Page 115 of Famous Last Words

‘I did.’

‘Does anyone know we’re here?’ she says, glancing behind her to the door. ‘I—Someone knows about that book, I think. Your enemies.’

Luke’s entire face turns white. ‘Do they?’ he says.

‘They …’ She doesn’t know where to begin to explain about Charlie. ‘They have the book.’

Luke’s head sinks to his chest, a condemned man.

‘But we can help you,’ she says. ‘Please … if you explain. We can help you.’ She doesn’t elaborate on who, not yet.

He grabs the pillow and passes it to Cam, who sits on it in the tiny wooden cubbyhole. She strains to listen, but she can’t hear anything. Nobody approaching: they’re alone. For now.

‘Talk. Fast,’ she tells him.

‘I took Polly out,’ Luke tells her. ‘A night in April. She wouldn’t sleep. It took so long, I ended up in the middle of London.’

‘Yes. I got this from the book.’ She scoots her body close to him. And, somehow, although the truth is about to unspool in front of her, she feels deep within her that their time is borrowed. His body looks fragile, too thin. But there’s something else, too. The hard wood of the room they’re in. The metal gun. And that body, soft and vulnerable. He’s made it this far, she tells herself, but it can’t stop the feeling of foreboding.

‘I saw two kids, youths. I later found out they were enemies from rival families. One shot the other, right there in front of me. I vaulted out of the car without thinking and pulled him off, shoved him roughly to the ground. He hit his head on a bollard I didn’t see. He was out cold. I took his pulse after a few seconds – and … nothing. I mean … I just stood over them. Two bodies. One bleeding from a gunshot to the chest. The other with a head injury. And I thought …’

‘God, Luke,’ Cam says, stunned. The pieces of the book tessellate with his story, and here it is. The answer she has craved for so long. And it’s nothing buried in his work ordeep in his past. It’s just a chance encounter on one night that changed his life for ever.

‘I just stood there and – Cam, I just didn’t know what to do.’

‘I bet.’

‘I thought: No one will believe me. Who do you believe killed the two dead people? The alive one. Right?’ he says, and, even now, seven years on, his voice catches on the words, like somebody losing their footing.

‘And I left the scene, but then went back.’

And Cam is pleased about this. The reasons are so deep and murky she can’t tell why, but she is, even though it caused everybody seven years of pain. His conscience, there in the past, in good working order.

‘And I thought about phoning the police … handing myself in. But then someone saw me. The father of one of the victims. He justlookedbad. Powerful, clearly concealing a weapon. We locked eyes, and I fled. Just left. Later, he said he only knew his son had died when the police knocked on the door, but it wasn’t true. How awful, to leave your son’s body to stage your surprise, to leave him to go home: to ensure that you could go after the perpetrator yourself, lawlessly. Later, I found out on the dark web that Alexander had been asked to kill a dealerbyhis father.’

Luke’s book is springing to life, right there in front of Cam. She can’t believe she ever thought it was Adam’s. No one can write like Luke.

‘And then I looked them up, and they’re all over the dark web. Two warring, awful families. Two heavies for fathers. I thought I had managed to get away with it, for a while. Couldn’t sleep with the guilt, but no one yet had found me. But then I did something awful. I had this dream that I went to hell. The devil was next to me, saying I was a murderer. Akiller. His skin was blood-red, he had a pitchfork – it was … I woke up in a panic. I had to atone. I found out it was the funeral. So I went. I spent the day in turmoil, then went hours after it had finished. I thought I’d just visit the grave, afterwards. Like an idiot. But he was still there. And he saw me.

‘He must have followed me home. A few days later, he, or someone he sent, broke into ours, to check it was me, looked at my ID. Later, a note through the door: the warehouse address. They were toying with me, these mafia. The warehouse, the date and time: I knew it was my death warrant.’

‘Go on,’ Cam says, but Luke stops for just a few moments, perhaps overcome. He slows his breathing in a deliberate way Cam doesn’t remember him doing before.

‘Do you know the maddest thing?’ he says. ‘I can count on one hand the number of conversations I’ve had these past seven years. I hardly use my voice.’

Cam closes her eyes in sadness. Her husband the extrovert. The man who couldn’t stop chatting at work, sent away to live alone because of something he did that was right.

She thinks of that morning, the day of the siege, when she woke up alone. Far worse happened to Luke that day.

‘I had no choice but to go. I left you the note to … I didn’t know what would happen. I wanted to say … ithadbeen so lovely with you both.’

‘It had,’ Cam says sadly, thinking of the lemon-drop summer morning, her ignorance, that she had no idea what was to come. That there wouldn’t be another normal morning for seven years. She hesitates on that thought.

Maybe tomorrow will be the first.

‘I knew your note meant something.’

‘I started to sayif anything, but I didn’t want to incriminateyou. I didn’t want there to be any risk it appeared you might know what I was doing, and I couldn’t have stopped it if it should end badly. So I left it. I’m sorry. My head was … in a scramble.

---