The Final Minute Read online

  I rang the buzzer at the front of the building, feeling strangely nervous, and waited for Tina to come to the door. She gave me an appraising look through the glass that didn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence, before opening up. The photo in the paper hadn’t lied: she was an attractive woman of about my age, not as tall as I’d been expecting, but there was the shoulder-length dark hair and the pretty, angular face that reminded me of an actress I’d seen on TV recently but couldn’t put a name to. It was her eyes that really caught my attention, though. They were hard and dark, the expression in them coolly inquisitive, but there was something else there too, a vulnerability she couldn’t quite hide, even though it was clear she was trying hard.

  I fancied her immediately.

  Then she frowned and said something that really shocked me. ‘Sean? What on earth are you doing here?’

  For a couple of seconds, I couldn’t speak. I stared at her. She stared at me.

  ‘My name’s Matt – Matthew – Barron,’ I said uncertainly. ‘At least that’s what I’ve been told. I was in a car accident. It left me in a coma for three months.’ I lifted up my fringe to reveal the scar. ‘And now I can’t remember a thing about my life before.’ I felt a sudden twinge of hope, because at least Tina had recognized me. ‘I need you to help me piece together what’s happened to me.’

  She tried hard not to look at me as if I was insane but didn’t quite manage it. ‘I’m not sure I’m the right person to help you. You need to see a doctor.’

  ‘Look, people are trying to kill me, and I have no idea why. Let me at least tell you my story. Or what I know of it. Please.’

  Tina sighed. ‘OK, you’d better come in,’ she said, with far too much reluctance for my liking.

  She led me down a narrow hallway about five degrees colder than the air outside and into her office. It was smaller than I’d expected of someone who could get a full-page spread in a national newspaper, with a big desk covered in paperwork and folders, a couple of chairs and two filing cabinets taking up most of the available space.

  She took one of the chairs. I took the other.

  ‘You obviously know me,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me who I am? Because I honestly don’t have a clue.’

  Tina looked thoughtful. ‘Before I tell you anything, I want you to go through everything that’s happened to you, and why you think there are people trying to kill you.’

  I could tell she was sceptical of my story, and who could blame her? But I was there now and I had to lay everything on the line. So I did. Beginning with the accident, covering everything I could think of, and finishing with the events of the previous night. And even as I recounted it, I realized how outlandish the whole thing sounded. Credit to Tina, she didn’t interrupt, and she kept her expression neutral. But she didn’t take any notes either, which didn’t exactly bode well.

  ‘So, let me get this straight,’ she said after I’d finished talking. ‘You’ve been staying at the house of a woman who claimed to be your sister, but because of your amnesia you didn’t know if it was your sister or not, and then last night a man and a woman with guns turn up, the woman tells you Jane’s not your sister, kills her and the nurse, asks you a question you have no idea the answer to, and then they try to kill you as well. However, you fight back and actually manage to shoot one of your assailants during your successful escape.’ She paused, looking at me. ‘Is that a fair summary?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yes. Pretty much. Look, there must be some way of checking whether or not I’m telling the truth. They set fire to the house with the bodies inside. Maybe there’s been a news report.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She let the word hang in the air for a couple of seconds, waiting, it seemed, for me to admit that it was all a crock of shit; but when I didn’t say anything, she sighed. ‘I’ll have a look. Give me the location again.’

  ‘The nearest town’s Pembroke. The house is about ten miles away.’

  I waited while Tina typed away on her PC keyboard. ‘OK,’ she said eventually, ‘there’s a report here on a local news website saying a house was destroyed in a fire last night twelve miles north-west of Pembroke, but there’s no mention of any bodies.’

  ‘There will be, I promise.’

  ‘You said you were in a car accident. Have you got the exact date?’

  ‘It was early April. I don’t know the exact date, but it was in north Hampshire, and I was taken to Basingstoke Hospital afterwards. I was in a coma for three months. But there was no ID on me when I crashed, and they couldn’t trace the car I was driving either. It was too burned out.’

  ‘So how did you end up being Matthew Barron?’

  ‘When I woke up from my coma in the hospital, my sister was there. She told me who I was. She even had a driving licence with that name and my photo on it. Not that I ever saw that again.’

  ‘Which is strange, isn’t it? Not only that you had no ID, but this woman claiming to be your sister knew how to find you.’

  ‘Apparently she rang round all these different hospitals after I went missing. When she found me, she visited almost every day until I recovered. And then she was the one who signed me out.’ I remembered the day I’d been discharged from the hospital; how strange it had been, leaving with a woman who was a complete stranger to me, and yet one whom I’d found myself trusting implicitly. She’d been so smiley and chatty, so happy that I was recovering and coming to stay with her, and even now, after everything that had happened, it made me wonder if I was wrong about her.

  Tina was tapping away on the keyboard again. Eventually she stopped and sat back in her seat. ‘OK, I’ve found a local news article about a car accident in April on the A31. The driver was taken to hospital with serious injuries, and the car destroyed. The date was the eighth.’

  ‘That sounds about right.’

  ‘Let me have a look at that driving licence.’

  ‘I haven’t got it. I didn’t find it in the house. But I did collect these.’

  I fished out the two licences I’d liberated from Tom and Jane’s belongings, and handed them over, explaining whose they were.

  Tina carefully examined them, then put them down on her desk.

  ‘Now it’s your turn,’ I said, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. ‘You say you know who I am. Tell me. Please.’

  Tina adjusted her position in the chair so she was more upright, and looked me in the eye. ‘You’ve got a rough, round scar on your stomach, haven’t you? And another on your thigh?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I do. Jane always told me they’d come from the accident, but I was never sure – they looked too old.’

  ‘They are. They’re bullet holes.’

  I could feel the excitement building. It lasted all of about three seconds, until Tina spoke again.

  ‘Your name’s Sean Egan,’ she said, an accusing note now in her voice. ‘And you’re a rapist.’

  Ten

  Tina watched Sean Egan as he sat dead straight in his seat, a look of utter shock on his face. He didn’t seem to be faking it either. She’d genuinely pole-axed him with the news. It had been a shock to her too, seeing him turn up out of the blue after five years, claiming he didn’t even know who he was.

  ‘I … I …’ He exhaled loudly, then stopped.

  ‘You used to be an undercover police officer,’ Tina continued. ‘Our paths crossed on a job once. You even saved my life. You look a little different, but it’s definitely you.’ She shook her head. ‘Jesus, Sean. What happened to you?’

  ‘That’s what I need you to find out.’ He shook his head. ‘A rapist? Do you remember the details?’

  ‘I remember reading about it at the time. It was one of those date rape cases. You met a married woman in a bar. Her husband was away and you went back to her place – which is something that neither of you denied. It’s what happened next that was the problem. The woman claims she had second thoughts – apparently she felt guilty – and asked you to leave. Except you didn’t. She says you knocked her abo
ut and forced her to have sex, then when you were done, you left.’ There was something else that Tina didn’t add. That at the time Sean had been living with his pregnant partner. For the moment, she didn’t want to give him that information. He had enough on his plate already, and Tina had an idea that Sean’s ex probably wouldn’t be overkeen on hearing from him right now.

  He put his head back and stared silently at the ceiling.

  Tina Googled the words ‘sean egan rape police officer’, clicking on the first link. ‘It seems the jury didn’t believe your story, Sean. You were sentenced to four years. The judge called you a predatory offender who couldn’t accept being told no.’

  He looked bewildered. ‘But I wouldn’t do that. It’s not like me.’

  ‘How do you know that? You can’t remember. Look, is there anything about this that sounds familiar? You went to prison. That must have been a brutal experience for a rapist who’s also a former police officer.’

  He sighed, rubbing his face and eyes in frustration. ‘No, right now I can’t remember a thing. Are there any details of what happened after my release?’

  She added the word ‘release’ to the original batch and searched again, scanning through the results. ‘No, nothing. But that’s not surprising. No one’s interested in a story about a criminal getting out. They like it to be the other way round. You were only put away just over three years ago so, clearly, if you had your accident five months ago, you were released pretty early for a violent offender, and I can’t find any mention of an appeal anywhere.’

  ‘Was I still a police officer when I supposedly raped this woman?’

  ‘No. You resigned at the time I knew you, five years back. You’d been on an unofficial job in which a lot of people got killed, and you were very lucky to escape charges. You were known as being a pretty volatile character, Sean. There’s no question about that.’

  ‘But I saved your life?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You saved my life.’ She remembered the incident well enough. Would always remember it. His appearance might have changed, but as she stared at him now she caught a glimpse of the man he’d once been: young, good-looking, with a gleam in his eye, and something of the bad boy about him. She’d fancied him at the time, but had steered clear. Sean had been trouble then, and it was clear that, one way or another, he was trouble now.

  ‘I’m not a bad man, Tina,’ he said.

  ‘You know, Sean, I’ve met a lot of bad men who said that.’

  ‘But you knew me. Was I bad?’

  ‘I didn’t think so, no. But I wouldn’t bet my house on it.’

  He shook his head. The pain and confusion on his face still looked genuine, and Tina had to work hard to resist feeling sorry for him.

  ‘Can you tell me what I was involved in when our paths crossed?’ he asked.

  ‘It’d be easier to let you read up about it. I’ll download everything I can on your background and print it off for you to take away.’

  He made an exasperated gesture. ‘Take it where? I’ve got nowhere to go. I don’t know anyone. I’ve got no family, no friends, no money. I’m completely alone.’

  ‘You need to go to A and E, tell them you’re suffering from amnesia. Give them your name and they’ll be able to help you. I’ll make some calls and try to locate family members, but that’s all I can do for the moment.’

  ‘But, Tina, there are people who want to kill me,’ he said, looking her right in the eye. ‘I don’t know why but they do. I want to hire you to help me find out what’s going on. When they had me at gunpoint back at Jane’s house, the female killer asked me “Where are the bodies?” I have no idea what she meant but I need to find out.’

  Tina had to admit she was tempted by this. She was pretty confident that Sean was telling the truth, and whatever had happened to him was a hell of a lot more interesting than the usual kind of jobs she got involved in. But she also knew that helping him could throw up a lot of complications and problems she really didn’t need right now. ‘You need to go to the police, Sean, and tell them what you’ve told me. You said you witnessed a double murder, and potentially killed a man in self-defence. It’s your duty to report it.’

  ‘But they’re not going to believe me, are they? I had enough trouble convincing you. I’m an ex-con. If I tell them the two people who’ve been looking after me for the past two months were murdered by a pair of contract killers with no obvious motive, with no witnesses … well, I don’t think I’d have a hope in hell of convincing them it wasn’t me who was the killer.’

  ‘And if I don’t report this conversation to the police, then I put myself in a very precarious legal position,’ Tina countered.

  ‘Help me find out who I am, Tina. When I know my history, and what happened to me before the accident, I’ll happily go to the police and tell them everything. And I won’t mention you either.’

  ‘I’m already working on a case.’

  ‘I know you are. I read about it in the paper. It’s why I decided to contact you. I think the missing girl might be connected to what’s happened to me.’

  Tina frowned, sceptical again suddenly. ‘How?’

  ‘I told you I stopped taking my medication after I hit my head. Since then I’ve had the same dream twice. And it’s so real that I’m sure it happened. It involves me being in a house with a dead woman, and another very badly injured one. I don’t know who they are, or why I’m there, but I can picture both their faces perfectly, and I believe that the girl who’s dead is the one you’re looking for.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Sean. Can you hear how this is sounding?’

  ‘Of course I can. But when I was talking to the psychotherapist, Dr Bronson, about it yesterday, he was suddenly way more interested in me than he had been before. In fact he was desperate to put me under hypnosis so he could get more details. And it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the people who came to the house last night wanted to know about the location of some bodies.’

  Tina exhaled loudly. ‘If you’re lying …’

  ‘I’m not. I swear it.’

  Tina wondered what the hell she might be getting into. She thought of Alan Donaldson then, and his desperate desire to be reunited with his missing daughter, how she’d felt so sorry for him as he’d sat where Sean was sitting now. And now this stranger from her past had turned up and told her he’d seen Lauren in a dream, and that she was dead. Sean had real powers of persuasion too. She remembered that about him from the first time round. They’d hardly known each other but, unlike most men, he’d really got under her skin. He was looking at her intently now, and she knew just how dangerous someone like him could be. But his story was seductive, and it appealed to that self-destructive part of her she’d been working so hard these past years to suppress, but which never truly went away.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll help you.’

  And with those words she set herself on a path whose final destination would haunt her for a long, long time to come.

  Eleven

  The man Sean Egan knew as Dr Bronson was sitting in the gloomy living room of his cramped London flat smoking a cigarette and sipping from a large tumbler of whisky. His real name was Robert Whatret, and he’d made a mess of his life. He couldn’t blame it on one mistake either. There’d been many, and they’d all had different names.

  There’d been a time when he had a thriving private therapy practice giving him an annual income in the several hundreds of thousands; an attractive, articulate wife he could be proud of; homes in London, Berkshire and the Dordogne. He’d had it all. But in the end, it had never been enough. Robert Whatret was a sex addict. It didn’t matter that he and his wife had shared a healthy, active sex life. It didn’t matter that he’d truly loved her. If there was an available woman – fat, thin, young, old, pretty, ugly, it really didn’t matter – he’d try to get her to have sex with him. The fact that he knew his behaviour was manic and addictive, and the result of insecurity and low self-esteem originating from childhood,
didn’t help at all. In fact, it simply made his guilt and self-loathing worse. In his youth he’d had numerous affairs and one-night stands, all of which had been intensely exciting at the time but had invariably left him feeling empty afterwards. He was careful, though, and during that whole period his wife had never found out.

  The problems had really begun when he’d grown older and his looks had begun to fade. His sexual needs, however, hadn’t. In fact, they seemed to become more urgent, and more extreme, as he tried to fill the emotional void inside himself. A large part of his work was based around the process of hypnotherapy, and the majority of his patients were women, providing him with an ideal opportunity. He would send selected patients into a deep trance and then, while they were under, he’d take advantage of them. It started as fondling, but he found the thrill so intense that he quickly progressed to far more serious sexual assaults. As before, he got away with it for a long time, even though it soon became clear that certain patients suspected something was amiss. Several stopped seeing him altogether.

  In the end it was inevitable that he’d be caught, although the circumstances couldn’t have been worse. Rather than report her suspicions to the police, one of the patients – a very attractive, middle-aged blonde with severe OCD called Adele, who was clearly a lot brighter than Whatret had anticipated (he tended to target those he perceived to be more vulnerable and less intelligent) – approached Whatret’s wife and told her what she thought was going on. According to what Whatret had since pieced together, Adele didn’t want to get involved in pressing charges or testifying in court, but she did want him stopped if he was abusing his position.

  Mrs Whatret hadn’t needed much persuading that her husband was up to no good and had planted a hidden camera in his office. Unfortunately for Whatret, in a supreme piece of misfortune that wiped away all the good luck that had kept him out of trouble so far, his very first appointment after that was with one of his favourites – Estelle, a buxom fifty-five-year-old with intimacy issues dating back to an abusive stepfather who, ironically, given that she hadn’t had full sex in more than a decade, gave an incredible blowjob while under hypnosis. The hidden camera had been placed in the perfect position to capture the two of them in high definition as Estelle sat on the couch fellating him.