Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (20 page)

She looked up from her iPad. ‘The way I hear it, you don’t have a job,’ she said, ‘and I’m not going anywhere unless it’s worthwhile.’

His phone rang again, Grazier this time. ‘You’ve seen the news?’

‘Yes. Only good thing that’s come from it is that Jocelyn Shahbazi has agreed to speak to me.’

‘I’ll send Elliot.’

‘Not if you want this to end well,’ Bish said, hanging up.

He was about to go into round two of convincing Bee to come along, but she was already on her feet. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Layla’s flat was in Shepherd’s Bush. The traffic across town was wretched and the trip wasn’t helped by Bee’s silence. Bish tried to ask her about the athletics meet coming up in a couple of days but she wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

He pulled into a street off Uxbridge Road, around the corner from the Brackenham estate. ‘You stay here,’ he told Bee. ‘It won’t take long. Then we can go somewhere cool and trendy to eat.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Bish didn’t know which of the two suggestions she thought was ridiculous. Bee was out of the car before he could stop her.

‘They were in
Hello
,’ she told him. When she said
Hello
she rolled her eyes. ‘I want to see how much photoshopping was done on them.’

He pressed the doorbell and Layla buzzed them in without a word. In the foyer he glanced up the central stairwell to see Layla and one of the Shahbazi boys looking down over the banister from the top floor. By the time he got to them he was trying hard to catch his breath.

‘Five minutes,’ Layla said, eyeing Bee and then Bish. ‘Are you taking her along on your police work now? First you go through her personal stuff. Now this?’

‘He was going to leave me in the car,’ Bee said.

Layla looked at him in disgust. ‘One more strike and I’m reporting you to child protection, Ortley.’

Inside the flat a teary Jocelyn Shahbazi was sitting in a small living room, with the rest of her obscenely good-looking children draped all over her. It was a fragile scene of a family on the brink. Until Layla slapped one of her nephews on the back of his head.

‘Get your grubby feet off my couch and go play in my room,’ she said.

‘Your room’s a cupboard!’ the curly-haired youngest whinged. ‘We can’t fit in there.’

‘You’ve got ants in your pants,’ Layla grumbled. ‘That’s your problem.’

The boy got to his feet and started doing pelvic-thrust dance moves.

‘Go!’ Layla ordered.

The girl stayed. Georgette Shahbazi seemed to be suffering the most from the upheaval Bish and Elliot had introduced into their lives the day before.

Jocelyn’s phone started ringing but she didn’t answer. ‘I honestly don’t know where Violette and Eddie are,’ she said. ‘I wish I did. I’m sick to my stomach thinking of them out there.’

Bish was disheartened, because he believed her. ‘Then give me names,’ he said, taking out his notebook. ‘Anyone Violette knows here. The authorities are in contact with the boy’s father every day and he’s heard nothing. Violette has to know someone in this city, Jocelyn. Can I call you that?’

‘I’m sorry you had to witness what you did in my home, Mr Ortley, but Ali’s family have always been uncomfortable about our name being dragged down with the Sarrafs.’

‘Yet you see Noor LeBrac every month,’ he said.

‘I’m not apologising for my behaviour,’ she said. ‘I’m apologising for his.’

Georgette was sniffling into a tissue.

‘Where did you get that T-shirt?’ Bee asked her abruptly.

Georgette gave her a hostile look. ‘Where did
you
get that skirt?’

Bish had no idea what this exchange was about, but he kept his attention on Jocelyn. ‘I don’t want to disrupt your family any more than they have been,’ he said. ‘And I’m not passing judgement on your phone calls or visits to Noor LeBrac or Jamal Sarraf. I just want to bring in Violette and the boy safe and sound.’

Layla was staring at her sister. ‘You visit him?’

‘Don’t start, Layla. You told me never to mention his name, so I haven’t mentioned his name.’

‘How could you, Joss?’

‘I promised Aziza I’d keep an eye on him and I promised Noor,’ Jocelyn snapped. ‘That’s all I’m saying on the matter.’ Her mobile started ringing again.

‘Just answer it, Joss,’ Layla said, irritated.

‘Daddy’s being an arsehole of biblical proportions,’ Georgette sniffed.

‘Gigi, we don’t use language like that,’ said Jocelyn, and Bish felt his daughter pinch him in the side.

Yes, yes. The Ortley family used language like that all the time.

‘She knows,’ Bee whispered.

Bish gave her a warning look but Bee persisted in the whispering and Georgette Shahbazi watched. ‘You’re being rude,’ Georgette accused.

‘Then I won’t whisper, Beirut Barbie,’ Bee said loudly.

There was a collective gasp.

‘Sabina!’

‘And you’re a dyke!’ Georgette shouted at Bee.

Another collective gasp.

‘Gigi!’

Bish was livid, but Bee was unperturbed by the name-calling. ‘She’s only trying to distract us by calling me that,’ she said. ‘She knows where they are, Bish.’

Georgette was horrified at the accusation. Bee was nodding with certainty. ‘The only person who calls anyone arseholes of biblical proportions is Violette,’ Bee said. ‘So where are you hiding her?’

Bish would have been sure Bee had it wrong if not for the look on Layla’s and Jocelyn’s faces. Stunned. Then furious. Not at Bee, but at Georgette.

The girl burst into tears. She had a delicate way of crying.

‘Gigi, cut the crocodile tears,’ her mother said.

‘Do you know where Violette is?’ Layla demanded. ‘Did she ring? Text? Email? Anything?’

When no one seemed to be buying Georgette’s tears, she stopped. ‘They only stayed a night,’ she said defensively. ‘I don’t know where they are now.’

There was a moment’s silence, then everyone was speaking at once.

‘Geeej!’

‘In our home?’

‘How could you not know you were hiding two runaways in your house?’ Bish asked Jocelyn, incredulous.

‘I don’t like your tone,’ Jocelyn said. ‘Don’t you dare judge me.’

‘Yeah,’ Georgette said. ‘Your daughter’s the one who smuggled them over the Channel.’

Nothing delicate about her now. Beirut Barbie was all attitude.

‘Bee was hardly in a position to smuggle anyone across the Channel,’ Bish said patiently, ‘because she didn’t drive herself over the Channel. I did and —’

He stared at his daughter, speechless. ‘Bee?’

She refused to look at him. Surely he hadn’t driven Violette LeBrac and Eddie Conlon onto the ferry? He thought back to that day, and Bee’s constant disappearances, her stalling at the campsite, the sobbing at Immigration.

There was a long, guilty, uncomfortable silence.

‘Where are they heading?’ he finally asked Georgette, hoping Bee didn’t think she was getting off scot-free.

‘I don’t know.’ She sent her mother a pitiful look. ‘I think she just wants to lie low so no one arrests her for something she didn’t do.’

In spite of himself Bish was impressed by how easily she’d steered the attention away from her own wrongdoing.

Jocelyn was teary. ‘They must be petrified.’

‘Another reason we need to get them off the streets.’

‘Jimmy’s the only person who can bring her in,’ Jocelyn said.

‘I disagree,’ he argued. ‘Violette had her chance to stay with him in Calais. I don’t think she trusts her uncle.’

He saw Jocelyn’s fury. ‘Do you not understand what’s happened to that family, Chief Inspector Ortley? When Jimmy got out of prison his mother begged him to take his uncle to Alexandria, because there was no way Joseph Sarraf was returning to Manchester. Although Jimmy couldn’t bear the idea of leaving her in that hospice alone, he went because he thought he’d be back within the week. But he was flying on a French passport and they wouldn’t let him back into this country. His mother died alone. He can’t see his sister. He can’t see his niece because the Australian government won’t give him a visa. Family is everything to the Sarrafs. It’s everything to Violette and she will do anything to protect them. She might not want to get Jimmy involved, but you need him. He knows the truth.’

‘What truth?’ Bish demanded.

‘Speak to him.’

‘You think I haven’t tried?’

‘Get him to trust you!’

Layla stood up. ‘Can we keep this down? I don’t want the neighbours to know everything about my life.’

‘And I don’t want the boys to know,’ Jocelyn reminded herself. ‘This thing with Violette has given them nightmares.’

‘The little one with the curly hair has got the moves like Jagger,’ Bee said. ‘He’s met Eddie Conlon for sure.’

Bish started the car. Couldn’t get his head around the reality that he’d driven Violette and Eddie across the Channel. How was he going to explain that to Elliot and Grazier? Beside him Bee was silent. She had the audacity to take out her iPad, as if she had every right in the world to switch off.

‘Where did they get out of the car?’ he asked. ‘On the ferry?’

No response.

‘You know they’re not safe, Bee,’ he said. ‘If you’d told me, I could have helped them. Does she have a plan or is she just on the run?’

‘I don’t know. She’s not much into confiding.’

‘But she confided in you.’

‘She asked a favour. “Can you get me across the Channel?” There was no detail other than that.’

‘So someone you’ve known for a week asks you to commit a felony and you agree?’ he asked in disbelief.

‘It was a gut reaction to say yes. It felt right.’

‘Just like that?’

‘I came out to her,’ Bee shouted. ‘So yes, I trusted her. Just like that!’

After a silent journey home, Bish parked outside his flat and neither of them got out of the car.

‘I don’t like the name-calling,’ he finally said. ‘With Gigi Shahbazi.’

‘I wasn’t being racist,’ Bee said. ‘She does look like a Middle-Eastern Barbie doll.’

Obviously no photoshopping for the Shahbazi women.

‘I don’t mean that, I mean the name-calling towards you.’

‘Maybe you just don’t like the fact that I am one,’ she said. ‘A dyke.’

‘But why would you think that, Bee?’

‘I heard you talking about it once with Mum. You said it was a phase I was going through. It made me feel like shit.’

‘When did I say that?’ he asked. ‘When you were twelve?’

‘Well, you haven’t brought it up since.’

‘It’s just . . . you’ve never mentioned it to me.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Have you spoken about this to your mother, or the principal?’

‘Stop calling him that. He’s Rachel’s husband, Bish. Get used to it.’

‘Then stop calling me Bish! I’m your father. It’s the only frickin’ thing in this world that means anything to me.’

‘I can’t believe you said frickin’ and not fucking.’

‘Well, Bee,’ he said, imitating Jocelyn Shahbazi’s tone, ‘we don’t use language like that.’

Bee made a rude sound and somehow the tension in the car softened. He didn’t know how to ask the next question, but this was progress and he had to make the most of it.

‘Are you and Violette together?’

Bee was mortified. ‘As if she’s my type.’

His daughter had a type?

Rachel Ballyntine had a plan for the last couple of weeks leading up to the birth of her son. Keep off her feet. Get a good haircut, because David would have the camera in her face through the whole birth. Most importantly, get a pedicure for her poor swollen distorted feet. If she could have sat with them soaking in water all day long, she would have.

But France has changed everything. Bee’s roommate on the tour was a LeBrac, and a better friend than her daughter has let on. The photos were a giveaway, reinforced by the sound of Bee throwing up in the bathroom when the bashings in Bristol made news.

The idea of visiting the prison is in Rachel’s head when she wakes on Monday. It obsesses her more as the morning goes on, but of course when she makes the phone call she’s told she needs to do things the official way. So Rachel has no choice but to lie. Tells them she’s Noor LeBrac’s new barrister and that a request to see her client will be faxed through on her chambers’ letterhead.

‘Just for the record, I’m not happy,’ David says when he drops her off out front. ‘Nor will he be.’

‘He’ is Bish, but what her ex-husband doesn’t know won’t kill him.

Inside Holloway she makes it through three entry points before she hits a roadblock.

‘Her barrister?’ the bland guy behind the window asks, studying the request, then staring down at her belly.

Rachel isn’t sure how accustomed those at Holloway prison are to legal representation turning up with a belly as big as hers, but she hopes that the last thing Her Majesty’s prison guards are going to do is stop a pregnant woman from supposedly doing her job.

‘You’re going to have to wait.’

‘Will do,’ she says, feigning cheerfulness. ‘But if my water breaks in that chair over there, you’re delivering this baby.’

After a pat-down and a surrendering of everything but her notebook and a locker key, she’s warned she has only fifteen minutes. Moments later she finds herself in a room facing Noor LeBrac. There’s a sharp intelligence in the woman’s eyes, which Rachel recalls from photographs of her pre-Brackenham. She’d had a fierce life force. Some of it has survived, but not the humour or light.