Page 116 of Famous Last Words

‘I know.’ The note. The note that, in the end, meant nothing.

‘But, in the end,’ he says, his voice brighter, ‘it was a good phrase to put in the book – I knew, years on, you’d pick it out.’ He smiles a wan smile. ‘My agent.’

‘Your wife,’ she says, thinking really of his final note to her: his book.

‘I turned up. Knowing it was over, really. An arrest was the best I could hope for. Inside was the kingpin’s wife, Isabella, and two heavies with their faces covered. After a few minutes, they put her in a balaclava, too. I knew it was over, then, for me. All I could think about was survival, and you and Polly. I watched and waited. I was late. Eventually, the hitman put his weapon on a table, and I used the opportunity. Sprung in. Took the gun. Directed them into chairs. Didn’t know about the CCTV. Or that it would only capture part of the room. How it would look … I tied them up. Was going to call the police myself and confess.’

‘And then – the hostage negotiator.’

‘Right. The phone goes. Isabella says to me if I let her answer it, and let her go, she will tell me how to get out of there without the police or the hitmen catching me. It was – I was so scared, Cam. My system was in overdrive. I took her up on it. Only, when I released her fully, she untied the hostages, so quick, ordered them to wait, then overpower and kill me once she’d left. They came for me. I had no choice but to shoot. The first then the second, quickly, close-range, had them in a headlock.’ He holds Cam’s gaze. ‘In self-defence.’He pauses, eyes glazed. ‘I was surprised by how small the holes were. I kept thinking about it, years later.’

And – it’s the way it ought to be – only Cam knows how he truly feels, and what really happened. Once more, she knows her husband’s innermost thoughts. The world watched the siege, the police tried their best to solve it, and Cam read the BBC live feeds and felt humiliated. But, here, only she knows the full truth of it, thanks to his book, thanks to his last words, just for her. The way it should be: intimate communication between husband and wife restored.

‘Then?’

‘Then I left. A fugitive.’

‘And you never came back,’ she says.

‘I had enemies everywhere. The police. The Louises. The Hales. I was a dead man walking.’

‘I know.’

‘But I did come back. I tried to come back. That night. I waited and waited in the Lewisham house. Did the police tell you about Harry?’

‘Yes. Rightmove. They found it on your phone.’

‘Ah. He lists it on there perpetually, but never sells it. Uses it as a location for clients. Anyway, that night, the police were on your tail. I had to tell Harry to deny he had me. He let me out of the bathroom window, right before they came in and searched the house. You were right there, out on the street, and I couldn’t get to you.’

‘Oh, Luke. You were there.’

‘I was. And you came for me.’

‘Tried to,’ Cam says, thinking of all of their missed chances, missed connections. How close they were, really, all this time. He in the warehouse; she outside it. He in Harry’s house; she waiting on the street below.

‘I know. I know you did,’ he says.

‘I lived in Kent for a while, working for cash in hand, living virtually off-grid. Each month, I swore I’d sort it out. I was on the dark web all the time, trying to find other enemies of this family, people who might help me bring them down. The Lancasters, even, but I was too scared to involve other criminals. Trying to pluck up the nerve to go to the police. To tell my side of it. And then …’

‘And then what?’

‘You started to enquire about moving house. Months ago. You asked for a new mortgage valuation, the bank sent it to my email, too. I had to log in in internet cafés, using shields to block it, so no one could know. But I got addicted to it. To knowing what you were doing. There were only ever emails about joint things, but it was like … a connection to you. Out there in the ether,’ he says, with a self-conscious little laugh. ‘So I came back. One night. But someone in a hood saw me. A shit coincidence, I think, though my enemies are criminals, and have footmen everywhere. He followed me a little, until I ran, and I was too scared to try to physically return. So I started to think about other ways I could tell you.’

And Cam closes her eyes in such exquisite pleasure. All this time, all the time she thought she saw him on the Tube and at the school gate, those times she wished for him at parties, the moments when she looked into the sky and thought of him, he was doing the same about her.

59

Niall

Dungeness. A jut of land at the very bottom of England, sticking out like the crest of a tiny wave. The A-road turns coastal.

Niall’s speed slows even more. A bleak, post-apocalyptic tarmac road cuts through desert-flat headlands dotted with occasional huts and shops and pubs and lighthouses.

The car slows to a stop in front of an abandoned-looking hut, the nuclear power station in the background, lit up and blinking like a spaceship.

The air is warm and dark and the sea rushes elsewhere somewhere. Otherwise, all is quiet, the power station a sentient being in the background, the cars abandoned.

Is Luke in there? Niall stares at where the Hales and the Louises are heading. They can see Niall, now, and they’re running. They know he’s about to act.

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