Page 46 of Famous Last Words

‘I know that you will say I can’t control the actions of gunmen,’ Niall replies. Another deflection.

Jess smiles. ‘You don’t know what I will say.’

‘Isn’t it that?’

‘It is your job to prevent these things as much as is possible’ – she holds her hands, palms up, to him – ‘but you are also a human being.’

‘I know that,’ Niall replies. He likes that Jess still talks about his hostage negotiation career in the present tense. For him, it’s all past. The Met didn’t take him off negotiations: he took himself off them.

‘Vulnerable to mistakes, as is anyone.’ She pauses. ‘Marital or otherwise.’

This is the second banned topic, so Niall ignores Jess’s invitation.

He gazes down at his feet, saying nothing. Only earlier this morning he checked Viv’s WhatsApp, as he does sometimes. There she was in her profile photo in her pink T-shirt, smiling at him.Last seen 22:11. He likes to look at that sometimes. See her continuing on even without him, living her life.

They have some contact. Every few months, one will text the other, something anodyne usually. Viv was very careful last year to let Niall know she is dating an American who – God forbid – has an actual RSPCA rescue dog. Be still Viv’s beating heart. Nevertheless, Niall does, in fact, still feel very close to Viv in that way you do sometimes when you don’t see a friend for over a year but when you meet up nothing has changed. Maybe this is a delusion. Probably. Even so, he hasn’t forgotten her birthday since.

‘Are you not allowed to make mistakes?’

‘I wasn’t. As a kid,’ Niall says sullenly, remembering falling off his bike and getting told off for it by his father, among other things.

‘Well – you are now,’ she says. ‘Trust me.’

‘Hmm.’

‘How often are the dreams now?’ she asks.

‘Only once or twice a week,’ Niall lies.

It does not exactly surprise Niall when, that evening at seven, working late, he receives the alert from the Met’s surveillance team: a text has pinged on Camilla’s phone. She’s about to be sent a message from a service called textanon.com. The Met put covert surveillance back on her phone after the sighting. It does no harm and, once in a while, those on the run slip up.

Like this.

Niall springs into action, calling Claire in telecoms. Her kids are in their teens, now, and, if anything, she’s become even more formidable as her home life has eased.

‘I know why you’re calling,’ she says, ‘and if you let me get off the phone, I will call Text Anon myself and make a release request.’

‘Fine,’ Niall says, then waits. He sighs. It’s been a long day already, heralded by Deschamps’s own gunshots, and succeeded by boring detective work that doesn’t excite him. Domestics. Burglaries. Nothing where Niall needs to make a judgement call.

He stares out at London. It’s another perfect summer. No rain for weeks, the air crystalline and fragile with the heat, only just beginning to cool down now.

Five minutes, ten, and Claire comes back to him.

‘Good news,’ she says. ‘It’s not sent yet. They’re on a delay. We can intercept it.’

‘Brilliant,’ Niall says.

‘Anon say they hold the message before sending it, so I’ve asked them to capture it, and not send it,’ Claire says.

Damn, Niall likes her. She’s so smart. ‘Thank you,’ he says.Neither of them says the unsaid: that he ought not to be working on this file. Not after he passed it over.

‘I’m guessing,’ Claire says, ‘that … somebody … is going to go to the location, instead of Camilla?’

‘Right,’ Niall says, smiling for perhaps the first time today.

‘The original text said eight o’clock. At these coordinates,’ she says, rattling them off.

‘Excellent,’ Niall says, ringing off.

---