The Final Minute

by Simon Kernick

  And yet my gut was telling me that I’d never get better if I stayed there.

  I came to the edge of the woods. Ahead of me was a stretch of wild grassland about a hundred yards long that ran to the edge of a cliff. I’d stood there a number of times taking in the view of the bay and the headland beyond. It was a wild, isolated place, barely touched by civilization, with only a handful of whitewashed cottages dotted across the horizon. Today the sky was a hazy pale blue with a handful of clouds drifting across it, bathed in the gentle rays of a bright sun.

  But there was no time to enjoy the view. At least not yet. I glanced back over my shoulder and, seeing no immediate sign of Tom, ran across the grassland in the direction of the cliff edge, careful to avoid the bumps of knotted grass and rabbit holes that littered the route but keeping as fast a pace as I could muster. Halfway across I looked round again. Still no sign of him. I was going flat out now, and as I reached the edge I slowed up and looked down. On this stretch of the peninsula, the cliff was actually more of a grassy, rock-strewn slope that meandered down to the sea in several angled steps before becoming sheer for the last thirty or so feet. It was steep enough of course, but if you fell, you were likely to roll rather than hurtle through the air.

  Carefully, I climbed down a short way, resting my feet on rocks a couple of feet apart so that my head was level with the top and I could peer over without being seen.

  I didn’t have to wait long for Tom to appear out of the trees. He was at almost the exact same spot where I’d emerged but I could tell he hadn’t seen me. He looked round angrily and called out my name again, real frustration in his voice. Then he did something I really didn’t expect. He started walking purposefully in my direction, like he knew exactly where I was, even though he couldn’t have seen me. Only the top of my head was visible, and even that was obscured by the long grass. And yet still he kept coming.

  I looked down. I suppose one of the advantages of amnesia is that you can’t remember whether you had certain phobias or not, like a fear of heights. I was guessing I didn’t because the view below didn’t disorientate me. About twenty feet down the land flattened a little for a couple of yards before dropping again, and there was a tangled gorse bush there that I could hide behind so that Tom wouldn’t be able to see me from the top. It looked safe enough, so I started to clamber down the slope.

  Which was the moment it all went wrong. The rock my right foot was resting on came loose at the same time that I lifted my left, and suddenly I had lost my balance and was falling backwards through the air. I was doing an aerial somersault, and the ground, in the shape of wind-bleached rocks jutting through the grass, was racing up to meet me. I threw out my arms to break the fall, hit the gorse bush, its thorns ripping at my flesh, and then landed hard and bounced on to my side, coming perilously close to the edge of the ledge.

  But for once I avoided banging my head. Groaning in pain, I crawled under the gorse bush so I could no longer be seen from the top of the cliff and lay still. I could hear Tom calling my name again, but at last he stopped and turned away.

  I got myself comfortable and settled in to wait until he’d finally given up the search for me, already shutting my eyes and thinking about a nap.

  Three

  Carl Hughie, known simply as Mr H to those who worked under him, or owed him favours, had three bad habits – smoking, gambling and prostitutes – and he was currently indulging in all three. The prostitute was in the hotel bathroom getting herself ready and Mr H, dressed only in the complimentary bathrobe, was sitting in a tub chair making a phone bet with Ladbroke’s, a copy of the Racing Post spread out on his lap, while puffing away on one of his cheap cigars. Life at that exact point was good.

  In his own way, Mr H was a powerful man. He had access to the machinations of the establishment, and his star, like that of the man he ultimately reported to, was rising fast. At fifty, and a lifetime bachelor, he was still young enough to enjoy it. The woman in the bathroom was costing him a grand for the night – a sum that would have been well out of range of his official salary but which he could now easily afford. And by God she was worth it. Her name was Magdalena and she could do things to a man he hadn’t even known existed.

  Unfortunately, as he placed his last bet, he saw a photo of a grey-haired man appear on the TV screen on the far wall, with a caption underneath saying that two British nationals had been murdered in St Lucia.

  Mr H recognized the man in the photo immediately and, grabbing the remote, he turned the sound right up. The man’s name was Maurice Bufton and, according to the news report, he’d been killed alongside his twenty-year-old daughter at his villa in a suspected burglary gone wrong. There were also unconfirmed reports that Bufton had been tortured before he died.

  Mr H knew immediately this wasn’t a burglary gone wrong. Bufton, now retired and living the ex-pat life, possessed a piece of important information, and Mr H would have bet anything that this information had been forcefully extracted from him. All of which meant he now had a real problem on his hands.

  Magdalena appeared in the bathroom doorway wearing only a baby-doll nightie, a pair of five-inch heels and a very inviting smile, but she might as well have been wearing a boiler suit and comedy face mask for all he cared. ‘Get some clothes on and grab a drink in the bar,’ he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I’ve got some business that needs dealing with.’

  She pouted but knew better than to argue with a client. He took out his phone and waited while she got dressed and left the room.

  He gave it thirty more seconds before making the call.

  ‘What is it?’ his boss demanded.

  ‘They’ve taken out Bufton.’

  There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. ‘Are you sure it’s them?’

  ‘They’re calling it a burglary gone wrong on the news but the report said he’d been tortured, which seems like too much of a coincidence to me.’

  Mr H’s boss sighed. ‘This is a real problem. We can’t lose our man. Not until we’ve found out what he knows.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Call the house where they’re holding him. Tell them to sedate him and take him away for a few days where they can lay low. But sort it. And sort it soon. And get that bloody psychotherapist to work a bit faster. We need that information.’

  Mr H was a fixer. He had good contacts; he got things done; and best of all, he didn’t worry too much about who got hurt in the process. It made his services very expensive and, luckily for him, his boss had very deep pockets. But he also knew that all that would count for nothing if he messed up on something as important as this. He needed to make a lot of new plans very fast. But first he needed to get the house evacuated.

  The mobile reception out on the coast was awful so he stubbed out his cigar and called the landline, waiting while it rang and rang and rang.

  He looked at his watch: 7.30 p.m. Someone should have been there. Taking a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm, he called again.

  But there was still no answer.

  Four

  I awoke with a sudden start.

  I was lying on my back staring up at a darkening sky, the final orange glow of the sun just inside my field of vision. For a few seconds I was completely disorientated before I finally realized where I was. I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. Jesus, I must have been out for three hours. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately and I guessed I was just making up for it. I’d been dreaming too. Short, dramatic bursts of activity that might have been memories. And then again might not have been. It was very hard to tell.

  Below me I could hear the sound of the sea lapping against the rocks, and the occasional cry of one of the seagulls that lined the cliffs on this coast. But there was no sign of Tom anywhere.

  I tried to remember the dreams and compartmentalize them for later analysis, but the effort was too much and I gave up as other thoughts came into play. I was cold, and I was hungry. And frightened
of being alone. Whatever their motives, Jane and Tom were the only people looking out for me right now and I had a sudden urge to be back in the warmth of the house eating a decent meal. I’d take whatever flak they threw at me and examine my admittedly limited options after that.

  But first I had to climb to the top of this cliff in poor light. I stared up, thinking it looked a pretty scary prospect. If I fell again, I probably wouldn’t be so lucky next time, and it was a long way down to the sea. But the need to get home was so powerful that I started up it without hesitation.

  Fifteen minutes later, the house loomed in front of me. It was a beautiful place, built from local stone, and surrounded on all sides by well-tended lawns. It might have been in need of modernization both inside and out but, even so, it still possessed a certain grandeur. Both floors were lit up and the curtains were drawn in all the windows, but there was no sign of anyone.

  I didn’t own a key – Jane had always said there was no need – so I went round the back of the house and peered through the window into the kitchen. The lights were on but the room was empty and there were no used pans or crockery left over from dinner, which meant they were probably out trying to track me down. Unfortunately, I had no way of contacting them. They both had mobile phones but, needless to say, I didn’t. We’d talked about getting me one in case I ever got lost but, like so many things round here, no one had ever quite got round to doing it.

  The back door was unlocked, however, and I stepped inside, wondering how I was going to do this. There was no point going in silently like some naughty schoolboy. I was a man after all, and I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. So I called out Jane’s name as I walked through the kitchen, trying to sound as jaunty as possible, as if me disappearing like this was the most natural thing in the world.

  I heard footsteps and a second later a woman I didn’t know appeared in the doorway. She looked like one of those lean, fit Californian women who populated the TV programmes I watched. She had an athletic figure, golden, sun-kissed skin, and naturally blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. It was no surprise that when she started speaking her accent was unmistakably American.

  ‘You must be Jane’s brother, Matt,’ she said with a big, confident smile as she came towards me and put out a hand. She must have seen the confusion on my face because she immediately added, ‘I’m Pen, an old friend of hers from college. She didn’t tell me her brother was so hot.’

  I must have been vain in my past life because that part got me straight away. I smiled back as we shook hands, thinking I liked this girl already.

  ‘We’re just in the lounge,’ she continued. ‘I’m sorry, I’m a bit of a prankster. I wanted to give you a shock. Jane says you deserve it, running away like that this afternoon. I think you scared her. Did she tell you I was coming tonight?’ Pen didn’t stop talking as she led me across the hallway to the lounge door, and I was thinking there was a real charisma about this girl and maybe, if she was single, it would be nice to get to know her.

  It only began to dawn on me that something wasn’t quite right when she opened the door and moved aside to let me go first, as if she owned the place.

  Which was when I saw Jane.

  At least I think it was Jane. It wasn’t that easy to tell. The woman I was looking at was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room facing the door. She’d been bound to the chair with black duct tape and her head was slumped forward. She was wearing a navy blue towelling robe that looked vaguely familiar and did a good job of camouflaging the worst of the blood: all but one of the fingers on her left hand were missing. A few feet away, lying on his side next to the TV in just a pair of nuthugging briefs, was Tom. There were two holes in his back, thick blood trailing from each one like tears, and more blood caking the hair on the back of his head.

  I took in all this in the space of a split second, and then I felt something hard and metallic being pushed into the base of my skull and the pretty American woman called Pen hissed, ‘Inside,’ giving me a hard shove.

  As I stumbled in, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and the next second I received a single hard blow to the side of my head, which sent me sprawling into a chaise longue. The initial pain immediately dissipated, replaced by a sense of shock as the adrenalin flooded my body. My vision blurred as I sat back up, then settled as I saw the man who’d hit me for the first time. He was huge. A man mountain dressed all in black, with big dark eyes that watched me coldly, like a lizard inspecting prey. I was nothing to him and he was letting me know it.

  In front of me, Pen picked up a crumpled apron from behind one of the chairs and put it on. It was white and liberally spattered with fresh blood. Then she pulled on gloves and screwed a silencer to the end of her pistol, before turning to the big man. ‘OK, let’s find out what he knows.’

  The big man reached down and yanked me to my feet, grabbing me in a headlock so I was facing his accomplice.

  I could just about see Jane’s corpse, and I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. She’d seemed so alive such a short time ago, and now she was gone. The woman who’d looked after me these past two months. The closest person I had in the world.

  ‘You’re sad about your sister,’ said Pen. ‘Don’t be. She’s not your sister. She didn’t even know you before you had your accident. But I think you guessed that, didn’t you? This is all a set-up. You, her, the guy who’s meant to be nursing you. You’re being kept here, like you’re in storage. Do you want to know why? Because I can tell you if you do.’

  I took a deep breath. The man’s grip was strong, and my head was throbbing like hell, but I was as alert now as I could ever remember. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  ‘Good. You cooperate with us and I’ll tell you everything. But I’m going to be completely honest with you here, Matt, because it’s easier that way. Tonight’s the last night of your life. There’s nothing we can do about that. You know too much.’

  Which was an irony if ever I’d heard one. ‘I don’t know anything,’ I told her, trying, with not much in the way of success, to sound as calm as possible. ‘I can’t remember a damn thing about my life before here. You know about my accident, so you should know that.’

  ‘I know all about you, Matt. Jane and I have been having a long chat. She didn’t want to talk at first. Understandably, her first loyalty’s to her employer.’

  ‘Who’s her employer? I need to know as much as I can. That way maybe I can help you.’

  ‘But she talked in the end,’ Pen continued, ignoring my question completely. ‘Because everyone does. We’ve all got a threshold, beyond which we simply give in. You’re going to give in tonight, Matt. You’re going to tell us everything you know – because I suspect you know a lot more than you’re letting on.’

  I started to tell her I was happy to give in straight away but a huge hand was clamped over my mouth.

  She put a finger to her lips. ‘Shh. I’m going to make you an offer, Matt. Answer my questions quickly and honestly, and it’ll all be over in the blink of an eye. All the confusion and pain of this life will disappear, and you can finally sleep.’

  Her words took on a hypnotic quality and for a moment I could relate to what she was saying. An end to this continuous living nightmare. Sleep.

  But no. I still had too many questions.

  ‘Or you can die choking and bleeding, covered in snot, begging for the agony to stop. Like this.’ She grabbed Jane’s head by her hair and lifted it up, while the big guy yanked my head round so I had to look.

  But it wasn’t Jane I was looking at. It was a torn bloody doll. I wanted to throw up when I saw what they’d done to her eye. And suddenly I was absolutely terrified.

  She lifted her phone and pointed it at my face, and I realized she was filming me. ‘So, question one,’ she said. ‘And the most important one of all. Where are the bodies?’

  I swallowed, fear pulsing through me in intense, crippling waves. ‘I don’t know what yo
u’re talking about. I really don’t. Whose bodies?’

  She smiled, but she didn’t look so pretty now. There was a cruelty in the way her lips curled up at the ends. ‘I think you know whose bodies we’re talking about. You might have been able to fool these people’ – she gestured in the direction of Tom’s and Jane’s corpses – ‘but I’m a very different proposition.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth, I swear it. I remember absolutely nothing before the accident.’

  Except now I did remember something.

  Something I didn’t want to admit to anyone.

  Pen shrugged. ‘We’ll soon find out.’ She put the gun down on one of the chairs and picked up a small, very sharp knife that looked like it would have no trouble removing a finger. Or an eye. She went over to Jane, slashed the tape binding her to the chair in one swift, savage movement, then yanked her out of the chair and dropped her to the floor as if she was nothing more than a bag of rubbish. She turned to me. ‘Your turn.’

  I felt my heart lurch in my chest. It was hard to believe that this was happening to me. That I was about to be tortured by a cold-hearted sadistic bitch and her sidekick to extract information I simply didn’t have. That very soon I was going to die in agony without ever knowing who I really was.

  Which was when I noticed movement behind her. It was Tom. The big lug might have taken a headshot but it had clearly missed his brain. His legs were moving slowly but perceptibly, as if he was waking up, and he was trying to lift his head.

  The guy holding me noticed it as well and his grip loosened. ‘Shit,’ he said aloud.

  Pen turned round to see what he was referring to and, grunting something, picked up the gun and went over to where Tom lay.

  With her back to me, I knew this was my chance. I either took it or I died. It was that simple.

  Without warning, I slammed my head back into the guy holding me. We were pretty much exactly the same height and I connected perfectly with the bridge of his nose. Nothing broke, but he let out a low grunt, and before he had time to right himself, something happened that surprised me: pulling an arm free, I reached round behind, positioned the side of my thumb beneath his nose and pushed upwards with all the power I could muster.