The Final Minute Read online

  But I did look.

  And saw the big man in the shadows of the burning house, maybe fifteen yards away. In his black clothes he was almost invisible in the darkness and smoke, but it was definitely him. And he was definitely pointing a gun at me, his arm perfectly steady. I couldn’t see Pen anywhere, but knew she wouldn’t be far away.

  ‘Stay where you are and drop the gun,’ he called out, because he knew I’d seen him and I assumed he needed to get closer to get a better shot at me. This was the first time he’d spoken and, like Pen, he had an American accent.

  For a second I didn’t move. Then, as he took a step forward and called out the words ‘He’s here’ over his shoulder, I leapt into the welcome darkness of the garage, swinging the gun up behind me and giving the trigger a hard squeeze. The gun kicked as I fired three times in his general direction, hoping to put him off balance, before fumbling for the car key. I knew Jane pressed a button to turn off the central locking but it was hard to tell which one it was in the darkness and I could hear rapid footsteps on the gravel.

  I ducked down behind the car as a shot whistled past before ricocheting off the back wall. I pressed one button on the key, then another, and the lights on the BMW flashed. A second shot flew through the garage, dangerously close to my head, so using the car as cover I fired off another shot towards my attacker, forcing him to jump to one side, temporarily out of sight.

  I threw myself inside the car. The driver’s seat was way too far forward and my knees were virtually hitting my chest, but that was the least of my worries. I turned on the engine, yanked the car into drive, thanking God that at least part of my memory was working, then accelerated out of the garage, grabbing the gun with my free hand and keeping my head down, tensing for the inevitable ambush.

  It came almost immediately. As I shoved my foot flat on the floor and the tyres ripped up gravel, I saw the guy loom to my left, gun outstretched, already firing. Glass broke, and I actually felt the heat from the bullet as it passed just in front of my face. More bullets hissed through the car’s interior, their sound partially muffled by the silencer on his gun, but I had no time to be scared. Instead, I opened up with my own gun, the noise of its retorts tearing through my ears. He was barely ten feet away from me and he was a big target, so even in a moving car it was hard for me to miss.

  And I didn’t. I wasn’t sure how many times I hit him, but I saw him fall, and then I was turning away and concentrating on where I was driving.

  That was when I saw Pen running out towards me from the side of the house. Her face was a mask of pure rage, and she was holding something in both hands. I just had time to process that it was a stone statue and then she was hurling it at the windscreen with a force I really wasn’t expecting. I swung the wheel away from her reflexively but the statue still hit the windscreen on the passenger side, smashing a fist-sized hole in the glass before bouncing off across the bonnet.

  The car skidded off the driveway and on to the lawn, and I swung it round as I came to the front of the house, giving Pen as wide a berth as possible, before accelerating towards the trees and the mainland. The car my assailants had come here in was directly in front of me, blocking the exit, so I drove through a flowerbed to avoid it, then slowed up, lowered my driver’s-side window, leaned out with the gun and put a bullet in their front tyre, grinning as it deflated with a fart-like hiss. I inched forward and pulled the trigger again, aiming at the rear tyre this time. But nothing happened. I was out of bullets. No matter. I’d slowed them down enough to put some miles between us. The gun was no use to me now so I wiped the handle with my shirt, remembering what the criminals did in all the cop shows I watched (or maybe from experience, I still wasn’t quite sure), and dropped it out of the window.

  In my rear-view mirror, I could see Pen running round the front of the house, holding a gun herself this time, and moving at a good pace. I slammed my foot on the accelerator as she pulled the trigger, tearing up some more of the flowerbed before coming back on to the drive, and within seconds I’d put thirty, then forty yards between us, and then the woods opened up to greet me and I knew that, at least for now, I was safe.

  There was something else too.

  I felt good.

  Six

  Pen de Souza screamed a curse into the clear night sky as she watched the car, and their target, disappear into woodland at the end of the driveway.

  There was no point trying to follow him. She’d seen him put the bullet in the tyre. She cursed again, knowing she should have put a bullet in his kneecap the moment he’d first walked in the door. After all, they’d only needed him to answer one question: ‘Where are the bodies?’

  Neither she nor her partner, Tank, had any idea of the identity of the bodies in question, nor did they want to know. In their line of business, knowing too much made you dangerous to the client. They had been tasked to get exact coordinates of the bodies’ location, make a mental note of them (not write anything down), and when it was established that the target was telling the truth, kill him.

  And they’d failed on all counts. Pen felt the bitter taste of it in her mouth. She wasn’t used to failure. In the five years she and Tank had worked together, no target had ever escaped them. The combination of planning and guile they used had ensured that. With her pretty, girl-next-door looks and ready smile, Pen could disarm the most suspicious of people – men and women – while Tank provided the brute force to back her up. Yet tonight it hadn’t worked, and Pen had been humiliated when the target had caught her off-guard – her! And in a choke-hold of all things! Thankfully, he’d been foolish enough to leave her alive and unsecured, which would end up being a mistake on his part. Far worse, though, was what he’d done to Tank. Her man.

  She turned and ran back past the burning house to where Tank was sitting up on the grass, rubbing his chest. ‘Are you OK, babe?’ she asked, crouching down beside him and putting a hand on his shoulder, thanking Lady Luck with all her heart that he’d been wearing a flak jacket. She didn’t know how she would ever cope if she lost him.

  Tank nodded slowly, giving her a tight smile. ‘Yeah, I’m all right. He got me twice in the chest – good shots too, especially for a guy moving. I’m lucky the jacket held from that range. I’m guessing you didn’t get him.’

  She shook her head. ‘He got away. And he put a bullet in one of our tyres.’

  Tank grunted. ‘The guy’s no idiot. He didn’t panic, he knows some good moves, and he can shoot straight under pressure. I didn’t think he’d be that good.’

  ‘Right now, I’m just glad you’re all right.’ Pen put her arms round him and hugged him close.

  ‘I’m always all right, baby, you know that.’

  He kissed her hard on the mouth and she kissed him back, her breathing quickening, because he always did that to her. She was thankful that he didn’t blame her for the plan they’d used. It had been her idea to lure the target into the room with the two people they’d already killed, because she preferred to interrogate subjects when they were terrified but otherwise uninjured: it tended to be easier to get a proper answer out of them that way. Tank hadn’t been so keen, but he’d gone along with it, which was one of the many things she loved about him: he took responsibility for his actions, which was not a trait she’d found in many men over the years. Except this time the plan had backfired, and Pen swore to herself that she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  Reluctantly, she broke away from the kiss and they both got to their feet, walking hand in hand back to the stolen Shogun they’d arrived in.

  ‘We’re not going to get him now, are we?’ said Tank, pulling the spare wheel from the boot, along with a box containing the equipment to change it with.

  ‘Oh, we’ll get him,’ said Pen coldly.

  She looked back over her shoulder towards the house. Flames were sprouting from the windows now, and the fire was lighting up the night sky. It was a beautiful sight but one that, even out here in the middle of nowhere, was going to a
ttract the attention of the authorities soon enough.

  Pen took out the wheel brace and gave Tank a big smile. ‘And when we do, I’m going to tear him apart limb from limb for what he did to you.’

  Seven

  There was no way I could drive too far in a car riddled with bullet holes. The windscreen was still just about holding, but a spider’s web of cracks had spread out from the hole where the statue had hit, and I had a feeling it wasn’t going to last much longer. Also, I really didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I’d just shot a man, and left behind a burning house with two corpses inside. So I needed to come up with some kind of plan.

  I was back on the mainland now, driving through a mix of fields and patchy woodland. The land here was still very rural, with only the occasional house popping up on either side of the road. I’d been down this way a handful of times when I’d gone clothes shopping with Jane in Pembroke, the nearest major town to the house, and knew there was a village somewhere along this road. A couple of minutes later it appeared on my left-hand side, a sprinkling of brick-built houses – some rendered grey, some white – nestled in the faint copper glow of streetlamps. Civilization. It filled me with a relief I really shouldn’t have been feeling. I was lost and alone. I had no past, and as a direct result, I had no future. I could hand myself into the authorities, but what would that mean? Life in an institution. Or maybe even life in prison if they didn’t believe my story of what had happened back at the house. I couldn’t tolerate that. I had to find out who I was.

  But first things first. There was a pub across the road from the village, its sign lit up and swinging gently in the sea breeze. I turned in and drove round the back, parking the car in a dark corner under a large tree.

  I sat back in the seat and closed my eyes, breathing slowly and steadily, allowing myself to calm down. My head still ached dully from where I’d been hit, but I hadn’t sustained any real damage. My hands had stopped shaking too, which surprised me. I’d almost died only a matter of minutes ago, and at least one of the people trying to kill me was still out there, but the shock I should have been experiencing simply wasn’t kicking in.

  I thought back to the dreams I’d had when I was asleep on that exposed ledge. Visions of terrible violence; of staring into the eyes of men I was trying to kill, and who were trying to kill me, our faces so close we breathed in each other’s sweat; of being held down in a cold, dark room while different men stood above me, with cleavers and axes, and mad, terrifying expressions, like monsters in a child’s nightmare. And that big, strange house from earlier dreams, with its marble floors and abstract artwork on the walls, and its corpses and dying women littering the rooms and hallway …

  I could conjure up every one of those images, and the thing was, they felt real. As if they’d definitely happened. Scattered pieces of a nightmarish puzzle that seemed to be my past life. Yet I was supposed to have been a police officer. Police officers didn’t get involved in the things I was dreaming about. No one did.

  I sat in the car another ten minutes. During that time I heard two separate sets of sirens coming past on the road, heading in the direction of the peninsula, and when I looked out of the car window I thought I could see a faint orange glow on the horizon. It was then I realized that I needed a drink. I still had Tom’s wallet with his money, and by now Pen and her buddy would have made themselves scarce. It might not have been the best use of the cash I had, but after what I’d been through that day, I figured I deserved a cold beer.

  The moment I walked in the door, I knew that in my past life I’d been a pub man. The bitter smell of the hops, the steady buzz of conversation, the clink of glasses on wood, the booze-fuelled laughter. It all felt so familiar. I’d done up my jacket and tried to tidy myself up, but I still looked far too much like a man who’d got himself into trouble recently, although I doubted whether too many of the drinkers would guess that I’d almost been killed at least twice tonight.

  It had just turned 9.30 and the pub was busy. The punters were mainly male and of all ages, ranging from the barely legal to the barely alive, with a sprinkling of wives and girlfriends mixed in. Most of them looked my way as I walked over to the bar, and some blatantly stared. I ignored all of them and ordered a pint of Foster’s because, just like I knew how to handle a car, I instinctively knew that this was my drink of choice in a pub.

  The barman was red-faced with a near-white handlebar moustache that made him look like a walrus. He inspected me like I was some kind of alien life form masquerading as a human being. ‘English,’ he said dismissively, and I wasn’t sure whether he meant it as an insult or a question.

  I took it as a question. ‘Yeah,’ I said, looking him in the eye. ‘I guess I am.’

  He turned away without another word and poured the pint, and I paid him with cash from Tom’s wallet before moving to the end of the bar as far out of the way as possible and taking a long gulp of the beer. It tasted good. I’d drunk beer back in the house a couple of times (although Jane had always discouraged it, claiming it wouldn’t be good for my recovery), but it tasted a lot better out of a tap. Or maybe it was simply the sense of freedom I was tasting.

  There was a folded, crumpled newspaper on the corner of the bar. It didn’t look like it belonged to anyone so I picked it up and leafed through it. Jane never kept papers in the house. She always referred to them as media propaganda, so I tended to get what news I got from the TV – not that I’d been paying much attention of late. The pages were filled with stories of disaster, murder, cheap politics and the drunken antics of young, strangely artificial-looking celebrities I didn’t recognize. It was only when I got to the features section towards the back that I came across something that caught my eye. It was an interview with a woman called Tina Boyd. There was a photo of her sitting behind a neat desk looking at the camera. She was what you’d describe as striking – late thirties, dark hair cut just above the shoulders, good-looking, with nicely defined cheekbones. If it hadn’t been for her eyes, I’d have had her down as an actress or businesswoman, but there was a hardened glint in them that gave her away as someone who’d seen too much.

  Having been drawn to her photo, I read the article. She talked about her career as a detective in various branches of the Met, during which time she’d been kidnapped, shot twice, come under suspicion for murder, and earned herself the nickname the Black Widow because her colleagues seemed to have a habit of dying around her. Luckily for them it seemed she’d left the force for good now and was working as a licensed private detective in London. She spoke briefly about the case she was currently working on, the hunt for a twenty-eight-year-old woman who’d been missing for almost six months, and appealed for help in finding her. At the bottom of the article was a small photo of the missing woman’s face. She was blandly pretty, with perfect features that seemed to have been taken from an artist’s mould, but a mould that had clearly been used plenty of times before, because she looked exactly the same as all the small-time female celebs who peppered the rest of the paper. But there was also something familiar about her.

  I squinted in the dim light of the bar, bringing the paper closer to my face. I stared at the photo for a good five seconds, wondering if I was mistaken or not.

  But I wasn’t.

  I took a deep breath and steadied myself, finding it difficult to believe what I was seeing. Because the woman in the photo was one of the two women in my recurring dream, the one lying naked and dead on the bed. Which simply confirmed for me something I already suspected. That it wasn’t a dream.

  It was a memory.

  There were details about Tina Boyd’s website at the bottom of the article which I ripped from the page, shoving the piece of paper in my pocket. Now at least I had a plan of action. I needed to find Tina Boyd and speak to her. If she was as good a detective as the article suggested, maybe she could help to unlock my memories.

  But, as I stood there, oblivious to the noise of the conversations around me, I wondered if this was
really such a good move because I was becoming increasingly worried about what I might find out. I remembered Pen’s question back at the house as she’d pointed the gun at me: ‘Where are the bodies?’ Did I really want to know? And was it me who’d killed them?

  ‘Fancy buying me a drink?’ said a voice beside me. It was husky and female, with the hint of a slur, and accompanied by a heady smell of perfume.

  I turned to see a larger lady with thick, lustrous curls of black hair, a bust that was pushing the tight top she was wearing to the absolute limits, and way too much make-up.

  ‘I haven’t seen you round here before,’ she continued, leaning just a little too hard on the bar. ‘What’s your name?’

  Good question. I didn’t even know that for sure. ‘Matt.’

  ‘I’m Lucy. I live across the road.’ She seemed to notice the mark on my face where I’d been hit by the big guy and ran a finger gently along it in a pretty suggestive manner. As she leaned in closer, I could smell the booze on her breath, and something else not quite so pleasant. ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘I hit it on a door earlier,’ I said, leaning back.

  A part of me was tempted to keep talking to her. I liked the idea of some female company, and wasn’t really too bothered where it came from, but I could see a group of three guys in their twenties staring over at me with less than friendly looks on their faces. Another siren blared outside as the vehicle it belonged to came past, and the pub was temporarily illuminated by a flashing blue light. It was time to put some more distance between me and the burning house.