Page 77 of Famous Last Words

He can’t access the dark web easily at work, so here he is. A fleeting visit on his way home, to attempt to find out a little more about Harry Grace and Sully. He’s glad the Met is caught up with the woman shot on her doorstep, Madison. Someone is murdered every three days in London, but, lately, deaths seem to depress him more than they used to. Another life lost needlessly.

It’s warm inside the café, and Niall takes off his jacket. Last night, beginning of July, it got darker slightly earlier than the previous, and Niall found himself looking forward to the end of summer, to autumn and to something new. Sometime in the future, when all this is over, where the gunshots may live in the past.

The man leads him over to a surprisingly modern-looking desktop Mac, which he pays fifteen pounds cash to use for forty minutes. ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ he tells Niall, but he says it listlessly, not looking at him. He takes aseat behind the counter and opens the front page of theGuardianon an iPad. It’s his coffee Niall can smell. Brown-grey, half finished.

Niall takes a seat and tries the login on four dark web forums without finding a hit. The URL was a dark web URL, but one temporarily generated that will have only worked for a period of time. So he needs to try the login manually on as many forums as he can find.

Outside, the leafy London street is black and neon, the colour of an eighties disco. Lit-up shops and headlights and streetlamps and dark air.

Four more forums, still nothing. He heads down and down and down the whirlpool of the web, searching more and more nefarious places. He isn’t put off – of course criminal enterprises have to hide themselves well from police – and, after a while, Niall pays for a second lot of forty minutes and orders his own instant grey coffee, too.

Nobody else would do this. Maybe Claire in telecoms, but that’s it. It’s old-school work, grunt work, but it almost always pays off.

Ninth forum, tenth, and there it is, on the eleventh. The login works.

He heads straight to the inbox, taking photographs of each message as he goes.

Sully018747450: I can do that for you. Meet at my address? 22 Grove Avenue, Lewisham.

As Niall suspected: Sully is Harry:Sully018747450 – protection 4 all ur needs.

He clicksall messages in threadand lets them load. Then sorts them by date, earliest to latest.

And there it is. In June 2017.

Bingo.

Not only has he found Harry: he’s found Deschamps himself, he’s sure of it, typing in the past. He shivers, moves his chair back, takes a breath, then begins to read those words from long, long ago that might finally provide answers.

LD47503038: Can you sell me a gun?

Sully018747450: Yes. What type?

LD47503038: A shotgun.

Niall scoots back from the computer. So this is where he got the gun.

LD47503038: How long?

Sully018747450: Two days.

Niall’s eyes flick to the date. It isn’t right. And it’s the wrong gun. Luke had a Beretta. This is the day before the siege: Deschamps didn’t have two days.

And Niall can feel it, that it is about to happen. An explanation is about to be provided to him from the mists, from all those years ago.

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LD47503038: I need it sooner.

Sully018747450: What’s the urgency?

LD47503038: I need some personal protection. I think somebody is going to murder me.

And there it is. The reason.

Deschamps thought that he was going to be murdered.

And he was right. He tried to arm himself in readiness.