The Final Minute

by Simon Kernick

  And then, fifty metres on, it widened suddenly before coming to a dead end next to a barn I immediately recognized as the one where I’d been discovered by Luda the previous afternoon. My gun, with its one bullet, was still in there. Caught with it, I’d be adding yet another major crime to the ones I’d already supposedly committed. But it also offered me a way out. A bullet in the head was preferable to prison for the next God knew how many years because, in the end, no one was ever going to believe my story. Jesus, half the time I wasn’t even sure I believed it myself.

  I stopped the car, scrambled out of the driver’s door, deliberately leaving it open, retrieved the gun from the barn, shoving it in the back of my jeans, then doubled back on myself, running into the trees on the passenger side of the car, figuring they’d expect me to head the other way. The sirens had started up now and I doubted if the cops were more than thirty seconds behind me. There’d be others coming too. I might have been one of them once, but to them I was now the worst kind of police officer – one who’d dishonoured the service. I could expect no mercy, although in a strange way it was that thought which gave me impetus.

  I was a survivor. I’d survived everything the world had thrown at me so far, and I wasn’t going to make it easy for them now.

  The trees gave way to a field of chest-high wheat, and I tore through it, keeping my head down, grateful for the cover it provided me with. In the distance I could hear more sirens coming from different directions, their insistent wails filling the still, clear air as they closed in on me. I kept running, ignoring the burning in my lungs, thinking I’d had more exercise this week than I’d had in the previous two months.

  The wheat field was huge, half a mile across at least, with a line of trees marking the border at the far end. As I got further in, slowed down by the tilled earth beneath my feet, a cluster of caravans and mobile homes appeared in the distance to my right, partially obscured by the trees. There were a number of cars and vans parked up among them, and smoke rose from somewhere in the middle. It looked to me like a travellers’ camp. I had a vague memory of going to one once before as an undercover cop trying to set up a deal to buy stolen 4×4s, and things not ending too well. But I wasn’t so worried about that now, and straight away I turned in its direction.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw two uniformed cops armed with guns appearing out of the woodland from which I’d emerged barely a minute earlier. They were staring out across the field, but it didn’t look like they’d spotted me. Keeping my head down as much as possible, I ploughed on, telling myself not to panic. As far as they were concerned I could be armed, which meant they’d have to secure the area and, if necessary, evacuate it before they moved in. All that took time, which worked in my favour.

  The travellers’ camp loomed in front of me. It didn’t look that big – the caravans, mobile homes, 4×4s and vans numbered about twenty – but what caught my eye was a large flatbed truck used for hauling plant that was parked behind one of the caravans, out of sight of the rest of the camp. There weren’t that many people around. I could see a group of about half a dozen kids playing around the remnants of the fire that was producing all the smoke, while a couple of guys in overalls worked on an ancient Ford Cortina, and a big middle-aged woman hung washing on a line that ran between two camper vans.

  I slowed as I approached, taking a quick look round. I couldn’t see the two armed cops any more and, although the sirens still sounded far too close, there was no sign of the cars. A fence separated the field from the camp, and there was about thirty yards of exposed wasteland I was going to have to cross before I got to the truck I wanted. It was a big risk trying to nick a truck from under the noses of a bunch of witnesses, but it was an even bigger one staying put, so, taking a deep breath, I hopped the fence and bolted towards it, hoping like hell that the doors weren’t locked. At almost exactly the same time, two police cars hurtled up the track, skidding to a halt in the middle of the camp, scattering the kids but not the two men working on the Cortina, who turned and stood their ground, joined almost immediately by several others.

  The truck’s cab was only a few feet from one of the mobile homes, and only a few feet more from the woman hanging out her washing. To avoid being seen by her or anyone else, I crept round the passenger side, passing perilously close to the mobile home’s windows. I glanced inside and saw a big guy with a bald head, an impressive white moustache and more tattoos than naked skin watching TV. All he had to do to see me was turn round, but he looked pretty engrossed in whatever was on so I stood on the passenger step of the truck and tried the door, silently thanking God when it opened. I slipped inside, quietly closing the door, and manoeuvred my way through a pile of burger wrappers and empty junk food containers into the driver’s seat. From this new position I could see the uniformed cops, who didn’t appear to be armed, remonstrating with the men.

  I could feel the adrenalin kick of excitement, and I loved it. I must always have done. It must have been why I spent so much time as an undercover cop. Even though this was a game that was always going to end badly for me at some point, I was enjoying it. I just knew I was going to go down fighting.

  Keeping my head down, I checked the ignition. No keys. No surprise. Ignoring the stale smell of cheap old food and body odour, I got to work on hotwiring the engine. Like a lot of things, I had no specific memory of learning how to hotwire a vehicle. I just knew. As I touched the wires together and pumped the accelerator, the engine kicked into life with an angry grumble. The noise did the inevitable and made everyone turn round in surprise.

  I released the handbrake and found reverse gear. The truck lurched backwards and immediately stalled. The woman was yelling something and, as I touched the wires together again, kicking the engine into life a second time, the bald guy with the tache and tattoos came running into view, making for the driver’s side with alarming speed. The cops were running towards me too, as were the rest of the men, so I accelerated backwards across the grass until I was almost at the fence, then swung the wheel round so I was facing away from my many pursuers, before putting the truck into first.

  But for a big man, the guy with the tache was fast, and as I pulled away he jumped up on the step and yanked open the driver’s door. I managed to get the truck into second before the guy shoved a beefy arm inside the cab and grabbed me round the neck. He was hanging half in, half out the door, trying to drag me out before I could pick up too much speed, his fingers squeezing into my neck. But there was no way I was stopping for him or anyone, so I swung round, keeping my foot flat down on the accelerator, and punched him twice in the face.

  His grip loosened and he wobbled a bit, cursing me in a thick Irish accent, but he didn’t let go and instead tried to yank me out of my seat. Unable to reach round and grab the gun in the position I was in, I punched him again and swung the wheel a hard left, then right, driving towards the edge of one of the far caravans. He wobbled again, holding on to the doorframe for support, and changed tactics, hitting me in the side of the head. It was a good shot too but I ignored the pain and kept my foot hard on the accelerator, aiming straight for the back of the caravan.

  The outswinging driver’s door struck the caravan as I skirted past it and immediately slammed shut on my attacker. He cried out and I took my chance, leaning over and giving him a single hard shove. This time he fell out of the doorway and disappeared from view, and I grabbed the wheel with both hands as the truck lurched on to the track, turning hard in the direction of a road about twenty yards away. I could see a bare-chested guy racing towards me swinging a pickaxe handle. He grabbed at the door with his free hand but I continued accelerating, the engine making a high-pitched scream as the rev counter hit dangerous levels, and he was dragged along for about five yards before falling over into the dirt.

  I took a rapid glance in my rear-view mirror. Two cops were running after me, both looking knackered already, while one of the locals had a third cop in a headlock. It was only when I looked back ahead t
hat I saw flashing blue lights through the hedge bordering the road, and then a cop car appeared right in front of me, blocking off the end of the track.

  It was a bad move on their part. I kept going, still picking up speed, aiming for the bonnet, not wanting to hurt anyone but knowing there was no way I was going to surrender either. Doors flew open on either side of the car and two cops emerged holding pistols. They were still in the process of pointing them in my direction when I hit the bonnet head on, shunting the car out of the way. I kept my head down as two shots rang out amid angry, unintelligible shouts, and the truck mounted the bank on the other side of the road, taking out a chunk of the hedge. But I kept control of the wheel and the truck slammed back down on to the tarmac amid another volley of shots as they tried to blow out the tyres.

  But momentum was on my side now, and I kept driving, putting the truck into third. And as the cops, and their battered patrol car, disappeared in my rear-view mirror, I laughed out loud.

  I was on my way.

  Forty-three

  The first call to Tina’s landline came at 8.20 a.m., and it woke her from a deep slumber. It was a journalist from the Daily Mirror wanting to do an exclusive interview about her relationship with Sean Egan.

  Tina hung up on him without comment.

  When the next call, from a Guardian reporter, came through at 8.35, she took her phone off the hook, switched all three of her mobiles on to silent and went back to sleep, confident that the police on duty outside wouldn’t allow any journalists to come knocking on her door.

  It was another gloriously sunny day, and her police guard were still in their car outside the house when Tina finally rose at about eleven. She showered and ate, trying to put the memories of the previous night behind her, before checking her phones again. She had seven missed calls on her main mobile but only recognized one of the numbers, that of Lauren’s father, Alan Donaldson. The others were probably journalists. She listened to Donaldson’s message. He told her that he’d read in that morning’s newspaper that Tina was linked to the disappearance of a murder suspect, and that the TV was carrying unconfirmed reports that she’d been at the scene of a double murder the previous night, and had been arrested, then released – all of which was true. He finished by saying he hoped she was all right, and asking her to call him.

  As her sole paying client, Tina felt she must return his call, but she was pleased when he didn’t answer. She didn’t want to have to go into a lengthy explanation about what had happened, or how it impacted on her search for Lauren, so she left a brief message saying she was fine and would talk to him later before heading outside into her garden with a coffee and a cigarette.

  But she’d barely sat down when she got a call from Mike Bolt.

  ‘How are you feeling today?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’m still here, and right now that’s a bonus.’

  ‘You’re always going to be here, Tina. I’m beginning to think you’re indestructible.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence.’

  ‘Have you seen the news today?’

  ‘No, but I’ve heard I’m on it. You weren’t able to keep my connection to Sean out of the public domain, then.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You know how it goes. These things tend to leak, especially when they’re newsworthy stories, which they always are when you’re involved.’

  ‘What are they saying about me?’

  ‘Not a lot yet, although the Scotland Yard press office has confirmed you were arrested but then released without charge after the incident last night.’

  Tina sighed, wondering how her poor parents were going to react to this. ‘I guessed as much.’

  ‘That’s not why I phoned, though. We requested local CID to pick up Dylan Mackay this morning. They had to break down the door because there was no answer.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Tina, knowing what was coming next. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘They found him hanging from a light fitting. No signs of a struggle, but no suicide note either.’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘It looks that way, but it was a professional job. Apparently there are no signs of a struggle on the body.’

  ‘The people we’re dealing with are professionals, Mike. To them, Dylan was just a loose end. If you can get hold of his phone records from around April the seventh and find out who he was talking to, you’ll be able to track down who’s behind all this, and hopefully connect them to your murder victim from the hotel.’

  ‘We’re doing that right now,’ he said, ‘although I’m having difficulty explaining to my team what the relevance of Dylan Mackay to our case is.’

  ‘They’re connected, you know that.’

  Mike sighed. ‘Did you hear there was a confirmed sighting of Sean Egan at a house in Cambridgeshire earlier today? The local cops tried to arrest him but he got away in a truck he stole from a travellers’ camp. You almost have to admire the guy.’

  It didn’t surprise Tina that Sean had got away again. He was nothing if not resourceful.

  ‘Did you find out any more about the company who were paying those two people to look after Sean?’ she asked.

  There was a pause down the other end of the line. ‘I’m not sure how much I should be telling you, Tina,’ Mike said eventually. ‘We’ve come across some very sensitive information.’

  ‘This is me, Mike. I don’t blab. Unlike some members of your team.’

  ‘Fair enough. You remember I told you that Sean’s minders were being paid by a shell company based in the Bahamas? Well, we got some people from the SFO to find out who owns it. There was something of a money trail heading back through more than one offshore company, but eventually they traced it to a UK outfit called Secure Solutions who, according to their company blurb, provide cyber security and counter-espionage services to industry.’

  The news surprised Tina. ‘So why would they have been involved with an ex-con like Sean Egan?’

  ‘I have no idea. But that’s not all. This company has direct links to the Home Secretary, Garth Crossman.’ Mike paused. ‘Whatever Egan was involved in, it was something very, very big.’

  Forty-four

  It didn’t take long for the euphoria of my escape to wear off. Having dumped the truck in a village about five miles from Luda’s farm, I hotwired an old Datsun that was parked round the back of someone’s house and drove it into the centre of Cambridge, which was where I was now. I’d managed to locate some spare change in the truck and now had the sum total of nine pounds twenty to my name. It was enough for one meal and then I was back to square one again.

  I found a pub offering a combination of chicken curry, naan bread and a pint of beer for £4.99, which seemed as good a deal as any I was going to get, so I went inside and ordered from a bored barmaid who thankfully didn’t bother looking me in the eye, before finding a seat a long way from everyone else.

  The food came and I ate hungrily, wondering whether this was going to be my final meal as a free man. Now that my face was out there in the public domain, it was only a matter of time before the police finally caught up with me, and the longer this whole saga went on, the less likely it was that anyone was going to believe my story. I didn’t deserve to be in this situation, yet I still couldn’t remember what had happened to me after I’d left prison and taken the job with Jack Duckford. It had to have been some kind of undercover role, one that had led me to that house in the dream.

  It struck me then that Jack Duckford could help fill in the gaps in my memory. Whether he’d want to help a killer on the run was another thing entirely, but it had to be worth a try. I didn’t have his number, nor any obvious means of getting hold of it, but Tina would be able to find it. Calling her was a major risk, but it was only a matter of hours, days at most, before I was caught. I had to use whatever opportunities were available to me.

  As if to drum home the point, I looked up from my half-empty glass to see the big screen at the end of the bar showing aerial views of a building I im
mediately recognized as Luda’s farmhouse. The footage was being taken from a helicopter hovering overhead, and there were a dozen or so police vehicles lined up on the road outside, and various black-clad figures milling about. I even saw one guy appearing to search the chicken coop, although what he was expecting to find there was anyone’s guess. Maybe he wanted some free-range eggs. As I watched, the camera panned away, moving across fields and woodland until it came to the travellers’ camp where I’d stolen the truck. The police car I’d hit was still in the same position, just outside the entrance, and even from a distance you could see that a huge piece appeared to have been sheared off one side of the bonnet. More cops, some of them armed, stood around aimlessly while clusters of travellers watched them from a distance. The breaking news headline rolling across the bottom of the screen said simply that shots had been fired in an operation to arrest wanted murder suspect Sean Egan, and that one officer had sustained minor injuries. I was guessing he’d been in the car I’d hit, and I hoped he was OK.

  A different photo from the one I’d seen earlier on Luda’s kitchen TV popped up in the corner of the screen. It was a police mugshot, doubtless taken when I’d been charged with rape. I was staring morosely at the camera, looking every inch the criminal I was supposed to be. I’d put on weight since then, and my hair was longer now, but it was a good enough likeness to make me feel distinctly uncomfortable being inside a pub. A couple of middle-aged drinkers at a table near the bar were watching intently and the barmaid who’d served me earlier was pouring a drink only ten feet away from the screen. If she saw my picture, there was a very good chance she’d recognize me.

  The important thing was not to panic. I remembered that from undercover. You hold your ground and act with total confidence, because that’s the most effective way of making others doubt their own instincts. So I took another sip of my pint, making it last, and settled back in the seat as my mug disappeared from the screen and the camera returned to the news studio where the male anchor continued with his report. The sound was right down and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, so I waited another minute, took a casual look round to check no one was staring at me, then finished my drink and stood up.