Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (29 page)

‘Are you two an item?’ he said, looking back at Bish and Elliot. ‘The marriage wasn’t a cover-up, was it Ortley?’

Bish tried not to look offended in case Walsh believed it was a homophobic reaction rather than an Elliot-phobic one.

‘It’s what we all thought back in fifth form,’ Walsh said. ‘You two hung out at each other’s homes for the hols quite a lot. What was the attraction then?’

‘His Italian exchange student,’ Bish said.

‘His mother,’ Elliot said.

Walsh looked slightly amused as he took out a bottle of Johnnie Walker from his cabinet and held up a glass to them.

Yes. Please. Would love to.

Bish shook his head to the drink. Elliot’s phone rang and he walked out to take the call.

‘What’s this business about your suspension from the Met?’ Walsh asked when they were alone.

Bish was back at school and his head prefect was about to tell him off. ‘Lost my temper, sir,’ he said feigning humility.

Walsh laughed. ‘Fuck off.’ He sat down and took a sip of Scotch. ‘What was your nickname back then, Ortley? The Hulk? Mr Meek and Mild until someone set you off?’

‘Did I do that much? Don’t remember.’

‘Fourth form. Study hall with Thomas Simpson from Plymouth. It still gets mentioned once or twice at reunions. The ones you refuse to turn up to.’

Bish couldn’t think of anything worse than a high school reunion.

‘I was gutted when I heard about your son,’ the judge said quietly. ‘I lost a brother the same way.’

Bish remembered the Walsh family tragedy back when they were fourteen. It had happened in Spain on a family holiday.

‘Better see what Elliot’s getting up to,’ he said, standing and extending a hand just as a knock sounded on the door. Walsh’s clerk came in with an envelope.

‘Little cunt,’ Walsh muttered after reading the apology note, then handed it to Bish. It read:
I’d rather rot in jail than apologise to those fuckers!

It wasn’t the words that surprised Bish, but the handwriting. He recognised it, knew it by heart, because it was from the one document that had provided information on the day of the bombing and beyond. Regardless of everything, Charlie Crombie had managed to do what the two surviving chaperones had failed to. He had also made sure that most of the kids spoke to their parents on his phone. Fionn Sykes had said it. Charlie Crombie took care of his minions.

‘I think I’m it,’ Bish said. ‘Charlie Crombie’s referee.’

They spoke about Charlie and the list a little while longer and when Bish went to leave again he couldn’t resist asking, ‘What did you think of the Brackenham Four case?’

Walsh was pensive. ‘I would have liked to see it presented in a courtroom with a jury.’

‘I think —’

‘Don’t,’ Walsh said. ‘I’m about to be tapped for the Federal Court, Ortley. I can’t afford a drama.’

In first form, when Elliot was getting thrashed by the prefects, Bish hadn’t had the guts to stick up for him. But he did write a note and put it in Anthony Walsh’s locker. Elliot was never touched again. Walsh’s idealism had always outweighed his ambition.

‘Just five more minutes?’ Bish said.

Reluctantly Walsh sat back down and Bish started talking, knowing full well that someone else would be waking at three am with Noor LeBrac in his head.

It felt good to be spreading the insomnia around.

Jamal can hear her moving around in the bathroom next morning. Would she want him in her home in the cold light of day? Would she worry about him being alone in her flat while she was at work? Layla, who trusted him with her getting-the-fuck-out-of-Brackenham money back when they were fifteen? She’d been planning to run away all the years he had known her, yet here she is, in the same neighbourhood.

She walks into the living room dressed for work. Jamal’s never been impressed with suits, until he sees Layla in one. She’s been avoiding him ever since he arrived last night. Avoiding the inevitable. Layla and he are unfinished business.

‘Can we talk?’ he asks, but she’s disappeared into her study.

‘I can’t find my keys,’ she calls.

He assumes that means a big fat no to the sort of talk he wants to have.

In the kitchenette he puts on the kettle. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he asks when she comes in.

She puts her briefcase on the table, which he takes as a yes.

‘I was wondering if I could use your computer today. Thought I’d get on Facebook.’

‘You? On Facebook?’

He likes that she knows he’s not on Facebook. Perhaps she’s searched him out over the years.

‘Just trying to find a way to let Violette know I’m here,’ he says.

She stares at him a moment, then rummages through her bag, grabs her phone and dials.

‘Oh sorry, Gigi. Meant to ring your mum. Can you just let her know that Jimmy Sarraf staying here is a bit hush-hush?’

She hangs up with a sort of smug victorious expression.

‘It’s not really hush-hush,’ he says. ‘Joss knows I’m here, so that means your mother knows, and if your mother knows . . .’

‘Yes, but my mother isn’t in secret contact with Violette. Gigi is. This is quicker.’

She bristled a bit when he mentioned her mother.

‘And my mother doesn’t gossip as much as she used to.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Ortley joined Facebook,’ she tells him. ‘He’ll want to be your friend. You’ll get a request every day.’

‘Doubt it. But I made a list of Violette’s pseudonyms. It’s unlikely she’s on Facebook, but if she is I know I’ll find her.’

‘Violette has pseudonyms?’

‘Yeah, like Lette Le-Hyphen.’

She smiles for the first time since he arrived. It’s a good one, Layla Bayat’s smile. Always was. It promised things.

‘Niece of James Hyphen-Hyphen?’ she asks.

‘Affable chap – bit dashing, really.’

She laughs this time. Accents had become Etienne and Jamal’s thing when Etienne appeared on the scene. That was when James Hyphen-Hyphen came into being. Noor would roll her eyes and remark on her husband’s maturity being comparable with that of her little brother’s. But she’d be laughing. In their repertoire, there were the Rothfuss-Joneses and the Franklin-Mays and the Atkinson-Hills and the Fuckety-Fucks. The hyphen joke got old, but a couple of years back, when Jamal told Violette about it, she had to have her own, and Lette Le-Hyphen was born.

Jamal is suddenly overcome with a bittersweet ache. As long as he lived, he’d never get over Etienne’s death. It was senseless, and a shock, and he found out about it while sitting among the inmates at Belmarsh, watching the communal TV. For Jamal it was breaking point. Etienne was like a blood brother to him, but also the Sarrafs’ only hope in the outside world. That night, Jamal smashed his head against the wall of his cell so many times they had to restrain him, while he begged them, ‘Just kill me, kill me.’

Layla is watching him carefully. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks. He’s holding the kettle and she’s pointing to her mug that he hasn’t yet filled.

He pours her tea. ‘It’s hot,’ he murmurs, taking the mug from her so she doesn’t burn her hand. But it’s just a pathetic excuse to touch her.

When the doorbell rings she gives him a questioning look and he retreats to the study. He hears more than one male voice.

‘Is it true he’s here, Layla?’

‘Wouldn’t mind seeing him.’

Jamal knows those voices, even after all these years. The Tannous brothers, from the neighbourhood. He ran around with these guys. Hasn’t seen them since he was seventeen. Alfie was the wilder of the two, in trouble with the law more than once. Disturbing the peace. His brother Robbie was smarter. Last Jamal knew, Robbie was teaching PE at a local high school.

‘You’ve heard wrong,’ Layla says and Jamal, peering around the study doorway, watches her go to close the door on them.

‘People are saying he’s here,’ Alfie persists.

‘People are having you on, Alfie,’ she says. ‘Go home.’

‘Your mother told us, Layla,’ Robbie says softly.

Jamal hears her swear under her breath.

‘We’re not here for trouble,’ Robbie says. ‘Just let him know that the old guy’s still coaching down at Haversham Park tonight. He’ll want to see him.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’

‘You’re looking good, Layla,’ Alfie says.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ she mutters, shutting the door in his face.

She looks over to where Jamal is standing and points to the door and he knows the boys are still on the landing outside. He shakes his head. Jamal isn’t here to get nostalgic about football and old friends. Although he understood everyone’s fear at the time, he still feels betrayed. The lads he grew up with were tight, and they always vowed to watch one another’s backs, didn’t they? But his father’s bomb had killed locals. Everyone was connected; they knew either the families of those who died or the family of the accused. It was seen as disrespect to the dead to be in any way associated with the Sarrafs.

After Layla leaves for work, he rings John Conlon. He first spoke to Conlon after the visit from Violette and Eddie. It was an awkward conversation but he reasoned Conlon would want to hear from the last person to see Eddie. Now he has in mind a visit, and when Conlon has no objection he makes his way down to the Tube station. On the corner he passes a restaurant called Algiers Street Food, where a man stands outside.

‘
Sabah el Kheir
,’ the man says. He’s in his early forties, with a receding hairline and an impassive look on his face. Or he’s trying to come across as impassive.

‘Morning,’ Jamal murmurs in response. There’s no doubt in his mind that the man knows who he is. The waiting on the street corner. The certainty that he understands Arabic. There’s a compartment in Jamal’s head that’s always alert to the possibility of someone’s vengeance for what his father did. And now it’s also alert to the possibility that Ortley and the government are using neighbourhood spies to keep an eye out for Violette and Eddie. In the London that he owned as a boy, Jimmy is a stranger as a man, overwhelmed by the crowds, paranoid at any recognition.

He takes the Tube to Charing Cross and then the train to Tonbridge and arrives within the hour. He’s never met Eddie’s adopted parents but Anna Conlon was a letter writer. Every year on Eddie’s birthday she had sent Jamal a card with a photo. She mentioned her husband often. John Conlon was a gravedigger and, Jamal suspects, less forgiving than his wife. The Conlons had moved to Kent when Eddie came to them. Originally from Liverpool, they couldn’t bear to live in their old neighbourhood after losing a son.

Conlon is waiting for him at the station. He’s somewhere in his late fifties, but grief seems to have added to his years. It’s a strangely quiet morning they spend together; Conlon has nothing to offer on Eddie’s whereabouts, and Jamal isn’t much of a talker these days. But he finds himself enjoying the stillness of it all.

‘I dug my son’s grave all those years ago,’ John tells him as they sit eating lunch in, of all places, a cemetery, watching a procession pass them by. John has brought ham rolls and beer for them both. Jamal doesn’t have the heart to tell him that regardless of how superficial his practice of Islam is, he avoids pork and alcohol. ‘And a year ago I did the same for my wife. If I have to dig Eddie’s grave, someone will be digging mine soon after.’

No use telling him not to think that way. Jamal would do the same thing. Noor too.

‘What happened between you and Eddie, John?’

‘I think I broke his heart even more than our hearts were already broken,’ Conlon says, and there’s a crack in his voice. ‘I don’t care if he’s done something wrong and the French want to talk to him. I don’t care if the police here want to talk to him. I just want Eddie off the streets. I want people to stop hurting kids who look like him.’

When his phone rings on the train back to Charing Cross Jamal knows it will be Noor. Anytime between three and four-thirty is her time to ring him.

‘Where are you?’ she asks.

‘On the train. I went to see John Conlon.’

‘What has he got to say for himself?’

He’s reminded of her words yesterday.
Tell him to be a damn father
to his son.
How much must it have hurt to say that? Etienne was Eddie’s father. She is his mother. They never had their chance.

‘He’s blaming himself. Says he’s slackened off ever since Anna died, that he said something to hurt Eddie and that’s why he’s not coming home.’ Jamal knows Noor would have pushed John Conlon for more.

‘What’s it like out there?’ she asks.

‘It’s the same and different.’

‘Yimi’s grave?’

‘Beautiful,’ he lies. ‘Taken care of real good.’

He can tell she’s crying.

‘I wish I hadn’t seen you,
habibi
,’ she says, and it makes him weep himself.

‘If you want to fight this, Noor, just tell me. We’ll get you out of there. The family will find the money to try again. You know that.’

‘Just find Violette and Eddie safe,’ she says. ‘That’s all I want in this world.’