The Final Minute (23 page)

He looked at me very closely. ‘Did you do it, Sean? Did you rape that woman?’

My answer was emphatic. ‘No. I’ve never forced myself on any woman in my life. You know me. I wouldn’t do that.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I know you wouldn’t. I just had to hear it from you, that’s all.’ He looked around at the blank walls, taking in the soul-destroying blandness of the place. ‘Jesus, they’ve fucked you, Sean. All the good work you’ve done over the years, and they repay you like this. Letting you rot in here with all the nonces.’

‘You remember Jason Slade, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, I remember that lowlife arsewipe. Although I’d prefer not to.’

‘He was the one behind the attack. And there are plenty of other people gunning for me too, and now they’ve got a way in through the screws. They’re going to hurt me again, and bad.’

Jack frowned. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything on an official level, Sean. People aren’t exactly lining up to help you. But I’ll ask around, see what I can do. I’ve got a lot of good contacts on both sides. They may be able to apply some pressure in the right places.’

I thanked him, and we continued talking for a few minutes about this and that. It was strange, because I couldn’t really understand why he’d come. It wasn’t as if we were great friends. But then, when the inevitable silence descended on the conversation, he leaned forward in his seat and said, ‘Stay strong in here, Sean, and I’m sure you’ll get out sooner than you think. And whatever happens, call me as soon as you do. I might have some work for you.’

‘What kind of work?’

He smiled. ‘The type you’re good at.’

Thirty-two

Tina had developed an appreciation of food over the previous few months, and along with coffee and cigarettes it had become one of her most important pleasures. She’d learned to cook, and found the whole process therapeutic. Tonight, though, she’d taken the quicker option of a tuna and avocado salad with crusty homemade bread and hummus, and had only just finished eating when there was a loud knock on the front door.

She looked at her watch: 8.10. She was pretty sure it was Mike Bolt, but with everything going on at the moment she wanted to be on the safe side, so she went upstairs and looked down at the doorstep from the spare bedroom window.

There he was. Her former boss, sometime lover, and good friend. The man she’d come close to falling for more than once but never quite managing it. They hadn’t seen each other for close to eighteen months now, after their one proper attempt at a relationship had fallen apart before it had even got going, courtesy mainly of Tina herself. Commitment issues, her therapist Debbie called it, but unfortunately Debbie had yet to come up with a cure.

Although she didn’t like admitting it to herself, Tina missed Mike, and she was disappointed to see that he’d come with his colleague Mo Khan rather than alone. She went downstairs and let them in. There were formal handshakes all round. Mike managed a smile but there wasn’t the usual gleam in his bright blue eyes.

She led them through to the lounge and asked if they’d like a drink but they both declined.

‘Sorry about how late we are,’ said Mike. ‘But you know how it is.’

She smiled. ‘No problem. I didn’t have plans.’ She sat down on her sofa and they both moved the armchairs so they were sitting opposite her. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I smoke. I’ve just finished dinner and that’s always the cigarette I like the most.’

Mike smiled again. ‘It’s your house, you do what you want. OK with you, Mo?’

Mo made an ‘I don’t care’ gesture as he sank into the chair, and Tina noticed that he’d put on even more weight since she’d last seen him several years earlier. He’d never been the skinniest of cops but another couple of pounds and they’d have to help him out of the chair.

‘We’ve just come from the Sunny View Hotel,’ said Mike formally, ‘where a man was murdered earlier today in the room you rented in the name of Mr Matthew Barron.’

‘Well, Matthew Barron, whose real name as I told you is Sean Egan, rented it. I just paid.’

‘I want you to go through everything that’s happened since Sean Egan – who’s now our chief suspect in the murder – came to see you,’ he continued, ignoring her interruption.

For the next ten minutes Tina went through the story in detail, avoiding any mention of her own missing persons case, since she still wasn’t a hundred per cent sure it was relevant yet.

‘It’s a pretty outlandish story,’ said Mo when she’d finished recounting what Sean had told her about why he was being chased by people he didn’t know for a reason he’d yet to remember.

‘I know,’ said Tina with a sigh, ‘and I’m still not entirely sure it adds up. He said the house where he was staying in Wales had been burned down by the couple who went there to kill him.’

‘So why didn’t you report the matter to the police immediately?’

‘Because all I had was his story, which sounded even more outlandish when he first told it. I Googled articles about houses burning down near Pembroke, which was where he said it was, and one did burn down on Monday night as he claimed. But there was no mention of there being bodies inside. I asked Sean to hand himself in. I sent him to the hospital because he had amnesia, and that’s where the two men who identified themselves as police officers – the two who, according to Sean, were in the hotel room today – abducted him.’

Mike frowned. ‘And they wanted to know the location of some bodies?’

‘That’s what Sean said.’

‘And he gave you no clue as to who those bodies might be?’

Tina could hear the scepticism in his voice. ‘No,’ she said, deciding to keep back the details of Sean’s recurring dream. ‘He claims he has no idea, although I’ve only got his word for that.’

‘Mo, can you check if the local police found any bodies in that burned-out house?’

With an effort, Mo pulled himself out of his seat and went out into the hallway to make the call.

For a couple of seconds Tina and Mike just looked at each other. He was a good-looking guy, she thought. Big, broad-shouldered, with amazing eyes, and an air of kindness about him that had always attracted her. Yet somehow she’d managed to mess their relationship up.

‘How are you getting on with the case?’ she asked, breaking the silence.

Mike gave her a laconic smile and Tina realized the bond between them was still there. ‘I’ll level with you because you’re levelling with us. Not very well. We can’t ID the dead man at the moment because he wasn’t carrying any, and the surviving witness, whose name’s Carl Hughie, isn’t cooperating. It looks like Hughie’s involved with MI5 and he’s got some very powerful friends because we’re having real difficulty even getting to interview him. I’ve already had a call from my boss at Homicide Command telling me he’s coming under pressure from on high to go easy on this guy. Apparently, whatever Hughie’s involved in is a matter of national security. We’ve tested his hands and the gloves that we found on him for gunshot residue but so far nothing’s shown up.’

‘It won’t,’ said Tina. ‘Sean admitted shooting Hughie’s colleague. He said it was self-defence.’

‘That’s a lot of self-defence,’ said Mo as he came back in the room and sat down. ‘The victim was shot four times, including once in the head at point-blank range.’

Tina’s expression didn’t change, but the news concerned her. More and more she was beginning to realize how unpredictable Sean was.

‘You also need to know that he fled the scene wielding the gun and threatening staff and guests,’ continued Mo, ‘before hijacking a car at gunpoint. They don’t sound like the actions of an innocent man. We all know your history with him, and the fact that he saved your life, but if you hear anything from him, you’ve got to tell us.’

‘I will,’ said Tina, but she wasn’t certain she would. She didn’t like the fact that Mike’s inquiry was being interfered with from on high before it had even properly begun. She thought of Dylan Mackay and the beating she’d given him that morning. It had been wrong. It had been illegal. It could even have been construed as torture. Yet it had got her at least some of the answers she was looking for – answers that Mike and Mo would never have got.

Mo’s phone rang. ‘That was Grier,’ he said when he’d finished the call. ‘There were two as yet unidentified bodies, a man and a woman, found in a burned-out house in rural Pembrokeshire on Monday night. They haven’t yet got a definitive cause of death but initial findings suggest they both died violently.’

‘I can help you ID the bodies,’ said Tina. ‘Sean gave me these.’ She handed Mike the two driving licences Sean had taken from the house.

Mike inspected them carefully, before handing them to Mo. ‘Where did he get these?’

‘He took them from their wallets.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Mo. ‘We’ve got two dead bodies, and Sean Egan rifles through their possessions then tells a story about two mysterious hitmen killing them who no one else saw. It doesn’t look good for him, does it?’

It was a fair point. ‘I know,’ said Tina. ‘Which is why I’m talking to you now. Believe it or not, I got caught up in this completely by accident.’

‘As usual,’ said Mo.

Tina opened her mouth, then thought better of it. There was no point getting into an argument.

Mike gave Mo a look to say ‘go easy’ before turning back to her. ‘OK, let me make things crystal clear for you, Tina. This is no longer anything to do with you, so you need to keep out of it, let us do our job, and we’ll do our best to keep your link to an on-the-run murder suspect out of the papers. Deal?’

Tina nodded. ‘Deal.’

But, as she let them out the door, she knew immediately that it was a promise she couldn’t keep.

Thirty-three

Dylan Mackay wasn’t good with stress. For a start, he wasn’t used to it. Life had dealt him some pretty good cards. Rich parents who’d always given him what he wanted; a top-drawer education at one of London’s premier public schools; enough superficial charm to get other people to give him what he wanted; and the kind of foppish bad-boy looks that women always seemed to go for. He could have been a millionaire by now if he’d applied himself. The problem was he never had. He’d scraped into Leicester Uni even though Ma and Pa had had their hearts set on Oxford, having already developed a taste for good drugs and high living. He’d dropped out after two years, done a gap year that had turned into three, spent a hell of a lot of money that wasn’t his, and ended up as a DJ scraping a living at friends’ parties. Because that was the thing about Dylan. He was never short of friends.

But friends don’t pay the bills – not ones the size Dylan had run up anyway – and when the old man had cut him off a couple of years earlier after he’d turned up to a cousin’s wedding off his head on a murderous combination of high-grade chang, champagne and MDMA and exposed himself to the bridesmaids at the reception (two of whom were under the age of twelve), he’d been forced to look for alternative forms of income. The problem was, when you started doing illegal stuff – and Dylan had been doing a lot of illegal stuff these past two years – you ended up dealing with some pretty dodgy people, which was how he’d got himself in the situation he was now in.

He should never have said a word to Tina Boyd. The moment he’d started talking he’d regretted it. He’d wanted to fight back – Christ, he had. Dylan was no coward, as more than one guy had found out to his cost, but she’d caught him by surprise, and when she’d held that broken glass to his face and threatened to cut him – and he knew she would have done it too – he’d had no choice but to cooperate. Even so, he hadn’t given up the name she’d needed, and he was at least proud of that. Still, now that she’d taken his phone it was only a matter of time before she found out the name of the man he was protecting, and if that happened, then, put bluntly, he was finished.

He knew who’d put her on to him as well. It was that little slut Sheryl Warner. She’d been big buddies with Jen and Lauren, and he remembered the way she’d kept asking him loads of inconvenient questions when they disappeared off the scene so suddenly. She was lucky she wasn’t made to disappear herself – thankfully, she’d shut up after a while, and things had settled down.

Until now.

He was looking forward to paying Sheryl back for her big mouth. He knew she fancied him, so he’d pop round her place one evening, all smiles, and when she let him in, he’d kick the shit out of her. The thought excited him, but his revenge was going to have to wait because at the moment Dylan had bigger fish to fry. He’d been instructed to call a certain number if anyone started asking too many questions about Jen and Lauren, and had been told in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if he didn’t. What had stopped him from calling the number so far was fear. If the man he was meant to call knew that he’d cooperated with Tina and admitted his own role in pimping out Jen and Lauren, then Dylan was in real trouble. Which was why he’d spent the last twelve hours or so in a state of abject terror.

It was a no-win situation. Say something and risk being viewed as a liability, or keep quiet and definitely be seen as one. What sort of choice was that?

Dylan stood looking out of his bedroom window at the street below, his thirtieth cigarette of the day in one hand, mobile in the other, knowing that one way or another he was going to have to make the call. He wanted to throw up – the tension coursing through him was that bad. He could die for this, and it was all that bitch Sheryl’s fault. God, he wished he could get his hands round her neck right now and throttle the life out of her. The same with Boyd. At least this call might mean the end for her. She really didn’t know the people she was messing with here. For a couple of seconds an intense, hot rage overtook Dylan Mackay as he recalled the beating he’d received from her, and he pressed the speed dial button on the phone.

Holding it to his ear, he waited, almost unable to breathe, praying the call wouldn’t be picked up at the other end.

And then a familiar voice came on the line: ‘Long time no hear. What is it?’

Dylan swallowed. ‘Someone’s been asking questions.’