Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil

  Bish stared at his daughter, stunned. “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 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,” Bish 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 neighbors 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. 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 had 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 favor. ‘Can you get me across the Channel?’ There was no information other than that.”

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

  22

  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 important, get a pedicure for her poor swollen distorted feet. If she could have sat with them soaked 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 on Sunday.

  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 chamber’s 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 patdown and a surrendering of everything but her notebook and a locker key, she’s warned that 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 had a fierce life force. Some of it has survived, but not the humor or light.

  “My name’s Rachel Ballyntine,” she says, sitting down. “I’m a QC, and I think it’s about time people heard from a Sarraf, Noor,” she says with so much conviction that she almost persuades herself it’s why she has come today. “I’m here to help.”

  Noor LeBrac’s wordless study of her is uncompromising. She leans back in her seat, as if enjoying the way Rachel is running herself into a bit of a babble.

  “I didn’t ask for help,” Noor says after a time, and when Rachel goes to speak, she holds up a hand to stop her. “I wanted your help years ago. When I was handcuffed to a hospital bed and told by a kind doctor that Rachel Ballyntine was one of the best human rights lawyers in Lon
don. But you didn’t respond to my letter. Since then I’ve had to put up with every idealistic idiot legal intern searching me out and promising me justice will be done.”

  “Look, I know how you—”

  “Do you?” Noor LeBrac is not a babbler. Her pauses are weapons. “Have you woken up every single morning since that bus bomb went off and pictured a maniac stomping your child to death out of revenge for something the media says she’s responsible for? Or imagined the police arresting and keeping her in one of those underground cells at Paddington Green for as long as they like, because if she’s a Sarraf and a LeBrac she’s obviously a terrorist? We’re clichés like that.” Rachel goes to speak, but Noor LeBrac holds up a hand, again. “Don’t dare to presume how I feel.”

  Lying has made Rachel weak. It makes her voice quiver and it stops her from looking this woman straight in the face. And she’s getting mighty sick and tired of Noor LeBrac’s hand. So Rachel stops lying. “Okay, I’m not here about your case,” she says bluntly. “Saying I’m your barrister was the only way they’d let me in at short notice.” She flicks quickly through her notebook and slides one of Bee’s photographs across the table.

  It has the desired effect. Noor LeBrac isn’t going to walk away from a recent photo of her child.

  Rachel points to Bee. “That’s my daughter.”

  Noor stares at the photograph greedily. “She was on the trip with them?”

  “Bee Ballyntine-Ortley,” Rachel says, spreading out the rest of the photos. “She shared a room with Violette.”

  There’s a question in Noor’s eyes, a tilt to her head as she studies her. “You’re married to the copper Ortley.”

  “Was.”

  Noor looks down at Rachel’s belly.

  “Not his. Our marriage didn’t survive the death of a child. We’re clichés like that.”

  Noor LeBrac makes a sound of dismay, as if she can’t help herself. “I should have seen it,” she murmurs.

  Suddenly Rachel feels she can’t breathe. She wants to cry and has to get out of here before she does. She tries to stand.

  “Stay,” Noor says.

  Rachel shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  And then a hand reaches out and takes hers. “Stay. Please.”

  Rachel can only stare at the hand. After a moment, Noor lets go. “Your daughter doesn’t have either of your coloring but she looks like your husband.”

  “Ex. Bish’s grandfather was Egyptian. Bashir.”

  “Of course.” As if Bish has been a puzzle this woman has just solved. “Was it a son or daughter?” she asks quietly.

  “Son. He drowned.” Rachel points to the image of Eddie Conlon. “Stevie would have been thirteen this year.”

  It is Noor LeBrac’s look of soul-wrenching empathy that finally breaks Rachel, and she bawls. In front of this stranger, supposedly responsible for such devastation. And it makes Rachel speak until she’s hoarse. About David and Bee and the baby, and Bish, and the fact that, regardless of how their marriage turned out, her greatest fear these days is someone knocking on her door to tell her he’s dead. She blames herself. It’s her pregnancy that seems to have begun his spiral into something truly frightening.

  “You still love him?” It’s almost an accusation.

  “Not in that way, not anymore. But he’s a good man. My husband, David, feels a bit put out that they’ll never be friends. We’re selfish, he and I. We want our cake and to eat it too.” Then Rachel can’t stop herself from asking, “Have you ever loved someone you shouldn’t?”

  “Yes. My father.” Noor sighs, world-weary. “Why are you here, Rachel?”

  “Do you want the selfish answer?”

  “It’s probably the most honest.”

  Rachel touches one of the photos. “I haven’t seen Bee this happy since before her brother died.” She tries not to cry again but fails. “Violette and Eddie mean something to her, and I’m frightened that if anything happens to them it will be the last straw for Bee.”

  Noor does not respond.

  “You know Violette’s in danger out there,” Rachel says. “You need to find a way of letting her know it’s safe for me to walk her into a police station.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Noor says emphatically. “I’ve told your ex-husband that. He stuffed up by not getting on Jimmy’s good side in Calais.”

  “What has your brother told you?”

  “Just that Violette and the boy came to visit him. I didn’t get a sense Jimmy was holding anything back.”

  “You think you’re being tapped?” Rachel asks.

  “Oh, I know we’re being tapped. Since last week, anyway. Jimmy by the French, and my calls are recorded here.”

  “So you don’t think your brother knows their whereabouts?”

  “Not consciously. But Violette and her uncle speak all the time when she’s back home. They have the luxury of longer conversations. So if anyone can get into Violette’s head, it’s Jimmy.”

  A guard enters without a knock. “Time’s up. Let’s go.”

  Before Rachel can stop herself she reaches for Noor’s hand. The other woman squeezes it in return.

  “Tell your ex-husband that if he wants to find Violette and Eddie, he’ll need my brother.”

  23

  It had been almost ten days since the bombing and the media were uncompromising in their attacks on the French and British authorities, accusing both of dragging their feet. As yet, no one had claimed responsibility. In the eyes of the world this ruled out Al Qaeda and ISIS, who were never shy about owning up to atrocities. French intelligence, according to Attal, seemed to be focusing on Ahmed Khateb, the driver of the French bus, but they were keeping tight-lipped about it.

  As far as Bish could tell, there were at least five agencies involved, the most official of which were French intelligence and MI6. If his suspicions about Grazier and Elliot were correct, MI5 were also onto it. The Spanish were conducting their own investigation, based on the death of Lucia Ortez. The Australian Federal Police had sent over a couple of people to find out what the French knew about Violette, which, according to Elliot, who was in touch with her grandparents, was nothing.

  And then there was Attal himself. Bish welcomed the clumsy texts he received from the French copper, although they demanded intense analysis through Google translations. Attal may have been officially off the investigation, but the bombing was within his jurisdiction and his daughter had been at the campsite. Bish knew that nothing would stop Attal from continuing his own inquiries, especially since the driver of her bus was a suspect. For Attal, this was personal. He had returned to the campsite often, suspecting that an employee there knew something. Someone had to have given details about which security cameras to avoid when planting the bomb. Attal had revealed to Bish that the camera overlooking the bus parking bays had been smashed. On the day of the bombing, Attal’s people had backed up footage from the other three cameras still operating: one outside the recreation hall, one outside the office, one overlooking the pool. The footage had yielded very little, but did confirm the presence of a security vehicle. When Attal spoke to the owner of the security company, he was told that all their vehicles were accounted for. But between the evening before the bombing and the morning after, there was a discrepancy of eighty kilometers on the odometer of one of the vehicles and very little petrol in the tank. Greta Jager hadn’t imagined what she saw.

  Photographies, Attal texted more than once. The answer to who was responsible possibly lay in the photographs taken by the kids.

  The lack of progress in the official investigation meant that Violette and Eddie remained in danger of the ignorance that had swept across London and beyond. Social media was abuzz with sightings of them in Richmond, Pimlico, Edgware Road, Manchester, and Swansea, all on the same day. According to Elliot, the only two that could be confirmed were Richmond the day before, when Violette and Eddie had been caught on CCTV on the foot ferry near Orle
ans Road, and Edgware Road tube station later in the afternoon.

  Bish had spent the previous night studying a map of those areas and their surroundings. London Central Mosque? Had someone in the community made contact with Violette? Promised her protection? Or were Violette and Eddie fearless enough to go sightseeing at Madame Tussauds?

  “They split up,” Elliot told him early Monday morning while Bish drove them around Edgware Road for what Elliot called a clue spark. “She knows they’re looking for a girl of seventeen and a boy of thirteen, so on the tube they separate so as not to draw attention, and they travel during peak hour so they can get lost in the crowd. They look like the least nervous kids in the country. No backpacks, which means they have some kind of home base. A different football beanie each day for him. Hats and wigs for her. Yesterday morning Violette looks like Eliza Doolittle; later in the day she’s a rock chick.”

  For Bish the area brought back memories of working at Paddington Green police station. “What’s Grazier’s latest theory about the bombing?” he asked as he pulled up at the tube to drop Elliot off.

  “Knows as much as you do.”

  “Well, that can’t be much,” Bish said.

  “According to him, MI6 weren’t taught to share their toys,” Elliot said.

  “With their little brothers and sisters, you mean?”

  “MI5 would never consider themselves the younger siblings of 6.”

  “You’d know that from firsthand experience, would you?” Bish asked.

  “Just come out and ask the question, Ortley.”

  “Okay, are you and Grazier working for MI5?”

  “Grazier and I work for the home secretary.”

  “And MI5 answers to the home secretary.”

  “You’re saying everyone who answers to the home secretary works for MI5?”

  “So when bombs aren’t going off on buses and vulnerable kids aren’t on the run, what is it you do for the home secretary?”

  “I do whatever she calls on me to do,” Elliot said. “Isn’t that what an employee does for their employer?”