Page 35 of Famous Last Words

Niall isn’t looking for the bodies. He intends to find the shooter, instead. And how could it not be Deschamps? Hehad the gun. Niall must find him, because it stops him from looking at the reality.

He needs to find the man who fired the shots despite Niall’s instincts that he wasn’t going to. The man Niall bought time for. Incorrectly, as it turns out. He has that nagging feeling people get when they know something enormous has happened to them but they’re not yet ready to fully turn and look right at it.

He needs to find Deschamps, and bring him to justice.

His gaze travels upwards to the door to the roof. Several police are already going up, the others spreading out in the vast warehouse, and Niall decides to follow them, takes the stairs two at a time.

Sixteen internal steps, one fire-escape door, and soon he is out on a staircase that accesses only the roof. The metal is white hot from the sun and momentarily blinding. His feet pound on the stairs, going up, up, up, the ground far below visible through the grating, the view shifting vertiginously.

The roof is flat and still and quiet, the only noise crackling police radios. Niall guesses an old metal fire escape used to be attached to the building, but no longer is.

The roof covering is made of some sort of carbon fibre, flush to the edges, new, bordered by metal railings. There are a couple of extractor fans, old and rusted, but nothing more, and neither of them large enough to hide Deschamps.

His radio blares: ‘Suspect not in warehouse. He is of unknown whereabouts.’

Niall gazes frantically around the roof. If Deschamps is up here, he wouldn’t have been able to get down again without being seen.

‘You shouldn’t be here!’ one of the armed officers yells at him from behind a helmet, but Niall ignores him. Where ishe? The building is surrounded. The warehouse has one door. On the radio, nobody has located Deschamps. And he isn’t on the roof.

Where can he possibly be?

Niall spins in a slow circle, just looking.

There were definitely only two shots. He’s sure of that.

Below, Bermondsey glistens in the sun. Beyond that, Southwark, the park just visible, a square knitted patch of dried yellow grass. Police disperse on the roof, heading to the edges, staring downwards, but there’s nothing. There’s no one. No Deschamps. And no bodies yet.

16

Niall’s radio blares again.

‘Confirmed hostages’ bodies found. Two of them – one bullet wound each to their temples. He’d attempted to quickly hide them – back of the warehouse, behind some shelves, under some tarpaulin.’

Niall’s head hits his chest.

So Deschamps killed them, then. He knew it, but he didn’t want to know it, all at once.

He can’t breathe. He looks at the horizon, tries to calm himself, but he can’t.

Those gunshots.

Two souls, leaving the earth.

And this is on Niall. He insisted they wait. He insisted they negotiate. He insisted George Louis be allowed to come, that Camilla be brought down. He bought and he bought and he bought time on credit, in overdrafts, thinking he’d be able to pay it back with interest in talk.

But he couldn’t.

Look what happened.

He stares down at the street, at the police vehicles, at the solemnity with which his colleagues have begun to walk.

He is responsible for this mess.

He wants to lie down right here, forehead to the concrete, and sob. Instead, he speaks into his radio. ‘Status of suspect?’

‘Still at large.’

Niall walks a slow, ashamed loop of the roof while thepolice disperse downstairs. He doesn’t know what else to do. He knows that, after this, there will be inquests and inquiries and questions asked. He will have to justify his decisions in open court, in police stations, in professional standards offices. And he can’t. They are based on two intangible things: instincts, and experience. He can explain neither.

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