The Final Minute (17 page)

‘Are you sure a hotel’s going to let me in looking like this and paying in cash? I’d really appreciate it if you could just let me sleep on your sofa. I promise I won’t let you down.’

Tina straightened up and took a pack of cigarettes from her jacket, lighting one without offering the pack. ‘Let me tell you something, Sean. This place is my sanctuary. It’s where I retreat from all the crap in the world. Some men tried to kill me in here once, and they almost succeeded. I came this close to moving out because of that, but I overcame my fears and swore I’d never let anything happen to me in here again. Only people I truly trust stay in my house. And right now, you’re not one of them.’

I nodded. ‘Fair enough. I understand. I hope at some point you’ll learn to trust me.’

She shrugged. ‘We’ll see. There’s a hotel ten minutes down the road from here who aren’t too fussy who they let in. It’s not the flashiest establishment in the world but it’s clean, and it’s safe.’

‘And I guess it’s better than being stuck in a barn with a couple of torturers.’

‘That’s for sure.’ She took a drag on the cigarette and gave me a half smile through the smoke.

‘I read about my brother,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘The way he got killed trying to stop an armed robbery. It’s amazing. I’d forgotten I even had a brother.’

‘Did reading it help you remember him?’ Tina asked.

I nodded. ‘Definitely. I keep getting flashbacks about growing up with him. They’re vivid too. But, as I said, I didn’t finish reading all that stuff you gave me. Did they ever catch the men who killed him?’

She frowned. ‘You don’t remember?’

I let out a hollow laugh. ‘I don’t remember much of anything, Tina.’

‘Well, you got your revenge, Sean. It took you a long time but you got there in the end. It’s how we met.’

‘Care to tell me more?’

‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you another time.’

‘Are the men who killed my brother dead?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’re all dead.’

‘And did I kill them?’

‘You killed at least one of them. In fact, you killed him in front of me. No one knows whether it was you who killed the other two – I guess, not even you – but you were never charged with any crime, although you had to leave the police.’

I sighed. I was pleased I’d killed at least one of them, and possibly all three. I had no idea who these men were who’d destroyed my family some twenty years ago, but they’d deserved to die for what they’d done to John. I just wished I could have remembered what had happened.

Tina put out her cigarette and opened her laptop on the kitchen table. ‘Tell me something. In that recurring dream of yours, you said that you remembered seeing the woman I’m looking for, Lauren Donaldson, and also another woman. Can you remind me what she looked like?’

I could picture her immediately, as clear as day. ‘Long, thick blonde hair. Very pretty. Late twenties.’

Tina picked up the laptop and handed it to me. ‘Is this her?’

A photo of the top halves of three young women filled the screen. One of them was the dead girl in the dream; another I didn’t recognize; but all my attention was on the third. I couldn’t stop looking at her wide smile and deep blue eyes. I felt my mouth go dry and my stomach clench tight. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I said quietly. ‘It
is
her.’

‘Are you sure?’

I nodded. ‘Positive.’

‘What the hell is going on here, Sean?’

‘I wish I knew. What’s her name?’

‘Jen Jones.’

It wasn’t familiar but that didn’t matter, because the girl was. I couldn’t stop staring at the photo as an intense emotion so powerful it made me want to throw up swirled round my system like an infection.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Tina, staring at me.

I took a deep breath. ‘This girl … Jen Jones. I was in love with her.’ And for a second I was back in the dream, with her sat propped against the wall, bleeding from the head as she turned in my direction. And then the fear in her eyes as she saw me standing there.

Why? Why was she so terrified of me?

I handed back the laptop, suddenly feeling drained and very, very tired. ‘I guess we’d better get me booked into this hotel. Maybe I’ll remember more tomorrow.’

But even as I spoke the words, I was wondering if I actually wanted to.

Twenty-two

It was gone ten o’clock when Tina finally got home from dropping Sean at the hotel. She made herself a decaf coffee, sat at the table and lit another cigarette before making a note on the laptop that she’d lent him another two hundred pounds to cover hotel expenses and a change of clothes. At this rate she’d be broke in a week. It wasn’t as if she made a huge amount of money from the detective work. She got by, but that was pretty much it, and she could ill afford to subsidize anyone, let alone a man like Sean who had little prospect of raising money from anywhere and whose presence in her life made things extremely dangerous.

The men at the barn tonight had been tracking him electronically ever since he’d fled the house in Wales. This meant that they’d know every place he’d been that day, including Tina’s office, so it wouldn’t take them long to put two and two together and ID her as the woman who’d rescued Sean.

So now she was in danger. She sighed, and dragged hard on the cigarette. It was the story of her life. The private detective work had been a way for her try to get some normality back in her life while still making use of some of the talents she’d picked up in the force, but nothing ever ran that smoothly for Tina Boyd. And tonight, when she’d emerged from the darkness and crept towards the barn with a Taser in her hand, knowing she was risking her life, the excitement had been incredible, the rush almost sexual.

She stubbed out the cigarette and finished her coffee before walking through the cottage and checking that all the doors and windows were locked, as she did every night. Tonight it felt like a lonely job – the lonely job of a lonely woman – and she found herself missing Sean’s presence. She’d felt a definite stirring when she’d been tending his injuries earlier. A need for closeness, and a real desire to hold him, just so she could feel male contact again. But she’d fought it back down, and not just because she couldn’t entirely trust him. It was more than that. It was because she always pushed men away. It was as if falling in love, even allowing herself to need someone, was a sign of weakness that could only damage her in the long run. She’d even started receiving counselling to deal with the problem, which was something she never thought she’d end up doing. Her therapist said that her intimacy issues stemmed from the violence she’d suffered at the hands of men during a long and unusually bloody police career. And Tina believed it. She’d come close to being killed on more than one occasion, and had killed others too. Three times. All men who’d deserved it. The scars those traumas had left her with were deep and permanent.

‘Yet still I come back for more,’ she said aloud as she readied herself for bed.

Through her bedroom window, she could hear the faint rumble of traffic on the M25 four miles away. Otherwise the world was silent. Ordinarily she enjoyed that silence, but tonight there was something foreboding about it.

She laid the Taser and the pepper spray on her bedside table, so they were close to hand, then got into bed and lay there for a few minutes with her eyes open, thinking about Lauren Donaldson, Jen Jones, and the enigmatic Sean Egan, the man who might yet be able to explain their disappearance.

Just before she let sleep take her, she asked herself a single question: ‘Do I regret getting involved with Sean Egan?’

The answer came to her straight away.

Not yet.

Twenty-three

The dreams came again that night. A mad, seemingly never-ending jumble of snapshots: childhood on sunny afternoons; the angst-ridden days of youth; tragedy; undercover work; violence; sex; joy; despair. The whole shebang. It was like a heavy door being slowly forced open and my past pouring through the gap and flooding the present.

I woke up once at about three a.m., sweating and disorientated with a violent throbbing coming from my mouth and no idea where I was. It took me an unfeasibly long time to work out that I was in the crappy hotel room I’d checked into a few hours earlier, with one set of dirty clothes and two dirty great holes where two of my back teeth had once been. I got up, stumbled over to the toilet, and took a leak in the gloom, unable to resist looking at my reflection in the mirror. The glow from the streetlights outside allowed me to get a pretty good view of my battered face. My hair was greasy and wild, and I looked like shit.

‘I’m Sean Egan,’ I told the reflection. ‘I was an undercover police officer. I worked for an outfit called CO10 in the Met. My boss was a man called Robin someone or other, but we all knew him as Captain Bob. He was an arsehole but he was good at his job.’

I stopped and smiled. My life was coming back to me, and fast now. Who knew what I’d find out about myself? It might not all be good, but it was so much better than living with no history and no identity. And somehow I knew things would be all right. I was a good man. I cared about people. I believed in justice.

I repeated those words to my reflection before heading back to my bed and my visions.

I didn’t wake again until close to ten o’clock. The remainder of my sleep had been a restless series of visions but as I lay there in bed trying to piece them together, I found that I couldn’t get things in order. Everything was still a jumble, and certain aspects of my life – particularly childhood, and my time as an undercover cop – were a lot more vivid than others. I could still remember nothing about the time I’d met Tina, or the supposed rape I’d committed, and my time in prison afterwards.

It was strange, though, because I remained convinced that I had a sister called Jane, even though she didn’t appear in any of my dreams, and hadn’t been mentioned in any of the material I’d read up on myself. In fact, rationally I knew she didn’t exist, and that the woman who’d claimed to be her had been an impostor, but it didn’t matter because, at a certain, very deep level, I believed I had a sister, and this certainty seemed to trump everything else.

It made me think about Dr Bronson and our hypnotherapy sessions back in the house in Wales. Had he implanted false memories in me? Was that even possible?

I needed to talk to him, and urgently, because I had a feeling he could unlock a lot of my more recent memories if he was put under enough pressure. I was pretty sure Tina could find him. She’d given me another mobile number to reach her on plus her office number. I didn’t have a mobile of my own any more but there was a hotel phone on the bedside table. I called Tina’s numbers but she wasn’t answering either, so I left messages on both, suggesting she think about tracking Bronson down, then clambered out of bed, feeling stiff from all the exertions of the previous thirty-six hours.

The room was small and box-like with a horrific floral carpet and thinly painted concrete walls, but at least it was clean. I pulled the curtains, opened the window, and looked out. My hotel was a cheap modern building that was already beginning to look tired, with a three-quarters-full car park out front. It was set on a main road with a retail park, consisting of a line of hangar-like warehouses, directly opposite. There was a fair amount of traffic about but surprisingly few pedestrians, even though it was a bright sunny day.

I stood there for a while watching the world go by, trying to work out what decisions I’d made to get myself into this position – a convicted felon all alone in the world, with enemies at every turn and only one potential friend, a woman who didn’t even trust me. I couldn’t believe I’d turned to the dark side. It just didn’t fit with the view I had of myself.

‘I’m a good man,’ I whispered, repeating it again and again.

And then, almost as if my words were an ancient magic spell, I was effortlessly transported back to my first undercover role.

Twenty-four

Dylan Mackay lived in an apartment on the second floor of a Georgian townhouse on one of the less pretty roads just off the A4 in Kensington. But even with the slightly dilapidated state of the buildings and the smell of cooking coming from the cheap restaurants at either end of the street, it was still the kind of place only the well-off could afford to inhabit.

There was an up-to-date video entry system just inside the porch, and Tina pressed the button marked 3. It had just turned eleven and she was banking on Dylan being up and about. Otherwise she was going to have to find a suitable spot on the street and wait until he appeared.

A good minute passed before a man’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Yeah?’ it demanded.

‘Mr Mackay?’ said Tina, looking up to the camera. ‘DC Ann Wright, Westminster CID. I’d like to speak to you for a few moments if I may.’

She held up a fake warrant card she’d bought over the internet. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was designed to stand up to basic scrutiny, especially through a camera lens. The only problem, of course, would be if Mackay recognized Tina from the media – something that had happened to Tina more than once before.

But he didn’t. ‘What about?’ he asked with a combination of belligerence and tiredness that reminded Tina of the tone her brother had adopted when he was an irritating teenager.

‘I’d prefer not to discuss it over the intercom. Can you let me in please?’ She kept her gaze firmly on the camera, allowing herself to pout just a little bit. She was dressed smartly in a trouser suit, with the top two buttons of her shirt undone, having figured that she might as well use all the weapons in her armoury to gain entrance.

It worked too. Mackay grunted something unintelligible but a second later, Tina was through the door.

‘Bad move, Dylan,’ she said to herself as she mounted the staircase, taking her time as she prepared herself for the interrogation ahead.

‘So what is it you want?’ said Mackay as he answered the door and with clear reluctance opened it further to let Tina inside.