The Final Minute

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Why did you never settle down and get married?’ she asked him after a short break in the conversation.

  ‘Hey, I’m not terminally ill. I still could. I just haven’t found the right woman yet. And anyway, I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘I got close once.’

  ‘With John?’ he said, referring to John Gallan, a man they’d both known.

  She nodded. ‘I think after what happened with him I got put off committing too much to one person.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s easier not to,’ he said. ‘That way you can’t get hurt.’

  And they fell silent once again, pondering that particular thought.

  Tina found a spot only a few minutes’ walk from Sheryl’s flat. It had just turned nine p.m. and the streets were busy with people out for the night. Camden was a fashionable area these days, and the sight of full restaurants and groups of drinkers standing around outside the pubs enjoying the balmy temperatures calmed Tina and made her question her suspicions about Sheryl’s phone call.

  Leaving Jeff out of sight in the car, she made her way to the building’s front door and rang the old-fashioned buzzer there. Sheryl let her through.

  When she was inside, Tina used a couple of envelopes from the communal mailbox to prop open the door, then put a call through to Jeff.

  ‘Any problems, you know what to do, right?’ she whispered into the phone.

  ‘Be in there like a shot, Tina, don’t worry.’

  Jeff was a big guy. He might have been running to fat a little, but Tina knew he could handle himself in a scrap.

  ‘Thanks, Jeff, I really appreciate this.’ She replaced the phone in her pocket and mounted the stairs.

  It was empty and quiet, and Tina felt herself tense as she went up to Sheryl’s door and knocked hard. The Taser was in her other jacket pocket and she gripped the trigger, ready to use it at a moment’s notice.

  The door opened and Sheryl stood there, a smile frozen on her face.

  Two things struck Tina straight away. One: she was petrified. Two: she didn’t have any injuries.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Tina,’ she said, moving aside to let her in.

  The flat seemed empty behind Sheryl, and Tina hesitated for a second. ‘Let’s take a walk,’ she said without stepping inside.

  Sheryl was suddenly yanked to one side by someone just out of view, and almost at the same time a blonde woman appeared in her place, pointing a gun at Tina, the end of the barrel barely five feet from her head. Her gun hand was perfectly steady, like she knew exactly what she was doing.

  It all happened too fast for Tina to get out of the way. ‘Don’t shoot!’ she said, loudly enough for Jeff to hear in the car.

  ‘Get inside and take your hands out of your pockets very slowly,’ demanded the woman, in an American accent. ‘Or I’ll kill you right now.’

  Tina didn’t argue – she could see the woman meant it – and stepped over the threshold, taking her hands out of her pockets so they could be seen.

  She was immediately grabbed by the same unseen hand that had pulled Sheryl away and flung across the floor in the direction of the sofa as the blonde closed the door behind her, trapping her inside.

  Steadying herself, Tina turned back round to face her adversaries, hands in the air, trying to look as calm and unthreatening as possible.

  The man who’d grabbed her was huge. Ex-military for sure, with closely cropped hair and a square jaw, he was a good six feet two, with muscles that looked like they were trying to burst out of the clothes he was wearing. Tina hoped that Jeff didn’t make a dramatic entrance, because this guy would break him in half.

  Tina’s eyes met Sheryl’s. The poor girl was standing in the shadow of the man, who absolutely dwarfed her. She looked confused and terrified, and was clearly unable to understand what she’d got herself involved in. Tina gave her a supportive look, but she was close to panic herself.

  ‘Sit down on the sofa, and keep your hands where we can see them,’ the blonde woman said. ‘Try anything stupid, and the first bullet goes through your kneecap.’

  Tina did as she was told, the blonde woman following her with the gun.

  The woman then motioned to the giant, and he walked round the sofa so he was standing behind Tina. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him produce a gun of his own from the back of his trousers and slowly fit a suppressor to it.

  When he’d finished, the blonde moved her gun away from Tina. ‘Thanks for your help, Sheryl,’ she said evenly, pointing it at Sheryl’s head and pulling the trigger. Sheryl crumpled to the floor without a sound, blood pouring down her forehead, her eyes already closed.

  Tina had seen violent death at close hand a number of times before but it never ceased to shock her. It was the suddenness of it, the way a whole life, full of experiences and memories, could be ended with the flick of a finger, and with barely a second’s thought. It was debatable that the blonde had given it even that, because even as Sheryl fell she was turning the gun back on Tina.

  ‘You need to answer our questions,’ she said, walking over, gun arm outstretched. ‘If you do, we’ll make it quick. If you don’t, it’ll be very slow and very painful. Do you understand?’ For a second, Tina thought about telling them that she had police back-up outside, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. If they had to, they’d just kill her and leave. What she needed to do now was stay alive, appear to cooperate, and hope Jeff had called the cavalry. ‘Yes, I understand,’ she said, and this time there was no mistaking the fear in her voice.

  ‘Good. You look like an intelligent woman. Under other circumstances we might have got on, but …’ The blonde shrugged. ‘I guess that’s not going to happen. We’re going to turn the music up a little bit. Just in case we need to hurt you.’

  She motioned to the big guy again and he turned up the volume on an iPod player until the room was filled with the chilled, relaxed sound of a melodic female voice. Tina recognized the track as something by Zero 7, a band she normally liked. If she ever got out of here alive, she knew she’d never be able to listen to it again.

  She swallowed, stared up at the blonde. Knowing she was talking for her life now.

  They looked each other in the eye. The blonde’s expression was hard and merciless, and sat wrongly on her pretty, youthful face. Monsters come in all forms, thought Tina, but she’d never have guessed this was one.

  ‘Who else knows the details of your investigation?’

  Fear seemed to fire up every nerve ending in Tina. She knew that if she gave the wrong answer, they’d hurt her, and if she gave the right one, it took her a big step closer to death.

  ‘No one knows the details,’ she said quietly.

  The blonde’s finger tensed on the trigger. ‘And where have you made a record of your investigations?’

  Tina knew this was the last question they’d ask her. Once they had the information, she was gone.

  Please, Jeff, if you’re hearing this … do something.

  ‘On my laptop.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In my car.’

  ‘Where’s your car parked?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  The blonde’s expression darkened. ‘What do you mean you’re not sure?’ She lowered the gun so it was pointed directly between Tina’s legs. ‘Maybe I should give you another hole for your boyfriend to fuck.’

  ‘Armed police!’ came an angry shout from beyond the front door. ‘Open up now!’

  The door shook alarmingly as it was kicked hard.

  Tina recognized the voice as Jeff’s, which wasn’t good, because he wasn’t armed. Then the sound of a wailing siren carried through an open window somewhere at the back of the flat, sounding like it wasn’t that far away, and getting closer.

  ‘Shit,’ hissed the blonde, turning her head in the direction of the shouts.

  The hiss of bullets being fired towards the door came from behind Tina. It was the giant, but Tina couldn’t see if he was hitting it or
not because her view was blocked by the blonde.

  All this happened in the space of a couple of seconds, which was all it took for Tina to make a decision. She knew she was about to be shot. The blonde was already turning back towards her. One more second and she’d end up like Sheryl.

  She launched herself from the sofa, grabbing the gun and yanking it upwards just as the blonde pulled the trigger. She heard another shout of ‘Armed police!’, caught a glimpse of smoking holes in the door as the giant continued to fire into it, and then she had the blonde by the hair and was using her momentum to drag her round so her body was between Tina and the giant.

  They both fell to the floor, crashing into the chair Tina had sat in when she’d come to see Sheryl a couple of days earlier, and knocking it backwards. Somehow the blonde ended up on top. She was snarling and trying to pull her gun hand free but Tina put all her strength into giving her attacker’s wrist a single hard twist, digging her nails in.

  The gun clattered to the carpet as the blonde let go of it, crying out in pain, and Tina used her hand to knock it out of reach. The blonde was fast, though. She immediately used her free hand to drive her palm into Tina’s face, delivering a blow that caused excruciating pain. She then forced down Tina’s arms and pinned them with her knees, before grabbing her round the neck with both hands and squeezing with real force.

  ‘Shoot the bitch!’ she yelled, and beyond her, Tina saw the giant looming into view, the gun in his hand, trying to find a good shot.

  With her air cut off, Tina felt herself becoming light-headed. She kicked and bucked with everything she had beneath the blonde, but already her strength was fading, and the blonde’s grip was like a vice. But she wouldn’t give up … she couldn’t.

  The giant was only a few feet away now, already pointing the gun at Tina’s head.

  Then, from what felt like a long distance away, she heard the bang of the door being kicked open, and another scream of ‘Armed police!’

  The giant turned to where it was coming from, firing again, a look of intense concentration on his face. At the same time, Tina concentrated on wriggling her left arm free from under the blonde’s knee, using all her remaining strength to lever it off.

  As it came free, Tina punched the blonde in the side of the head and, as the grip on her throat momentarily loosened, drove herself upwards and raked her face with her nails. But in her peripheral vision she saw the giant was pointing the gun at her again.

  He pulled the trigger.

  It was over.

  Except it wasn’t. He’d run out of bullets. He cursed and reached into his pocket.

  But Tina wasn’t going to wait for him to reload. Already pressing her advantage, she yanked one of the blonde’s hands from her neck and managed to knock her off balance. Kicking and struggling free, Tina scrambled across the floor in the direction of the gun, grabbed it, and swung round, finger already tensed on the trigger.

  But the giant and the blonde were running towards the rear of the flat, slamming the door behind them and leaving Tina aiming at non-existent targets.

  Suppressing a choking cough, she clambered unsteadily to her feet and looked towards the open front door.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered as she saw Jeff Roubaix sprawled on the hallway floor, his head propped up against the wall opposite. He’d been shot repeatedly in the upper body, and the blue shirt he’d been wearing that Tina remembered thinking she liked earlier was peppered with dark stains the shape of blooming roses. His eyes were closed and he looked dead, and she felt a hard wrench of shock and anger. Even though he’d been unarmed, he’d tried to save her, and it had cost him his life. She was responsible. This was her doing. Tina Boyd. The Black Widow. The woman no man wanted to work with because of the way they had a habit of dying around her.

  She could hear heavy footfalls on the staircase and more shouts of ‘Armed police!’ These ones were real, though. The cavalry had arrived, but as so often, they were too late.

  With the gun still in her hand, Tina ran through the flat in the direction the two assassins had taken. These were the two who’d come to kill Sean at the house in Wales, she was convinced of that, which now inextricably linked him to the disappearance of Lauren and Jen. But that was of no use to her if these bastards got away.

  Passing through the kitchen, she ran into the back bedroom, gun arm outstretched. The room was empty and smelled of perfume, and the doors leading out to the narrow balcony were open.

  The rear of the building looked out on to a residential street, and Tina ran on to the balcony and looked both ways. She was on the second floor, a good twelve feet above the ground, but the blonde and the giant had clearly jumped, because they weren’t there now. And she couldn’t see them either. They were gone.

  Cursing and shaking, still holding the gun, Tina strode back into the lounge, almost straight into the guns of two cops sighting her down the barrels of their MP5s. Behind them she could see a third cop crouched down beside Jeff, trying to resuscitate him. ‘It’s no good,’ she heard him call out. ‘He’s gone, he’s gone.’

  ‘Put the gun down now!’ the cop on the left yelled at her. ‘Now!’

  She put it down.

  ‘Get on your knees.’

  She got down on her knees, as the one on the right kicked the gun away from her.

  ‘Lie down on your front with your hands down by your side.’

  ‘My name’s Tina Boyd. I’m a private detective.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck who you are, lady. Lie down or I’ll shoot you.’

  Tina lay down, level now with Sheryl’s corpse, which was only a few feet away. Blood dripped slowly from the dead girl’s head wound on to the carpet. Tina knew it could have been her, and she found herself shaking, knowing once again that she’d pushed her luck to the absolute limits.

  But at least it was finished.

  For now.

  Forty

  It was the nicest evening I could remember, which, given my general lack of memory and the shit I’d had to put up with over the last two months, probably wasn’t saying too much. But the fact was I felt truly relaxed. Luda was a lovely woman. Kind, friendly, and a real conversationalist. During the course of dinner (a very tasty coq au vin with homemade bread and steamed veg from the garden) and two bottles of red wine, we really opened up to each other. Or perhaps more accurately, she opened up to me and I got into my role of the jilted salesman husband so well that I stopped thinking of it as a lie. It felt good, whereas being me just felt crap.

  I think it was inevitable that we’d end up making love. Somewhere near the bottom of the second bottle she reached over the kitchen table and took my hand, we looked into each other’s eyes, and that was pretty much it. I leaned forward and kissed her tenderly on the lips, and she kissed me back, but harder and with real passion, and then we were in each other’s arms and trailing through the house and up the stairs, losing clothes on the way as we explored each other, mouths locked together in an almost desperate embrace.

  When we got to the bedroom and were lying naked on the bed she turned to me with a nervous look on her face. ‘I haven’t done this for a long time,’ she said quietly.

  I propped myself up on one elbow and smiled down at her, gently pushing back a lock of hair from her face. ‘Me neither,’ I said, which was the truth.

  ‘You and your wife didn’t …’

  I shook my head. ‘Not for months. Listen, we don’t have to do anything. I’m happy just to lie here with you.’ This wasn’t quite the truth but I was conscious of what I’d been sent to prison for and there was no way I was going to push myself on Luda. Not after everything she’d done for me.

  She smiled. ‘No. I want to do it with you.’

  So, after some messing about with a condom from her bedside drawer, we did. It was wild, it was passionate, and it was going great. But then, just as we built up towards the climax, I found myself looking down not at Luda but at a beautiful blue-eyed woman with luscious lips, and thick blo
nde hair that seemed to cascade down on to the pillow. It was the girl from that recurring dream. Seeing her then, in place of Luda, I experienced an intense physical reaction that literally made me shake and, as the orgasm coursed through me and I buried my face in the crook of Luda’s neck, all I could think about was this girl from the dream and how much I’d been in love with her.

  Afterwards, we stayed in the same position for a long time before finally getting into bed. Luda switched off the lamp and snuggled up to me as I put a protective arm round her shoulder.

  Lying there in the peaceful darkness, I was transported back to a busy bar. I couldn’t remember who I was there with – I couldn’t even remember the name of the place – but it was definitely the place where we’d met. I was just peeling away from the bar with a beer in one hand when I saw her. Jesus, she was gorgeous. Tall, young and glamorous, with the kind of face that’s both sweetly pretty and sexually alluring at the same time. And she was smiling at me too.

  It was like that feeling you get when you’re so attracted to someone that the strength of it almost makes you fall over. It was – I swear it – love at first sight.

  I walked straight up to her. ‘Hi, my name’s Sean. I’m trying to think of something cheesy to say, and I can’t. So please just let me buy you a drink.’

  She laughed then, a sweet, feminine sound. Although, to be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d honked like a Canada goose. At that moment she could do no wrong. ‘Sure, why not? My name’s Jen, by the way.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Jen,’ I said, taking her hand in mine and shaking it gently. ‘I bet you’ve got a really exotic surname as well.’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, still laughing. ‘It’s Jones.’