Page 24 of Famous Last Words

23:10: Poplar

23:30: East Ham

Odd place to drive, through central London – unusual for a native – and so late at night. He can access pictures from each hit, but they’re as crappy as ever, near useless, taken from gantries or poles by the side of the road, dark and grainy. You can barely make out it’s a white male, certainly nothing else.

He flicks to the twenty-second of April, but there’s nothing, nor the twenty-third. Nothing comes back on until early May, two weeks later. Now it’s the twenty-first of June.

So Deschamps goes out that night but, according to the database, he doesn’t come home again.

Maidstone arrives at Niall’s table, interrupting him. ‘Where are your coffees? You’re almost fifteen minutes into your allotted thirty.’

‘Coming,’ Niall says tightly.

‘Growing the beans yourself? We have guns to heads here, Niall.’

Niall ignores him. Maidstone is holding a piece of paper: reports of missing persons from this morning in London – sixty of them, with descriptions.

‘No matches to our unknown hostages. These guys areboth in jeans and white trainers, middle-aged, we think. No one’s phoned that in at this time,’ Maidstone says.

‘Lambert was just saying it’s weird.’

‘It is.’

Niall points to his screen. ‘Look at this: Deschamps goes out one night, gets pinged all over the place by ANPR, but then doesn’t come home again according to the cameras – and turns off his iPhone location data just before midnight.’

‘Hang on,’ Maidstone says. ‘Let me get the report on the state of the car.’ He types away on his phone. ‘See if it’s got any evidence on it … Finally – your order is arriving,’ he says, gesturing briefly towards the assistant at the door holding a drinks tray and a brown paper bag. ‘Get moving. Twelve minutes.’

‘James.’

‘What?’

‘If he comes to the door to get these, I need an assurance from you that you will do absolutely nothing. And I really mean nothing.’

Maidstone shifts on his feet. ‘That depends what he does.’

‘I need to be able to give him a cast-iron guarantee that you will do nothing if he gets those coffees. If one of your snipers aims the rapport will be lost.’

‘Provided he doesn’t aim at us, we won’t shoot.’

‘He may well aim. But I just don’t think he’ll shoot.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Where are the snipers situated?’

He sighs. ‘One on the door and one on the roof. Do not so much as glance at them or you will get me sacked and sued.’

‘I’m not an idiot.’

‘I’m thinking of the inevitable public inquiry here.’

‘I need to be able to promise him that we won’t harm him. That’s my first move always. This coffee needs to be a true offer. Not bait.’ Niall pauses. ‘He will think it’s bait, anyway. I want to prove him wrong as my opening effort.’

‘Fine,’ Maidstone says.

‘Look at this. Officers have checked the car and the ANPR system for the twenty-first of April. Reg plates got covered in mud, it seems. Stopped pinging the ANPR on the way home. You can see where the mud has crusted off when he starts pinging them again in May.

‘At the same time he turned off his location data.’ Niall’s tone slides to frustrated.Yes, they need to do the coffees, but they also need to crack the mystery.

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