Any which way, the shaps said thank God the French were going in the opposite direction. But then they all ended up at the same camping ground in Bayeux, halfway through their tour. Gorman thought it a good idea to organize a World Cup match between France and England. Having never traveled beyond these two countries, he believed they constituted The World. The French won that game. Blood was shed, mostly Crombie’s, and there was a rumble of sorts, and this one time, Marianne Attal straddled Bee and they just stared at each other for so long. Violette went to kick Marianne off, but she grabbed Violette’s boot, which ended up in Bee’s face, which is how she got a black eye. Violette and Marianne had a “C’est de sa faute à elle” argument, and then the shaps put an end to it. For days, all Bee could think of was the straddle. And how perhaps the next time she saw Marianne, they would exchange phone numbers.
On the last night, at the campsite outside Calais, the French were back. And so were the Germans, who’d spent their entire trip with a curfew for the graffiti. The seniors of all three factions ended up in the car park, shoving one another, calling one another names. Pretty pathetic. Someone threw a can, but that was as violent as it got. And suddenly, there was Marianne grabbing Bee’s arm, pulling her away, and once out of earshot saying something about it being personal, about her being the reason Bee was in Calais in the first place. Bee’s greatest fear wasn’t that everyone would find out; it was that every time the capitaine’s daughter beckoned, Bee would come running. That she’d be one of those girls.
And then the lights in the car park came on and everyone split, but Marianne wouldn’t let her go and Violette wouldn’t leave without Bee, and Eddie wouldn’t leave without Violette. Charlie Crombie was there too, so the five of them hid under the stilts of one of the cabins until the shaps were gone. Then, instead of walking back to her cabin, Marianne told them she knew how to hot-wire a car and they could head down to the coast for the night.
That was how they came to be pushing the security guard’s car through the woodlands surrounding the camping ground and coming across Fionn Sykes, who was out searching for night herons. And then the six of them were in the car, heading to nowhere in particular. It was the longest night of Bee’s life. The best night of her life. They talked about everything. It’s why sometimes she thinks she hates Violette: because Bee trusted them with all the stuff that keeps her awake at night. Stevie’s death. Her parents’ divorce, her father’s drinking. How petrified she is that one day there will be a phone call saying he’s done himself in, because he was headed for the edge. And how she had sex with a boy over Christmas at a party, just to prove to her friends that she wasn’t a lesbian. She cried when she said that. She had come out to Violette days before, but this was different. She knew there would be no turning back.
Charlie talked about the cheating episode. They couldn’t see one another in the dark but she knew from his voice that he was crying. Being expelled for drugs would make you cool in years to come, but cheating was different. Everyone hated a cheat. Eddie talked about his mother’s death and how his father didn’t want a bar of him now that she was gone, and Fionn too spoke about his mum. She didn’t leave the house ever, because she was one of those people you read about in the Guinness book of records. At Easter, Fionn finally got the guts to bring friends home to meet her, and the girl he thought he could trust told everyone that Fionn Sykes’s mum was so fat she couldn’t move out of her room. Like Gilbert Grape’s mother. And then there was Marianne. Her dad had shot dead the son of a local crim and was taking it bad, regardless of the fact that the guy was scum in the making. She said it wasn’t like the movies. Police didn’t kill people every day.
Violette said very little. Just that her father was dead and that she lived with her grandparents. Charlie asked where her mum was, and at least she was honest about that: “In jail.” They spoke briefly about the kids on the tour who got on their nerves. They compared bus drivers: both cranky most of the time. Violette told them she’d had words with the driver of the French bus. He was a bit of a stickybeak, she said.
Later, they came across a party on the beach in Arromanches and danced. As if no one they loved had ever died, or killed anyone, or cheated, or shamed them. It was the most uninhibited Bee had ever been. Her arms around Violette and Marianne, laughing up at the stars. Crombie made them promise they’d never tell anyone that he had danced to One Direction. But the very best part was later, lying beside Marianne on the sand. And her kiss. And her fingers and her tongue and the way they shook in each other’s arms and the way they didn’t really speak the same language, but understood exactly what the other was saying.
That was what happened the night before the bomb went off.
Bee’s father and Capitaine Attal and Dupont are staring at her in disbelief.
“‘Stickybeak’?” Dupont asks. “Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?”
There’s a discussion about what it means. “Nosy,” Bee explains to her father, because now she has to be a translator for Australian English as well. “He was prying.”
“That’s it? You went for a joyride in a car?” her dad asks, not really caring what “stickybeak” means.
“C’est tout?” the capitaine asks.
“That’s all,” Bee says with a shrug, because in the end it’s all she decides to tell them.
“C’est tout,” Marianne says.
The one good thing to come out of the bombing, Bee thinks, is how everything fades in comparison. She would never have guessed that Marianne’s father and her own could be so relieved to hear that their children are car thieves and not terror suspects.
She stands up and says that if they need more information they can contact her on her mobile. Marianne does the same. They’re both giving their numbers but their fathers are being dicks and shouting above them. Bee can’t hear the last couple of Marianne’s digits over the din the men are making.
“You contact me,” Bish is telling Dupont. “Not my daughter. If you want to speak to anyone, speak to me.”
Capitaine Attal says much the same with a lot of French swearwords thrown in. Dupont ignores them. As if French intelligence doesn’t already have everyone’s phone number.
Back in the car, Bee and her dad put on their seat belts in silence. Then he turns and stares at her, as if he can’t believe what he’s thinking.
“Just ask,” she says.
“Did you give up martial arts for French classes on a Saturday morning?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
She hears a message come through and fumbles for her phone.
Ton père est un idiot. Mxx
Yours is too, she texts back. Bxx
Bee has never been so grateful for idiot fathers.
40
They spent the night at a motel in Calais close to the port. While Bee texted her life away, Bish borrowed her iPad and searched through media from thirteen years ago. If Ahmed Khateb had been living in North London in 2002, someone he knew could have been a victim of the Brackenham bombing. What did Violette mean by calling him a stickybeak? Had Khateb approached her because somehow he had worked out who she was? With a name like Zidane it wouldn’t have been as easy as linking a LeBrac to the bombing, but perhaps a grief-stricken man knew every single detail there was to know about the family whose patriarch had been responsible for Brackenham.
In Bish’s search for names, statements from the injured, death notices, and everything else that was written about back then, he came across the front page of The Guardian, which showed photographs of the twenty-three victims. At one point in his police career, Bish had known the names of them all. Remembered their personal stories. A young mother and her five-year-old son on their way to school. A father of four who worked for the council. An eighteen-year-old lad who was the only child of a couple from Merseyside. Bish stared at the lad’s face. Eternally laughing, without a care in the world. His name caught Bish’s eye. A common name, so he should hav
e put the thought aside, but he couldn’t help a Google search. And at a time when he thought there was no more room for surprises from Noor LeBrac, Bish discovered her biggest one.
41
When Eddie’s mum died his dad had stopped doing things around the house, like cooking and cleaning and getting the mail from the post office. Then he stopped getting out of bed.
That was how Eddie came across the letters. He would have ignored personal mail to his mum and just concentrated on counting out the money in the tin that paid for the bills. But this letter came from Holloway Prison and Eddie had never known anyone to get mail from someone in prison, so he opened it. It was from a woman named Noor. Most of the letter was about the babies born in the wing where she worked, but the last few sentences read,
It’s the anniversary of Etienne’s death, and Eddie’s birth, and the day I knew I’d never see Violette again. The worst time of the year for me. The pain never lessens. In actual fact it grows, and one day I’m frightened that it will consume me. Please write when you can, Anna. I worry that I haven’t heard from you.
Love,
Noor
He had always known his parents weren’t his from birth. People only had to look at them to work it out, so Eddie worked it out straightaway. This Noor lady must be his birth mum. So he tore up the letter, because as long as Eddie lived he would never want another mum.
But he couldn’t forget the names. Noor. Violette. Etienne. No surname, but when he googled those names together he learnt everything. Who had done the Brackenham bombing and why. He’d known that “our Jimmy” had died in a bombing, and for days and days and days Eddie was sick inside and couldn’t look his da in the eye.
Eddie went searching for other letters his mother had been sent by Noor. Not all of them were from Holloway. The other mother had been to a few prisons in the early days. And the more Eddie read, the more curious he was. Not about people called Noor or Etienne. But about Violette. He had a sister. A full-blooded sister. She was seventeen years old and she lived in Australia. On a farm. The other mother spoke to her every morning between 10 and 10:30 a.m. in England, which was between 9 and 9:30 p.m. in Australia.
Eddie found out everything about Violette through those letters. Like the fact that she seemed tough but was “seeing someone” because of the nightmares. And she had been homeschooled since year seven because the kids in her class had found out who her grandfather was and had written awful things on her locker. The other mother said she was desperate for an appeal on her case because she needed to be home with Violette. But that didn’t seem to happen.
He also learnt from the letters that Violette was clever and wanted to be a doctor, and she loved her animals and was enjoying netball because for the first time she was allowed to be on a team. That she had become obsessed with her father’s death and wrote to Scotland Yard each time she remembered something new about the day Etienne died. That she swore way too much because she was used to being with the workers on the farm. That she knew very little about the world outside the town she lived in. That she spoke Arabic, French, and English. And that she was going on a camp that year. To Tasmania.
So Eddie went searching for Violette. He couldn’t find her on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or anywhere else. The only Violette Zidane he came across was in a local paper called the Daily Advertiser. She played center in a junior netball competition in the Riverina, New South Wales. So he found the name and address of the netball club and sent her a letter. He kept it short in case it never reached her.
Dear Violette,
My name is Eddie Conlon and I think you’re my sister. If you get this, my email is
[email protected] Yours sincerely,
Eddie Conlon
One month later he received an email from
[email protected] Dear Eddie,
This is Violette. Yes, I am your sister. I’ve thought of you every day since you were born, and I will think of you every day until I die. (Not to be dramatic or anything.) I’ve attached a photograph of myself. Do we look the same? It doesn’t matter if we don’t. I hope for your sake you don’t have my hair.
Love,
Violette
And from that time on, they hadn’t stopped emailing each other. Twice, three, four times a day. The first time they Skyped she bawled her eyes out. The second time he did. They talked about everything. Like music and the fact that he wanted to be a DJ and she wanted to be a doctor and her netball team had a chance of winning the grand final for the first time ever. Everyone said she was a bitch, but a good center had to be.
During that time, his dad got a bit better. He started cooking dinner, getting the mail. It made Eddie happy because he had thought things would never be normal again. But one night he could see that his father, who had fallen asleep in the armchair, was having a nightmare. “It’s okay, Da,” he said, nudging him. “It’s Eddie. It’s okay.” And Eddie would never forget the next moment. The way his da opened his eyes and flinched. Cringed.
“Get away from me.”
So. That was the real truth, then. His father had only ever put up with him because of his mum. He actually thought Eddie was a monster, just like people said Louis Sarraf was when he blew up our Jimmy and the others.
When he Skyped Violette that night, he told her, and she said it killed her to see him so sad. He knew by the look on her face she was up to something.
“What are you thinking, Violette?”
“I’m going to have to miss out on Duke of Ed camp,” she said in a determined voice.
“Why?” He knew how much Duke of Ed meant to her. It had a lot to do with the other father, Etienne.
“Because I’m coming there to be with you.”
42
Bish arrived at Holloway Saturday afternoon with no visiting order and no clearance from Grazier. But his find last night was burning a hole in his head. Added to that was the news that Khateb had lived in North London at the time of the bombing. As far as Bish was concerned, he had reason enough to talk his way in.
Gray was nowhere to be seen at his hole in the wall. Bish identified himself to the guard and explained that he was here on his ongoing Home Office business. He was surprised by the startled look in the man’s eyes.
“That was quick,” the guard muttered.
Bish was even more confused when he was taken straight to the acting governor’s office. Sitting there with Eleanor Cook were Gray; his younger sidekick, Farrington; a female guard whose name tag identified her as Vasquez; and Allison from the visitors’ center. They seemed surprised to see him there. Nevertheless, he was invited to sit down.
“Everyone’s off sick these days,” the acting governor said once he was seated. He tried not to concentrate on the misapplied lipstick around her mouth. “We were shorthanded.”
He looked from one to the other of them. “And I’m being told this because…?”
Eleanor Cook cleared her throat. “A woman visiting an inmate this morning claimed to recognize Violette LeBrac and a younger boy in the visiting hall.”
He stared at her. “Violette and Eddie were here? Visiting Noor LeBrac?”
“We haven’t confirmed that, but the visiting hall was understaffed this morning.”
“Old Lorna here had to help out,” Farrington chimed in. “She’s usually got a cushy job in the mail room and probably didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Who are you calling old, you little tosser?” Vasquez muttered.
“Just the two of them, on their own?” Bish asked Farrington, who seemed the one to break. “So they just walked up to the visiting hall and popped in to see Violette’s mum?”
Farrington didn’t seem to know how to answer this without looking at Gray.
“A Mr. Bilal Lelouche came visiting,” Allison answered for him, handing Bish a printout of the visitors’ log.
“Who’s he?” Bish asked.
“A family friend,” Allison said.
“We spoke to LeBrac after the report
was made,” Cook said. “She told us that Mr. Lelouche visits every year, after Ramadan. We checked previous years’ records and confirmed it.”
“Ramadan ended almost a month ago,” Bish said.
Cook was irritated. “Yes, we know that, Chief Inspector Ortley. Apparently, out of respect for what’s happening with LeBrac’s daughter, he held off this year. According to the records, he did the same thing today he always has. He brought along two of his kids—”
“Names and ages?” Bish asked.
Now Farrington had found his voice again. “We asked for his ID, as we do with all adult visitors.”
“But you didn’t check the IDs of the children?” Bish asked.
Cook indicated the printout of the visitors’ log. “It says here they were Fatima and Anwar, seventeen and fourteen years old.”
Bish took a deep breath.
“I’d say it’s unlikely that Violette LeBrac and the boy were actually here,” the acting governor said, looking at the others. They, of course, seemed to agree.
“Probably some racist who made the claim because she thinks they all look the same,” Gray said.
Bish wondered how long they’d spent getting their story right. “Let me see the security cameras,” he said. “I’m sure it’s all there in black and white.”
“We’ve already looked,” Cook said. “The images aren’t clear enough to make confirmation.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
Cook already had the footage downloaded to her computer. He stared at the screen where Bilal Lelouche and the children were visible. The girl was wearing a hijab and the boy an Arsenal beanie. They were quite obviously avoiding the security camera.