Page 54 of Famous Last Words

Brad. The American.

‘Oh, why?’ he says, feigning sympathy, hot, pleasant hope rising up through him.

Rosalind holds his gaze for a second, there outside the busy Tube. A couple more people push past them, and Niall gestures for them to stand to the side, in the shade of a shop’s awning.

Rosalind looks down the street, at a man playing steel drums on Hungerford Bridge in the sun. Eventually, she looks back at him, and says: ‘They never stick.’

‘No.’ Niall doesn’t know what to say. It’s gauche to grill Viv’s sister. It’s unseemly to pester Viv herself. She told him what she wanted, and she got it. Their divorce was finalized four years ago, his unreasonable behaviour evidently confirmed and verified by a court, even though he was told they only rubber-stamp it.

And yet … sometimes, late at night, he will smoke on his balcony and think of her, and feel sure that, somewhere outthere, she is thinking of him, too, right at that exact same moment.

‘Well …’ Niall says, ready to make the meeting two minutes, not ten, ready to stop this conversation and the awkwardness Rosalind is clearly feeling.

She removes her sunglasses and – yes – there are the eyes, those same eyes. Exactly the colour and shape of Viv’s: the dark lash line, everything. For a few seconds, Niall can only gaze at them, and pretend it’s her. ‘She said late one night that she still loves you oh my God I shouldn’t be saying this,’ Rosalind says, just like that, all in a rush.

‘Did she?’ Niall says. ‘When?’ All of his nerve endings feel alive.

She’d texted him a few months ago. Just a news story about somebody they used to see in the Barbican pushing a pram with two cats inside. He’d replied, and it had ended there, but he’d found it interesting, sad and loaded. The choice of topic: where they used to live together, with the stray animals she collected.

‘A few months ago,’ Rosalind says.

‘In what context?’

‘Just talk,’ Rosalind says. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve got to go. It’s just …’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Rosalind says. He goes to reach for her, but she waves him off, waves him away. And then, over her shoulder, she throws him a single line: ‘For a hostage negotiator, you are a terrible communicator in marriage.’

A terrible communicator in marriage. This is what Niall keeps thinking as they approach Dungeness, a small coastal wasteland two hours from Scotland Yard. Viv isn’t what his mindshould be preoccupied with, but she is. The Bermondsey siege and his marital breakdown, forever twinned. Why did she use the present tense? Youarea terrible communicator in marriage.

He shakes his head. What an idiot, finding a positive in that insult.

He’s sitting in the passenger seat of Tim’s car – he hates not driving, makes him feel sick – woozily reading old articles about the Deschamps case.

HOSTAGES NEVER FOUND THANKS TO BUNGLED INVESTIGATION

THE MET have admitted they still do not know, six weeks on, the identity of the men murdered during the Bermondsey siege

Just over six weeks after the explosive events of a siege in Bermondsey, London, in which writer, husband and father-of-one Luke Deschamps took three hostages and murdered two of them, police still do not know the identity of the dead hostages.

‘You would expect dental records, DVLA records, anything,’ our expert forensic investigator says. ‘These days, it’s impossible to not know the identity of a dead body.’

The perpetrator, Luke Deschamps, remains on the run

Niall sighs, doesn’t read the rest of the article, and looks at the straight horizon instead, trying to feel less queasy. It really can be impossible to know the identity of a dead body, despite what theMail’s expert forensic investigator says. If they don’t show up on the dental records website when you search their exact fillings by placement in the mouth and date. If they aren’t registered on the DVLA. It baffled Niall, but it’s nevertheless true.

The mast the burner phone pinged serves the entire Dungeness estate, a post-apocalyptic-looking cluster of beach huts and old radar stations sitting right on the shingled coast. Niall thought it was the UK’s only desert, though on the way Tim told him this is an urban myth, that it’s ‘not at all a desert, technically and environmentally’.

The sea is rough and tumbling when Niall, Tim and a small team arrive in unmarked cars. Niall gets out, and immediately a blunted, warm sea wind hits him. It disturbs the marram grass, making it sway and bend and crack. It’s hot, but wild.

Niall agrees with Tim: Dungeness possibly is a good place to hide. Not really a small village, more disparate and eerie holiday lets that people pass through week after week, separated by shingle and the sort of stiff plants you’d find in a terrarium, all cut through by a single winding tarmac path.

One lone pub with a swinging sign that sounds like grating metal. A tiny café that, even now, in the high summer, is closed. You could stay anonymous here, for sure. You could see almost nobody.

A lighthouse stands sentry, looking over everything, a single bulb burning at the top. An officer tries the door, but it is locked, the ground-floor window boarded up, empty.

They’re in plain clothes. An informal reconnaissance right now. The only way to leave the estate is by road, unless you have a boat, so it doesn’t matter that they’re conspicuous, in convoy. So far, the text and coordinates could be something and nothing, but Niall doesn’t think so. He feels a thrill work its way up his body as they begin to door-knock, officers spreading out in all directions.

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