Page 73 of Famous Last Words

Cam: Sorry pal.

The trainers he wanted – Vejas – came into fashion and then went out again. The café where she bought the salad has now closed.

Cam’s eyes begin to burn as more texts load, and she continues to scroll up and up, climbing a ladder to the past, wondering if she might see something hidden somehow, somewhere. Something that connects everything: the burglary, the siege, the hostages, the disappearance, the bodies, Alexander Hale, James Lancaster, Harry Grace, the coordinates …

She moves backwards through time, through their digital footprint. After half an hour, she has scrolled up so far that her phone has become slow, stilted as she tries to force it to go further. Eventually, it freezes, and she panics. ‘No, no, no,’ she says. ‘No.’ If it won’t scroll up, they’re lost for ever, that beautiful life that they had thought was mundane, annoying, even.

We got milk?

And:

Bath time is sooo irritating – half an hour of stone cold drudgery x

Is it a black or green bin week?

And:

Yes, always yes to coffee, a caramel latte please, just peeling the potatoes!

And now:

Just this. Blankness.

Nothing before February 2017. It’s as far as her phone will go. She sits up, throwing the duvet off her head, her chest clammy with sweat. She can’t lose their old texts. There must be some way to export them, somewhere, to some place safe.

She can’t move on. She can’t do it. She panics, her phone not responding. She lets it drop down the side of the bed, like a bungee jumper who doesn’t return.

34

Niall

It’s late at night and Niall is cooking. Well, trying to. He’s multitasking. Pondering what to do about suspected-Deschamps, who didn’t respond to his text. Chopping chicken, binning irritating pepper seeds, and googling the number Camilla just called. The real-time alerts from O2 will flash up a system-wide message as she is under their surveillance, but Niall is the only person looking while making stir fry very late on a Tuesday night. Half of the Met is preoccupied with a murder. Single woman, shot dead on her doorstep in north London. No suspects yet. Niall, really an ex-detective, isn’t on it.

Google search results: It looks like there aren’t many great matches for your search.

Interesting. An office number, or a landline, with no footprint. Unusual, these days. Niall hesitates over dialling it, but in the end, after sprinkling his chicken with fajita seasoning, decides not to. Sometimes, you can shoot your shot too quickly.

He had the kitchen done just after Viv left, one of those impulse decisions made by the broken-hearted who think a new kitchen will fix everything. It’s space grey, and fixed nothing. Awful decision: he doesn’t know why he did it. Grey cupboards, grey floor, grey paint. Who decided industrial grey was de rigueur, he thinks, frying up red bell peppers that look aggressively colourful against all that monochrome. It’sso late. He doesn’t even want to be doing this. This is so dysfunctional. He should’ve ordered an Uber Eats.

What should he do about this number she called? It could’ve been anyone, of course, but nobody makes tedious calls at eleven on a Tuesday.

He finds some mangetouts and chucks them in. He notices, lately, as soon as he starts making a meal, he almost immediately loses his appetite. Wants to throw the lot away. Viv used to cook, and it isn’t the same without her herbs and spices, and her, too, to share the leftovers with. He surveys the chicken, peppers and vegetables. He’ll be eating this for days.

A second alert comes in, a low-priority one, so a number Camilla texts regularly. And, God, it’s weird being privy to this level of a near-stranger’s intimate communications.

It’s Luke’s old mobile number. Niall winces at this, reads the text through half-closed eyes.

I miss you, it says.

Another:I miss you I miss you I miss you.

Niall’s vision clouds over there in the kitchen. He can feel the pain of those texts. Hell, he could send those texts himself.

Niall is troubled by Camilla. He’s troubled by this twenty-two-second call made late at night, he’s troubled by her dogged search for her husband, and he’s most troubled by the figure he saw in the alleyway near to her house. He’s tried to get full surveillance on her, to follow her everywhere – in part, to make sure she’s OK – but the budget won’t stretch. He’s tried to get Claire to harass Text Anon, to force them to dig deeper into who sent the coordinates, and she says she will but will have to do it on her own time. Deschamps is not a priority. There are other, more current murders to worry about, Niall was told firmly.

Something about it all has an inevitability to it. That Camilla is heading in one direction: towards answers, but perhaps, too, towards danger. He can’t explain why he thinks that, only that he does. Something about the shadowy figure … funny how he still relies on instincts, even after they let you down. Sometimes, it’s the only thing you can do.

He wants to reach out to her, to tell her to be careful, but he can’t. It would scupper his chances of catching Deschamps. He might cross some blurry lines, but he can’t jeopardize a Met double-homicide investigation. All he can do is watch and wait, and hope she’s careful, whatever it is that she’s doing. And try to remember whose side he is on: not hers.

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