Page 62 of Famous Last Words

‘Not worth a full surveillance budget,’ Lambert sayshumourlessly, conversation closed. ‘We can’t keep throwing good money after bad. If it was Deschamps, he will slip up again one day, if he’s out there.’

‘Yeah, and we won’t be looking,’ Niall says.

Lambert straightens some papers on the table, clears his throat. ‘Sometimes,’ he says lightly, ‘it’s best to just accept that some investigations are better off without your input. Speaking generally.’

Niall sits back in his seat, disappointed. He’s glad he bought the new burner phone the other day: and now’s the time to use it. He’s given the Met time to trace Deschamps officially, and they haven’t. It’s time for him to act.

Therapists, another hostage negotiator once told Niall, call it ‘hand-on-the-door syndrome’. When people reveal themselves only as they’re leaving, and then bring up the topic which means the most to them.

Jess wants to talk about the gunshots. She wants to get to the bottom of why he hears them. Doesn’t seem quite satisfied with the explanation that Niall made a mistake, and is haunted by it.

Hand-on-the-door syndrome. Niall does just that in Jess’s office today. It’s raining, rare summer rain, the world outside her windowpane a watercolour. ‘Rosalind said Viv never got over me,’ he says, summer jacket slung on, palm – proverbially only: Jess always opens the door for him – on the handle.

He has nobody to discuss it with, and the conversation keeps moving fast around his mind like a ping-pong ball. He’s got to get it out, somehow.

‘Oh,’ Jess says, clearly surprised. ‘And how do you feel about that?’

She takes her glasses off and begins to clean them on hershirt. Takes one to know one, thinks Niall: she’s telling him there’s no hurry, inviting him to talk even though the session is over, pretending she isn’t listening avidly. ‘Surprised,’ Niall says. ‘She ended it. Said she played second fiddle to my work.’

Jess pauses, perhaps weighing up what to say, then concluding that Niall can deal with it. She looks directly at him, no glasses, eyes clear. ‘And did she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you regret that?’

Niall turns his mouth down, not saying anything.

‘What exactly did she say to Rosalind?’ Jess asks.

‘I don’t know. Rosalind said she’d finished with this boyfriend of hers, the American with the rescue dog’ – Jess raises her eyebrows at this – ‘and that it was because of me.’

‘Doyouthink it was because of you?’

‘I don’t know. I have no idea. After she left I …’ Niall says. His throat clogs as he thinks of that night. It’s all tied together for him. The rain intensifies outside. Jess’s office roof is flat; they can hardly hear each other over it.

‘I told her she didn’t play second fiddle to my job.’

‘But you said that she did.’

‘I know. But she wouldn’t. I … I don’t know. It’s mad,’ Niall says. ‘I forgot her birthday, is all.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. No. But sometimes I … I just think there’s another chance for us.’ Niall meets her eyes again as he says this, and Jess’s face falls in sympathy, perhaps feeling sorry for a deluded old fool.

‘Do you think Viv thinks that?’

‘I don’t know. Probably not.’

‘Maybe she didn’t believe you,’ Jess says lightly. ‘When youassured her.’ She puts her glasses back on. They magnify her eyes, a clear green, not unlike Viv’s.

‘Believe me?’

‘That she isn’t second fiddle.’

‘Rosalind said I am a crap communicator, considering what I do,’ Niall says.

‘Everyone is, about something,’ Jess says, seeing him out now into the corridor, where it’s quieter. ‘Their Achilles heel.’

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