Read Dead Man's Gift 03 - Today for Free Online

never want to see him again either, because he would always be a reminder of the most terrible experience of her life. Fair enough. He understood that.
    Finally she turned away and walked with Max back to her car.
    Scope watched them both get in, then reversed out of the spot and away from their permanently changed lives. He didn’t want to go back home, so instead he wound his way through the back roads that dotted this part of the Chiltern Hills until he finally found himself on the M40, heading north. He had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there. He just felt a need to get away.
    He was almost at the Lake District when he heard confirmation on the radio that Tim Horton was the sole fatality in the select committee hearing explosion. It had now been confirmed that it had been caused by a bomb, and the media were finally beginning to report that Tim might have been the man in possession of it. Because he’d been running for the door at the time of the explosion, the force of the blast had been directed against the main wall and away from those inside the room. The result was that the only other reported casualty was a nearby security guard, who was currently in hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
    In the end, Tim had shown a bravery that Scope wouldn’t have expected of him. He’d sacrificed his life for his son, but he’d done it in a way that had avoided taking many innocent lives. That took real guts, and it made Scope proud of him. It also made him glad that he’d helped save Max, even though he’d had to kill three people in the process. It was possible that the police would find out about his involvement and come after him, although there was nothing he could do about that now. And anyway, that was the risk you took when you involved yourself in other people’s battles, and Scope had never been able to resist a cry for help.
    He thought for a few moments about whether he regretted sticking his life and his liberty on the line like that. But a few moments was all it took. As he looked out of the car window to where the sun was beginning to set in a fiery gold blaze above the rolling hills to the west, he knew he’d done the right thing, and it pleased him.

A Note from the Author:
    Some of the more eagle-eyed of you may notice that I’ve taken a couple of minor liberties with both the layout of the House of Commons and the Royal Middlesex Hospital. These were done deliberately to help with the smooth running of the story which, in the end, is always the most important thing!
    All the very best.



One
    I’ve been worried that I’m not who they say I am for a while now.
    It started a week or so back after I fell down the cellar steps en route to getting a bottle of red wine and smacked my head on the stone floor. They kept me in the local hospital overnight as I was showing the symptoms for mild concussion, and ever since they let me out, things haven’t felt quite right.
    To be honest, the whole set-up here’s pretty odd. According to my sister, she’s been looking after me at her house for over two months now, and that feels about right, although it’s impossible to tell for sure because the days just seem to drift into one another in a kind of soft fog. The thing is, I’m not sure whether I’m being paranoid or not. When you’ve got no long-term memory you’re as helpless as a young child, which means you’ve got to trust the people around you. And particularly those whose job it is to bring your memory back – like the man sitting opposite me across the room.
    Dr Bronson’s a big, dapper man at the wrong end of his fifties with a quite magnificent mane of black hair, tinged with silver, and a long, thoughtful face that would have been described as ruggedly handsome a few years back but which is now beginning to lose its fight with gravity. Even so, you can still imagine that he’d have his pick of single ladies of a certain age. He has that