Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (12 page)

‘Ms Bayat?’

Layla looks up to see two men standing in the doorway of her office.

‘Can I help you?’ she asks, feeling far from helpful, because whoever these men are, they should have been announced. Her office may be a shoebox next to the toilets, reflecting her status in the firm, but all she wants is for people to do their job and respect the importance of the four suffocating walls around her, thank you very much.

One of the assistants appears behind the men, looking almost apologetic. Almost. ‘George Elliot and Bish Ortley.’ Jemima gives a couldn’t-give-a-shit-who’s-who wave between the two.

Layla’s last encounter with a George Eliot was in high school, where she failed an English literature exam after expressing the view that
Middlemarch
could have been written in five hundred pages rather than eight hundred-plus. So the hostility she feels towards these two, turning up at ten am without an appointment, is limitless. But one look at them tells her they aren’t here for Silvey and Grayson business.

‘Can you bring me the file on the Carrington-King case?’ Layla asks Jemima all the same. Because unknown men in suits means trouble and Layla needs the office spy to reassure the partners that these men are part of everyday business.

Chances are Jemima will tell Layla to get it herself. On the younger girl’s first day two years ago, Layla told her she wouldn’t be there long. Jemima, misunderstanding, complained, and Layla was called in to explain herself to one of the partners, and to Vera, the head of the admin girls. Layla couldn’t admit that she had meant Jemima would outgrow her typing and filing duties, because Vera was a world-class bitch and would make sure that Layla never got a document typed again. The pity is that Layla liked Jemima instantly. A working-class Hounslow girl, smart and thorough. It was hard shaking a council-estate address when you were working in the city, regardless of your job or your race. But Jemima decided that Layla wasn’t the ally she wanted. The antagonism festered, even though Jemima was the only girl Layla gave work to. Everyone else was lazy and thought they were above it. Rumour had it that Jemima would be in charge of the admin girls one day. Nothing wrong with that. But if Jemima had taken the time to listen, Layla would have told her to get herself a law degree.

After Jemima leaves the room the two men seat themselves. Gut instinct tells Layla they’re government. Gut instinct has been talking to her since the bombing outside Calais made the front page four days ago.

‘Carrington-King?’ the shorter of the two asks, perhaps the Elliot one. Skinny, pale, with a perpetual ‘Who me?’ look on his face, as if he’s in the midst of doing or saying something wrong.

‘Two people getting a divorce who don’t concern you,’ she says flatly.

Jemima returns with the file as well as a quizzical look that can only mean she’s been questioned by one of the partners.

‘Will you close the door on your way out?’ Layla says. Jemima leaves and Layla studies the men. ‘What is it you want?’

There is hesitation, until the other one, a shaggy-dog type with a healthy head of golden-brown hair spliced with grey, stands, sifts through his pocket and hands over a messy business card. Chief Inspector Bish Ortley of the Bethnal Green police station. Now she’s confused. Calais is a long way from Bethnal Green.

‘Have you been in touch with Jamal Sarraf lately?’

But not that far away.

‘Last I heard Jamal Sarraf lived somewhere in France.’ She’s pissed off. The men sitting at her desk know she’s pissed off. She presumes both of them have come across many pissed-off women in their lives.

‘We’re here out of concern for Sarraf’s niece,’ Ortley says.

So he’s playing good cop, but there’s something about him. A festering below the surface. The bloodshot eyes and sad teddy bear look. This man comes with a story.

‘You desperately care about her, do you?’ she asks. ‘From what I’ve been reading, no one seemed to care about Violette’s reputation when it was smeared before the whole world this week.’

Ortley gets twitchy at this. ‘We think you may know where she and the boy are,’ he says.

‘And why would you think that?’

‘Well, let’s start with the fact that you lived next door to Violette’s mother and uncle for almost eighteen years,’ Elliot says.

‘I’d like you to leave.’

‘Layla,’ Ortley says. ‘Can I call you that? All we need to know is whether Violette has made contact with you. Whether she and the boy are okay.’

Layla points. ‘There’s the door.’

Elliot leans forward. ‘We may visit your sister next, Layla,’ he says. ‘And from what I know about the family Jocelyn married into, the Shahbazis have built wealth and a good name in a reputable way. If there’s anything they hate most in the world, it’s people breathing the word “Muslim” and “terrorist” in the same sentence.’

‘Then do me a favour, wanker,’ Layla says. ‘Try really hard to avoid breathing “Muslim” and “terrorist” in the same sentence. You’ll get the hang of it sooner or later.’

This guy, unlike his partner, seems oblivious to the fact that he irritates people.

‘My brother-in-law’s family are well aware of who our neighbours were,’ she says.

‘But do they know you’d been in a relationship with Jamal Sarraf since you were sixteen?’ Elliot asks. ‘I’m willing to wager that it didn’t end there. Some acquaintances of your brother-in-law’s may not like the fact that over the years you’ve crossed the Channel to fuck a terrorist.’

He looks pleased with himself. Ortley seems uncomfortable, his attention on the furnishings.

The Sarrafs have no more family living in the UK. So each time there’s a bombing, the media call on Layla. Once or twice it was Layla’s sister Jocelyn they went to, since she’d been Noor’s best friend. But most people know not to approach Ali Shahbazi’s wife and kids. Ali has the power and money to sue anyone who hassles his family. These clowns in her office know that too, which is why they’ve come here first and not to Jocelyn’s home.

‘So what are you thinking, Layla?’ Elliot asks.

‘It’s Ms Bayat to you, and what I think, Elliot, is that deep down you want to fuck me, but you’ve seen photos of Jamal Sarraf so you know I don’t go for pale middle-aged men with little dicks.’

There’s the hint of a smile on Chief Inspector Ortley’s face.

‘Now get out,’ she tells them.

Phillip Grayson is in her office before the men have reached the lift. ‘What was that about?’

Layla dismisses the question with a wave of her hand. ‘They can’t afford us.’

Phillip offered her a job when she was straight out of university and competing with candidates whose connections and qualifications were better than hers. Layla never quite understood why he chose her, but she worked hard enough to ensure that he never regretted his decision.

‘Are you ready for next week?’ he asks, referring to the interview for junior partner.

‘I’ve been ready since you interviewed me eight years ago.’

The purse of his lips means she’s going to get a reprimand.

‘When you’re up in front of the rest of the partners, sweeten the tone,’ he says.

She tries to smother the anger. Fails, like always. ‘Did you give Luke the same advice?’ she asks. ‘Or Damien?’

Irritation on his face. ‘Don’t turn this into accusations of sexism, Layla.’

She feels as if everything is slipping through her fingers. If it isn’t the fact that she’s a woman, it’s that she once lived next door to the Brackenham Four. A week before the most important interview of her life, she doesn’t need two men in suits screwing with her head.

Phillip stops on his way out the door. ‘Tell me that bombing business with the LeBrac girl is not going to touch this firm, Layla.’

She gives him a smile. She has a killer of a smile, she’s always been told. ‘Whatever you’ve heard about my family and hers is doubtless exaggeration and fabrication,’ she lies. ‘My sister and I can hardly remember living next door to those people.’

One thing was always certain to the people of the Brackenham council estate: the greatest war in the Arab world took place on Uxbridge Road back in the 1970s, between two women, Mariam Bayat and Aziza Sarraf. It wasn’t over religion or territory or water rights, or the fact that they were born on opposite sides of Beirut, or that one was married to an Iranian and the other to a French Egyptian. It started with their firstborn children, Jocelyn and Noor. Who was more beautiful? Who spoke first? Who was meant for greater things? Fifteen years later, when both mothers coincidentally gave birth to their second children, the Sarrafs won by having a boy. From the very beginning Layla was the lesser in her mother’s eyes. Not so much when compared to Jocelyn – well, anyone was lesser than Jocelyn – but compared to Jamal Sarraf. Layla didn’t stand a chance alongside him. When five-year-old Jimmy showed signs of being the estate’s football prodigy, Aziza’s boasting was drowned out by Mariam’s declaration that her elder daughter was the greatest beauty Brackenham had ever seen. Photos of Jimmy holding up trophies that weighed more than he did were all over the community noticeboard in the foyer of the main building, only to be replaced by photographs of Jocelyn being presented with a bouquet of flowers by the ex-Duchess of York for her work with the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, or of Jocelyn’s portrait, painted by an award-winning artist as part of his Women of Persia exhibition.

The thing the two mothers couldn’t control was the deep connection between all their children. Jocelyn and Noor adored each other, not once allowing their mothers’ rivalry to get in the way of their friendship. When their younger siblings were born within the same month, the girls believed it cemented something special. They were doting older sisters, Jocelyn the more maternal, Noor the more practical.

But what turned out to be even less controllable was the bond between Jimmy and Layla. They were raised mostly by their semi-mad mothers and adoring older sisters, and not a day went by without them seeing each other. Until Jimmy went up north to stay with his uncle and visit with scouts. Three months later, when Layla stood on the platform at Euston Station watching her best friend get off the train, she hadn’t expected the strange rush of weirdness. All their lives, Jimmy had looked younger than her, but now there was such confidence in his walk. And that look on his face. Despite his newfound maturity, he still managed to blurt out, ‘Fuck, you’re hot,’ in a way that had them both flushed and refusing to look at each other the rest of the way home. From that day on, everyone knew that Jimmy and Layla were forever.

When Jimmy was finally released after the Brackenham bombing, Layla was there waiting for him outside Belmarsh prison. He didn’t walk towards her with a swagger and he didn’t have that ‘Fuck, you’re hot’ look on his face. She should have turned and walked away then, because he wasn’t the Jimmy she’d known all her life. But after he travelled with his uncle to Alexandria and they wouldn’t let him back into England, Layla made the trip across the Channel every weekend.

‘My shrink says that you and I probably romanticise who we were when we were kids,’ she told him on the last night they were together, in the shoe closet he called home down by the Calais port. The sex was rough and Layla hadn’t signed up for rough. ‘She says most people romanticise the first person they sleep with, and that we do because we’ve never coped with the reality of who we are now.’

‘Why the fuck do you need a shrink, Layla?’

He’d lose it over anything those days.

‘You need to speak to someone, Jimmy,’ she said, getting out of bed.

‘And tell them what?’ he shouted. ‘That I spent my eighteenth birthday in jail and got fucked up the arse? You think talking to a shrink’s going to make it all go away?’

Back home, she went off the rails for a while. Got herself a reputation with the local boys. Everyone knew she’d been with Jamal Sarraf after he got out of prison. By the time she was nineteen she felt as though she had lived a lifetime.

‘Shame on you, Layla,’ her sister said one day while they were sitting in the park watching her niece play. ‘For wasting your brain. Noor’s stuck in that prison wasting hers, but she doesn’t have a choice. You’ve got all the choice in the world.’

So Layla applied for university, and life with the Sarrafs and LeBracs was forgotten. A boyfriend or two, but nothing serious enough to get in the way of her work. She was ambitious and she wanted the junior partnership, and she worked hard for it.

And now a second bomb has gone off in their lives and Layla has a feeling that everything is heading downhill fast.

Outside on Fetter Lane Bish walked ahead of Elliot. Surrounding him were buildings housing state-of-the-art courtrooms that reeked of multimillion-dollar cases. London had outgrown him. It was for people with a burning desire. People like Layla Bayat and those young ambitious faces that had surrounded him in the lift, talking apps and tweets. He felt like a little man in a big city and it frightened him to the core. Had he reached an age at which he no longer had access to the riches of the greater world? At his work in the Met, at least there was a place for authority. Seniority. Until his suspension, there was respect for a man who’d worked hard for longer than some of them had been alive. Bish had no idea who he was without his work, and nothing reminded him of that more than standing amidst the city’s high achievers.