Jamal makes his way towards Bill. It would be disrespectful to let the old guy come to him. He tries not to think of father figures because that will remind him of his own father, Louis. And what he did. But Bill had been a father figure. He was his coach since he was a kid. He came to Jamal’s house when he was six and told his parents their son had a gift. There are times in Calais when Jamal finds himself threatening the kids he coaches with words that came out of Bill’s mouth.
They don’t speak for a while. Just watch the younger lads warm up. Alfie is shouting out some inane advice and his brother is telling him to shut up.
“I thought they weren’t letting you back in,” Bill finally says.
Jamal shrugs. “They’ve changed the rules for a couple of days.”
Bill doesn’t ask why.
“Any of them good?” Jamal asks.
“Lazy lot. No one says they want to play football anymore. Everyone wants to be a star.”
“You used to say the exact same thing about us, boss.”
That seems to lighten the mood slightly.
“What are you doing with yourself over there?”
“Bit of this and that. Training some of the local kids.”
“Any of ’em good?”
“Doesn’t really matter. Most are migrants. They just disappear after a while.”
Bill blows his whistle and walks towards the players and Jamal follows. It’s the smell of the grass. The neighborhood. It’s watching Bill’s bandy legs as he walks. It’s remembering the nights Noor and Etienne would walk down to watch him practice, and how Layla would be trailing them because she had been after Davie Kennedy with a vengeance. How they’d go to the chippy on the way home.
When training is over, Jamal runs that field with his Brackenham lads and a bunch of fourteen-year-olds. He can feel the Tannous brothers at his heels, just like the old days. They were never able to catch him back then. Jamal had never been as invincible as he was at fourteen.
The younger lads approach to taunt Alfie, who’s lying on the ground panting.
“The boss says you was even better than Rooney,” one of them says to Jamal.
“Yeah, better-looking.”
And then it’s time to go, and without saying good-bye he turns to walk away. Because he knows he shouldn’t have come. Nostalgia is a weakness.
“Jimmy lad?”
The old guy is close behind. Jamal stops and waits.
“People around here talk more now,” Bill says in a low voice. “It’s not that they’ve forgotten the dead, but some people…some people say the coppers shouldn’t have gone for the whole family. Some’d bet their life you had nothing to do with it.”
“Would you?”
Bill’s eyes are watery with age and emotion. “My opinion’s not worth much.”
“It’s worth everything.”
The old guy gives a smile. “Then I’d bet my life.”
Layla is in her bedroom when he gets back. The door is open so he takes a step inside. There isn’t much in the room apart from the bed, a print on the wall, and a dresser, but it all speaks of class. The Bayat sisters always liked beautiful things and they can spot a bargain from across a marketplace. Jocelyn taught Layla to be frugal but to choose well, the approach she took when she chose Ali Shahbazi to marry. It was her only way out of the council estates. Layla’s way out was her brains.
She looks up from where she’s sitting on the bed. Her eyes are swollen, as if she’s been bawling all afternoon. Beside her is a cardboard box of stuff that she’s sorting through.
“Did you go down to Haversham Park?”
He nods. “No one speaks normally,” he says. “It’s always a whisper. Noor’s name. Etienne’s. Now Violette’s. They’ve all become a whisper. Am I one?”
“You’re the greatest whisper of them all,” she says. “It’s human nature. You make people feel good about their lives. Because whatever they’ve experienced, it can’t be worse than what happened to Jimmy Sarraf.”
“I don’t want my niece to be a whisper.”
He takes the envelope of money from his pocket and holds it up. “Alfie and the lads. Can you get it back to them somehow?”
She gets off the bed. “That Brackenham lot don’t part with their money too easy. If they’ve given it to you, they mean you to have it.” She brushes past him.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Rough day,” is all she says.
He follows her into the kitchenette, where she puts on the kettle.
“Do you know the guy who owns the Algerian restaurant on the corner?” she asks.
“No, but he’s watching me.”
“His name is Bilal Lelouche and he stopped me tonight because he’s one of the hundreds of people who know you’re staying with me.”
She doesn’t seem happy about that fact.
“He asked if you could drop in for supper. He knew Noor and Etienne, apparently.”
Jamal gives a shake of his head. It sounds like a setup.
“I’ve never heard anything bad said about him,” she says. “Great restaurant. People come from all over to eat there.”
“No clean clothes.”
“I’ll find you something.”
“No thanks.”
He hadn’t meant it to sound judgmental. He just doesn’t want to be wearing some other guy’s clothing.
“I’ve got some stuff of Ali’s that Jocelyn wants me to give to a Brackenham charity,” she says.
He has no excuse now. “Will you come with me?” he asks.
The restaurant is packed but there’s a table set for them down the back. Jamal and Layla exchange a look and follow the waiter. The moment they sit down the food comes, and doesn’t stop coming for the next hour.
“Love the French,” Jamal says, wolfing down the best kefta he’s ever eaten. “Hate their food.”
Layla laughs and it’s a good laugh to hear, and even better to see. “My favorite treat is a French restaurant,” she says.
“Hate the food with a passion,” he says.
With a meal this good, there’s no room for being polite. It’s the survival of the fastest and Layla likes her food as much as he does. There’s less room for talk too, which is fine, because he has to accept that they’re strangers now. She’s guarded and it makes him tense; he wants to be anything but. When he brings up her work she dodges the subject. Asks about his instead. He tells her about the gym, and working at one of the bars downtown.
“As a bouncer?” she asks, soaking up the last of the chakchouka with her pita bread.
“Not a bouncer.”
“You work behind the bar?” she says.
“Who said I was working behind the bar?”
He reaches over and finishes the eggplant dip on her plate. They eye each other. The old Jimmy and Layla always ate from each other’s plates. There was an intimacy to it.
“You’re not a bouncer and you’re not behind the bar,” she says, trying to work it out. “So you’re running the place?”
“Not running the place.”
By ten thirty Bilal Lelouche still hasn’t come over for a chat, and Jamal is surprised when a waiter puts the bill on the table. Not that he’s complaining, but Layla made it sound as if the meal was on the house. She reaches for the bill before he can and takes out her purse.
“Put it away,” he says gruffly.
“We’ll go halves,” she says, looking at the bill, and her expression changes at once. Her eyes meet his as she hands it over.
Breakfast tomorrow 9 a.m. Lette Le-Hyphen and a friend.
For most of the short walk home it’s like old times and Layla and Jamal argue about whose plan has worked best.
“Lette Le-Hyphen found out I was on Facebook.”
“Yes, but through my message to Gigi.”
Inside her building, Layla reaches for the stairwell light. The moment it’s illuminated, they hear a sound further up the stairs. Instinct has him taking her hand.
&
nbsp; “Stay here,” he whispers.
“Who’s there?” Layla calls out.
A young blonde looks down at them from the stair rail. Layla leads him up to her flat, where the woman, dressed in a suit, stands holding a plastic Marks & Spencer bag. Layla lets go of his hand.
“Some of the things you left behind,” the woman says, holding out the bag. “Toiletries and stuff from the ladies’ room.”
When Layla takes the bag she seems surprised by the weight of it. The two exchange a look Jamal can’t read before the woman heads down the stairs.
“You shouldn’t have lasted this long typing,” Layla calls out after her. “You’re better than being the next Vera. That’s what I meant back then. So next time someone gives you advice, listen to them.”
There’s no response and Layla clutches the bag to her.
“What was all that about?” he asks, his heart sinking because he understands now. The reason she was in her room crying. The carton on her bed.
She doesn’t respond. Jamal takes the keys from her and wordlessly opens the door.
Inside he sits at the piano, tinkering. Layla disappears into her bedroom and when she returns she seems composed. She comes to sit on the bench beside him and tries to remember the beginning of “Für Elise.” He takes her hand and guides her through it. When they were younger he’d be rough, jabbing her fingers against the keys. Tonight he lets his linger over hers. He plays the opening strands of Clapton’s “Layla.” He used to play it to her back when life made sense. Back when Layla Bayat could have had him on his knees begging for the rest of his life.
“Any requests?” he asks.
She looks at him and then suddenly laughs. “No way. Are you the piano man at that bar?”
Playing the piano and playing football. They were the two things that held his life together in Calais.
“Just on weekends. All my mother’s nagging paid off in a strange way.”
“Whereas my mother brings up the waste of money every time we have a family get-together.”
“Your mother was too tough on you,” he says quietly. “I could easily hate her for that, but then she went and nursed my mother while she died, didn’t she?” He concentrates on the keys because he can’t bear thinking of Aziza Sarraf dying without her family.
“They were a strange pair, our mothers,” she murmurs.
And then their eyes lock and he realizes they’ve both avoided that for the past twenty-four hours, with one of them looking away just in time. But not now.
She reaches across and touches the scar above his eye, a souvenir from Belmarsh. And the rest is inevitable. Has been from the moment he stood outside her door waiting for her to come home. One minute they’re at the piano, the next they’re in the bedroom, hardly making it to the bed. And all through the night a harmony of cries and skin against skin cutting through the stillness. Beyond exhaustion but they can’t stop. She’s crying real tears. He’s crying himself. Because what Ortley has given them is a tease. A glimpse of what could have been. In Calais it’s easier to pretend he isn’t sick at heart for home. For Layla. She doesn’t just remind him of who he was back then, but of who he wanted to be. Thought he would be. If he was a selfish man he’d beg her to cross the Channel with him, but he knows it would be a fake life for her. She’s been second-best all her life, had told him that often enough. He can’t stomach being responsible for her having a second-best future.
35
The shakes of the previous day had made way for a full-blown migraine. It pounded Bish’s brain every step he took. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the end of the day without succumbing to a drink, and between now and that moment there was Holloway.
First the brisk, forced cheerfulness at the visitors’ center. Then the ever-hostile Gray and his colleagues. And then, for the prize, Noor LeBrac, who looked far from impressed when she was finally delivered to the room and buzzed in.
“You gave my brother a two-day visa but I can’t see him again?” she said before she had even sat down.
Bish wanted to believe that antagonism would give way to thanks after Jamal Sarraf’s visit. Not when it came to this woman.
“The reason he’s in London is to find Violette and Eddie,” he said. “Not to have a daily reunion with you.”
“Yet you’re the only adult who’s spoken to her for two weeks. The fool who found out nothing.”
Bish’s headache didn’t like the word “fool.” The pain pounded back its response and made him giddy. Pity she didn’t appreciate that her daughter trusted Bish enough to ring him. He opened the file Grazier had given him. “There’s been a development,” he managed to grind out. He filled her in on the driver of the French bus.
“That’s all you’ve got?” she said. “The fact that he’s Algerian? Would he be a suspect if his name were John Smith and not Ahmed Khateb? Would a German bus driver arguing with a Spaniard be a suspect?”
“He was caught on CCTV arguing with your daughter and now he’s disappeared. That’s why he’s a suspect.” Bish handed her a photograph of Khateb. “Do you recognize this man?”
She shook her head in disgust. “I married an Australian whose mother is Algerian and you think I’m going to know every one of her countrymen? You people are so ignorant.”
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 her mouth. 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 ice pack 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. “Gray’s not happy about the paperwork.”
She moved the ice pack 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 he
r 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. License. Couple of business cards. Forty quid. An Oyster card. Credit card. A photo of him with his children taken three years ago. The last shot taken of Stevie. Noor studied it and sighed with a depth of sadness and grief that played with his head. As everything 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 took one of his business cards and pocketed it before handing 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 loved 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, hair shirt and all.”