28th March
‘Where am I, and why are you keeping me here?’ demanded Christian Leadbetter to the duty doctor.
‘You’ve suffered psychological trauma that’s caused your memory to be blocked,’ replied Dr. Peter Smith. ‘This is a specialist unit where we hope to help you. We’re on a military base in Dorset,’ the doctor continued, trying to incorporate as much truth as possible into his explanation. ‘We have a lot of experience of psychological trauma here due to treating soldiers for the effects of their battlefield experiences.’
‘I’m fine. I want to go,’ replied Leadbetter dismissively.
Peter Smith provided some reasons as to why Leadbetter could not leave, and the vicar soon concluded that further verbal protestations would be pointless.
Leadbetter appeared to acquiesce as he began to plot his escape.
The vicar’s situation was genuinely confusing for him. He knew that he was the vicar of St Basil’s in Waterford, Hampshire. He could recall going to bed at the end of an uneventful day in January, but his next recollection was of waking up on a psychiatric ward in March with no idea of what had occurred in the interim.
He had resolved that he must get back to Waterford in order to piece together what had happened to him.
~*~*~*~*~
It was one o’clock in the morning when he quietly slipped from his bed and crawled on all fours to the lavatory that adjoined the ward. A small window in the lavatory was constructed of glass louvers that were not secured to their frames. Leadbetter gently levered the glass panels from their flimsy aluminium supports, leaving an opening of about half a metre by forty centimetres – just sufficient for him to squeeze through.
Once outside, Leadbetter was confronted by a high fence, topped with barbed wire.
He began to make his way along it in search of an exit route from the camp.
He approached some bungalows. There seemed to be no signs of activity on the camp at this hour – with the exception of a light that was streaming through one of the bungalow windows. It would be necessary to cautiously pass that window in order to continue his inspection of the perimeter fence.
He crouched down and moved silently past the window, briefly pausing to glance into the room through a gap in the blinds.