Page 12 of Famous Last Words

‘What’s the most unusual thing that’s happened for you guys in the last six months?’

Cam thinks, then remembers possibly the most significant thing: ‘We were burgled.’

‘When?’

Cam thinks. ‘Six weeks ago. Got home from the park – in the day. Place had been messed up. Luke called the police.’

‘Right,’ Lambert says, his eyes already on his phone, finding a contact, and dialling. ‘You never know what’s connected,’ he says to Cam. ‘Paul, I need a read-out on a burglary. Took place six weeks ago at 24 Bucks Avenue.’

Cam dispassionately observes his quick mind working in overdrive, while hers is on go-slow. They’d taken Polly to the swings. They’d returned home to their house which felt cool, the patio doors open in the bedroom. Drawers gone through, kitchen cupboards, too. Cam had looked around, holding Polly, at first not comprehending it, until her eyes had met Luke’s.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he’d said, and perhaps,perhaps, in hindsight, had he seemed more rattled than she would expect? No, not really. A burglary was a horrible thing.

Luke had called the police, had complained about how long he was on hold for, spoken to them out in the garden. Cam had watched him pace, dragging a hand through his blond hair over and over.

That night, Cam couldn’t sleep, nor the next, jumping at sounds, imagining strangers’ fingers rifling through their things. Yet they hadn’t taken anything. Not even a laptop that Luke had left out.

And now look. She watches Smith walk into the kitchen and begin opening her cupboards. Other strangers join her, all searching.

Perhaps her story arouses suspicion in Lambert, or perhaps he always intended to do this, but he sets a recording device down next to Cam. It looks incongruous on her sofa, an old-fashioned black box. ‘Interview with wife of suspect commencing ten twenty-two, June twenty-first, 2017,’ he says. ‘When did you last see your husband?’

Something collapses in Cam.

‘Last night,’ she says. ‘Or perhaps this morning.’

Lambert looks at her. ‘Which?’

The search team arrives. Cam hears them downstairs. Boots on stairs. Lowered voices.

‘Camilla?’ Lambert prompts, ignoring the team arriving. He is completely and totally focused on her. ‘We have to get on with this. Get you to the scene. Before something happens.’

She pauses, thinking of Luke’s note. The cryptic note. This whole situation feels surreal, but this especially so. Could she refuse to answer anything? Is she here –wife of suspect– leading the police to her husband?

‘He left this morning before I got up. He wrote me a note,’ she says carefully, knowing that she is not the sort of person who can refuse to cooperate, who can easily lie. ‘He kissed me. I think.’ And he did. She really thinks he did. He always does.

‘Where’s the note?’

‘Got it,’ Smith calls through. She appears again in the doorway – false smile spreading across her features – and the love note from husband to wife is double-bagged. Smith passes it to Lambert, who reads it quickly.

He brandishes it. ‘What does the back mean?If anything? The crossed-out part?’

If anything… Did he mean he knew something was going to happen? That he was going to do something? Should she have hidden it? Is this note her thirty pieces of silver, handing her husband over?

‘I don’t know.’

‘No idea?’

‘No.’

‘Have you texted him?’

‘Yes. They’re undelivered.’

‘What time did he leave here?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a – our baby doesn’t sleep well, so it’s a blur …’

Lambert’s eyes catch the sunlight. They’re an unusual patterned camouflage green. Funny, this man must eat breakfast, sleep, get dressed in the morning, but Cam can hardly imagine that he is a human being beyond a detective.

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