Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (16 page)

‘Why?’

‘He beat up that kid from Guildford. Tried to do it incognito, wearing a Chelsea beanie. Apparently Crombie’s a Tottenham fan.’

‘Kennington?’ Bish asked.

‘That’s right. I’ve spoken to the chief constable of the Surrey police and she’ll make sure the Guildford lot are expecting you. The other family’s pressing charges.’

Of all the parents he had met at the campground the Kenningtons were the only ones who hadn’t responded to his calls. They’d been the big mouths with the press. And Bish didn’t know who he liked least, Crombie or Kennington.

‘I’m not a copper here, Grazier. So what the hell am I doing? Either arrange for me to go back to work or stop sending me off to do Elliot’s.’

‘We’ve got nothing to do with the Met. You answer to the Home Secretary for the time being, Ortley. She’s not too happy with the way that nutter Gorman handled things and she’s less than impressed that the Foreign Minister, our Intelligence, and French Intelligence are revealing nothing.’

‘Because it didn’t happen here?’

‘That’s what they’re telling us. To butt out. But the Home Secretary has to answer to people here, and the way she sees it, the kids on that bus are ours. Anything they get up to on home ground has to be investigated.’

‘And who am I down in Surrey?’ Bish asked.

‘I’ve told you before. Your being one of the fathers is the closest we’ll come to getting people talking. Find out if Crombie and Kennington know something.’

Bish flushed the toilet anyway because he no longer cared if Grazier thought he was taking a dump while talking to him.

‘What else do you do, Grazier, apart from ordering people around?’

‘The fun stuff, Ortley. I get to hang out with Eddie Conlon’s father and reassure him that his son’s not going to turn up dead. And next week I get to watch two families bury their teenage children, and a town say farewell to its favourite teacher. Make the comparison. Who would you rather be at the moment?’

Bish knew he was going down to Surrey whether he wanted to or not.

Grazier must have taken his silence as acquiescence. ‘Any theories about why Crombie targeted Kennington?’ he asked.

‘Kennington’s apparently a bit of a squealer,’ Bish told him. ‘I suppose he could have something on Crombie, who may have tried to keep him quiet.’

‘And the story with Crombie? By the sounds of it, he’s quite the little cunt.’

‘Quite,’ Bish agreed. ‘He was at the back of that bus. He was asked to help a kid sitting in the seat close to where the bomb went off, but refused. Could have known it was there.’

‘Too far-fetched. If you’re a murdering little bastard who knows there’s a bomb, you’re not going to stay on board. Plus he doesn’t have a motive.’

‘And Violette does?’

‘Have we ever implied Violette’s a suspect?’ Grazier asked.

Bish still hadn’t worked out where Grazier stood when it came to the missing pair.

‘Did you get that phone call between her and the grandparents translated?’

Grazier’s telltale sigh sounded in Bish’s ear, and he didn’t know whether it was his pissed-off sigh or exhaustion.

‘Let’s not talk about the translation. Let’s just find her and Eddie and bring them in. They’re our number-one priority and anything Crombie or Kennington can tell us may help.’

Bish wondered what was in the conversation between the LeBracs that made Violette Grazier’s number-one priority.

‘Just get over there before Crombie’s parents arrive,’ Grazier said. ‘They’re travelling from Margate, so you’ve got about an hour on them. If we’re lucky, the kid doesn’t know his rights and he’ll talk.’

Charlie Crombie did know his rights and he was talking to no one. His sour-faced expression shifted slightly when Bish entered the holding cell in Guildford. A pathetic attempt at summer facial hair made him look even more pale and puny.

‘I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if you apologised to Kennington,’ Bish said. It was the best advice he could give. ‘I’ll talk to his parents, persuade them to drop the charges, and this won’t go on your record.’

‘And I think it would be in everyone’s best interest,’ Charlie mimicked, ‘if you were out there looking for my missus.’

‘Violette’s your missus, is she? A bit derogatory.’

‘She’s been called worse.’

‘Give me something on Kennington that could motivate his family to drop the charges, Charlie.’

‘He’s a wanker. Literally. Wanks all night long.’ Crombie was enjoying himself. ‘You think that’ll do the trick, Chief Inspector Ortley?’

Bish pushed aside fantasies of tearing Crombie’s bum fluff off his chin. ‘It’s your life, Charlie,’ he said.

It wasn’t until he was leaving the cell that Crombie called to him. ‘Kennington’s father reckons they should round up all the Pakis and towel heads and migrants and set ’em on fire under Marble Arch.’

Bish hesitated. Didn’t want to believe the kid, but there was a hint of disgust in Crombie’s tone.

‘Not to mention the queers. His words, not mine.’

There it was. A Grazier comparison. Kennington or Crombie? Who deserved a win today?

Rodney Kennington certainly didn’t look like a winner. His broken nose, swollen lip and purple eye were proof that for someone so scrawny, Charlie Crombie packed a punch. The Kenningtons were furious. Yes, yes, Bish agreed, Charlie Crombie was a troublemaker, and now he was claiming that the Kenningtons believed the solution to Britain’s problems was to set fire to minorities. Perhaps the media would be interested in just how low Charlie Crombie would stoop to get out of this cowardly act. To tell such lies about the Kenningtons. Hopefully the powers that be at Rodney’s school wouldn’t believe everything they heard. The school had a zero tolerance for racist remarks by students. Bish’s advice was that the Kenningtons go all the way with their charges, to show just what a thug and a liar Charlie Crombie was.

The Kenningtons exchanged an uneasy look.

Perhaps not.

Bish met Crombie’s parents in the foyer, where they were being reunited with their ungrateful sprog. Mr Crombie, in a Salvation Army uniform, was a silent man in his fifties with a sad smile for his son, as if he had only just realised there were souls to be saved closer to home. Mrs Crombie was the talker. A robust woman with a no-nonsense manner. They were listening to a harried-looking legal rep.

‘The Kenningtons have agreed to drop the charges,’ she said, ‘but they want a restraining order.’ Her phone buzzed and she walked away to take the call.

The Crombies looked relieved, and Bish thought he needed to explain the whole restraining order deal to them. ‘Mr and Mrs Crombie ––’ he began.

‘Reverend,’ Charlie interrupted, the sneer back on his face.

‘Reverend and Mrs Crombie ––’

‘Mr and Reverend Crombie to you, wanker.’

‘Charlie,’ his mother warned, ‘let it go.’

‘My apologies,’ Bish said. ‘It was stupid of me to presume.’

Charlie muttered something under his breath.

Loud voices were coming from down the hall. ‘The Kenningtons,’ Bish said.

Charlie’s parents glanced at one another. ‘Tell the Kennington boy you’re sorry, Charlie,’ his father said.

‘Yet I’m not,’ Charlie said, feigning pleasantness. ‘And if he opens his mouth again,’ he shouted to everyone within hearing distance, ‘I’ll cut out his tongue!’

‘Oh, Charlie,’ his mother said.

That evening, Bish received a text from Grazier. It listed Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, BuzzFeed, Reddit, and the words
JOIN/FOLLOW
in capitals. Bish couldn’t deny it was the best way to track down Violette and Eddie, but he was irritated at being forced into something he’d deliberately avoided for years, not because he was a Luddite, but because he didn’t care to embrace the art of ticking mediocrity and keeping up with the mundane comings and goings of other people’s lives.

His first Facebook friend request was to his daughter. Bee rang him a moment later.

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘You’re friends with Sofi,’ he said.

‘You’re a copper. How do you think everyone’s going to feel about posting stuff?’

‘I want to keep in contact with some of the kids from your trip, Bee. And this is faster than going through their parents.’

‘Do you know how creepy you sound? I heard David tell Mum you’re having a nervous breakdown.’

The fact that his ex-wife and her husband discussed Bish in front of his daughter was humiliating. He managed to talk Bee into accepting his request, but it came with a threat that if he did anything to embarrass her he’d be unfriended. He posted on her wall,
Thanks Honey Bee
, and she posted back,
That was your first and last warning.

He set about studying her list of friends. A handful from her athletics club, her school football team, and about half a dozen from the Normandy tour. The rest were names he didn’t recognise, though he checked those pages just in case. They all seemed legit. The one thing he was certain of was that Eddie and Violette weren’t using their real names on Facebook. He tried every variation of Violette’s name and came up with nothing. There were only a few Eddie or Edward or Ned Conlons, and they all lived a long way from Kent.

What he did read on Bee’s Facebook wall was that Lola, Manoshi and Fionn had been transferred from Boulogne to Buckland Hospital in Dover. It hadn’t made the news yet, so Bish couldn’t help wondering if it was true. It seemed too soon to be moving them around.

He went to bed that night with three Facebook friends: Bee, his mother, and Jill from the comms team at work, who had 768 friends. He had ended up in bed with her after the Christmas party last year because they were both pissed, so once again he felt a great regression in his life as he accepted her invitation to befriend him online.

Next morning he checked to see if he had gained any friends overnight and found himself bombarded by the Worthington side of the family. Bish had spent a lifetime avoiding them, and now he would be subject to hearing about their tedious lives on a daily basis. By nine am the transfer of the three injured kids to Buckland had been confirmed, and was being discussed vigorously on morning talk shows in both countries. The French were insulted that the kids had been moved so soon, given the severity of their injuries. The British media commentary was along the lines of ‘Thank God these kids are safely home on UK soil’, as if France were a distant enemy territory and not a 35-minute drive across a 21-mile channel.

It was now a week since the bombing, and the mainstream press had exhausted their stories about the five dead and three badly injured and were after tales of heroism and resilience. Bee had already expressed regret that she’d got out of the bus as fast as she could, and Bish didn’t want her actions judged by others. It would break her.

He was checking his Facebook page to see if Layla Bayat had accepted his friend request within the past five minutes when Elliot rang.

‘Grazier’s fuming because Ian Parker won’t let us talk to his daughter.’

Bish didn’t question why he needed to know how Grazier felt. ‘You work for the government, Elliot. Just go down there and demand to speak to him.’ He was concentrating on finding any new friends Bee had accepted overnight. Was Zulu Dawn a pseudonym for Violette, despite there being no obvious connection between their names?

‘Making demands is tricky,’ Elliot was saying now. ‘The French already did that. Apparently their investigators were insinuating that Lola Barrett-Parker was the target of the attack.’

Elliot suddenly had his attention. The daughter of an MP who persisted in expressing his views about migrants could easily have been a target. Lola had been sitting in the front row of the bus that day.

‘Grazier wants you to speak to Parker face to face,’ Elliot said.

‘I already did that. Wasn’t pleasant. And I thought my job was bringing Violette and Eddie out of the cold?’

‘Yes, by getting the parents to find out what they can from their kids. Ian Parker is a parent. Both your children were on that bus. Common ground.’

Common ground? It’s what Bish had with Noor LeBrac. With Ian Parker. With the Kennington bigots. He didn’t want that sort of common ground.

‘Lola, Manoshi and Fionn haven’t been interviewed by our Intelligence. Better that you chat with the kids than those goons do. Total ignorami when it comes to dealing with kids.’

‘Ignoramuses,’ Bish corrected.

‘You’ll make the Home Secretary very happy if we don’t have to force an interview on Parker and the other parents of the injured.’

‘And yet making the Home Secretary happy is not my number-one priority this morning.’

‘Try,’ Elliot said, hanging up.

So Bish spent the next two hours talking to parents, trying to find a way to Ian Parker. There was no number for him on the Calais list and no one seemed to have a connection with him. No one seemed to want it. When Bish rang Greta Jager’s father, he knew he had to question what Grazier’s journalist contact had overheard. They spoke about the injured kids for a while until Bish found his segue.

‘Paul, is there a chance Greta might have seen something that could help the investigation? On the night before the blast?’