Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (32 page)

He counted to three, to stop himself from telling her to fuck off. ‘Just look at it, please!’

She looked at it again and pushed it away. ‘Yes. The spitting image of the Algerian spice man at our Saturday markets. Has to be him.’

Bish’s hand snaked out to grip her wrist across the table, dragging her closer. ‘A bit of fucking humility would work a charm here.’

‘I don’t do humility,’ she said, pulling free of him. ‘Because I’ve met very few people in the past thirteen years who have humbled me.’ She stood up. ‘And I won’t tolerate the profanities.’

‘You’re in a fucking jail, Noor. You take whatever is dished out to you. Including
profanities
.’

‘I think we’re finished here,’ she said.

‘Off you go, then. Let someone else take care of your kids. You should be used to it by now.’ He stumbled out of his chair.

‘You’re going to faint,’ he heard her say.

‘I’m not prone to fainting.’

He came to lying on the floor with his feet up on something soft. Her face was the first thing he saw. During his sleepless moments deep in the night he often thought of it. The freckle on her bottom lip. What he’d like to do with it. And here he was laid out on the ground like a pathetic drunk at her feet. His humiliation could get no worse.

Gray was beside LeBrac. ‘Keep the icepack on the bump and don’t let him fall asleep. His mother’s coming to collect him,’ he said before disappearing from view.

Yet there it was. A further descent.

‘I black out for a minute and they call my next of kin? Haven’t they got better things to do?’

‘You’ve been out for longer than that,’ Noor said. ‘The nurse has been and gone. Gray’s not happy about the paperwork.’

She moved the icepack on his temple and he flinched, grabbing for her hand to shift it.

‘You hit your head on the table on the way down,’ she said, and her voice was almost gentle. ‘And they didn’t call your mother, they called the Home Secretary’s office. The ubiquitous Samuel Grazier called your mother and your mother called here.’

His head made it hard to think clearly. ‘You know Grazier?’

‘Intriguing woman, your mother,’ she said, ignoring his question.

Bish tried to sit up too quickly. She pointed back to the floor. ‘You’re going to faint again. Try to believe me this time.’

‘You spoke to my mother?’ he asked. Had Noor LeBrac infiltrated all the women in his life?

‘Apparently Gray, he of the matching name and nature, wasn’t impressing her at all, so she asked to speak to the person in the room with the highest IQ.’ Noor was enjoying herself. The slightest ghost of a smile on her face.

Beside her lay Grazier’s file. Also his wallet, opened, its contents displayed as if she had been going through them. There was nothing much in there. Licence. Couple of business cards. Forty quid. An Oyster card. Credit card. A photo of him with his children from three years ago. The last shot taken of Stevie. LeBrac picked it up and sighed with a depth of sadness that played with his head. As everything to do with this woman did.

‘People keep telling me I’ll get over it,’ he found himself saying. ‘I don’t want to get over my son.’

She pocketed one of his business cards, returned the rest of the contents, and handed back the wallet. But not the file. ‘All those years ago I never got to read what the press scrounged up about me.’

The file contained not just interviews, but clippings from the time of the bombing. He didn’t want her reading them. Even the more reputable newspapers had gone for the knee-jerk headlines and it was Noor who copped the worst. Long before she confessed, she’d already been found guilty by the media. As well as by him. They had often made a play on her name. Noor meaning light. So they spoke of the darkness within.

She opened the file and removed an article. ‘“Cold and driven,”’ she read out.

He tried to retrieve it from her, but she held it away.

‘A university colleague wrote that,’ she said. ‘Angus Stephenson. But then again I won a university medal and he didn’t.’

She scanned another article. ‘According to Anonymous, I was “the least maternal person in the Morphus Street mothers’ group.”’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘I remember the anonymous type well. Insignificant twits.’ She looked at Bish angrily. ‘I love my daughter to death but I hated the domestic part of it. More than anything, I hated
talking
about the domestic part of it.’

‘Give it here,’ he said, holding out a hand for the file. But she refused and he wasn’t in a position to fight her for it.

‘“A fanatic about everything Islam”,’ she read on. ‘That came from a supposed schoolmate. What were you fanatical about when you were fourteen, Chief Inspector?’

It was the first personal question she had ever put to him. ‘Well . . . I wanted to join the seminary. I went to a Jesuit school and discovered St Francis of Assisi. He was sort of the first environmentalist and I wanted to be him, hairshirt and all.’

She looked surprised at that. But his revelation seemed to soften her a little. ‘I wore a hijab my entire third form,’ she said. ‘I wanted to make a point about how Muslim women were treated after my mother was verbally abused at a park. My point was proven. On top of the discrimination I was subjected to then, eighteen years later someone labelled me a fanatic over it. No one labels a nun a fanatic for wearing a habit. Or a priest for wearing a collar.’

‘Do you practise Islam?’ he asked warily, and to his continuing surprise she answered him.

‘On my terms.’ She was emphatic. ‘I pray at sunrise and sunset because my brother does and it’s the only control we have over our lives together. I fast during Ramadan because Violette wanted to do it one year and Nasrene wouldn’t let her. It would have been hypocritical if I insisted that she be allowed to if I wasn’t going to join her. Now I do it for my mother, who did it year after year on her own.’

She took a moment to collect herself. ‘My mother practised goodness. Part of that came from her religion. Giving to those less fortunate is one of the five pillars. That’s what I practise – the aspects of both my parents’ religions that make sense to me as a human. My brother is the same.’

Sometimes he couldn’t take his eyes away from her. It had to do with the passion and the fury.

‘And you? How do you feel about Catholicism now?’ she asked.

He grimaced. ‘I can’t get past the paedophile priests and brothers and cover-ups. I hate the hypocrisy of it. But probably the same as it was for you. My mother and father practised the good side of it, and that was the part of my childhood I remember most. The teenage years weren’t so good. I was petrified that everything I did was a sin. That every time I masturbated I’d be struck down.’

‘I’m presuming that was often.’

‘Every single day of my life when I was fifteen.’

‘Not during your St Francis of Assisi obsession.’

‘No, I abstained that year.’

She had a creeping smile. It began with a twitch.

‘Next?’ she said, going back to the file. But this time Bish managed to take it from her and she didn’t protest.

‘I wish a person of substance had written something of worth about me,’ she said. ‘Even if it was negative.’ She pointed to the file he held. ‘That’s what I’ve been reduced to? Petty people claiming to be authorities on my life. I wrote an amazing doctoral thesis, you know. There were only two copies out there. One with my professor and the other on my computer. My professor chose to publicly burn hers and the police confiscated my computer. So four years of feeling guilt for neglecting my husband and daughter and being seen as the least maternal person to join a mothers’ group amounted to nothing!’

He had opened up an old wound. He’d seen that same wound before in Rachel.

‘Not to mention moving my family back into my father’s house so I could complete my doctorate. That was right up there with the best decisions I made.’

Bish wondered how often that had plagued her mind over the years.

‘What they have on Ahmed Khateb isn’t concrete,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s the same way they arrested my family. On circumstantial evidence.’

‘At the moment he’s the only suspect,’ Bish said.

‘One with no motive. He’s a suspect because he’s Muslim.’

‘We don’t know that. The French may have something on him that they’re not letting on. For now, every lead is important, and you have to face the possibility that Violette was the target.’

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if that were too much to bear. ‘Etienne’s mother has very strong ties to a number of Algerian families here and in Le Havre. They looked after Etienne and Violette when I was arrested. So to point a finger at a member of the community, with so little evidence, is an insult to them.’

‘Another reason we need to speak to Violette. Find out what she argued with Khateb about.’

‘Well, she hasn’t made contact with any adult but you,’ Noor said.

‘She’s sent you letters.’

‘I want to hear her voice!’ she cried. ‘I spoke to her every day until three weeks ago, and something’s happened to distance her from me. All she had to do was give you a number I could contact her on and she didn’t.’

Cruel teenage children were cruel teenage children regardless of who their parents were. Slowly he sat up, positioning his back against the wall, and he took a chance.

‘She isn’t contacting you because she had sex with Charlie Crombie.’

‘She told you that?’

He couldn’t quite lie. Shrugged reluctantly. ‘She thinks you’re disappointed.’

‘I
am
disappointed. Violette knows how I feel about smart girls turning into needy sex objects for dumb boys.’

‘Maybe she’s too smart to be serious about him,’ he tried.

Noor retrieved a photo from her pocket. The one of Bee, Violette and Eddie. She pointed to a corner and Bish saw something he had missed before. ‘She’s serious about this person,’ Noor said. ‘It can only be Crombie.’

One of Violette’s fingers was entwined with another finger, its owner out of frame. It was a tiny detail that spoke of a great intimacy. Not a fumble of adolescent groping, just two fingers linked.

‘How can you be so sure?’ he asked.

‘Because Violette’s never had a boyfriend, so what are the chances that within seven days she’s going to have sex with one boy and hold hands with another?’

‘How do you know she’s never had a boyfriend? They do lie, you know.’

Noor sent him a look that said she knew what she was talking about.

Bish thought back to the interview that day with Braithwaite and Post. After a bomb and carnage and being locked in a cupboard and threatened, it was mention of Charlie Crombie kissing the girl from Worthing that had made Violette weep.

He tried to lighten the mood. ‘Anything else, Sherlock?’ he asked.

She pointed to his daughter. Bee was staring into the lens, looking luminous.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Can’t you see? She’s in love with whoever’s taking the photograph.’

Bish heard the buzz of the door and Gray was there.

‘The acting governor wants you back in your cell,’ he ordered Noor, before turning his attention to Bish. ‘And Mummy with the BBC voice is downstairs waiting for you,’ he mocked. ‘We’re just getting you a wheelchair.’

After a moment Noor held down her hand to Bish, and greedy, needy fool that he was, he let her help him up, his fingers lingering in hers like those of the two adolescents in Violette’s photograph. He chanced a look at her and saw the flare of something in her eyes. A salve to the emptiness that sometimes threatened to suffocate him.

Friday morning, Layla steps into Algiers Street Food, inhaling the smell of coffee and baked eggs. Bilal is behind the espresso machine talking to a customer. He looks up and his eyes send her to the door leading to the kitchen.

It feels strange, not putting on a suit and going to work, but it isn’t as if she has nothing to do while searching for a job. Jemima has made sure of that. Layla only realised last night that there was more camaraderie at Silvey and Grayson than she had given credit for. Every woman there had stored her makeup bag in the toilets so she didn’t have to carry it across the office and hear someone say, ‘Off to apply some lippy, eh?’ At times Layla had wanted to say, ‘Off to have a wank, eh?’ Her stash in the bathroom was simple – a Jocelyn rule – perfume, mascara, lip gloss, a brush. Four items that fitted in a pencil case. Too small for the large M & S bag Jemima handed over. She may have been sent in to clean out Layla’s office and find evidence that she’d been compromising the firm, but Jemima held onto a manila folder labelled ‘Skipton’ from Layla’s drawer.

In the kitchen, staff are arguing and music blares from someone’s iPod. Jimmy is at a table in the corner with Violette and Eddie, his head bent low as they talk. The kids are hanging off his every word.

Violette is the first to notice her standing there. Once, Layla was Violette’s favourite babysitter, but teenage Violette is a different story. She has a dismissive, disdainful look that could send the best of them into the foetal position. Nevertheless, she stands and kisses Layla on both cheeks.

‘Eddie, this is Layla,’ Violette says.