Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (43 page)

Come on, Dad!

And Stevie was shouting out to him, laughing, just as he had on that holiday in Cornwall, and Bish would have followed his boy anywhere. Anywhere. So he ran with his lungs exploding, feeling the way Bee had described the last five metres of a two hundred.

Come on, Dad!

And when the ground shook beneath him and Bish felt himself being thrown into the air he could still hear his boy laughing. It was the further tragedy of the past three years: he hadn’t been able to remember the sound of Stevie’s laugh. But right now it was ringing in his ears. The entire world was ringing in Bish’s ears.

When he came to he could see black plumes of smoke above him. Voices were shouting in French. He needed familiarity right now. It came in the form of Jimmy Sarraf.

‘What the fuck, Ortley? I thought you were going to drive that bus to Belgium.’

He tried to sit up. Sarraf was gently pushing him back down.

‘Stay there.’

Then a paramedic was replacing Sarraf and asking him questions in French. Bish closed his eyes to shut her out. He didn’t have the strength to tell one more person in this country that he didn’t understand a word they were saying. He pushed her hand away and gingerly got to his feet, miraculously undamaged.

He looked around. A couple of firefighters were dealing with the bus, completely destroyed and smouldering. Bish could smell the sulphur in the air.

‘Anyone hurt?’ he asked Sarraf.

‘Yeah. You broke the bus driver’s wrist. He complained to the coppers that you didn’t have to use so much force.’

The paramedic must have understood, because she chuckled.

Laughter. That didn’t happen where death was present. Bish felt as if he could take on the world. Zero body count.

Regardless, the place was chaos. Parents were arriving in droves, pushing past police, hysteria in their voices. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and retrieved it. The screen was cracked. His ears were still ringing and it got worse when he answered the phone. Someone was asking if he’d take the call. Then Noor’s voice: ‘Where are you? All I can hear are sirens.’

‘I’m in Calais. There’s been another bomb —’

‘What?’

‘Jimmy’s here —’

‘Oh God!’

‘No one’s hurt.’

‘You’re slurring your words.’

‘I haven’t been drinking.’

‘I didn’t say you had.’

He could see her brother being questioned now by a couple of uniforms. He hoped they wouldn’t do something stupid like arrest him.

‘Slow down and tell me everything,’ she said, her tone gruff. Not hostile, not tender. But gruff belonged to the caring family.

He gave her the shortest version he could. One with an optimistic ending in which he hoped Benoix’s people got caught. ‘This means Violette and Eddie are safer out there now, and once they realise it, they’ll ask for help,’ he said. ‘And the Home Office will stop sending me to bother you.’

She didn’t respond and he wanted her to.

‘My Holloway privileges will be revoked, I’m guessing.’

‘A privilege, was it?’ she asked.

‘A great privilege.’

He thought she was gone and then he heard a ragged breath. ‘Etienne LeBrac was the love of my life. But some days you make me forget him and I don’t think I can forgive you for that.’

Good. Now he knew what he was up against. The ghost of a man who hadn’t lived long enough to fuck up a marriage. Who would stay eternally perfect in the eyes of the woman and child who adored him.

‘When you can forgive me for making you forget, send me a letter. Handwritten. I might just have to give up my Saturday afternoons to see you.’

She didn’t have a response. And for now, Bish was happy with that. ‘Do you want to talk to your brother?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

He waved Sarraf over.

‘You know, you’re going to faint if you don’t lie down,’ Sarraf told him, taking his phone.

‘I’m not prone to fainting.’

When he came to again, Attal was standing over him, one eye concealed by a heavy swollen lid, which had bled down his face. A man that ugly didn’t need another scar.

‘Benoix,’ Bish mumbled.

The captain knelt and gripped his hand. Didn’t let go. Bish could see he was gutted, but there was relief in his eyes. Then the paramedic dared suggest Attal sit down so she could attend to his face, and a shouting match ensued.

Bish eventually learnt from Sarraf that Attal had been combing through the Eurostar at Fréthun when he was alerted to their message. It was minutes before the bomb went off. His first instinct was to contact the school, but there was no answer and at 4.05 he collapsed to his knees and wept. Then he got a call from Marianne telling him she was safe. So he went after Benoix, arresting him in a bar on Boulevard Jacquard. But not before beating him to a pulp. Benoix had managed to get a few in himself, by the looks of things. He was now in the custody of French Intelligence and Attal had been told to stay away.

‘French Intelligence want Eddie’s photos,’ Sarraf said. ‘Especially the one with Dussollier.’

Attal was mumbling something to Sarraf while fighting off the paramedic.

‘He wants us to come home with him.’

‘Tell him it’s not necessary,’ Bish said.

‘I think we should go,’ Sarraf said quietly.

Sarraf pulled up at the capitaine’s home just as Attal and Marianne were getting out of the car. Her blue eyes were filled with angry tears.

‘They are dead because of me,’ she told Bish when he joined them. ‘The English and the Spanish girl and Monsieur Sagur.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re dead because of Benoix.’

The woman who opened the door to them held Marianne wordlessly and Bish could see her hands trembling. When she let go, she ushered them all inside.

The Attals lived in a cramped apartment. There were two other kids, a boy of fifteen or so and another of six, both talking at once. They threw themselves onto their father as soon as they saw him, and Bish heard him suppress a groan of pain. For the next few hours Bish spoke through Sarraf and Marianne, who managed to keep texting as she translated, while her mother sewed up her father’s brow with rough furious fingers while instructing her son to cook the evening meal. She was a nurse, Bish was told.

The family were big talkers. It sounded to Bish that they were shouting half the time, except when eating. Halfway through dinner two lads, twins of about twenty, burst into the house, shouting even louder. One of them dragged his sister out of her seat and all but choked her while hugging her. The other was crying.

‘Any more?’ Bish asked Marianne, trying to make light of all the emotion.

She shook her head and gleefully made a scissor with two fingers, pointing to her father. Attal had had the snip. Who could blame him after five kids?

Then the bottle of Brenne came out and Bish knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. He was tired and homesick for Bee. And strangely also for Noor. It made him feel like a fool, not because of feeling this way about a convicted terrorist, but because she was a woman he couldn’t possibly have. He’d have this drink to forget the fool he was. Anyone would understand.

Just as he was about to take the glass of Scotch held out to him, he noticed a photo on the mantelpiece. Marianne standing on a podium holding a gold medal.
Goteborg Sverige
. Beside her, holding the silver, was Bee. Bish caught Marianne’s eye. Bee and Marianne knew each other from Gothenburg? And at that moment Bish knew with certainty who had taken the photo of Bee, Eddie and Violette. Marianne Attal had put that look in his daughter’s eyes.

Oh Bee, of all the girls in the world, you pick the daughter of a copper?

When it was time to say goodbye there was a lot of kissing on both cheeks with all of them. Except Attal’s wife, who held Bish in a robust embrace.

‘
Merci, Bashir. Merci.’
And it felt strange but familiar to hear her use his proper name.

Attal grunted something to him and Sarraf interpreted. ‘He says, “Learn French and I’ll take you fishing.” ’

The capitaine held out a hand to Sarraf and said something in such earnest rapid-fire French that Bish figured it was personal and didn’t ask him to translate.

Outside, on the sort of night when the wind speaks cruelly of summer’s end, Bish couldn’t help sighing with regret. ‘I only speak one language,’ he said as they got into the car. ‘Should have learnt more. You can conquer the world that way.’

‘My sister and I speak quite a few and we’re not exactly ruling the world,’ Sarraf said. He started the engine. ‘You can crash on the sofa,’ he offered.

Bish didn’t argue, though he knew the ferries ran all night.

They drove in silence until they neared the flat. ‘I’ve drawn you up a fitness plan,’ Sarraf said.

‘Really?’

‘You’re a heart attack waiting to happen, Ortley. You need to get yourself fixed up here.’ He pointed to his own head. ‘Make your goals reasonable. You’re never going to have a six-pack again so don’t aim for that.’

‘Never had one in the first place.’

‘You’re good at what you do, Ortley. Ask them for your job back. You’re not the first copper to get pissed on the job.’

‘No, but I’m probably the first to stick a gun down a colleague’s throat.’

Inside, Sarraf grabbed a few blankets from a closet and threw them on the sofa. ‘I’ll see you in morning,’ he said, moving to his side of the room.

‘Jimmy?’ Bish called. He’d remembered something Noor had told him about the Sarraf family’s guilt.

‘It was a twelve-seater bus today. Twelve kids. Twenty-four parents. Thirty or so siblings. Forty-eight grandparents. All those people, and I haven’t even counted friends. Tonight, be a mathematician for the living and not the dead.’

Bish was still on a high next morning on the ferry heading back to Dover.
The Guardian
, in reporting the arrest of Benoix and the bomb on the Calais bus, noted that Jamal Sarraf had been working with the police and was being hailed as a hero. Two students were interviewed about the terrifying moment. ‘Monsieur Sarraf he says, “
Rentrez! Rentrez!
” Go back!’

Bish wondered if all the students had also seen Monsieur Ortley have a fainting spell. But he was too happy to care. Until he saw Eddie Conlon’s face on the TV screen in the lounge. Had that journalist done exactly as she’d threatened? Or was it something worse?
Don’t let him be dead.
Bish strained to listen, as if he might understand by sheer force of will. His phone rang and for once he was glad to see it was Elliot.

‘Eddie Conlon?’ Bish said.

‘Then you’ve seen it. Sarah what’s-her-face ran with the story and it’s gone fucking viral.’

The cruelty of it. Just when the boy was out of danger he was exposed as the grandson of a terrorist. Bish watched footage of the media camped outside a cottage. The graffiti on the stone wall read
Eddie Bin Lardin lives
hear
. All the sacrifices made to keep Eddie from this sort of hate, all for nothing.

The segment crossed to Layla Bayat walking out of the Holloway grounds, closely followed by a press pack.

‘Why is the press after Layla Bayat?’ he asked Elliot.

‘Wanting to know whether it’s true she was asked to leave Silvey and Grayson because of her links to a terrorist cell.’

Bish swore under his breath, moving closer to the screen.

A journalist asked, ‘What’s Noor saying about her children, Layla?’

Bish watched as Layla stopped walking, and for a moment he thought she was going to have a meltdown on live TV. But only for a moment.

‘We’ll deal with the treatment of Violette and Eddie soon enough,’ she said to the first microphone poked in her face. ‘For now, I’m here because Noor LeBrac’s confession thirteen years ago was obtained illegally, by coercion. Her imprisonment is unlawful. Louis Sarraf acted on his own and my client is innocent.’

Bish felt his heart somersault.

His phone beeped a message.

Can you make sure nothing happens to her? Please.

Jimmy. Helplessly watching the girl he loved from across the Channel.