Page 51 of Famous Last Words

‘Almost a whole term!’ Cam calls after her.

‘I just want to laze around,’ Polly calls down, and Cam admires her upfrontness.

Cam flicks through the post. And – ah. As if her emails with his publisher yesterday have conjured it, here it is, in true Adam style. A Jiffy bag in her hands, addressed to her.

Inside, a bound manuscript. There’s no note. It’s the same font he deliveredOut of Sightin: Baskerville, 12. Cam would recognize it anywhere. No title. Just his words.

Finally! Almost seven years later, but here it is. And just as the publisher was getting irritated, too. Cam holds it close to her chest, hoping it’s good, hoping it’s the one, glad one good thing has happened today, thinking she will read it tonight. When Polly is in bed and the world is quiet, she will sink into fiction, the way she always has.

She takes it into the bedroom, her bedroom, which is still divided in two. Her side and Luke’s, his possessions now seven years out of date, but nevertheless still there, waiting.

25

Anonymous Reporting on Camilla

We always meet in a laundrette just opposite his apartment. He sometimes thinks his flat or his phone might be bugged, and, otherwise, says the machines are loud enough to cover it. Plus, he says he gets loads of laundry done. He’s organized like that, my brother. House as neat as a pin.

It’s a small space. Five tumble dryers. Five washing machines. He sits on a wooden bench affixed to the wall. He has closed the door, the one with a little bell above it, and, as I arrive, looks up at me.

‘Nothing especially unusual,’ I tell him. ‘The house move is still on the horizon, but not underway yet.’

He leans his head back against the plate-glass window. He doesn’t say anything. ‘Nothing to report at all?’ he says over the thrum of a spin cycle.

‘Really nothing.’

‘No strange visitors, nothing?’

‘Nothing. No one coming or going. I’ve been at the house three times now, watching.’

26

Niall

Niall was not surprised to find that Camilla went to the coordinates’ location. She waited for forty minutes – a perfectly normal and reasonable amount of time – and then left. Nothing suspicious about that. On her way in, she’d looked harassed and hopeful, and Niall would bet money on Deschamps never having made direct contact with her before. Whatever he’s up to, Camilla isn’t in on it.

Niall had stood there as she passed, in plain sight but wearing sunglasses despite the evening hour – you can get away with anything in London – just observing her. If he was in any doubt about what the coordinates might have meant to her, he needn’t have been: when she emerged, the emotions were written across her face. Perplexed, sad, hopeless. He’d not seen her for many years, but she was unchanged facially, though she’d cut her hair into a bob. Big eyes and short hair. Perhaps slimmer than back then, somehow tragic-looking, though maybe he was just reading that into her.

And now it’s time for Niall to act. To phone it in. To report it all to the creaking Met, which will impose its bureaucracy on him.

So it is this that brings him to his boss Tim’s office on a sunny Tuesday. He knocks once on the dark-wood door, doesn’t wait, then enters.

Tim, the Detective Superintendent, first and foremost, is a genius. Tidy in physical appearance and with an orderly and structured mind, too: he is able to assess a situation and cut through the weeds that pull other people down.

While Niall went into negotiating, Tim favoured hardcore policing. He was the lead on the Deschamps case, once it became homicide, but has now passed over most big cases in favour of management.

Tim is sitting behind his desk. There isn’t a single piece of paper on it. Only a laptop and a tall glass of water with – get this – a lemon slice bobbing around in it.

‘Can you do something for me?’ Niall asks.

‘How aboutLong time no speak, Tim – how are you?’ Tim replies, folding his hands in a lattice and placing his chin on top of them.

‘Sorry. Long time no speak, Tim – how are you?’

Tim wrinkles his nose. ‘Have you beensmoking?’

Niall winces. He has replaced Coke with the very nostalgic menthol cigarettes that taste of smoking tobacco covered up ineffectively with chewing gum. They’re not sold any more in England; he has to import them from America on eBay.

‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Look – I need a favour.’

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