Page 79 of Famous Last Words

He closes his eyes. It all makes sense. Itallmakes sense. It wasn’t a siege. There was no siege. It was the attempted murder of a man that turned into the death of two.

The best way to police is to be relentless with it. Harry will not be expecting Niall back so soon, and this is why Niall shows up, past midnight, and rings the bell.

Harry answers the door in dark clothes, shoes on, clear shock on his face.

‘Nice to see you, Sully.’

And, just like that, the threat is made:I know your criminal identity. I may know your business. I may know every single illegal thing that you’re doing.

Harry wordlessly lets him in. ‘And?’ he says.

‘And what?’

‘Nothing on the dark web ever gets to court.’ He leans against his kitchen counter. ‘Can’t trace it. And what if I am Sully?’

‘AndI am perfectly capable of getting your internet dealings to court.’

‘Don’t care,’ Harry says, but Niall knows that he does. Businessmen can’t work when they’re inside, after all.

‘All right then: unless you tell me what you know about Luke Deschamps, you’re under arrest.’

A pause. Niall treads so carefully with his words, you would never be able to hear his footsteps. What he’s musing on is why, if Deschamps murdered his enemies, has he disappeared.

‘What do you want to know?’ Harry says reluctantly, then thumps his weight back against the cupboards, the sort of power play a toddler might make.

‘Why don’t you tell me what you know – and then we’ll go from there,’ Niall says.

‘I don’t know where Luke is,’ Harry says, and Niall notes the familiarity of using Deschamps’s first name.

‘Is he alive?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Whatdoyou know?’

‘Not much.’

‘Who was sent to murder him?’

‘I don’t know who ordered the job,’ Harry says.

Niall’s mouth forms a perfect O. ‘The job?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Niall says, though he thinks he does.

‘Luke told me when he came to see me that his enemies – I never knew who – were sending two contract killers for him.’

Niall’s head hits his chest. Of course.Of course.The identity-less hostages have no ID because they are experienced hired criminals. Had only cash on them and Oyster cards registered to nobody.

They didn’t have a personal vendetta against Deschamps. They were on a job, sent to kill him on behalf of someone else. Deschamps’s enemies are elsewhere. Niall has been looking in the wrong places.

And this means that Deschamps’s existing enemies are alive and well. He merely shot their messengers.

37

Cam

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