Famous Last Words

Chapter 16

16

Niall’s radio blares again.

‘Confirmed hostages’ bodies found. Two of them – one bullet wound each to their temples. He’d attempted to quickly hide them – back of the warehouse, behind some shelves, under some tarpaulin.’

Niall’s head hits his chest.

So Deschamps killed them, then. He knew it, but he didn’t want to know it, all at once.

He can’t breathe. He looks at the horizon, tries to calm himself, but he can’t.

Those gunshots.

Two souls, leaving the earth.

And this is on Niall. He insisted they wait. He insisted they negotiate. He insisted George Louis be allowed to come, that Camilla be brought down. He bought and he bought and he bought time on credit, in overdrafts, thinking he’d be able to pay it back with interest in talk.

But he couldn’t.

Look what happened.

He stares down at the street, at the police vehicles, at the solemnity with which his colleagues have begun to walk.

He is responsible for this mess.

He wants to lie down right here, forehead to the concrete, and sob. Instead, he speaks into his radio. ‘Status of suspect?’

‘Still at large.’

Niall walks a slow, ashamed loop of the roof while the police disperse downstairs. He doesn’t know what else to do. He knows that, after this, there will be inquests and inquiries and questions asked. He will have to justify his decisions in open court, in police stations, in professional standards offices. And he can’t. They are based on two intangible things: instincts, and experience. He can explain neither.

He waves a hand and lets it flap by his side, trying to stay mindful. For now, he is here.

This is now a homicide investigation. It’s not what he does – he isn’t needed. He tells himself he can go home to Viv, to discover an unknown stray animal in their kitchen, to let her stories and her humour wash over him. That this is only work, but he doesn’t believe it.

His phone rings: it’s Maidstone.

‘He’s escaped,’ Maidstone says.

‘How?’ Niall says into the phone, thinking that this really is the end for his career, now. A suspect at large. Two men dead. Maidstone will be questioned; Niall will be questioned. And, slowly, everybody will distance themselves from him and turn against him. Niall has seen this happen countless times to coppers who have had the audacity to make a human error.

‘Isabella told us that right at the back of the warehouse is a service lift no one knew about – beyond the view we had of him, not on the plans. It leads from the ground floor to an underground car park shared by an office block three doors down that we also had no idea about. We have surrounded the wider area.’

‘How did he know about it?’

‘Isabella has just admitted in questioning – he said he would let her go if she gave him an escape route. And she did. Her husband didn’t know about it. She was the manager of their building.’

Ah. Of course. That makes complete and total sense. She saved herself, knowing it might damn the others, and escaped. And who wouldn’t do that? He can’t blame her.

Niall’s voice is too thick to speak back, lined with his tears and sadness. Deschamps’s and Isabella’s quid pro quo. All the while, Niall was waiting like an idiot.

How could he have got it so wrong? He never gets it wrong. His instincts are king, and they have never let him down.

Until now.

London sprawls beneath him. Old London, grotty railway arches and ancient buildings, and new London, big, clean silver skyscrapers glinting in the sun.

So – what? Is he dogmatic? Unable to listen to others? Admit that he’s wrong? Did he cause this? Or was it just George, his outburst – bad luck? Would Deschamps have shot without it?

He focuses his gaze down on the street, at the detritus of everything left.

And then he sees her; there she is, a little way down the street, flanked by two officers, looking right up at him on the roof: Camilla Deschamps.

And even though she is in miniature, he feels their eyes lock, and he thinks, I am going to find your husband. And I am going to bring him to justice.

And make him pay.

When he arrives home that night, much, much later, Viv has packed and taken two suitcases, left him a note, saying she can’t do it any more, can’t be married to him, to somebody who always puts work first.

PS , the note goes on. It was my birthday today.