Page 18 of Famous Last Words

Bagged.

‘Are you going to go in?’ she asks.

‘No firm plans to at the moment,’ he says. ‘So long as your husband cooperates.’

‘OK,’ Cam says in a small voice, thinking, Please cooperate, oh please, whatever it takes. Whatever cooperation is.

‘I’ll need contact details for all of his friends and family that you can think of,’ Lambert says. ‘As part of the profiling, we need to talk to everybody.’

Cam mutely starts to write them down on a plain pad with a pen he provides her with. The pen isn’t police-issue, has the name of a rock band on the side of it that Cam’s vaguely heard of. Her handwriting is strange and jagged, the plastic pen slick with sweat, her phone hot in her hand.

And Cam doesn’t know where the thought comes from, only that it arises: there won’t be a second child. Not unless there is an amazingly credible explanation for all of this. She almost doubles over in shock from the strength of this revelation. What else won’t there be? Won’t Luke go to prison, even once the siege is done?

Poor, poor Polly. A criminal for a father.

Cam will be a single parent.

She thinks she might be sick.

She stares at her feet, lost. As lost as if she had landed on the moon, alone. She’s still wearing the shoes she put on to take Polly to nursery, when Luke was merely missing.

Lambert’s phone rings again, making Cam jump, and he takes the call, uttering only one-word sentences.

‘Camilla,’ Smith says, arriving back in the room. ‘We’ve restored a few apps, but most are deleted even from the servers. Anything relevant to you in here? Anything you want to flag?’ she says lightly, and Cam is suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps the police are not merely fact-finding, here. Perhaps this is Cam’s only opportunity to confess about anything suspicious – or run the risk of being implicated herself …

UBER EATS ACCOUNT

Your Orders

Starbucks (Putney)

£9.13 (LARGE) COFFEE X 2

18 Jun 08:02AM

DELIVERY CHARGE: £3.40

Starbucks (Putney)

£4.10 DOUGHNUT (CUSTARD-FILLED) X 1

18 JUN 08:40AM

DELIVERY CHARGE: £2.50

Cam blows a dark, sad laugh out of the side of her mouth. Here he is. Her husband’s character. He loves Uber Eats, once said he would Uber a Mars bar to the sofa if he could.

She looks at the recent searches on his Spotify:

White noise for babies

Lullabies for babies

Music for anxiety

Anxiety.

Cam stares at it. Sure enough, Smith doesn’t miss it either. ‘He usually anxious?’

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