Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (13 page)

Elliot was at his heels, further confirmation of the regression of Bish’s life. Six years sharing a dorm weren’t enough? What gods had Bish angered to have him and Elliot sharing space more than three decades later?

‘Much appreciated if you’d give me a heads-up on when you’re going to threaten people,’ Bish said.

‘You’ve spent too much time behind a desk, Ortley. You’re getting soft.’

‘I wasn’t the one associated with a little dick,’ Bish said.

‘And I’m not the one whose wife ran off with the school principal.’

Bish began counting to ten in his head to stop himself from responding. Before he got there Elliot’s phone rang and he answered it wordlessly. There was a bit of nodding, a few ‘yep’s. Then Elliot said, ‘Well, the thing is, my phone’s running out of juice and you can’t send it to him because the idiot doesn’t have a smartphone.’

Bish refused to feel held back by the Nokia brick he carried. He knew plenty of dumb people with smartphones.

Elliot hung up. ‘Grazier’s on his way up north and can’t deal with this – Violette’s made contact with her grandparents. The Australian Federal Police have taken their time sending us the recording. Grazier wants to know if there’s anything of importance in it.’

A few moments later, Bish heard the alert and watched Elliot retrieve the attachment. He tapped on a link and they waited, only to hear Arabic being spoken.

‘Shit. Fuck. We’re going to have to wait till the translator gets to it.’ Elliot stopped at a filthy black Prius, retrieved a parking fine from the wipers, and stuffed it in his pocket just as his phone rang again.

‘It’s a no-go for the time being with —’ he began. Elliot listened, then he paled. ‘Are they sure —?’ He removed the phone from his ear and glared at it. ‘
Fuck.’

‘Battery dead?’ Bish asked. ‘Not so smart after all then?’

There was no comeback. Elliot went to open the door but it refused to budge. He kicked it. Once. Twice. ‘Fucking kids. Fucking fucking
kids
.’

Bish glanced around. They had an audience. Elliot was a likely candidate for road rage but Bish knew that whatever had set him off had nothing to do with a stuck door and a dead phone battery.

‘What’s going on, Elliot?’ he asked once they were in the car, Bish having first shoved a week’s worth of fast food containers and coffee cups off the seat. He wanted to remind Elliot that Prius drivers were meant to be helping the environment. ‘What’s happened to those kids?’

Elliot stared at his hands on the steering wheel. After a moment he turned on the ignition and it spluttered.

‘The French border police picked up a body in the Channel. Young, female. It’s all we know.’

Bish’s heart hammered. ‘Attal,’ he said, fumbling for his phone. He found the Frenchman’s number and messaged
Violette LeBrac?

They sat in silence. Five minutes later, Bish’s phone beeped a response. He showed it to Elliot, who read it and winced.

‘He wants you to meet him at the morgue on Boulevard des Justes.’

The body in the Channel made the news within the hour. Bish was numb as he drove to Dover. There was something about Violette LeBrac Zidane that had seemed unbreakable. Attal had also messaged that the French border police were searching for a second body. Eddie’s father had been contacted and Downing Street wanted confirmation as soon as possible.

Saffron rang just as he was driving onto the ferry. ‘We saw the news,’ she said quietly. ‘Bee’s here for a couple of days.’

‘How’s she reacted?’

‘She’s on her iWhatever. Claims she hardly knew the girl.’

Regardless, Bee had spent seven days sharing Violette LeBrac’s room. She had to be feeling something. Was his daughter in shutdown, or was it an apathy that bordered on amorality?

‘That poor woman,’ Saffron said.

‘Eddie Conlon’s mother died last year,’ Bish said. ‘Small mercies.’

‘I meant Noor LeBrac.’

‘She’s a terrorist.’

‘But still a mother.’

‘Tell that to the mothers of those who died in Brackenham Street. And Bee’s upstairs on Snapchat or Facebook or whatever the fuck’s in fashion, not giving a shit.’

‘Maybe that’s Bee’s way of coping,’ Saffron said. ‘You spent every moment of your school holidays with earphones on listening to that depressing Jones band. It made me want to slit my wrists.’

‘The Smiths,’ he corrected.

Attal met Bish at the entrance to the morgue attached to the Centre Hospitalier de Calais. The Frenchman ground out his cigarette and raised his chin in acknowledgement.

‘A girl,’ he said in his thick accent. ‘Young.
Arabe.
’

‘ID?’

Attal shook his head. He shoved the door open and they went inside.

‘
L’oncle
. He is coming.’

The mother. The uncle. Regardless of everything they had done, Bish couldn’t get the families out of his head. Eddie Conlon’s father, Violette’s uncle and grandparents. If it was Violette lying in this morgue, Bish was grateful that he wouldn’t be the one to have to tell them.

They stepped into a room and an attendant pulled open a drawer. The last time Bish had been in a morgue was to identify his son’s drowned body. He’d known for sure it was him. There’d been no room for hope, only the sort of certainty that could kill a man.

Attal waited just behind him. The capitaine had not interviewed Violette. Bish knew he’d hardly had a good look at her, except in the photos from the trip that the media were using.

Bish studied the girl lying on the slab, his stomach churning. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief, mixed with a sickening sadness, and shook his head.

‘Again,’ the Frenchman ordered. ‘Look again.’

Bish tugged at his own hair. ‘Violette. Light.’ He pointed to his shoulder. ‘Up to here.’ This girl’s hair was longer and darker.

They heard shouting and exchanged a look. Attal walked out with Bish close behind. In the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor they saw Jamal Sarraf hurrying towards them, his presence filling the narrow corridor.

‘Where is she?’

Bish heard the anguish. Felt it. Attal stepped in front of Sarraf, who shoved past him. It took both Bish and Attal to hold him against the wall.

‘Ce n’est pas Violette.’

But Sarraf refused to listen to Attal.

‘It’s not her!’ Bish said.

Sarraf shrugged free. ‘I need to see for myself.’

When Bish knew his son was dead, he had still needed to see. He’d needed to see so he wouldn’t believe that Stevie was there at every corner, every doorway, in the backseat of his car, at the dinner table, in his room, at his school, on the football field.

So they let Sarraf go and he followed the attendant into the room. Bish waited in the stark white corridor with Attal.

‘Investigation?’ Bish asked, hoping it sounded like the French equivalent.

Attal shook his head, a look of bitterness on his face.

‘DGSI,’ Attal said. ‘
La sécurite interieure
.’

From what Bish knew, the DGSI was French Intelligence answering to the Minister of the Interior. That meant Attal was no longer handling the case, and was here today only because dead migrants in the Channel fell under his jurisdiction.

Bish thought of the makeshift camps along the port of Calais and wondered if the girl in the morgue belonged to anyone in them. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister or niece or neighbour. Someone who had given her father grief. Someone who believed that swimming over a treacherous Channel would lead to a better life. Now Bish wanted to find this girl’s people. He wanted to find Violette LeBrac. All of them. Because who were they if they couldn’t protect their children?

Outside the hospital, Sarraf stumbled to the side of the gravel driveway and threw up in a flowerbed. Bish and Attal watched through a cloud of Attal’s cigarette smoke as Sarraf wiped his mouth and stood up straight, took a deep breath.

Attal put out his cigarette and went to leave, then changed his mind, turned back, and demanded something of Sarraf.

Sarraf shook his head.
‘Dites-moi pourquoi?’
he wanted to know.

The only word Bish understood was ‘why?’ ‘What’s he’s asking?’ he asked Sarraf. He looked at Attal. Although the Frenchman was reluctant to speak, he didn’t walk away.

‘He wants to know if I’ve heard of a man named Ahmed Khateb,’ Sarraf said. ‘An Algerian. He was the driver of Attal’s daughter’s bus.’

Bish looked back at Attal.
‘Pourquoi?’

Attal hesitated before responding.

‘Because Khateb’s nowhere to be found,’ Sarraf translated.

The French captain walked off to his car. Sitting on the hood was a tall girl around Bee’s age, all lanky arms and legs. Marianne Attal, Bish guessed. Rust-coloured hair untidily pulled back in a ponytail. Prominent facial features. She wore denim shorts, cowboy boots and attitude. When her father approached she fired out something rapid at him. It gave Bish some relief that the French were getting as much of a hammering from their kids as he was. Until she jumped from the hood and reached her father, linking her arm in his.

France 1. England 0.

The girl got into the car, staring back at Bish with a healthy glare of dislike. She looked shifty. Bish had received two warnings about her so far. Was her father covering up for her? Did she know something about the bombing? Was that the reason for Attal being taken off the case?

Walking back to his own car, Bish felt a firm grip on his upper arm. Sarraf.

‘Make sure someone tells my sister it’s not Violette.’

Bish tried to shrug free. ‘Someone will,’ he said.

‘No. You make sure,’ Sarraf said forcefully. ‘We made a pact. If something ever happened to Violette, we’d end it.’

Bish felt a shudder go through him. Hadn’t he made the same vow on his way to Calais last week? He finally pulled free and got into his car, but Sarraf was hammering at the window.

‘You make sure someone tells Noor that Violette’s not the dead girl in the water.’

When Grazier rang for an update Bish said, ‘A name’s come up. Ahmed Khateb, driver of the French bus.’

‘Motive?’

‘Attal hasn’t let on much, but it seems Khateb’s disappeared.’

‘Then we’ve got a suspect?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Sarraf wants you to let his sister know it wasn’t Violette’s body, sooner rather than later.’

‘You can go see her as soon as you’re back,’ Grazier said. ‘LeBrac will be grateful to the bearer of good news and you may be able to find out more from her.’

‘The prison won’t appreciate us turning up whenever we want,’ Bish said.

‘The Home Secretary is making the decisions there, not the guards,’ Grazier said. ‘Push LeBrac. If anyone knows where her daughter’s heading, she does.’

At Holloway late that afternoon, Bish was forced to wait. Officer Gray wasn’t happy. Why wasn’t the general visits hall being used for LeBrac? Why did a police inspector from the MET think he could just walk in any time he chose? Bish watched Allison from the Visitors’ Centre hold up a faxed document.

‘Because this says so.’

Grazier was thorough, if nothing else. But that didn’t stop Officer Gray taking his time sending out his staff to locate LeBrac.

‘It’s been forty-five minutes,’ Bish said, after listening to Gray give priority to the repair of the foyer’s vending machine and to taking a phone interview from a journalist about the authenticity of
Orange is the New Black.

‘So you think LeBrac’s just waiting in her cell for you to pop by and say hello?’ Gray said.

‘No, but I think she’s waiting to learn if her kid’s dead or not, so it would be in your best interest to find out if she’s hanged herself yet.’

It was another fifteen minutes before he was taken to the same interview room as before. A nurse sat outside. She stood when she saw Bish and Gray approach.

‘Do we need to prepare for anything?’ she asked.

A sedative, in case LeBrac’s daughter was dead? Restraints? A priest or an imam? Did any of those things work in the case of tragedy?

Bish shook his head.

He watched Noor LeBrac through the one-way mirror, and it was as if she knew the exact moment he was there. Could have sworn she was staring him right in the eye. When he entered the room she stumbled to her feet, the question all over her face. She was breathing raggedly but deeply, as if she believed that more air would save her from the despair of hearing her child was dead.