The Final Minute (20 page)

‘I’m going fast as I can, Tina, but you know what it’s like. Only found out who the carrier was yesterday, and that was quick by usual standards. Going to take longer for records.’

‘But you can push it through faster if you try.’

‘Yeah, but it’s a hassle.’

‘I’m paying you, Jeff. That should cover the hassle. I need to find out when and where it was turned off. I also need records on two other numbers urgently.’

Jeff made an exasperated noise down the phone. ‘I can’t just keep making comms data requests without some decent reason. You know that.’

She did. But she also knew about his gambling habit. ‘Listen, I’ll pay you double what I agreed to pay you for each number. That means if you get me the information fast – and by fast I mean within the next twenty-four hours – you’ll be getting six times more than you thought. That should give you plenty of incentive to come up with as many good reasons as you need. And it’ll be in cash.’

‘That’s a lot of money, Tina,’ he said, his voice barely audible above the outside noise, but loud enough for her to hear the hunger in it.

‘My client’s wealthy and he’s dying. He just wants to find his daughter, so he’s not going to quibble about cash.’

‘You know, if you’ve got an important lead on a missing person, you need to report it.’

‘When I’ve got something concrete, I’ll go straight to the police, but not before. And I promise I won’t involve you, Jeff. I haven’t got your name written down anywhere, and the phone I call you from is unregistered, so there’ll never be a way to connect the two of us.’

He sighed. ‘OK. I’ll go in as urgent as I can without sounding too many alarm bells. May take longer than twenty-four hours though.’

‘The faster you go the more money you get,’ she told him, and having read out the numbers, she ended the call.

For a couple of minutes she stood in the sunshine, eyes closed, finishing off her cigarette and enjoying the thought that she was beginning to get closer to finding out what had happened to Lauren Donaldson, even though she had a strong feeling that the case wouldn’t have a happy ending. She was also trying to work out what Sean’s involvement in it was. He’d left a couple of messages for her earlier and she needed to call him back. She hoped he didn’t want more money. He was bleeding her dry already and without, as far as she could see, any prospect of paying her back.

The office phone started ringing as she put out the cigarette, and she hurried back inside, seeing a mobile number she didn’t recognize up on the screen.

It was Sean.

‘This is good timing,’ she said. ‘I was just about to call you.’

‘We’ve got a real problem,’ he said breathlessly. It sounded like he was outside somewhere in a car. ‘They found me.’

‘Jesus. How? We removed the bug.’

‘I don’t know, but they were waiting in my hotel room for me when I came back this afternoon.’

That was when it dawned on Tina. Whoever these people were, they’d clearly identified her by checking the recent location history of Sean’s tracking device and had traced him that way, probably through his phone call to her office that morning. Which meant her office, and her phone, were almost certainly bugged.

‘Don’t say another word,’ she said, writing down his mobile number on a piece of paper. ‘I’m going to call you back on your number in two minutes.’

Hanging up, Tina grabbed the slip of paper and hurried out the door, checking it briefly for any signs of a break-in. But nothing looked tampered with. Which scared her even more. Only professionals of the highest calibre would be able to break into this building without tripping the alarm, then get into her office and have the wherewithal and the technical gadgetry to bug her phone so they could trace the location of incoming calls. She might be wrong, of course. It was possible that there was another tracker somewhere on Sean’s body, but she doubted it. It was hard enough implanting one without it being discovered; implanting two would have been near impossible. There just weren’t enough locations.

There was a phone box about two hundred yards away on the next road along. Tina ran all the way down to it and dialled Sean’s number. He answered immediately, still sounding like he was in a car.

‘Where did you call me from this morning when you left the message on my office phone?’ she demanded.

‘My room. I didn’t have a mobile.’

‘There’s only two ways they could have found you. One’s if they’ve implanted you with a secondary tracking device.’

‘No way,’ he said. ‘After last night, I checked every inch of my body. And I mean every inch. There’s no way I’m carrying another. I’d have found it.’

She sighed. ‘That’s what I suspected. The only other way is if they’ve bugged my offices.’ She explained how they could have done it.

‘Shit,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘These guys are good.’

‘Not that good. I’m assuming you got away.’

‘Yeah. That’s what I wanted to talk about.’

Something in his tone of voice put Tina on her guard. ‘What happened?’

‘There was an altercation in my room. They were trying to get me to go with them again but they got disturbed by the cleaner. One of them had a gun and I got hold of it.’ There was a heavy pause. ‘I shot the guy with the beard, the one you Tasered last night. Then I got the hell out of there. I had to borrow a car in the process.’

‘The guy you shot. Is he …?’ Tina let the sentence trail off, not wanting to hear the answer.

‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Sean. You’ve got to go to the police.’

‘Before I do, I need to speak to you. And not on the phone either. It’s too dangerous.’

‘Meeting you’s just as dangerous after what’s just happened.’

‘Please, Tina. I’m begging.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Where are you now?’

‘There’s a layby about a mile north of Cheshunt on the A10. If you come off at junction twenty-six of the M25 it’s about a ten-minute drive. I’m parked in a blue Ford Fiesta with white stripes on the side.’

‘Classy,’ said Tina. ‘All right, I’ll meet you there.’

Twenty-seven

It had just turned 3.30 when Tina pulled in behind the Ford Fiesta that Sean had somehow liberated from its rightful owner. She really didn’t want to hear how he’d managed that. On the way there she’d driven past the hotel and the sight of the ambulance and dozen or so police vehicles in its car park had reminded her in the starkest terms that she couldn’t keep her association with him secret any longer. It would only take the investigating officers a matter of hours, if that, to link the hotel’s fugitive guest to her credit card, and then they’d be knocking on her door.

The layby was on a straight stretch of semi-rural dual carriageway, with fields on both sides, and aside from her car and Sean’s, it was empty. Tina got out and walked over to the Fiesta, surprised to find there was no one in the driver’s seat. Then she saw Sean waving at her from under a tree about twenty yards away. She had to climb over a fence to get to him, and as she approached she saw he was looking tired and dishevelled, even though he was wearing new clothes.

‘Thanks for coming, Tina,’ he said with a big smile. He seemed genuinely happy to see her.

‘This can’t carry on, Sean.’

He sighed. ‘I can’t go to the police yet. They’ll never believe my story.’

‘But you can’t keep running. Where are you going to go?’

‘I don’t know, but my memory’s coming back fast now, and if you can locate the psychotherapist who was treating me back at the place in Wales, then I think he can fill in some of the gaps. We used to have these hypnotherapy sessions and I think he was planting false memories in me to keep me confused. You know, I’m still convinced somewhere in my subconscious that Jane was my sister, even though I know in my head she can’t have been. Because I know I had no sister.’ He was talking fast, bouncing on his toes as he spoke, and constantly running his hand through his hair, giving Tina glimpses of the thick pink scar that ran across the top of his forehead, and which had snatched away the first thirty-eight years of his life in one life-changing instant.

‘I’ll see what I can do to find him, Sean.’

‘His name’s Dr Bronson, and he’s in his mid-fifties. Big guy, black hair going slightly grey. Wears glasses. He’s the one who’s been trying to extract the information about the location of the bodies that all the people after me keep talking about, and I assume he’s been doing that under hypnotherapy as well.’

‘And you haven’t had any further memories about that dream involving the girls?’ Tina asked, deciding against telling Sean what she’d found out about Lauren and Jen’s potential work as prostitutes.

He shook his head. ‘I’m sure the women in the dream are the ones whose bodies they’re after, though.’

Tina sighed, and thought of Alan Donaldson. ‘I have a feeling you could be right. But why is their location so important?’

‘I have no idea, but the couple who tortured and killed Tom and Jane at the house are working against the two guys who kidnapped me from A and E and who came after me today. And I have no idea who any of them are. I did manage to pull the wallet of the guy I shot, but there was no ID on him. Just some cash.’

‘And you’re going to spend that, right?’

He frowned. ‘Look, I know how it looks, but it was self-defence. It was their gun. They were going to kidnap me. I resisted.’

‘But you still found the time to rifle through your victim’s pockets. That suggests to me you’re either very cool under pressure or you’re not actually that bothered that you’ve killed someone.’

‘Look, Tina. I didn’t ask for any of this. All I’m trying to do is find out why I’m being targeted. You know I’m not a cold-blooded killer. I was a copper for most of my adult life, for Christ’s sake. I saved your life once, remember?’

‘So you keep telling me,’ she said, but she wasn’t convinced. In fact, standing there out of sight of the traffic on the road, she realized that she was a little scared of the man in front of her. ‘But people aren’t going to believe you’re innocent if you shoot a man dead, steal his wallet and then go on the run. Where’s the gun?’

He gestured towards a thick tangle of bushes behind him. ‘In there. I unloaded it, then buried it and the bullets separately.’ He sighed. ‘I will go to the police, I promise, but I want to face them knowing exactly who I am, and what I’ve done.’

‘That’s a laudable aim, Sean, but I’m not sure it’s going to work out like that.’

‘I won’t involve you with anything, I promise.’

‘You already have. I booked you into the hotel room on my credit card, remember?’

‘But you haven’t actually done anything wrong. I came to you asking for help, you tried to provide it, and now you can cut all your ties with me, and that’ll be that.’

‘You know I’m going to have to talk to the police.’

He nodded. ‘Of course I do. Tell them whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. You don’t know where I’m going so you can’t help them in that way.’ He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the tracking device she’d given him. ‘Take this. I don’t need it any more. And I’m going to turn off the phone I’m carrying, and dump the car, so there’s no way you can reach me. If I remember anything about Lauren Donaldson, I’ll call you.’

‘If you do, be careful about leaving messages. The police will be monitoring my phones. And so, I suspect, will the people after you.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry for getting you into all this. I didn’t mean to get you into any trouble.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Sometimes these things happen. Especially to me.’ She managed a smile. ‘You’ve certainly provided some excitement.’

‘And that’s got to be a good thing, right?’ He took a step closer. ‘Thanks for everything, Tina. I’ll pay you back the money too, I promise.’

Then, without warning, he moved right into her space, took her in his arms and started to kiss her.

The move was so sudden, Tina was caught completely off-guard, and for a second she was too shocked to react.

But only for a second.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ she snapped, shoving him away with both hands.

He stumbled backwards, looking as surprised as she was. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.’

‘Jesus, Sean. What’s wrong with you?’

‘I don’t know, I’m just very attracted to you that’s all. I have been since the moment we met.’ He tried a boyish smile.

It didn’t work. ‘You’re a convicted rapist, and a man who’s got quite enough on his plate without alienating me.’

And with that she turned away and headed back to her car, without wishing him luck.

Twenty-eight

The Sunny View Hotel was bedlam when DCI Mike Bolt arrived. A whole section of the building including the reception area and the emergency staircase was now a crime scene, and its 180 rooms were in the process of being evacuated. Quite a few of those guests, some of them angry at being herded out on to the street and not being able to get to their cars, milled around the edges of the scene-of-crime tape that lined the central third of the car park, arguing with the uniforms protecting the crime scene’s perimeter. There were also plenty of bystanders gathered at the car park entrance eager to see what all the fuss was about, while police vehicles lined the street on both sides, causing a traffic bottleneck that stretched for several hundred yards in both directions.

It had just turned 4.15 on a sunny afternoon, and any hope that Bolt had had of getting away on time that night had evaporated the minute they’d been given news of the fatal shooting in Room 305. As the head of one of the Met’s more local Murder Investigation Teams, this was always going to be his case.

He found a parking spot outside a giant B&Q about fifty yards further down the street, got himself kitted up inside the cordon and called his long-time colleague Mo Khan, who’d arrived separately half an hour earlier.

Mo met him on the front steps of the hotel and they shook hands, even though they’d seen each other earlier that day. It was a habit of theirs.

‘What have we got exactly?’ Bolt asked.

Mo opened up the notebook he always carried with him. ‘It’s a bit of a strange one, boss, to be honest. We’ve got an altercation in a hotel room. The cleaner’s cleaning the room next door. She sees one of the guests walk back to his room, then when she knocks on his door to see if she can clean his room, she hears the sounds of a struggle, followed by a succession of gunshots. Next thing, the guest’s running out the hotel with a gun leaving behind a dead male. There’s a witness too. A guy who was in the room with the two of them.’