Page 64 of Famous Last Words

‘No expense was spared,’ said a spokesperson from the Met.

Then, beneath a school photograph of Alexander Hale:

ALEXANDER HALE was said to be full of a zest for life. He was found with a head injury to the back of his skull, believed to be from a blunt weapon. He is survived by his parents, Michael and Janet.

Cam reads the report, and the stories about the murders,there in bed by herself, shivering as the early-morning wind and the rain rattle past her patio doors.

Justice for James, heartbroken parents’ plea, headlines theDaily Mail. Cam stares at his mother and father, and she recognizes something in their expressions. A kind of heaviness. The thing about grief is that, when it happens to you, you go through the looking glass. Suddenly, everyone else lives one kind of life, with one set of problems, and you another. You’re in a different world now, one you can never return from. And you only realize too late how good the first world was.

She keeps reading. The parents of each teenager never appear in the same article. No joint story sold, but then Cam wonders if she would do the same. Maybe they didn’t know each other. Maybe that’s part of the mystery.

ALEX was out alone, walking to the corner shop around eleven at night. It was less than five minutes from the Hales’ house in Whitechapel, only he never came home.

James was travelling home from a friend’s house.

It is there that the murder case begins: nobody knows who killed them, or why. A head wound and a gunshot.

Both parents were alerted less than an hour later: a pensioner in a house nearby reported hearing shouting, then a gunshot. Paramedics were called to the scene but couldn’t save them.

Extensive enquiries were made of the local residents of Whitechapel. Anybody who knows anything is urged to call the designated hotline below.

She googles Alexander Hale’s name together with the judge whose book Luke worked on, but nothing comes up. She does the same with James Lancaster. She keeps reading,article after article after article, reaching the depths of the internet, moving on to Facebook posts.

My cousin Alexander Hale was killed on 21stApril.

Somebody out there will know what happened.

The funeral will be held at St George-in-the-East on 16thJune 2017.

According to a follow-up post, the funeral was attended by 250 people.

And Cam, seven years later, is wondering if one of them was her husband.

And, if so, why.

Form N208

Status: Under way

Cam is out in the garden an hour later, in the already blazing sun, bare toes warm in parched, spiked grass that rustles like straw. She will miss this house if she ever manages to move, this simple house with its neat garden, her single deckchair worn to faded in the middle where she’s sat and read reams and reams of fiction.

In the sunlight, the rain evaporating off her patio, the Whitechapel double murder and the coincidence of the location data and the funeral no longer feel as frightening or as urgent. She’s connected the dots too quickly, too rashly, taking her twos and coming up with five. Luke could’ve been anywhere on 16 June. Adrienne could have been mistaken.

She looks at her phone. Another email update from the government site sits in her inbox, about her application for Luke. It’s moved fromBeing processedtoUnder way, whateverthat means. The handler helped her to find the documents, and stated none were needed where they didn’t have them. She sighs, the air close, her breath feeling heavy. Soon, then, he will be declared dead, and Cam will have to stay in the afterworld, alone, questions over coordinates unanswered, like everything.

Her work email is full to bursting with submissions and people chasing her, but she’s on leave, it’s Friday, Polly has an inset day. She sips her coffee and reads theBooksellerand then, as the morning stretches on, Facebook – God, it’s so nice that Polly lies in like this! – and then finally WhatsApp. Libby: she’s up early.

Libby: ???

Libby: Have you seen the Mail Online?

Libby: There’s a news story there about you? ‘Wife of siege-starter speaks out: still searching’

‘Oh fucking fuck,’ Cam says aloud, standing up in the garden. ‘Fuck.’

She opens it, then closes it, then paces. She walks to the back doors, the soles of her feet damp and warm from the puddles, then opens the article again. Task switching, biting her nails. How has this happened?

It’s a whole bloody piece. This is bad. It is so bad. It is worse than when they ran the story on the note Luke left her.

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