Page 13 of Famous Last Words

‘So he gave you the impression he was heading to work? He’s a writer, correct?’ Lambert says.

‘Yes, he is. He has a co-working space he sometimes goes to … It is – it’s in Bermondsey,’ Cam says, knowing the power this word holds. ‘But he didn’t say he was going.’

‘What’s the address? We’ll order a search.’

‘Umm, it’s called the Water Cooler co-working space.’

Cam’s back prickles as she says this. What if he’s hidden something there? Some explanation – another note for her? What ifit’s been so lovelywas some sort of clue? Cam is used to reading her husband’s writing, used to analysing him, editing him. But this one is lost on her.

What if there’s something darker there? Evidence? She is handing her husband over to the police. In the face of him or good citizenship, she’s unwittingly chosen.

She went to his co-working space only a few weeks ago, took Polly down to see him one sunny afternoon. ‘The Water Cooler’ was written above the door in brass letters. Luke rented a dedicated office he said he could close the door on – though he never did. While they were there, another occupant of the co-working space arrived to see him, carrying two ping-pong bats and a ball.

But all Cam really remembers is that he had a framed photograph of them on the shelves. In the evening snow, Cam in a purple hat, scarf and gloves, he in a black beanie, the light behind them sodium yellow. Flurries of snow whirled around them, obscuring parts of their faces, some of them blurred, some of them in focus.

How absurd it is that they were once there in the snow together, then in the office, and now here she is, talking to the police about him while he holds captive three innocent people. The shock repeats on her like rolling thunder.

‘OK.’ Lambert fires off an email right in front of her. He doesn’t even hide the screen from her, fingers flying across the keys. ‘Why does he work in Bermondsey?’

‘He used to live near there. And the co-working space has good coffee,’ Cam says honestly, her voice catching. ‘He likes good coffee.’Theylike coffee. Ordid? It’s one of their things. Luke bought beans on subscription just recently for them to share. They’re being delivered tomorrow. If he did that – if he intended to …?

‘He’s a ghostwriter, yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good work ethic?’ Lambert receives an email, reads it, then looks back at Cam.

‘Tries, but he is extroverted.’

‘Ah. Prefers to socialize?’

‘Yes. Likes the research and interviewing people. Less so the typing.’

‘Right,’ Lambert says, perhaps with a slice of judgement. And maybe it’s easy to judge Luke, if you don’t really know him. If you don’t know the way he can make a story about buying a pint of milk entertaining. If you don’t know how well he writes, how he knows the precise way to command a story. If you don’t know that he cooks their every meal, says he enjoys it, but Cam knows it’s because she hates it. Just recently, she’d caught a glimpse of a note calledthis week’s dinnerson his phone, and thought how glad she was that he was hers. The load truly shared, and never resentfully.

‘He working on anything particularly … interesting, at the moment? Anything that might’ve landed him in some sort of hot water?’ Lambert gets out a piece of gum and begins chewing it, offers Cam one, which she declines. His chewing irritates her, adds an air of mania to his fast questioning. Cam wonders how much time they truly have until something escalates in the warehouse.

‘He’s doing a biography of an MP and researching one for an actor.’

‘Who?’

‘Alan Pastor and Tristan Hughes.’

Lambert makes a bemused face. He might not even have heard of them: an under-the-radar Green Party MP and an actor currently inMacbethat the Globe. Could these people have somehow led to … all this? Some awful exposé? It would be ridiculous. She can’t imagine. Niche, not likely to attract huge sales and certainly won’t be of interest to a copper.

‘Not worth our time looking into them,’ Lambert says,and Cam is struck by someone making constant and urgent judgement calls.

‘I don’t think they’re anything big,’ she says, thinking that these contracts will almost certainly be cancelled now, the money handed back. God … his income. His reputation.Herreputation. The aftershocks of it all keep hitting as she sits there, battered by repercussions.

‘Is it unusual for him to be gone before you wake?’ Lambert continues.

‘Yes.’

‘He stressed?’ he says. Another look at the phone.

‘Is something happening?’

‘Is your husband under stress?’

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