“They’re not refugees, mum. They’re from Australia and Tonbridge.”
He knows it wouldn’t kill him to stay there in the living room with them, but all he can think of is people finding out who Eddie is. And how the kid will never have a chance of winning Britain’s Got Talent.
46
It feels good to be back in a suit. Work clothes make Layla feel competent, compared with the tracksuit she wears watching repeats of Made in Chelsea while feeling sorry for herself. Today is going to be a big gamble, but she’s determined.
“I’m Layla Bayat,” she tells the guard at the inquiry desk on Monday morning. “My name should be down there to see Noor LeBrac. I’m her new representation.”
That piece of news certainly gets a reaction.
“What happened to last week’s new representation?” the woman asks.
Layla’s not prepared to be the inferior in this exchange.
“Is my name there or not?”
The last time she saw Noor was the day the family were arrested, when they still believed that Louis was an innocent victim of the bombing. Noor was frantic. Etienne was flying back from Australia and she was trying to keep everyone focused. Their uncle Joseph was visiting from Manchester, and he calmly reassured them all. But Jimmy was inconsolable. No one ever imagined the nightmare of Louis Sarraf’s being the main suspect.
Today she’ll be facing a harder version of Noor, but when she’s taken into the room it’s still so recognizably the woman Layla always looked up to alongside Jocelyn.
Noor kisses Layla’s left cheek, right cheek, then left again and they sit down in silence. Layla thinks she’ll just go straight into talking about an appeal. But then she doesn’t.
“I never came to see you.”
Noor seems to be processing and after a moment she nods. “True. But you were the only one there for Jimmy when he got out of jail. And you used to drive your mother to the hospice to look after mine. I think the Bayat women have done enough for my family.”
“We could have done more.”
“Is this about Etienne’s death?” Noor asks. “Violette said you’re looking into it.”
“Not yet,” she says. “Because we start with you, Noor. If we can get you into a courtroom and win an appeal then everything else falls into place. Etienne’s death. Jimmy and your uncle’s citizenship. We start with you and blow the rest out of the water.”
Layla ignores Noor’s headshaking. “Yes,” Layla says firmly. “Most decent people are upset about the way Violette has been treated. I hear it on the streets, in my neighborhood. That means they’re talking about Brackenham. They’re talking about you.”
She removes a file from her briefcase and places it in front of Noor. “From a blog created by two of the mothers whose daughters were badly injured by the Calais bomb.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Noor says, picking it up.
“A piece went online this morning written by Chief Inspector Pain-in-the-Arse Ortley. He ends it by saying he believes Louis Sarraf acted on his own. He said the same thing to me.”
She hears the intake of Noor’s breath.
“Katherine Barrett-Parker and Sadia Bagchi have as big an online readership at the moment as some of the tabloids,” Layla tells her. “The comments in response to what Ortley says are polarizing. For every person who thinks he should shut his mouth in respect for the dead, there’s another who supports him.”
“Every attempt at an appeal ends the same way, Layla. It runs out of steam, it never makes it to court. It’s always the wrong timing…”
“I’m not going to run out of steam and I’m not going to give up on this, Noor,” Layla says. “I grew up living in everyone’s shadow. Jocelyn’s. Yours. Jimmy’s. And ever since the bombing I’ve been living in its shadow. What if I’m selfish and I’m doing this for me too?”
“If you take this on you’ll be begging to get back into that shadow. And if you lose you’re going to spend the rest of your life doing conveyancing for your extended family, and everyone on the block.”
Noor isn’t telling her anything she doesn’t know herself.
“You can’t do this without a barrister, and no one will touch it,” she says.
But Layla would rather spend the rest of her life doing conveyancing than sell her soul on the tenth floor for Silvey and Grayson. “Leave the barrister to me,” she says.
Outside she rings Ortley, but it goes straight to voice mail. Layla decides to put her niece to work. She suspects that Gigi and Bee Ortley text each other obsessively about their common denominator, Violette, despite the fact that they don’t consider themselves friends.
Can you ask your frenemy what hospital her mum’s in?
Next stop, William Harvey in Ashford. Rachel Ballyntine smiles questioningly when Layla walks into her private room. She’s nursing a baby with a thatch of red hair much like its mother’s.
“Hi, Rachel. My name’s Layla Bayat. I’m Noor LeBrac’s solicitor. I know this probably isn’t the best timing but I’m wondering if we can talk about her case.”
Rachel is staring at her. The baby in her arms doesn’t seem to like the change in its mother’s mood. Badgering a woman while she’s breastfeeding her newborn is a bit on the low side, but Layla can’t back down now.
“I’ve just had a C-section and I haven’t slept for two days,” Rachel says coldly. “Can you please leave?”
Layla places the chocolates on the bedside table with her business card. At the door she stops and turns. “Did you know they forced her to confess during labor? She was giving birth to Eddie. They gave her forty-eight hours with him. Noor didn’t let go of him that entire time because she knew she’d never see him again.”
The baby is crying now and Rachel tries her best to comfort it. There are tears in her eyes. Angry ones. Full of sorrow.
“Oh Layla,” she says. “You don’t play fair.”
47
When Bish pulled up on Rue Delacroix on Monday morning, Sarraf was standing on the pavement looking annoyed.
“I meant nine a.m. in France,” he said. “Not nine a.m. in the UK.”
Bish wasn’t in the mood to apologize about the misunderstanding. Not on Sarraf’s turf. “So what’s going on?” he asked instead.
Sarraf got into the car. “Bilal found Khateb.”
That took some processing. “Lelouche did?” Bish asked. “He had no idea who Ahmed Khateb was when I spoke to him.”
“But he knows every wealthy Algerian within a radius of two hundred miles, which includes Paris, and wealthy French Algerians have staff. Khateb’s wife works as a live-in for a family in Paris. A cousin of a cousin of a cousin of Bilal’s, and if some fucker’s caught on camera arguing with my niece, we want to know why. Turn left at the bottom of the street.”
Bish pulled out but forgot where he was and had to swerve to miss a car coming from the opposite direction. He could feel Sarraf’s glare.
“I’m driving,” Sarraf said. “Pull over.”
“We should get Attal in on this,” Bish said when they’d swapped seats and set off again.
“Not happening. It was hard enough convincing Khateb to let you come along.”
“Good of you to trust me this time round.” Bish tried to keep the reproach out of his tone.
“I don’t,” Sarraf said. “But if I get caught speaking to a terror suspect, who knows where I could end up? You’re here to do the explaining if I do get caught, and Khateb’s agreed because you have no jurisdiction in France and can’t arrest him.”
“Always, always a pleasure to be useful,” Bish muttered.
Khateb’s hideout was a twenty-minute drive south of Calais, off the main highway and five miles down a gravel track not quite meant for a Renault 5. Bish couldn’t help wondering what his response would have been if someone had told him two weeks ago that he’d be letting Jamal Sarraf drive his car down a road that seemed to go nowhere. Just when he was beginning to think that Lelouche and Sarraf had been
duped, they came across a dilapidated cottage, fronted by a rotting vegetable plot. Sarraf pulled up. The overripe produce had split open and the stench was overwhelming. A far cry from Monet country. Bish counted four children peering out at them from a cracked window, before disappearing from sight.
Inside the cottage, he and Sarraf sat on the only piece of furniture in the room, a two-seater with half its stuffing pulled out. A girl of about twelve wearing a hijab served them tea. She looked nervously from Sarraf to Bish. Khateb sat opposite them, his appraisal less nervous than hostile. He was surly if not rude, and refused to speak English although he admitted to knowing a little. He and Sarraf slipped from French to Arabic and back again. Bish had to trust that Sarraf was translating accurately.
The Algerian was clear about one thing: he would cut off his hand before he would hurt a child. He had five of his own, the oldest thirteen, the youngest two. His issue with the driver of the British bus had to do with the parking bays. Serge Sagur had been a stickler for assigned parking. Ahmed Khateb wasn’t.
Bish listened to Sarraf question the man about Violette. It was the only word he recognized in the quick exchange. Did English sound this fast to foreigners?
“In Bayeux, he overheard a phone conversation between Violette and Nasrene in Arabic,” Sarraf told him. “He heard her use the word ‘henna,’ which is Algerian for grandmother. When she hung up Khateb told her off for being disrespectful to her grandmother. It was obvious to him that Violette wasn’t where she was supposed to be. She’d described the weather as bitterly cold, for one thing. In the middle of August. So Violette told him to mind his own business, but then came back to say she was sorry.”
“Do you believe him?” Bish asked, remembering the “stickybeak” comment.
“Yeah I do. Nasrene’s a stickler for manners, and one of the big rules is to respect your elders.”
“Ask him why he disappeared the day of the bombing,” Bish said.
Sarraf asked, then translated. “He says his wife is working illegally for a wealthy Algerian family in Paris. She sends home money, but mostly he’s raising these kids on his own. When he’s away for work for more than a week, he leaves them with a friend in Amiens. He went to collect them after being gone for eight days, and by the time he returned, his photo was plastered all over the TV. He’s been hiding in this dump ever since.”
“I’m not buying it,” Bish said. “Why not go talk to the police? He could have cleared things up with the truth.”
“Really?” Sarraf’s voice was icy. “Because coppers believe the truth, do they?”
“Look—”
But Sarraf cut him off with another question to Khateb. It was a quick exchange. Then silence.
Sarraf glanced at Bish. He went to speak but Khateb stopped him.
“What?” Bish asked.
Khateb was agitated. Whatever he had just revealed to Sarraf, he seemed to regret. Khateb spoke rapidly and Sarraf held up a hand, as if asking the Algerian to hold on. To trust him.
“What’s going on, Jamal?” Bish asked.
“He lied about leaving the kids with a friend in Amiens. They aren’t enrolled in school. He needs the older ones to look after the younger ones while he works. He’s scared the authorities will find out and take them away.”
Bish sat forward, his eyes meeting Khateb’s. “I’ll bring you in to Attal.”
“No!” Khateb shouted. No translation needed there.
“You heard him,” Sarraf said. “We’re finished here. Let’s just leave these people alone.”
“He’s a terror suspect. They’ll come hunting him down. Tell him that if he gives himself up as a person of interest, it’ll go much better for him.”
“You’re asking too much,” Sarraf said.
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“To find out if he was a threat to Violette! That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Well, how about you answer to Violette when antiterrorism catches up with this guy and starts shooting? Because God help you all if five innocent kids get caught in between.”
Bish retrieved his phone but Khateb was on his feet in an instant, yelling at both of them. They heard crying from the back room. “Baba. Baba.”
“Put the phone away,” Sarraf said. “You’re spooking them all. He thinks you’re calling the coppers.”
“I’m getting the name of someone who can help. Tell him to trust me.”
Sarraf looked torn.
“This isn’t a repeat of Brackenham, Jimmy,” Bish said. “Tell him I can help.”
When Bish finally got the nod he rang Rachel at the hospital. “Do you know a human rights lawyer in the Calais area who could make a big fuss if a French Algerian disappeared beyond the doors of a police station?” he asked. “Someone like a French Amal Alamuddin,” he added.
“What’s wrong with a French Rachel Ballyntine?”
“Yeah, her too.”
Once Bish had a name there was more back-and-forth between Sarraf and Khateb, but finally Khateb agreed. Sarraf phoned one of the volunteers he knew through his work with the migrant kids and organized someone to take in Khateb’s children for the time being. And then they drove to the Calais police station, where the French equivalent of Amal Alamuddin and Rachel Ballyntine was waiting outside. Lena Crozier spoke French, Arabic, and English. She had contacted Attal to say she was bringing her client in for questioning, and had informed the French press as well. She made a statement outside the police station explaining that her client was about to be questioned. It all seemed so civilized. The four of them entered the foyer under the intimidating scrutiny of the local police.
“I’m getting out of here,” Sarraf said, well aware that the hostility was directed at him as well as Khateb. “Let me know how it goes.”
“Keys?” Bish reminded him.
Sarraf went to retrieve them from his pocket and within seconds two uniforms had him facedown on the floor, with a gun to his head. Khateb got jumpy, turned to run, and there was shouting and more weapons drawn until Khateb too was down, a knee to his back. Both men were cuffed.
“Uncuff them!” Bish shouted at Attal, who had just entered the foyer and was looking stony-faced.
It was Lena Crozier’s voice of reason that seemed to calm the situation. Probably a threat or two that Bish couldn’t understand. Once uncuffed, Sarraf made an exaggerated show of removing the keys from his pocket and handing them to Bish.
“Fuck you all,” he muttered, walking out.
Attal beckoned Bish with a gesture to follow him upstairs, but Bish was too annoyed to respond.
“You should go with him,” Crozier said in English. “There is something wrong here. I’ll take care of Monsieur Khateb.”
By the time Bish was inside the station proper, he knew Crozier was right. The place was in full frenetic alert. There were phones ringing, shouts across the room; every landline, mobile, and computer was in use. It was constructive chaos and seemed to have nothing to do with Khateb or Sarraf walking through the front doors. Bish followed Attal into his unsurprisingly cluttered office. Once inside, through the glass door he could see a group standing before a massive map of the area projected onto a white wall.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
Attal put on a pair of latex gloves to open a plastic evidence bag and take out an envelope with the words Capitaine Olivier Attal scrawled on the front. He withdrew a single sheet of paper and held it out to show Bish.
Lundi 16.05. Bombe numéro deux.
Bish didn’t need a translator for that. Attal pointed to the mobile phone in Bish’s hand. Ring your people was the silent instruction.
“There’s been a bomb threat,” Bish told Grazier moments later.
“Where?”
“Calais.”
He heard a commotion on the other end and figured Grazier was multitasking his own staff into action.
“Did they give a time?”
“This afternoon at 4:05. A letter addresse
d to Attal at his station. Postmarked Calais. Probably means it’ll happen here.”
“Facts, Ortley. Not presumptions.”
“The letter says ‘Bomb number two.’”
“Does Attal think it could be another British target?”
Now it was presumption time?
He watched an agitated Attal light up a cigarette. A thumping sounded at the glass door and Bish saw a woman wagging her finger. Attal ground out his cigarette with a curse.
“I’m presuming he showed it to me and wanted you to know for that precise reason,” Bish said. “I’m presuming that Bombe numéro deux suggests that it’s the same bomber, which could mean the same targets. British kids.”
“Summer tours are over,” Grazier said. “The Boulogne campground is still closed for business. Can’t imagine it being there. Think, Bish.”
Attal was listening attentively, but Bish could tell he understood little of what had been said.
“What about the driver of the French bus?” Grazier asked.
“We’ve got him here. They’ll question him, but I’m almost certain he’s not the one.”
“‘We’?”
“Long story.” Bish thought of the scene along the port. “This town is turning into one big refugee camp and it could be someone trying to make a political statement. They’re pretty pissed off at our government.”
Some of those words Attal certainly did understand because he was nodding.
“So they kill British kids?” Grazier asked. “I’m not buying the evil madman thing.”
“Why not? Louis Sarraf walked into a supermarket and blew up twenty-three people because he couldn’t stand his supervisor.”
“Louis Sarraf probably only had one victim in mind, but the bomb went off too early and too close to a couple of gas cylinders,” Grazier said. “Less intent than the bus bomb, but more fatalities.”
“That sounds like a presumption, Grazier, rather than a fact.”
“A presumption that is not going to bring those people back, so it doesn’t need to be explored.”