocket of my rucksack and take a huge bite, not so much out of hunger but more in a conscious effort to refuel my weary body. I immediately start walking again and begin the climb up Crookstone Hill, following the well-trodden track up the east side of Kinder Scout. Halfway up the hill my progress is abruptly haltered by a sudden searing pain in my calf, and I collapse to the ground. I’m stunned by the intensity, and in my fatigue-ridden and paranoid state my first thought is that I’ve come under fire from a police marksman. Reality quickly re-established, I realise that it’s just cramp and begin frantically massaging my lower leg to ease the pain, regretting that I’d not taken more fluids on board during the course of the day. The pain is unrelenting, but within a minute I’m on my way again, struggling up the hill.

  Forty-five minutes later I reach the summit of Kinder Scout just as the last of the daylight disappears. With the moon hidden by the dense cloud and many miles from the nearest street lighting, I can barely see more than a few metres. I stumble over the rocks littering the path and I’m desperate to switch on my torch, but now that I’m so close to the bolt-hole I daren’t risk the light giving me away. Negotiating the darkness and battling against cramp, the final hundred metres to the bolt-hole takes almost as long as the previous half mile, but finally I reach my Nirvana at the fantastically named Madwoman’s Stones.

  Sick with fever and exhaustion, I neurotically check over my shoulder one more time. Reassured that I’m still alone, I remove the rucksack, and with the energy drained from me I slump to my knees and bow my head, almost as if offering a prayer of thanks. In the darkness, and relying on my sense of touch, I crawl behind the distinctive rock that signals the entrance to my sanctuary. It’s only now that I switch on the torch, but even so I keep my hand over the lens and it illuminates only half a metre or so in front of me. I study each rock in detail and compare it with the almost photographic image in my head from when I was last here a little over a week ago. Mercifully nothing has been disturbed, and I remove the rocks and make my way through the entrance. The glorious feeling is of returning home after a long trip away to the relief and comfort of familiar surroundings.

  Safely inside, I reposition the rocks behind me to secure the entrance and reduce the chances of inadvertent discovery. The entrance area is about three metres long, 0.5 metres wide and 0.5 metres high; similar to the dimensions of the Graves Park bolt-hole. But once I’ve negotiated the entrance, the remainder of the subterranean hideaway opens into a metre-high space that’s more than two metres across. Far bigger than the Graves Park bolt-hole, it feels almost cavernous by comparison.

  The Kinder Scout bolt-hole had always been a key feature of my contingency planning, a plan that had evolved from my worries that if for any reason I wasn’t able to reach the airport, I would have a secure place to hide out. Though I’d always been totally committed to Musgrove’s untimely demise and confident that it was achievable, I was determined not to let complacency compromise my chance of future freedom. Now, of course, I’m more than a little grateful for the foresight of such a contingency.

  I’d always had a clear idea of the perfect bolt-hole. It would be isolated, but at the same time somewhere I could reach on foot. I would be familiar with the area, and I must be able to live self-sufficiently for several months while the murder was newsworthy or the police investigation at its height. I’d considered all the remote areas I’d previously visited: the Highlands of Scotland, Dartmoor and the Lake District. In many ways they were ideal, but getting to these places, a good few hundred miles from home, would be difficult, particularly if the police were giving chase. Then I remembered my last visit to Kinder Scout in the Peak District just a few days earlier. The place was isolated and remote, yet within a hard day’s walking, and it had the added advantage that I’d been there numerous times. Just picturing the area in my mind, I’d remembered a hiking trip to the plateau of Kinder Scout some twenty-five years earlier while in the Boy Scouts. We’d spent several hours fox-holing, as we called it at the time, a game that involved hiding in and around the numerous stacks of boulders that were strewn across the landscape as if flung by an angry giant.

  One of these massive structures in particular was imprinted on my memory. Bizarrely, it resembled a massive distorted face presumably formed after thousands of years of exposure to the fierce elements. In school at the time we’d talked about abstract art with our trendy art teacher, and my friends and I had called the distinctive feature Picasso’s Head. Inside there was a large cavity that had been a godsend in a game of hide-and-seek, and although even as a kid in my early teens it wasn’t big enough to stand fully upright, I suspected it was big enough to hide out in relative comfort. If I stocked it with food, sufficient for six months or so, and with plenty of fresh water from the nearby streams, it offered the ideal solution.

  From the outside the structure is no different to the numerous other haphazard stacks of boulders that litter this part of the “dark peak”. As a child, I explored many of the piles of rocks while on visits with my parents or more often as a teenager with the Boy Scouts. We spent hours climbing the stacks, some containing boulders as large as ten metres across, pretending each was the summit of Everest. In school geography classes we studied the Peak District, and some twenty-five years later I’m amazed how much I can still remember. I can picture the brown corduroy trousers and checked shirt, and hear the monotone voice of my geography teacher, Mr Willis: “The Peak District covers an area of over five hundred square miles, quiet at the back there, and is bordered by the industrial conurbations of Sheffield and Manchester. The geology of the land separates the area into the dark and light peaks, the former formed by millstone grit and the latter by carboniferous limestone.” I smile to myself: after all these years God only knows why I still remember these irrelevant facts. At the time, as a thirteen-year-old, I was far from thrilled with geography, but studying this area of the District held my boyish interest, largely because of the unusual-sounding names of the landmarks in the area. I recall one particular
geography lesson when Mr Willis had handed out photocopied maps and we’d all been intrigued by place names like Madwoman’s Stones, Mermaid’s Pool, Ringing Roger and Pym Chair, and had tried to imagine the stories behind such evocative names.

  Now some twenty years on from the innocence of my schooldays, secure inside the bolt-hole with the entrance blocked by rocks, I sit exhausted in the deeper, larger section of my new home. Although not able to stand fully upright, I can kneel comfortably without risk of suffering a head injury, as would undoubtedly have been the case in the Graves Park bolt-hole. I gratefully remove my boots and soaking wet socks, and under the torchlight inspect my blistered, red and swollen feet. They’re in desperate need of a good soak, but I have no such luxury. Almost too tired to move, I lean over to the back of the bolt-hole and find the two large rucksacks I’d hidden behind a collection of loose rocks a few days earlier. I drag out my sleeping bag from inside the first rucksack, and then a Gore-Tex bivvy bag, a large waterproof sack made of breathable fabric. I briefly consider preparing a boil-in-the-bag camping meal that I’d stashed away, but tiredness rather than hunger is my overwhelming emotion and I crawl fully clothed into the sleeping bag and then awkwardly manoeuvre myself into the larger bivvy bag. Too exhausted to even unfurl my cushioned sleeping mat, I lie on the damp and rocky floor and pull the hood of the sleeping bag over my head. After all I’ve been through in the last few days, I still can’t quite believe that I’ve made it. Gripped by exhaustion, within seconds I’m asleep.