Page 6 of Famous Last Words

‘He’s taken hostages?’ she says to Lambert.

He wordlessly hands her a phone displaying a video on which he presses Play. It’s the same one the news had on.

In the centre of the frame are three hostages, sitting silently on three wooden chairs. They have their heads covered with black material, like something from a film. They’re so motionless it looks like a freeze-frame, until she sees that they’re breathing. The slightest rise and fall of their shoulders. Three sentient, terrified beings, taken.

It’s grainy CCTV, hard to make out. For a few seconds, all is still, but then the hostage-taker steps into view.

Tall and slim, all in dark clothes, he moves in front of them, left to right, five, six, seven steps, then pauses, about to turn and move in the other direction. His walk, the shapeof his arms … Cam sits very still, watching this eerily familiar man.

And then he turns and looks properly at the camera. It’s just a glimpse, no more than a second.

But it is him.

It’s him.

4

‘Camilla, it’s very important that we go and speak privately somewhere – the station or your house – because we are putting together a strategy to end the hostage situation,’ Lambert says.

A shivery, fluey feeling comes over her. She holds on to the video and presses Play again, ignoring Lambert. Soon, on this video, she’ll notice something different. She knows Luke’s face so well. It’ll be easy to spot that it isn’t actually him. She can screenshot it and send it to him. They’ll laugh about it later.It’s been so lovely with you both.

He comes back into view, pacing, and she thinks it again: It’s Luke. That’s what her brain supplies once more, the second she sees him. Unmistakably him, the man she’s loved for four years. His hair, his walk – are those histrainers? They are: the ones with the yellow soles. Distinctive. At this, Cam begins to truly panic.

She waits, then presses Pause when his face is centred right in the frame. It takes a couple of attempts to get it just right. Lambert and Smith watch her dispassionately.

And, eventually, there it is. The scar on his forehead from his bicycle.

It is him.

Cam gulps, then looks up. Sunlight outside. Books everywhere: on the table; on the floor; two on a spare chair; one splayed open, propping up a wobbling table leg. Her colleagues in the foyer. Everything looks almost normal.

She blinks, puts the phone down, then plants her face in her hands, not caring what the police or her colleagues think. Her whole body is trembling. Her head judders like she’s on a motorbike. Her teeth chatter. She’s suddenly so cold.

‘Is this real?’ she says eventually, head still in her hands, not looking at the officers.

‘Yes.’

‘How do you know it’s him? For sure?’

‘From intelligence,’ Lambert says, though that isn’t a specific answer. She looks up at him now, thinking how unlikely it must be for a workaholic copper to be wrong. He removes his suit jacket, then stretches his arms above his head, and the tattoo reappears. It isn’t a symbol: it’s actually upside-down – to her – writing.Protect and Serve. Something about it unsettles Cam. This dedication to the cause.

She blinks, wondering when she will stop shivering. She waits, both for that and for an explanation from Lambert. Only one of them arrives. ‘Number one: his face is a match to the DVLA’s facial recognition system. It’s never wrong,’ he says.

‘What?’ Cam says, so softly and quietly it’s almost a whisper.

‘The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency,’ he adds, as though that is what Cam doesn’t understand. ‘This CCTV matches his driving licence photograph. We have sophisticated technology that can be sure of this. And a phone is with him and Vodafone have confirmed that it’s his.’

Welcome to the Vodafone messaging service. Luke’s provider.

Lambert continues: ‘He took it into the warehouse, where it pinged a nearby mast at five o’clock in the morning, and then he switched it off.’ He is unable to keep the satisfaction out of his voice, and some battle line is drawn, right there in a meeting room full of books. He has played his full houseof evidence, and Cam says nothing, holding her own cards, a shitty low-scoring hand.

Lambert seems to make a decision then. ‘Let’s go somewhere we can talk more privately,’ he says, standing and leading her out of the meeting room. Through the back of his white shirt, Cam can see another tattoo, a pair of wings spread right across his shoulder blades.

Outside, the road and footpaths are scorched white – holiday pavements. The shadows are short, the sun high, and this is what Cam focuses on. Anything other than the truth. They walk, two coppers and a bewildered woman, and suddenly they’re standing by the police car.

Blue lights on silent, two further officers in stab vests, hats, high-vis coats they must be sweltering in. Stuart’s voice calling her name in the dim background, but Cam can’t reply, can’t seem to form any words at all.

Her body is still trembling, legs as unstable as Bambi’s. How can her husband be doing this? How?

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