The Final Minute (18 page)

It gave straight into a spacious lounge that was so white it made her want to squint.

‘If it’s the neighbours complaining again about the music, then they’re bullshitting,’ he continued. ‘I haven’t had people here in weeks.’ He sat down heavily on a long white sofa that dominated the centre of the room and stared at Tina with undisguised impatience.

He was good-looking, but in a non-sexual way that was almost camp. He reminded her both in tone and appearance of one of the characters from
Made in Chelsea.
Tina preferred more rugged men, and there was no way you’d call Mackay that. He was medium height and medium build, with a boy band haircut that had been hastily pushed into shape with too much gel, and wore jeans and a linen shirt that was open to reveal a tanned, waxed chest. His feet were bare and it didn’t look like he’d been up for that long.

Tina remained standing, looking down at him. ‘It’s not about the neighbours,’ she said. ‘It’s about two missing girls, Lauren Donaldson and Jennifer Jones.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, shaking his head.

But he wasn’t a good liar and she knew he did.

‘Yes you do.’ She reached into the inside pocket of her suit jacket and produced the two photos Sheryl Warner had emailed her. She took a step forward so she was standing right over him and held them out.

He gave them a cursory glance and shook his head again. ‘Never seen them before in my life. Who told you I knew who they were?’

Tina ignored the question. ‘I think you do know them, Mr Mackay. In fact, you encouraged them into prostitution. And now they’re both missing. Which doesn’t reflect very well on you at all.’

Suddenly Mackay was on his feet, furiously staring her down. ‘Listen, back right off. You want to start throwing round accusations then I want my lawyer present. And I want your badge number as well. I’m not having you talking to me like that.’

Tina returned his stare. ‘So you don’t care what might have happened to those two girls?’

‘I told you, I don’t even know who they are. Who’s been talking to you, eh? Because they’re lying. Now get out. And if you want to talk to me, you do it through my lawyer. Capeesh?’

Tina didn’t move. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t give a fuck whether you do or not. Now, are you going to leave or am I going to have to call your boss?’

‘I don’t have a boss. I’m not a police officer, Dylan.’

Mackay snorted. ‘Then who the fuck are you?’

‘I’m working for Lauren Donaldson’s father. One way or another, I’m going to find her. And you’re going to help me.’

‘No I’m not, you stupid bitch. Now get out of here before I beat your arse.’

Tina could see the rage building in Mackay. It was obvious he was contemplating trying to remove her forcibly from his apartment. In her three-inch heels she was roughly the same height as him, but he had more bulk. Although not that much more. Tina had been half expecting this kind of reaction, and she was ready for it. What she was less ready for was the rage that was also building in her.

‘I know people who could really fuck you up, bitch,’ continued Mackay in his irritatingly upper-class tones. ‘You want that, do you?’

‘Don’t threaten me, Dylan.’

That was when he finally broke, grabbing Tina by the arm and starting to push her back towards the door.

Her reaction was instinctive and immediate. She swung round, moving in close, and drove a knee into his groin.

He gasped in pain, staggering backwards. He was now completely defenceless, so there was no excuse for what happened next. Tina grabbed him by his linen shirt with one hand and punched him in the face with the other, before getting a leg behind his and tripping him up. He fell backwards on to the tiled floor, landing heavily, and Tina placed a foot on his neck, holding him down.

The sudden burst of violence excited her. There was no denying it. This arsehole had treated her like dirt, deliberately holding back on information she knew he had on Lauren and her friend Jen, two girls who were missing, very possibly dead. For a long time as a police officer she’d been forced to uphold the law even when it meant treating suspects with kid gloves in the face of their blatant disrespect. In her old life she’d have been forced to put up with Mackay’s denials and insults. No longer. Now her newfound power felt liberating.

She took out her mobile and put it to camera setting. ‘Smile, Dylan,’ she said sweetly, taking a shot of him lying humiliated on the floor, his face screwed up in pain. She replaced the phone and removed the shoe from his neck. ‘I bet you’ve got drugs in here as well, haven’t you? You look like the classic small-time dealer to me. The sort of guy who thinks he’s really tough.’ She crossed the room and pulled out the drawers on a cabinet next to the door to the kitchen, rifling through them until she found a battered tobacco tin. She opened it up and saw that it contained twenty or so single-gram wraps of what was almost certainly coke. ‘Naughty, naughty. Look what I’ve found.’ She strode back over and dropped the contents over Mackay, who was still lying on the floor, unwilling or unable to get up. ‘You see, I’ve got contacts too, Dylan. A lot better ones than you. And if you don’t tell me the truth I’m going to let them know about your little stash.’

‘Listen,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She stamped on his groin, and this time he let out a shriek of pure agony.

‘Oh God,’ he wailed, rolling over on to his side like a child, tears forming in his eyes.

Suddenly, Tina felt a pang of absolute disgust with herself. Jesus, what was she doing? She put a hand to her mouth and took a step back. She was deliberately and systematically assaulting a man she’d never met before, and inflicting real damage. She tried to think about Alan Donaldson, a broken man trying to find his estranged daughter before the cancer took him. She was doing this for him. Finding answers from a spoilt rich kid – a pimp and a drug dealer – who was being obstructive. And this was the only way.

But the justification felt hollow in her mind. She was better than this.

‘God, you’ve really, really hurt me,’ he whispered, the tears pouring freely down his face.

‘And I’ll keep hurting you until you tell me the truth,’ she said, knowing that having started this, she couldn’t stop now.

The information. It was all about the information.

‘You hired Lauren Donaldson and Jen Jones out as prostitutes, didn’t you?’

‘No I didn’t. I swear it.’

‘Bullshit.’ She loomed over him and raised her heeled foot again, hoping she wouldn’t have to hurt him any more, but knowing she would if she had to.

‘No, please …’

He raised a hand weakly, and she kicked it away.

‘Answer honestly, because you know what? I can ruin you. I’ll have cops on your back; I’ll let everyone know you’re a pimp; I’ll post photos of you with my shoe in your face all over the place; I’ll come back here and beat your arse. I’ll make you wish you were dead. Do you understand?’ She raised her foot again.

‘Don’t do this,’ he pleaded. ‘You don’t know what you’re getting involved in here.’

‘I know I don’t. You need to tell me. Now.’

‘I can’t.’

He knew something. But he was clearly more afraid of the consequences of imparting the information than he was of her.

She could have stopped there. Should have done. But she was close to a breakthrough, and right then she had to have it.

He started to move beneath her foot, slowly gaining confidence. ‘Listen, if you go now, I won’t say a—’

She kicked him hard in the ribs, then, as he doubled up in pain, took a step back and made a great play of donning a pair of surgical gloves before grabbing an empty wine glass from the coffee table and smashing it against the corner.

Dylan cried out and tried to roll away but Tina was on him in an instant, pinning his arms down with her knees. Her inner voice screamed at her to stop what she was doing but she ignored it, temporarily lost in the power of the moment, continuing to justify her actions to herself.

The fear in his eyes was clear and vivid. It made her feel sick but she kept her expression hard and indifferent. ‘I don’t think you’re taking me seriously, Dylan, and that’s a bad, bad move.’

‘I am, I am!’

‘I wonder how you’d look with a nice long scar across your face from ear to ear.’ She held the jagged tip of the glass barely an inch from his face and drew a leisurely outline from the corner of his lip to his left eye. ‘Shall we find out?’

‘No! Please, please …’

‘Then talk. You hired Lauren Donaldson and Jen Jones out as prostitutes, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, I did,’ he blurted out. ‘I hired Lauren out a few times to guys, but I only hired Jen out once.’

‘Did you ever hire them out together?’

He hesitated.

‘Don’t even think about lying,’ she snarled, bringing her face close to his. She was scaring herself now so God alone knew what she was doing to him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Once.’

‘And was that the last time you saw them?’

Hesitation.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was this?’

‘Months ago. Back in the spring.’

Only one more question now.

‘Who did you hire them to?’

Sweat was dripping down Dylan’s forehead. He looked absolutely terrified. Like a little boy. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t make me.’

She couldn’t let herself weaken. ‘Tell me.’

‘No.’ He was weeping silently now, too scared to do anything but await his fate.

Tina felt her resolve weakening as the enormity of what she was doing hit her. There was no way she could continue this. ‘I’m going to give you one more chance,’ she said, but her heart was no longer in it, and that showed in her voice.

Dylan continued to weep. She’d broken him. It was a horrible feeling.

‘Where’s your phone?’

‘In my jeans pocket.’

Still holding the glass close to his face, she rummaged inside until she found it, then slowly clambered off him. She put the glass on the table and pocketed the phone. ‘I’m taking this,’ she told him. ‘And if you say a word about this to anyone, I’ll break you. Do you understand?’

He nodded, and rolled on to his side so that he was facing away from her, like a scolded child, all the fight gone out of him. She was certain he wouldn’t report her conduct to anyone in authority. He wouldn’t want any inconvenient questions about what he knew about the disappearance of two young women. Because he knew something very important, even if he wasn’t prepared to tell her what it was.

Tina left without another word and it was only when she was back inside her car, a ten-minute walk away, that she broke down, the tears coming in an intense flood. It was hard to come to terms with what she’d just done. She was a tough woman, far too used to violence. But even though she’d killed before, it had always been in the heat of the moment, and the men she’d killed had been killers themselves. What had happened with Dylan Mackay was different. He might have been an arrogant bastard but he was no killer. And Tina hadn’t hurt him in the heat of the moment either. Her violence, and the threats of it, had been methodical. She’d tortured him. There was no other way of describing it, and it shamed her to think that this was what she’d become. Because for a few minutes she’d been out of control in his flat, and it would be a lie to say that a big part of her hadn’t enjoyed the power she’d wielded over him, and the way she’d managed to drag out potentially key information about her case there was no way she’d have got using legitimate means. Because there was no question, she’d made a real breakthrough.

But at what cost? Her integrity? Certainly. Her sanity? Possibly. More worrying was the question that was burning through her tears.

How much further was she capable of sinking?

Twenty-five

It was one of the most relaxing mornings I’d had since … well, since I don’t know when.

The thing was, I felt free. I could do what I wanted when I wanted. Admittedly, I didn’t have much in the way of money – and what I did have, I owed to Tina – but for once I was my own man. It might have been only two days but already the months I’d spent at that isolated house in Wales felt like a lifetime ago. I’d been a prisoner then in all but name, fed a cocktail of drugs in order to keep me passive and helpless while Dr Bronson messed with my head as he tried to extract information I didn’t know I had.

But that was behind me now, and my past was returning to me far faster than I could ever have anticipated. Every time a new memory popped up I stopped whatever it was I was doing and tried to fit it into place in the still scattered and only partially complete jigsaw that was my past life. Sometimes I was able to; other times the memories were random visions I filed away in my mind, hoping they’d slot in somewhere later. But it was a fantastic feeling knowing that I was finding myself once again after far too long in the wilderness.

I spent the morning wandering the streets round the hotel and doing some shopping. I bought a new shirt, new jeans and underwear, and threw away all the old stuff I’d been wearing, since most of it had been badly soiled by the events of the past couple of days. I also bought a cheap pre-paid mobile without leaving any details with the guy who sold it to me. That left me with about twenty quid, almost half of which I spent in McDonald’s on two Big Macs, large fries, a hot apple pie and a strawberry milkshake. It was hardly the food of the gods but Christ, it tasted good, and I needed it.

Afterwards, feeling sated and tired, I headed back to the hotel figuring that a nice nap was in order. I thought about phoning Tina again since I hadn’t heard back from her, but decided it could wait for later. Today, everything could wait. I was free. My belly was full. And I was alive. The world was good.

The door of the room next to mine was open and I saw the cleaner inside as I passed. I smiled and wished her a good afternoon, and she smiled back, nodding enthusiastically. She was young, early twenties, and pretty, and I felt a stirring somewhere down below. Jesus, I was horny, and there was very little I could do about it. Still, I wasn’t going to let that, or anything else, dampen my mood.