Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (15 page)

When Bish pulled up at the former coach house on Church Lane, his mother was pruning roses in the front garden. He watched her work and realised that regardless of her beauty, Stevie’s death had aged her. It had aged them all.

‘Rachel rang,’ she said when he stood beside her.

‘Does Bee know I’m coming over?’

They looked up to see Bee staring down at them from her window.

‘Well, she obviously does now.’

Inside the house Bish climbed the stairs and waited a while at Bee’s door before knocking, then entering. It had been his room once and now it was Bee’s whenever she came to stay. He was pleased to see that she hadn’t thrown out his posters. Bauhaus. Joy Division. Siouxsie and the Banshees. He had Elliot to thank for his post-punk obsession.

Bee was lying on the bed with her headphones on. She removed them and shook her head bitterly when he handed her the photos he’d printed out.

‘You have no right looking at my personal stuff.’ A tremble of fury in her voice.

Bish sat down on her bed. ‘We’re worried about you, Bee. You’ve been so cagey – even before Calais. What’s this about you dropping out of martial arts? Where have you been going every Saturday morning?’

‘It’s none of your business,’ she said.

‘Actually it is, sweetie.’

Bee got off the bed and pulled on a pair of runners. ‘Let’s make a deal, Bish. I won’t ask why you’ve been suspended and you don’t pry into my life.’

‘Tell me about the photos,’ he said, not giving in. ‘You said Violette wasn’t a friend.’

‘I’ve got photos with everyone!’

‘No you haven’t.’

Bish had never seen a photograph of Bee with friends. She slipped in and out of friendship groups with little fanfare. It didn’t worry Rachel, who claimed that not many people still hung out with their schoolfriends; Bee would find her tribe one day. Were Violette and Eddie part of her tribe now? Violette LeBrac’s arm had hugged Bee to her in an almost sisterly way.

‘Bee, I need you to tell me the truth. The French equivalent to MI5 is in charge of this investigation now and I don’t want them on your doorstep. Do you know where Violette and Eddie are?’

‘She’s a scummy terrorist’s spawn and I hope she rots in hell. That’s all you need to know.’

Bish thought it best not to ask the question that was hovering. Was she in a relationship with Violette? Was his daughter secretly in love with Noor LeBrac’s daughter?

Saffron insisted he stay the night. Bee made a brief appearance at dinner for her sake, Bish presumed. Bee never extended her surliness to his mother. When Bish’s phone rang after the meal and Elliot’s name showed on the screen he was tempted to ignore it, and then he remembered that Grazier and whoever he worked for had a tape of a conversation between Violette and her grandmother. Had there been mention of Bee? He took the call.

‘Is there a reason you don’t answer your phone?’ Elliot asked.

‘Yes. I rarely want to speak to you.’

‘Grazier thinks the kids on the bus know more than they’re letting on,’ Elliot said.

‘Why would he think that?’

‘Because one of Grazier’s contacts is a journalist who was at the campground, and he overheard a girl talking about the night before the bombing. Said she saw something. When Grazier tried to set up an interview with the family he was told to go away.’

‘Who is she?’

‘The girl from Chichester.’

‘Greta,’ Bish said.

‘Can you look into it, seeing you’re on first-name terms with these kids?’

‘I’m not,’ Bish said. ‘It’s common courtesy to know their names. Referring to her as the girl from Chichester doesn’t exactly invite a relationship with the girl from Chichester’s parents.’

‘Then can you have a chat with
Greta
and find out if she saw or heard something the night before the bombing.’

Bish wanted something in return. He tried to sound casual about it. ‘By the way, did Grazier get that conversation translated? Between Violette and her grandmother?’

‘He did, and we’re trying to work out how to deal with it. We don’t want some of this stuff getting out.’

‘What stuff?’ Bish hadn’t meant his question to sound so much like a demand. He could feel Elliot hesitating.

‘Just talk to the kids and parents, Ortley. That’s what Grazier wants you to do.’

He joined his mother to watch the news. A teenage girl in Marseille had been threatened by a group of thugs wearing balaclavas outside a gymnasium. It was only through the intervention of a passer-by that she escaped without being hurt. She claimed that her assailants had mistaken her for Violette Zidane. Not that the girl looked anything like Violette, but she clearly didn’t have to.

‘How did Lucy Gilies put it?’ Saffron asked with bitterness. ‘The same sort of foreign. And then all you need is a social vigilante on Twitter who wants their hundred and forty characters of fame claiming to have seen her in the neighbourhood.’

‘I thought you were a social networker extraordinaire,’ he said.

‘Oh I am. I just find the unregulated part of it frightening.’

In the guestroom Bish lay in bed desperate for a drink. He knew with great certainty that he was going to be creeping around the house in the dark soon enough, like a seventeen-year-old searching for his parents’ booze. He hadn’t slept in this room before. It was a converted attic space, but there was nothing stuffy and old-fashioned about it except the portable TV.

He found himself watching a movie in Arabic and French, the subtitles difficult to read on the small screen. It was hard to watch while half asleep. He couldn’t close his eyes a moment and still understand what was going on. But somewhere in a different sort of blur to the one he’d woken up in that day, he heard words that had him wide awake in an instant. The subtitles were gone already from the screen, but the phrase echoed in his memory. It sounded like the same thing Violette had said to Eddie in the campsite kitchen, he was sure of it. He scribbled it down phonetically. He had no idea how to make sense of it, but those words haunted his sleep and were on his lips when he woke the next morning.

The overgrown teddy bear is coming Layla’s way just as she’s walking into the towers on Fetter Lane during the peak-hour morning shuffle. She doesn’t know whether it’s pure bulk or overindulgent padding, but he’s a big guy.

‘Can we talk, Layla? Can I call you that?’

‘No we can’t. And no you can’t.’

She steps into the revolving doors, hoping to shake him off. There’s no way she wants him following her to the tenth floor. But he’s already waiting inside, having taken the other door, so she revolves herself right back outside and faces off with him on the street.

‘Where’s bad cop?’ she asks, looking around.

‘He’s not a cop,’ Ortley says. ‘And this is something separate from the other day.’

She isn’t in the mood for game-playing. ‘Don’t follow me in,’ she says, walking back into the revolving door. But he’s instantly there behind her and now she’s truly irritated because they’re trapped in the same small space.

‘It’s bad etiquette getting into a revolving door with someone who hasn’t given you permission.’

‘Haven’t actually read the handbook on revolving door etiquette,’ he says. ‘I need a favour, Layla.’

‘I don’t give out favours,’ she says, about to step into the busy foyer for the second time.

‘I need you to translate a comment in Arabic that Violette made to the boy she’s with.’

Layla finds herself out on the street again. She doesn’t know what this guy is up to but she wants him nowhere near her office.

‘Last I heard, Scotland Yard had Arabic translators, Chief Inspector Ortley. Not to mention Google. So I think you’re lying to me.’

‘I’m not with Scotland Yard, and Google has a problem with the way I spell.’

‘Then who are you with?’

He doesn’t respond. Just retrieves a piece of paper from his pocket and holds it out to her.

‘There’s something written here that I don’t trust anyone else with,’ he says.

‘But you trust me?’ she asks, disbelieving. ‘Someone you’ve met once, who you interrogated because I fucked a Sarraf?’

He winces. So does she, a little, inside.

‘Your friend’s words, Chief Inspector.’

‘But not mine,’ he says, still holding up the paper. ‘I trust anyone who cares for Violette. It’s why I’m not handing it over to just any translator.’

She tells herself to walk away. Junior partner, she reminds herself. It would make up for all the wrongs in her life.

‘Two minutes,’ she says. ‘Talk.’

He looks relieved. ‘My daughter was assigned a room with Violette on the Normandy trip. They were supposedly enemies. But my ex-wife found photos of B–– my daughter with Violette and the boy, clowning around together. So for some reason, my daughter is lying.’

Layla puts up two hands to stop him. ‘The moment I get to my computer,’ she says, ‘I’m going to google you and find out everything about you, including your daughter’s name, so you can just go ahead and use it.’

That makes him grimace. He would have been good-looking in his youth, Layla thinks. For girls who are into older men, he probably still is. There’s a bloodshot quality to his eyes that could be attributed to the fact that his daughter’s just been in a bomb attack, but she suspects it’s more than that.

‘Bee,’ he says finally. ‘Short for Sabina.’

‘And you’re scared she’s going to get dragged into this?’

‘To be honest, yes. But I also want Violette and the boy safe.’ He gestures again with the slip of paper. ‘Violette spoke these words to the boy in Arabic. I know it mentions love. That much I understand.’

She refuses to take it, which seems to anger him.

‘People are dead, Layla. Kids are dead. The right wing both here and in France are riling up racist scum. Violette and the boy are at risk. Do you honestly think I want those kids hurt?’

‘You’ll do anything to protect your daughter,’ she says. ‘Including sacrificing Violette. My sister and Noor were best friends for most of their lives. My sister would never forgive me if I put Noor’s child at risk.
I
would never forgive myself.’

Layla is finished here. ‘Please don’t follow me up. If your daughter showed you the photographs, then I’m sure she’ll trust you with the truth.’

‘Bee didn’t show us the photos. My ex-wife found them on her iPad.’

Layla can’t believe what she’s hearing. ‘You snooped on her life? What kind of people are you? Teenage privacy is important.
Very
.’

‘Please,’ Ortley says.

She looks down at the paper. It appears to be gibberish.

‘I’ll wait out here,’ he says.

From the corner of her eye she sees one of the partners in the foyer.

‘No, you won’t,’ she says, keeping her voice low. ‘I’ll ring you when I get to it.’

She pockets the paper as Frank Silvey walks to the lift. She means to follow, but stops. Can’t resist.

‘Did you see him?’

‘Who?’

‘Jimmy Sarraf? Did you see him in Calais?’

He nods.

Layla badly wants to ask how he was, but doesn’t. She can’t make junior partner with the Sarraf noose around her neck.

‘Don’t call me,’ she says. ‘I’ll call you.’

The soup ladle had found a new purpose scooping dead fish out of the tank. It was getting to Bish now, because he was following all the rules. Don’t overfeed. Make sure the tank is filtered and cleaned. He was even thinking of filling the tank with bottled water. Didn’t drink bottled water himself, but he’d do anything to keep a fish alive these days.

The phone rang and he saw it was Grazier. Bish had finally added him as a contact, because getting five phone calls a day really seemed to invite the inclusion.

‘Charlie Crombie?’ Grazier said. No salutation. Sometimes he’d come on the line mid-sentence.

‘Hmm?’ Bish concentrated on keeping the fish in the ladle as he took it to the bathroom for its final rites.

‘I’m presuming that name rings a bell?’

‘Responsible for Violette Zidane’s less than pure reputation with our tabloid-reading friends.’

‘We believe there’s more,’ Grazier said.

Bish thought it best not to flush the fish down the toilet in case Grazier drew the wrong conclusion.