The Final Minute

by Simon Kernick

  This time he let go of me completely as he struggled to get away from my grip. Turning, I punched him once, very hard, again on the nose; then, before he could regain his balance, I pulled him round so that he was between me and Pen, making myself as difficult a target for her as possible. I caught a brief glimpse of her trying to get a shot in without hitting her accomplice, a startled look on her face, and then I was running in a crouch towards the huge bay window that looked out on to the front lawn.

  I dived into it, shoulder first, at the point where the curtains meet, just as a shot rang out with an angry hiss. The window exploded outwards and the next second I landed in the flowerbed, my body crunching on the glass beneath me as I rolled over, trying to get as far from the window as possible. Adrenalin was fuelling me totally now and I was up on my feet in an instant. But there was a carefully honed instinct for survival too – one I’d never realized I had. Somehow I knew not to make a dash straight across the lawn towards the trees because I’d be far too easy a target that way. Instead, I crouched down so I couldn’t be seen through the windows and ran round the edge of the house towards the back, counting on the fact that in the confusion they weren’t going to know where I was heading. As soon as I was level with the kitchen, I sprinted the short distance across the back lawn and into the trees without looking back.

  I kept running, fear and real determination driving me on. Pen had confirmed that Jane wasn’t my sister, but the burning question I now had was why had I been set up like this?

  Five

  I was following the woods round the northern side of the house in the general direction of the road that led off the peninsula when I heard a car starting somewhere off to my right, and I guessed they were trying to cut me off.

  I stopped, getting my breath back, and watched through the trees as a car – a big black four-wheel-drive, its headlights off – made its way slowly along the driveway some forty yards away, making very little noise. It was impossible from this distance to see whether there were two people inside it or not, and as I watched it disappeared from view into the woods. The problem now was that it was positioned between me and the mainland. If I were them, I’d have had one person trying to pick up my trail from the house, and the other parking the car and doubling back through the woods to trap me that way. At their widest point the woods were only a hundred yards across, and there weren’t that many places to hide. And out here in the middle of nowhere, time was on their side.

  Unless …

  I had an idea. I found a spot among some ferns in a shallow dip behind a tree, where I had a good view in both directions, and lay down flat on my stomach, listening out for sounds of footfalls on the breeze. I was a good fifty yards from the house and well hidden enough that I wasn’t going to be seen unless they actually walked into me.

  I waited there for twenty minutes, the pain from where the big guy had hit me gradually subsiding to little more than a thick, dull ache, like a hangover. During that time I heard and saw nothing suspicious. So it was clear they weren’t trying to catch me in a pincer movement. Which meant they were waiting for me to make my move.

  Time might have been on their side, but it was on mine too. I waited another twenty minutes. There was a shallow glass cut on my hand but that was the only obvious injury from my dive through the window. Then again, there was still so much adrenalin pumping through me that I could have been cut in a dozen places and not have felt a thing. I was still shocked. Not only at what had happened to Jane and Tom but also at the way I’d reacted when I’d seen my chance of escape. I hadn’t frozen with fear. I’d fought back.

  Something else too. More important. I’d known what I was doing. Some deep-seated instincts had taken over and I’d fought like a pro. I felt like I’d had fights like that before, with my life in imminent danger, and yet nothing in my supposed background would have suggested it.

  My need to find out who I was became desperate, and I knew where my best bet for information lay. Back in that house. I’d explored it whenever I’d had a chance in the past two months, wanting to discover all I could about my situation, but Jane and Tom had both kept their rooms locked at all times, and I got the feeling that I never found out any more than they wanted me to find out. Now, though, I was free to hunt down anything I could.

  Darkness had settled completely now, and the first stars were appearing in the sky, bathing the woods in an unwelcome blue light. Somewhere off in the trees an owl hooted plaintively. Otherwise the night was perfectly silent. I sniffed the cool air, my eyes scanning the undergrowth in both directions, knowing this could be a trap. An inner voice told me to keep waiting. I was a patient man, but there was an urgency about my situation now. It was clear I’d been involved in something major prior to my accident.

  Where are the bodies?

  Who am I?

  I gave it another twenty minutes, figuring that, even with time on their side, Pen and her accomplice had still committed two murders and so couldn’t remain here for ever. Then, moving inch by inch, I raised myself up to my full height and stepped out from behind the tree.

  Nothing moved. I waited a couple of beats before starting back towards the house, moving slowly and carefully, looking round all the time, knowing that I was taking a huge risk but concluding that in the end what the hell did I have to lose. I had no life. No memory. Two of the three people who knew me were dead, and I’d probably never see Dr Bronson again. It was as if I didn’t exist, which should have been a terrible feeling, but it wasn’t. With nothing to lose, I suddenly had everything to gain.

  I stopped at the edge of the treeline looking towards the kitchen and the rear of the house. It seemed amazing that it was only about an hour earlier that I’d entered the house that way, and in that time my whole world had changed.

  If Pen or her accomplice were still in the house, he or she would almost certainly assume I’d come through the kitchen door, as I had last time. It was the only unlocked entrance and the closest to the woods. Deciding not to risk it, I moved slowly through the trees round towards the side of the house, passing the double garage where the cars were kept. Seeing nothing untoward, I ran across the lawn, over to the far lounge window. The curtains were drawn so, keeping to the shadows, I crept round to the window I’d leapt through earlier. My momentum had caused the whole frame to come out and broken glass littered the flowerbed and the grass beyond. Now exposed to the breeze, the curtains billowed a little but didn’t give me a view into the room. I looked over my shoulder to check there was no one creeping up behind me, then put my ear close to the fabric and listened.

  All was silence.

  This was where I was going to have to take a big risk. For all I knew, one of my pursuers could be just the other side of the curtains waiting for me to show my face. I could be dead in the next few seconds. My heart was beating hard in my chest and I had to steady my breathing to prevent it being audible.

  Slowly, very slowly, I parted the curtains a few inches. This time I could smell the death in the room. It came at me in a pungent, sour wave, like meat left out to rot in the hot sun, and I had to fight off nausea. I couldn’t see the bodies from the angle I was at, but the room looked empty. After taking another look behind me, I parted the curtains a few inches more, lifted my leg over the window sill and climbed inside.

  I’d done a good job of being silent, and the carpet beneath my feet was thick enough to muffle my footfalls as I crept further inside.

  I looked over at the two corpses. There was a second hole in the back of Tom’s head where Pen must have shot him again, just to make sure, and this time he was actually dead. It seemed ironic that he’d saved my life by refusing to die quietly – a fact I was sure would have annoyed him if he’d known anything about it. Still, I felt an odd pang of gratitude.

  Jane lay on her side where she’d been pulled from the chair, one arm sprawled behind her in an almost flamboyant gesture. Her gown had fallen open, revealing a full, shapely breast – a sight that looked so wr
ong against the terrible damage to her face. She’d been a fraud. But why? What had been her motive? I felt a familiar wave of frustration as I moved across the carpet, stopping at the half-open door to look round it.

  Which was when I saw Pen.

  She was standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall with her back to me, watching the kitchen door, the gun down by her side. As I’d anticipated, she was waiting to see if I’d come in the back way again. Twelve feet separated us, but the hallway floor was polished mahogany and it creaked. If I tried to creep up behind her, I’d never make it.

  And then, as I watched, she turned round in my direction.

  Thankfully her movement was casual enough to give me time to pull my head back behind the door without being spotted.

  I heard her yawn and, as I watched through the narrow half-inch gap between the door and its jamb, she turned back round again, and sighed wearily. Clearly she was tired of waiting around. The problem was, I was just going to have to stay put and keep quiet until she decided I wasn’t coming back.

  A minute passed. Then two. I considered retreating towards the window and hiding behind the chaise longue where I’d be less exposed if she decided to come back into the room, but before I could make my decision, I heard the crackle of static. Through the gap in the door I could see that Pen had a two-way radio in her free hand.

  ‘I’m not sure how much longer we should give it,’ she whispered into it. ‘The phone keeps ringing, and that’s not a good sign.’

  Which was a surprise to me. The landline rarely rang. Once a week at most. The only times I answered, it was people trying to sell me stuff.

  I heard a male voice talking back but couldn’t hear what he was saying, then she was speaking again. ‘OK,’ she hissed, ‘pick me up in ten minutes.’

  She replaced the radio in her jacket and then, without warning, turned and strode into the lounge.

  I didn’t even have time to be scared. As she came past the door, barely a foot away from me, I shot out of my hiding place, grabbed her gun arm at the wrist with one hand and wrapped my free arm round her neck, my fingers pressing decisively into soft skin. It was as if I was being piloted by my subconscious. She barely had time to grunt before she went limp in my arms. I let her fall to the floor, grabbing the gun at the same time. She lay still and I pointed the gun at her head, my finger tensing on the trigger as a cold rage bubbled up inside me.

  My first instinct was to kill her, but as I looked at her lying motionless on the floor, her eyes closed, her expression peaceful, my rage dissipated. I patted her down, quickly locating the knife she’d used on Jane in her jacket pocket. I took it, along with the radio, but couldn’t find the duct tape. I had no idea how long she’d be unconscious for. For all I knew she could have been faking, but I felt a lot safer now I had a gun. Her partner was coming to pick her up in ten minutes – about nine now – so I was going to have to hurry.

  I removed the batteries from the radio and threw it across the room, then raced up the stairs, no longer bothering to stay quiet. Straight away, I saw that Jane’s bedroom door was half open. She and Tom had clearly been caught unawares by their killers and, given the fact they were half naked, it was a fair bet that they’d been in bed.

  My suspicions were confirmed the moment I stepped inside. The bed, a giant four-poster that looked like it could sleep five comfortably, was unmade, the sheets chaotic, and there were clothes and shoes strewn across the floor where passion had clearly got the better of them. Even after everything else that had happened today, the sight made me jealous. I had many vague recollections of being intimate with women. But I couldn’t picture any of their faces. Nor could I remember anything about any of them. They were like ghosts. I knew I’d enjoyed their nakedness though, and yearned for it again.

  I picked up Tom’s jeans and rifled through the pockets, finding a wallet and a mobile phone. I checked the wallet. A hundred and eighty pounds in cash, a couple of credit cards and a driving licence in the name of Robert Thomas Berman, with a photo of Tom looking suitably sour-faced. According to the licence he lived in South London, in the SE24 postcode. It struck me then that I’d never known his last name, and had never bothered asking. Ours wasn’t that kind of relationship.

  I turned my attention to Jane’s clothes and started going through them. Her jeans pockets were empty but her handbag was on the dressing table and when I went through that, I got hold of another mobile phone and a purse. This time there was no cash but there was a driving licence and credit cards in the name of a Ms Alison Wolfrey. The address on the licence was London again.

  I shoved everything of value into my pockets and then started on the drawers in the bedside table, quickly finding the keys to Jane’s BMW convertible, which she kept locked in the garage, presumably in case I ever got an urge to take it for a spin.

  I was just forcing them into a pocket when the home phone rang, its sound blasting through the house. There was a handset on the bedside table, just next to my ear, and the ringing startled me. Holding the gun, I checked the landing and the stairs to make sure Pen wasn’t creeping up on me, then closed the bedroom door and went over to the phone. I stared at it as it continued to ring then, taking a deep breath, I picked up.

  ‘Hello,’ I growled, trying to emulate Tom’s brusque, gravelly tones.

  ‘Tom?’ snapped a man’s voice in a neutral, educated accent. He sounded stressed.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Put Alison on.’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Where the hell is she? She’s not answering her phone.’

  ‘She’s out walking,’ I told him, growing naturally into my role as a liar, although not necessarily a mimic. ‘You know the reception’s not very good round here.’

  ‘And where have you been? I’ve been phoning this number for the last hour.’

  ‘I was outside too.’

  ‘Our man’s still safe and sound, isn’t he?’

  I guessed that ‘our man’ meant me. I almost said, ‘Yes I am, and by the way, who the hell am I?’ But I didn’t. ‘Yeah, he’s still here.’

  ‘Get him out of there. Now.’

  I glanced over towards the door, keeping the gun trained on it. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The location’s been compromised. Don’t ask me any more questions. Grab our man, get him out of there, and set fire to the place. We don’t want to leave any evidence anyone was ever there. Understand?’

  There were a million more questions I wanted to ask but I knew that now wasn’t the time. ‘Sure. I’m on it.’

  ‘If you can’t find Alison, leave her. We can find her later. And be quick. We haven’t got much time.’

  He rang off and I put down the phone, going over what he’d just said. I remembered it pretty much word for word. The irony was that I had a great short-term memory, but on its own, it wasn’t going to help me find out why I was being treated like some hugely valuable commodity – a man with priceless information I didn’t even know myself.

  I was still pondering that as I approached the bedroom door, gun in hand.

  And that was when I smelled it.

  Smoke. It seemed like someone was already ahead of the man on the phone in deciding to torch the place.

  I yanked open the door and jumped to one side, just in case someone was waiting there to ambush me. But the landing was empty and the air acrid. I could hear the angry crackle of burning wood as I ran over to the top of the stairs. Smoke was pouring down the hallway from the direction of the front door, while flames gouted through the open lounge door. Unfortunately, there was also a thick black cloud of smoke billowing out of the kitchen as well, effectively trapping me up here. I cursed myself for leaving Pen alone down there. She must have regained consciousness and, rather than tackle me now that I had her gun, decided to burn me alive.

  Already the smoke was making it hard to breathe, and Jane’s house was all wood panelling, so it was going to go up like a tinderbox.

  Pu
tting a hand over my mouth, I ran back to my bedroom. At least I knew I could get out that way. I shut the door behind me, cutting off the worst of the smoke, and went over to the window I’d sneaked out of earlier. Someone had been up here and shut it, so I opened it again quietly. I took a quick look out into the night and didn’t see anything untoward, so unscrewed the gun’s silencer and chucked it on the bed, before shoving the gun down the front of my jeans, saying a silent prayer for it not to go off accidentally, and climbing out the window, leaving my bedroom and the only life I really knew behind, for ever.

  This time I didn’t hang about but dropped immediately to the ground, rolling over in the grass and gritting my teeth silently against the pain of the impact.

  Still I didn’t see anyone. I could make for the safety of the trees and wait for my pursuers to leave, because they were going to have to now they’d set the house on fire. Even in an isolated place like the peninsula the fire would be seen for miles around, and already the flames were beginning to take hold. But the thing was, I didn’t want to be anywhere near this place when the police and fire brigade turned up, because I’d have a lot of very awkward questions to answer and no real means of answering them. It seemed best then, now that I had the keys to Jane’s BMW, to make a getaway on wheels. I knew I could drive. I had plenty of vague memories of being behind the wheel of a car and I’d got Jane to let me have a go in the BMW with her in the passenger seat a couple of weeks back (even though she’d taken a lot of persuading). I could remember what to do perfectly.

  I got to my feet, pulled the gun from the front of my jeans and moved across the grass in the direction of the detached garage on the other side of the house, listening out for any signs of danger. As I rounded the corner, the garage appeared in front of me twenty feet away. I looked round quickly, then ran across to the door, keys in my spare hand, unable to stop my shoes from crunching on the gravel. I found the right one, unlocked the door and, as quietly as possible, lifted it up on to its runners. At that moment, I didn’t want to look round, just in case someone was creeping up on me, gun in hand, ready to put a bullet in my head. It was almost better not to know.