Page 92 of Famous Last Words

‘He was good,’ she says, tilting her face upwards. The rain lands on it, illuminating her in silver. Niall doesn’t answer. She says it again, almost to herself. ‘He was good.’

Niall lets her have this moment before revealing anything more.

Camilla turns away from him, Niall assumes so she can have her moment in private. Her husband was good.

In the distance, two other figures stand at a rooftop bar: pinpricks on the horizon. They must be half a mile away. Niall squints at them through the rain. The people will be soaking. He smiles as he looks at them and thinks that they won’t care. Not at all.

Act Three

SEVEN YEARS AFTER THE ATTEMPTED MURDER

42

Cam

Relief. A high, tidal sort of feeling, rising up through her body and washing her clean from the inside out. He was good. He was the man she married. Night after night, she slept next to him, and shedidknow him. The circumstances of the siege, though still unknown, were not as clear cut as they seemed. She had been right about him. And that is what matters most.

Cam and Niall walk under a bridge that joins two buildings. The rain is so loud it’s like white noise. Her feet might be wet. She doesn’t know, doesn’t care. She can’t yet bring herself to speak properly.

A police officer says men were sent to murder her husband.

That he retaliated.

That, all this time, they were the ones sent to kill, and he the one who defended himself.

She blinks. Niall is looking down at her.

‘You don’t think he wanted to kill anyone,’ she says softly. Just checking and checking and checking again.

‘No,’ Niall says. A pause. ‘I never did, actually. Which was why we didn’t go in. I wouldn’t authorize it.’

‘But …’

‘I know. There’s a lot to unpack. I don’t think the rain’s going to stop – hang on,’ Niall says, and he leads her across a courtyard, then lets them inside a wooden door and up to therafters. ‘I know a barrister who knows the caretaker,’ he explains.

The corridor is old-fashioned, royal-feeling, deep red carpets faded up to rose pink, portraits on the walls, iron knockers on old-fashioned doors. Niall opens room number five.

The room is chilly inside, like a church, and Niall perches by the windowsill. Cam lets a breath out, and holds her information close to her. Her husband was a victim. He was good.

She chokes on the thought. A storm of emotions: relief; a happiness she hasn’t felt in years; sadness, too.

And fear. Somebody wanted her husband dead. And he knew it, and told nobody. The dread he must have felt, alone with it, chopping onions and hiding his tears … Cam had dismissed that clue from seven years ago, put it down to stress, but now she holds it up in a new light. The sunlight strikes it at the exact right angle, finally, and it fragments out into a rainbow. Somebody wanted him dead. He was a man with few options, desperately trying to find some before they came for him.

Cam’s head begins to clear from the shock of it, and she starts to try to work out what she needs to do. How much to tell Niall. Which parts to keep to herself.

But there is liquid happiness in her chest, gloopy as childhood medicine and just as comforting.He didn’t want to do it. He is not, he was not, bad.Cam swallows it down greedily.He took their weapon. The one they wanted to murder him with.

‘How did you find out?’ she asks him, her heart happy/sad.

‘He contacted a man called Harry Grace just before the siege. You’re aware of him?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Cam says in surprise.

‘Well, Harry lurks on the dark web. He’s a criminal fromLewisham. People use him when they want protection. Deschamps reached out to him on there.’

‘Lewisham,’ Cam says. Harry, in Lewisham.

‘Yes. The Rightmove house. Very clever, to obscure a meeting point in that way. When questioned, Harry said he didn’t know him.’

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