The Final Minute (12 page)

I’d found an empty chair at the end of a row, next to an old man who smelled of compost and opposite a harassed-looking mum, who was trying with only limited success to prevent her two-year-old son from making a beeline for the exit. Somehow, I couldn’t blame him.

While I sat there waiting, I leafed through the pile of information on my background that Tina had given me. It didn’t take long to find revelations that came as a real shock. The first thing I found out was that I had indeed had a brother. The second thing was that he’d died twenty years earlier. His name was John and he’d been a veteran of the first Gulf War. At the age of twenty-one, during the height of the fighting to oust Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait, the armoured personnel carrier he’d been travelling in had been hit by friendly fire from an American A10 fighter plane, and John had ended up with extensive burns to his face and body. He’d survived the attack but had been invalided out of the army and, according to the report I read, was unemployed and suffering from PTSD when he died four years later.

I tried to remember all this. There was a vague familiarity to the words I was reading, but once again there was nothing definite I could cling to. They had a black and white face-shot of John as a young man, and I stared at it for a long time. In the photo he was wearing a small, almost nervous smile, as if he was trying to find the right pose. He didn’t look that much like me. His hair had been cut short, military-style, and he had a round, boyish face with dimples and rosy cheeks. I thought he looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure whether this was an actual memory or just my mind playing tricks on me.

There was another photo of him, this time lying in a hospital bed with his face obscured by bandages. The sight made me feel sick. My brother, young and fresh-faced in the first photo, burned beyond recognition. I didn’t want to see any pictures showing the injuries, and thankfully there weren’t any. I didn’t want to read about his death either, but I had to know what had happened to him, and to the rest of my family.

John’s death had been both dramatic and tragic. According to the newspaper article Tina had supplied me with, he’d just finished his morning shift in the charity bookshop where he did voluntary work and was en route to buy a sandwich for lunch when he walked straight into an armed robbery. Two masked gunmen were holding up a cash delivery van outside a branch of NatWest while their getaway driver sat in a car nearby, revving his engine. Rather than keep a safe distance, John, it seemed, had gone steaming in, chasing the gunmen as they ran for the car. He’d rugby-tackled one of them but the robber John had targeted was a big guy and had managed to throw him off. At this point the second gunman had come over, shotgun raised, and even though John had been down on his knees, with his hands raised in surrender, the gunman had shot him once in the head from point-blank range, killing him instantly.

My brother.

It was hard to read the article. It was even harder when I saw the words that, according to eyewitnesses, the gunman had said to John just before he shot him.

‘Oi, freak!’

A simple, harsh statement epitomizing how little the gunman had thought of him. A man who’d suffered terrible injuries in the service of his country, and who’d just been trying to do the right thing, only to be shot down like a dog by a piece of dirt who couldn’t resist mocking him before he pulled the trigger.

It made me sick. It made me angry.

More importantly, it made me remember.

Oi, freak!
Those words came vomiting out of the dark, inaccessible recesses of my mind, and suddenly I was transported back to a dark crematorium where a grim-looking bald-headed priest was delivering a eulogy on all the positive things John had achieved in his short life, all the good he’d done. I was standing in the front row, and I could feel the tears stinging my eyes. They weren’t tears of sadness either. They were tears of frustration. As I stood there staring at the priest, not listening to his pointless words, I was full of rage at the injustice of what had happened to my brother. And then I saw with perfect clarity my mother and father, standing next to me, holding hands, my mother in a black dress and coat, my father in a loose-fitting suit and cheap black tie that looked older than he was.

I knew it was my parents. They were the same as the people in the photo in my bedroom at Jane’s place, which made me wonder where Jane had got it from. I was certain too, without looking at any of the other articles on my lap, that they were both now dead. But, though the thought should have filled me with grief, it didn’t. Instead I felt a weird sense of elation. Slowly, inch by brutal inch, my memory was coming back.

‘Jordan, no!’

Awoken from my reverie, I looked up to see the hyperactive two-year-old boy grabbing at the papers on my lap. His mum got up, wrapped him in a bear hug and dragged him back to her seat. The kid struggled, but in vain.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said from behind his flailing body. ‘He’s a bit bored.’

I smiled. ‘No problem. I think we all are.’

‘He can be a bit of a handful, but he’s a good lad really,’ she continued, but I was no longer listening.

My attention was focused on two men in suits and raincoats who’d just come in through the main doors. One was tall and wiry with a pile of thin, unruly grey hair whose sole purpose seemed to be to try to cover his otherwise bald pate, and just looked like a rather windswept combover. I put him at around fifty but he could have been a few years older. The other was a couple of inches shorter but a lot broader. He had thick black hair and an even thicker full-face black beard, making it difficult to know what was going on behind there, but he had sharp eyes that quickly scanned the room, stopping on me for just one second too long before continuing on their way. He was about forty, and looked like the kind of guy you didn’t want to get in an argument with.

Straight away I knew they were police officers. They just had that air of authority about them. I also knew they were here to see me, even though neither was now looking my way. I wondered if Tina had reported my story to her former colleagues, but quickly dismissed the idea. She wasn’t that kind of woman. She wouldn’t go behind my back.

Then I wondered if I was being paranoid, but when I looked up again I saw the two guys talking to two uniformed security guards.

Acting as casually as possible, I put all the A4 papers on the chair next to me, covered them with a newspaper, and started to get to my feet.

The four of them had split up now and were walking purposefully down either side of the row of chairs, coming at me in a pincer movement.

For a second I thought about making a run for it, but there was only one set of double doors into the room and the four of them had them well covered.

‘Mr Barron?’ said Combover as they surrounded me. His voice sounded vaguely familiar – as did so much in my life recently. ‘My name’s DI Carl Jones, and this is DC Brian Smith.’ Combover produced a warrant card which he flipped open just long enough for me to see a photo of him alongside the Metropolitan Police insignia, before he made it disappear like some cheap magician. ‘We need to speak to you down at the station.’ He leaned forward and took my arm – not roughly, but not exactly gently either. ‘Please come quietly because we don’t want to make a scene.’

‘Can I ask what this is about?’ I said as they moved in closer.

‘We’d rather not discuss it in here. Now, if you just put your hands behind your back for us, we’re going to handcuff you for your own safety.’

His tone was calm and reasonable, as if he was talking to a misbehaving kid, but I wasn’t fooled. Something was wrong here, I could tell. The problem was, what did I do about it? It was four against one and, although the two security guards didn’t look like they’d pose much threat, I could tell the bearded cop would be a real issue. His hands were touching the lapels of his suit jacket ready for any sudden move, and he was staring at me intently.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I don’t need handcuffs. I’m happy to come along quietly.’

‘It’s for your own safety, sir,’ continued Combover, a pair of handcuffs suddenly materializing in his hand.

‘Am I under arrest?’ I asked, thinking there was no way I was going to allow them to cuff me voluntarily.

‘We will arrest you if we have to.’

‘On what charge?’

‘Murder,’ he said, loud enough for several of the people in the waiting area to hear. I heard Jordan’s mum gasp from behind the wall of bodies surrounding me. The security guards visibly stiffened, and the tension in the room was suddenly ratcheted up a couple of notches.

‘Look,’ I told them, ‘there must be some mistake. I haven’t killed anyone.’

As I said this, I gave Combover a hard shove and swung round fast, trying to make a break for it.

But I’d missed my chance. Blackbeard had clearly been expecting exactly that kind of move from me, and he grabbed me in a bear hug, driving me forward into the chairs. His weight, plus the weight of the two fat security guards, meant I didn’t have a chance. I sank to my knees before being pushed face first on to the hard floor so I was lying on my front. I struggled, terrified of where these guys were going to take me, but it was no use. I was helpless. I felt my wrists being forced together and the cuffs roughly applied.

‘These men aren’t police!’ I blurted out, but I could hardly breathe under all that weight and my words were barely audible.

‘Come on, Mr Barron, this isn’t helping,’ said Combover, crouching down next to me. ‘All we want to do is talk to you.’

I tried to look up at him, but in the position I was being held in I could only see his shoe. He continued to talk to me, and I stopped struggling, but the next second I felt my shirt being lifted ever so slightly from behind – presumably by Blackbeard – followed by a sharp prick.

I started struggling again, trying to speak, but this time no words came out and I suddenly felt dizzy and weak, as if all my energy was leaking out of me.

‘I think we can take it from here, gents,’ said Combover as he and Blackbeard lifted me to my feet.

I could hardly stand now and the two of them had to hold me upright. I also noticed that Combover picked up the bundle of papers Tina had given me.

‘Is he all right?’ asked one of the security guards.

‘He’s just play-acting,’ answered Blackbeard, speaking for the first time, his voice gruff. ‘He’s renowned for doing this. Can you get us a wheelchair for him?’

The guard pushed past, giving me an uncertain look as he did so. I tried to catch his eye, because if these guys were police officers, they were definitely the dodgy kind. No cop injects a prisoner with a debilitating drug while trying to restrain him. But the guard had already looked away, and now all my efforts were concentrated on trying to stay awake and on my feet.

A few seconds later, the guard came back with a wheelchair and the two detectives bundled me into it. Combover continued talking to the two guards, and as I sat there in the seat, unable to move, I saw all the waiting people staring at me as if I was some kind of circus exhibit. But as I met their gazes they seemed to melt into one another until they became a single watery blur, and my eyes seemed to close involuntarily.

I felt myself being wheeled through the A and E double doors and out into the fresh air, and then Combover leaned down so his mouth was right by my ear. ‘Who gave you all this stuff, Sean?’ he hissed, hitting me on the side of the head with the bundle of papers.

So he knew my real name. I wasn’t surprised. Everyone I was meeting at the moment seemed to know a lot more about me than I did. I didn’t answer his question. I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. The power of speech had now well and truly left me.

‘You’d better not have done anything stupid,’ he whispered. ‘Because I’m telling you, you’re just as much use to us dead as you are alive.’

And on that cheery note, I fell asleep.

Fifteen

Pen de Souza despised men. They’d mistreated her from the very beginning. Her father had started it. A frustrated alcoholic who thought the world owed him a living, he blamed everyone else for the fact that he was a nobody and had taken his anger out on the two people closest to him – Pen and her mother. Pen’s childhood had been a sickening blur of beatings and mental and sexual abuse. Her mom had tried to escape from him many times, but it never worked. She always went back, trailing Pen on her arm, taken in by his repeated empty promises that this time things would be different.

He’d first raped Pen when she was ten years old. She hadn’t been Pen then. Her name had been … No, she wouldn’t even repeat the name of the person she used to be. That person was gone. He said that if she told her mom what he’d done, he’d kill both of them. It was to be their little secret, and if she did what she was told, he’d treat her like a princess. He didn’t treat her like a princess. He raped her again, even though she begged him not to. Pen couldn’t remember how many times it had happened after that. She didn’t like to dwell on it. She didn’t like to dwell on any part of her childhood, except for the day when, aged fifteen, she finally fought back.

It was a hot, dry afternoon. Her mom was out and the bastard was drunk, and Pen knew what was coming before it happened. She could feel and smell the tension in the air, and he was watching her in that sneaky way of his.

When he came at her, his movements lumbering and awkward, a lopsided smile on his face, she’d acted instinctively, grabbing an empty Coors bottle from the sideboard. She remembered perfectly the look of surprise on his face and the way the smile faded as he saw her expression. She’d struck him hard round the side of the head. The bottle didn’t break but it was a good hit and, as he fell to his knees, one hand pawing at the blood that was already soaking his hair, she’d danced out of his line of sight and brought the bottle down with everything she had on the top of his skull. It shattered then, leaving a broken, jagged neck in her hand, and suddenly she was filled with a sense of power she’d never experienced before. She’d smiled then, and when the bastard had looked up and seen that smile, his eyes had widened in fear. ‘Please don’t, Princess,’ he’d pleaded drunkenly, his eyes half closed as the blood poured from the deep cut on his head. But there’d been no mercy in Pen that day, or on any other day since. Mercy was for the weak. And she would never be weak again.