“Before my sister and me, no one in our family had any sense of a home country,” he was quoted as saying in one interview. He went on to relate that his mother had been born in Beirut and at fifteen had made her way to Alexandria, on her own, to work for a wealthy relative. His father was born in Alexandria to a French mother and Egyptian father. When his mother was pregnant, they left Egypt to head for the UK but ended up having Noor en route, in Le Havre. “Fifteen years later,” said Jimmy, “my mum wanted me born in the same place as my sister. It’s sort of cool because it’s also where my brother-in-law was born before his family migrated to Australia, which was a bit of a coincidence. So obviously my niece Violette had to be born in Le Havre. We like it that there’s a family tradition when it comes to passports and stuff like that. But Noor and I have never been confused about who we are. If there were two things we were sure of growing up, it was belonging to England and speaking Arabic. We didn’t let religion rule. It’s what me and my girl, Layla, have in common. Her mother’s Christian, my mother’s Muslim. Her father’s Muslim, my father’s Christian. We say it all the time: our kids are going to have the best of both worlds.”
Bish tried very hard not to be fascinated with this family. Two siblings, one with a PhD in molecular biology, the other with a lucrative football contract. Up until the Brackenham bombing they were an immigrant success story.
A guard stood outside the now familiar interview room on Sunday morning. Noor LeBrac was already seated, her suspicious eyes following him from the door to the chair before her. One thing was for certain: Violette’s disappearance was clearly affecting her. There were dark circles around her eyes, sinking deep. She swallowed constantly, as if trying to keep down the bile in her throat.
“I’m presuming you know that Violette’s in the UK,” Bish said, sitting down opposite her.
“Whether they’re here or in France makes no difference.”
She looked away and he felt the sting of her disdain.
“We’ve got a better chance of finding them now,” he said.
“‘We’?” she demanded. “‘We’ who, Ortley? The people whose fault this was in the first place?”
She shifted in her seat.
“You thought I’d be grateful, didn’t you?” she said. “Do you honestly believe everything’s fine just because Violette and Eddie are in England? The only safe place for my daughter is with her grandparents in Australia. Because Etienne’s father will put a bullet through anyone who’s a threat to Violette.”
“Then help me find her, Noor,” he said patiently. “When was the last time you heard from her, apart from the postcard?”
She made a sound of disbelief. “Are we really doing this again?”
“We’re doing this until something you say triggers a clue to where they are. I’m not accusing you of holding back information. I’m just saying I may be able to see something you can’t.”
She thought about that for a while, then sat forward in her seat. Bish took up his notebook.
“I spoke to her three weeks ago when she supposedly left for her Duke of Edinburgh camp.”
“Did she take part in Duke of Ed before this year?” he asked.
“Yes. She was going for her Silver Award so that next year she can be part of a residential project in Nepal and get her Gold Award. Etienne had been involved with the Duke of Ed Award when he was at school, and she’s determined to do anything her father did.”
Bish heard pride in her voice.
“It was a short conversation,” LeBrac said. “I have a two-quid phone card that doesn’t go far with international calls. Violette told me it would be the last time I’d speak to her for a couple of weeks. That I believed. The hikes are in deep bushland. They have to rough it. She said, ‘I love you, Mummy. We’ll talk when I’m back.’”
It gave Bish a sinking feeling to realize that Noor LeBrac spoke to her daughter on the other side of the world, from behind bars, more often than he spoke to Bee.
“Nothing strange about the conversation?” he asked. “You didn’t sense her lying?”
He waited. On her face, yet another expression. One he couldn’t read. Or perhaps he didn’t want to, because it would require empathy from him, and he didn’t want to give her any.
“There was something?” he prompted.
She nodded finally. “Months before, Violette told me she’d remembered an important detail from the last time she saw her father. She was only four and a half when he died, so her memory of that day has always been sketchy.”
Bish hoped Violette hadn’t seen her father jump.
“She recalled that Etienne was wearing his watch.”
Bish was confused. “Is that important right now?”
“When you lose someone, Chief Inspector Ortley, everything about the day they died is important. Especially the lies.”
Her stare bore into him and he looked back down at his notes before she could do some damage with it. Because Bish felt it was in her power to damage him. That she could seek out the thin parts of his skin. He felt his throat go dry.
“The watch comes with an extraordinary story. One you don’t deserve to hear, so I’ll skip that part. What you need to know is that when Etienne’s parents flew across the world to identify his body, there was no watch. Violette remembering it being there makes all the difference in the world.”
Bish put his pen down because this watch business was bollocks and had nothing to do with bombs going off outside Calais or with Violette’s disappearance.
“Keep writing,” she ordered, pointing to his notebook.
“Why? Do you seriously think Violette came all this way to find a watch?” Bish felt the frustration of the past week. “Noor, you’re wasting my time.”
“Please refrain from using my name,” she said with a quietness soaked in ice. “You speak it with such contempt.”
Because it was contempt he felt.
“I’m not the one who allowed an idiot to lock Violette up and then let her run off,” she said. “When I think of my child—”
“You should have thought of your child in 2002.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.
“You’ve been dying to say that ever since you walked into this place, haven’t you?” She looked at him in bitter disbelief, then leaned closer across the table. “No, I think you’ve been dying to say it even before that. Back when you took my daughter away from me. The first time.”
Her stare was a bullet now. It went right through to his bones.
“Oh I remember you,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “I remember the disgust in your eyes when you came into the cell and cast judgment on my family. As if you believed my child was safer with you than with the people who loved her.”
He was finished here for the day. He moved to collect his notebook and pen but LeBrac grabbed them and began to scribble furiously.
Wordlessly, he removed the notebook from her hands, not wanting her privy to its content.
“Then commit this to your tiny brain,” she said, hurling the pen against the wall. “Etienne wearing his watch in death could have been the tragedy of a man taking his life. Etienne’s body without it could be the tragedy of a man murdered for his watch.”
Bish had been a constable working behind the desk when Brackenham happened and they brought in the Sarraf family. The station had gone into lockdown because the crowd outside was baying for blood. His boss came to find him later that afternoon. “You’ve got a kid her age, haven’t you, Bish? You’re going to have to go in there and take the little girl.” When he went to remove Violette LeBrac from her mother’s arms, Jamal Sarraf cried. Her great-uncle Joseph Sarraf sat with his head in his hands. Her grandmother wailed. But Noor LeBrac was chillingly calm, all smiles, though a look of despair beyond reckoning was in her eyes.
“It’s just a game,” she whispered into her daughter’s ear, so close to Bish’s cheek that he felt the broken whisper of her voice for nights to come. “Dad
dy will be here soon and you’ll see it’s just a game.”
When news of Noor LeBrac’s confession came through six months later, there was rejoicing at the station. And across the country. Louis Sarraf may have escaped punishment by blowing himself up, but justice had been served.
There was relief that the families of the dead would not be put through a trial. The country had moved on. A memorial hall was built on the Brackenham council estate where the supermarket once stood. It brought together a fractured community where cultural diversity would be celebrated rather than feared. There were music programs for youth and concerts to showcase their talents. Occasional day care for working parents. Weekly meetings about public policies that affected them; they were well attended, mostly for the suppers. PG Tips tea served alongside baklava and basbousa. The wounds had started to heal and no one wanted to look back.
Bish had looked back more than once. On the morning they buried his son he had the clearest memory of Noor LeBrac’s face the day he’d taken Violette from her. Because it reflected his own grief and hopelessness. Over time, the blackouts when he was pissed could make him forget the bleakness. Until a bomb went off on a bus carrying her daughter. His daughter. Violette LeBrac Zidane was personal business for Bish. Removing her from the arms of her family had undone something in his psyche and he knew the only way to restore it was to return Violette.
21
The brutal bashing of two teenagers outside a Bristol skate park made news that Sunday afternoon. The girl was in serious condition with a punctured lung, the boy had had most of his teeth knocked out. Police in Bristol and Greater London made pleas to the social media sites that had been encouraging people to hunt for Violette and Eddie. It was the public’s responsibility to report any sightings, not to search for the pair or take matters into their own hands.
Bee arrived to spend the night. The summer holidays were dragging on, as far as she was concerned. “All this sunshine,” she complained, which Bish could relate to, and her friends at home were being cows and Rachel was in “baby la-la land.” When she went for a run, he phoned Rachel just in case Bee had left without telling her.
“I was about to ring to make sure she arrived safely. She was pretty shaken by those Bristol bashings, and I got a sense she wanted to be with you.”
Bee returned from her run looking as if she had pushed herself hard. He saw tears but she refused to look at him and went straight to the shower. Later, he thought he could entice her out for a quick meal. Just as he was about to knock at her door, his phone rang.
“She’s here and she’ll speak to you, for five minutes,” said Layla Bayat. “Only because the Violette and Eddie look-alikes getting beaten up has freaked her out.”
It took Bish a moment to realize that “she” was Layla’s sister. Before he could ask a question, Layla gave him her address and hung up.
He didn’t like the idea of leaving Bee alone in the flat. It gave him an easier reason to knock on the door.
“We have a little errand,” he said.
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 has always been uncomfortable about our name being dragged down with the Sarrafs.”
“Yet you see Noor LeBrac every month,” he said.
“I’m not apologizing for my behavior,” she said. “I’m apologizing 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 judgment 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 argued. “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,” Georgette said defensively. “I don’t know where they are now.”
There was a moment’s silence, then everyone was speaking at once.
“Geej!”
“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. “You’re 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—”