“Yes, well, it does when someone’s rotting in prison because of it!”
“Control your stonker for LeBrac, Bish, and concentrate on working out where this bomb is!”
“We got it wrong back then and you know it,” Bish said with a quiet fury. Attal was watching carefully. Bish turned away a little, as if that could stop Attal overhearing. “It’s why you and the home secretary have been desperate to get this right. Because you know deep down, whether it was Blair’s people or yours, we got it wrong.”
“Concentrate on making sure that we don’t get it wrong today, Ortley. We still don’t know where Violette and Eddie are. As far as I’m concerned, that means they’re still in danger.”
“Any more sightings?” Bish asked.
“Not since Margate. Should we have a tail on Crombie?”
“I doubt he’ll get up to much driving a Salvation Army minibus around on community service, but it’s worth getting the local police to check in on him today. Violette and Eddie may return there.”
“Keep me posted on any developments,” Grazier said before ringing off.
Bish followed Attal out of the office to where his team was studying a wall covered in hundreds upon hundreds of photos. Bish recognized some from his trawling on Instagram. Photos taken by kids and teachers from every bus at the campsite the night before the bombing. Here, he was getting the bigger picture. It’s what he hadn’t noticed in his cynicism. That the United Nations of youth having fun on Instagram looked all the same in the end. Happy and safe. He recognized those he had sent through. Shots of the shadowed man lurking in the woodlands. Bird-watcher or murderer?
48
Two blocks from the station, he saw the figure of Sarraf walking in the direction of his home. Didn’t know whether to beep the horn or stop or just drive by. But he couldn’t rid himself of the image of Sarraf on the floor, gun to his head. He pulled over and wound down the window. Sarraf glanced at him but kept walking.
“I need your help, Jimmy.”
“Fuck off.”
“There’s going to be another bomb,” he said, trailing him in the car. “Today at 4:05 p.m., and we don’t know where.”
That made Sarraf stop.
“I need a computer and a place to work,” Bish said.
Without a word, Sarraf got into the car.
Some ten minutes later, Bish followed him through the gym and up a flight of back stairs that looked nailed solid but still creaked. Sarraf unlocked a door and led Bish into a small flat. Kitchenette in one corner, table at its center, neatly made bed in the opposite corner. It was surprisingly clean and homey.
“You use the desktop. I’ve got an old laptop,” Sarraf said, unlocking a cabinet next to his bed. “And then you’ll tell me what we’re looking for.”
Bish was surrounded by photographs of the family. Mostly Violette at various ages, snapshots sent by the LeBracs, perhaps, or Violette herself. Images of her horse, her dog, the ducks, the pigs, the cows, the sheep. There were one or two of a younger Jamal and his sister. Noor’s wedding to Etienne LeBrac, his grin so wide, her joy so potent. A photo of the Sarraf and Bayat siblings from sometime back in the eighties, judging by the clothes; a wild promise of beauty and intelligence and talent and a sense of wicked fun shining in all their eyes. The four of them would have been a force beyond reckoning. These were photographs Sarraf must have begged from relatives; those in his home at the time of the bombing had been confiscated, locked up like the rest of their lives. Along with Noor’s thesis and Violette’s childhood keepsakes and Jimmy’s football trophies.
Then Bish saw a photo of Violette and Eddie. He couldn’t believe Sarraf had been stupid enough to take a photo of the kids in public, until he realized with a quickening heart that Lola was standing behind them, waving. It had been taken in Normandy.
“You have a photo of Violette and Eddie on the tour.”
Sarraf sat down at the table, laptop in hand. “You know I saw the kids in London, Ortley.”
“Did they give you any others?”
Sarraf booted up his ancient laptop.
“I downloaded it from Eddie’s Instagram account.”
They were the exact words Bish wanted to hear. He logged into his Dropbox account.
“I was searching for anything out of the ordinary,” Bish explained, finding one of the six photos he had collected of Lola and Manoshi sleeping on the bus. He zoomed in. “An anomaly. Something that seemed out of place.” He pointed to the figure in the woodlands. “French intelligence and our lot couldn’t get much more out of it. Attal even went back to where he thinks this was taken. There’s a walking track beyond those trees, so it could have been a bird-watcher.”
Sarraf adjusted the shutters, blocking out as much light as possible. It made no difference to the image on the screen.
“The kids used to prank anyone who fell asleep,” Bish explained. “Eddie was sure to have taken a shot like this. He was sitting opposite these girls, one row down. He may have the clearest picture of whoever’s beyond that window.”
Sarraf logged into Instagram and went straight to Eddie’s profile.
“Why don’t the other kids follow Eddie online?” Bish asked.
“Violette banned any social networking,” Sarraf said. “Moveslikejagger02 has one follower: me. He was planning to network when he got home from the tour. That hasn’t happened yet.”
Sarraf turned the screen towards Bish.
“I didn’t take much notice of his tour stuff. The photo of the two of them was the only one I got printed. My eyes glazed over by the time I saw the twentieth shot of someone’s tongue stud.”
“Reggie Hill from Brighton,” Bish said. “I think someone dared him to lick the pigeon shit off the rocks at Mont-Saint-Michel.”
Eddie had taken photos of anything that moved, but thankfully they were in date order. Bish looked at the time. It was past 3 p.m.
“There,” he said a minute later, pointing to a couple of photographs of the sleeping girls. Most were close-ups. Eddie had seemed determined to capture every dribble, freckle, or blemish. Sarraf focused on one of the photographs that didn’t capture just the faces.
Bish indicated the space behind the girls’ heads. Sarraf zoomed in until Lola and Manoshi were a blur. But the image in the woods was the clearest Bish had seen yet. It was definitely a man. Middle-aged. Deep-set eyes, jowls that drooped, a bulbous nose. Bish reached over to click onto the next image, hoping it would reveal even more.
“Wait wait wait,” said Sarraf.
“What?”
“I know this guy!”
“Bullshit! How?”
“Comes into the gym. A real thug, you know.”
“He trains with you?”
“No. He’s a heavy. A henchman. Goes round collecting debts. Selling drugs. Doing the dirty work. Some of my kids, you know, the ones I train, they get themselves into some deep shit. They need money. Some fucking lowlife gets them to do things in return.”
“So who does he work for?”
“Armaud Benoix. You heard of him?”
“No. Should I have?”
“Local drug dealer. Pig-ignorant. The type who pimps thirteen-year-old migrant kids. At the beginning of the year he made news when his eighteen-year-old son was high on ice, swinging a semiautomatic all over Novamatique—the Laundromat. The cops shot him dead during the arrest. It’s all anyone could talk about for weeks.”
Sarraf showed Bish an Internet image of Benoix. Nothing going on in his eyes. Dead cold.
“I’m presuming Benoix’s man isn’t coincidentally in the same place where people die the next day,” Bish said.
“What else do people do around there but camp?” Sarraf asked.
“Bird-watch.”
“This guy, Dussollier, is more the type to hunt birds with a semiautomatic,” Sarraf said.
Bish dialed Attal’s number and put the phone on speaker. “Just tell him what we know,” he told Sarraf. They waited, only to hear Attal
’s recorded message. Bish hung up and tried for Attal’s landline. There seemed a diversion and then a voice answered, identifying “Bureau de police.” It was the first and last thing Bish understood before Sarraf started speaking. The woman’s response was quick. Then the click of the line being disconnected.
“Attal’s out and she’ll let him know,” Jamal said.
“Out where?”
Still on speaker, Bish tried Grazier, who picked up with his usual blunt, “Grazier.”
“Can you ring the Bureau de Police Beaumarais and find out where Attal is?”
“What have you got?”
“A name that might interest him. Armaud Benoix.”
“Stay on the line.”
Bish couldn’t sit still. Less than an hour until a possible repeat of what took place at the campsite. He walked to the window, needing air.
“Who is he?” Sarraf asked. “The guy on the phone.”
“Someone who makes things happen,” Bish said as truthfully as he could.
“What sort of things? Arrests? Because I know that name.”
Bish caught Sarraf’s eye. Looked away.
“He makes two-day London visas happen,” Bish said. “And adoptions.”
Sarraf swore under his breath.
Grazier was back on the line.
“It’s not good. There’s been a bomb scare at Calais-Fréthun Station and they’re taking it very seriously. A Brussels to London Eurostar train arrives there at 4:01.”
“Any suspects?” Bish asked.
“Who knows? What about the French bus driver? I still don’t understand why he’s not a suspect.”
“Apparently Serge Sagur had an issue with him because of parking spots,” Bish said. “Did you at least mention Benoix to them?”
“Yes. That name seemed to get a reaction, but not one that they were going to necessarily share with me,” Grazier said. “Stay put. If it’s not a hoax, I’ll need you out there.”
Grazier hung up. Sarraf looked gutted.
“A trainload of people.”
Bish didn’t want his brain going there.
“Could Benoix be responsible?” he asked Sarraf.
“Sort of not his thing. And why go after a bunch of British kids, or a train heading for London? Why wouldn’t he blow up the police station instead? His issue is with Attal. Not tourists.”
“Why Attal?”
“I’m not one for sticking up for coppers, but Benoix’s son was holding a girl and her baby hostage. Attal had no choice.”
Bish’s heart thumped hard in his chest.
“Attal shot Benoix’s son?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Bish moved away from the window. What if…
In an instant he was at the computer, tapping into Lola’s Instagram feed. She wasn’t much of a photographer. Just the type to take snaps of everything. Bish remembered photos taken of the kids inside the French bus. One dated the first day of the tour, one from Bayeux on the fourth day, one from Calais on the last day. The three times that the British and French buses were at the same camping grounds. Marianne Attal was pictured inside her bus, staring out the window. Behind Marianne was the object of Lola’s affections. The French boy who did magic tricks. Bish had looked at these photos ad nauseam. In some of them Lola managed to frame the young magician well, but in most, Marianne’s head was in the way.
“What?” Sarraf asked over his shoulder, staring at the three almost identical photos on the screen.
The French bus, unlike Bee’s, had been full and everyone stuck to assigned seats. Three different days. Same seating. Marianne Attal had been one of the junior coaches on hers, so there was no sitting in the back, Charlie Crombie–style, for her. What had Khateb and Serge argued about? Assigned parking spots.
“What if it was the wrong bus?” Bish said softly.
“I don’t understand.”
“Benoix’s man got the wrong bus. Marianne Attal’s assigned seat was first from the front.”
“Fuck. Fuck!” But Bish could see Sarraf’s reaction wasn’t just about the wrong bus.
“What?” he asked. “Anything. Say whatever’s in your head, Jimmy. Even if it sounds like bollocks!”
“It’s the first day back at school,” Sarraf said. “Last bell rings at four p.m. What if the fucker’s put a bomb on her school bus and Fréthun is a hoax? Or a diversion?”
They were back in Bish’s Renault inside a minute, with absolutely no idea which direction to drive.
“How many schools in town?” Bish asked.
“Too many for guesswork.”
“Fuck!” They tried Attal’s mobile number again, and this time when it went to message bank, Sarraf repeated what he knew. He spoke slowly with an element of calm before hanging up.
“What about your daughter?” Sarraf asked. “These kids know more about each other than you’d think.”
Bish looked at his watch: 2:53 in Kent. Bee could be anywhere. She didn’t start school until Wednesday.
“It’ll be quicker to text,” Sarraf said. “They ignore phone calls but can’t resist a text.”
“Please tell me you’re not dating teenage girls.”
“One teenage girl in my life is enough and she’s giving me gray hair.”
Bish figured that if they had been in a stolen car together, Bee and Marianne might have exchanged that sort of information.
Urgent. Where does Marianne Attal go to school?
They were stopped at an intersection on the Boulevard la Fayette. Cars honked their horns behind them as Sarraf debated which way to go.
“Quai Gustave Lamarle, Quai du Commerce, or Boulevard Victor Hugo. Take a guess.”
Bish’s phone beeped. He read the message aloud. “‘Convent school in Calais. Why?’”
Sarraf rammed his foot on the accelerator, dodging cars as he turned onto Boulevard Victor Hugo. “It’s about two kilometers out of town,” Sarraf said. “But what if we’re wrong?”
“Then a bomb goes off on a train heading to London and we’re fucked either way.”
Sarraf left another message for Attal. Then picked up even more speed.
It was Bish’s idea of hell, sitting in the passenger seat on the wrong side of the road at this speed. He shouted out more than once, remembering too late each time that Sarraf had driven on French roads for years now and knew what he was doing.
“Just close your eyes and shut up, Ortley. Okay?”
At 3:59 they sped through the school gates of what looked like a fifteenth-century convent. Three minibuses sat in a closely confined turning circle. They were marked with their destinations: Calais, Desvres, Étaples. Bish was out of the car while Sarraf was still pulling up and he hit the ground running, hammering at the door of the Calais bus.
“Ouvrir. Ouvrir. Open the door! Open!”
The driver stared at him in irritation.
“There’s a bomb on your bus. Bomb.” Bish made a ridiculous bombing gesture with his hands but the idiot driver didn’t move. Then Sarraf was behind Bish, shouting at the man in French. The driver’s irritation turned to alarm and he opened the door. Just as the school bell rang. The first of the kids came spilling out of the buildings surrounding the turning circle. Bish dragged the driver out of his seat and onto the curb. Sarraf had already taken off in the direction of the students and Bish could hear him shouting, “Rentrez! Rentrez!” and suddenly everyone was screaming. And then Bish was in the driver’s seat, crashing into the bus in front, crashing into the one behind, before swinging left and mowing through the rose garden at the center of the turning circle, knocking down a statue of the Virgin Mary and narrowly missing a cluster of kids who were being ushered into the chapel by two teachers.
Hail Mary, full of grace, I’m so bloody sorry.
The turning circle had two exits. One where Sarraf had entered, the other leading to a meadow where Bish could see a grotto in the distance. He scrunched the gears and charged in its direction. Statues and grottoes could be repaired. R
eplaced. People couldn’t. He had to get the bus as far from the kids as possible. Perhaps there was no bomb and he was just some mad Brit causing chaos across the Channel. One who had desecrated a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary and ruined a fifteenth-century rose garden. But he thought of the body of the Spanish girl that night in Calais. A distance away from the bus, but still a victim. No more dead kids. He would give his life never to see a dead kid again. The time on the dash read 4:04. He hit the brake, almost falling out of the bus. Ran.
Come on, Dad!
And Stevie was shouting out to him, laughing, just as he had on that holiday in Cornwall, and Bish would have followed his boy anywhere. Anywhere. So he ran, his lungs exploding, feeling the way Bee described the last five meters of a two hundred.
Come on, Dad!
And when the ground shook beneath him and Bish felt himself thrown into the air he could still hear his boy laughing. It was the further tragedy of the past three years. He hadn’t been able to remember the sound of Stevie’s laugh but right now it was ringing in his ears. The entire world was ringing in Bish’s ears.
49
When he came to he could see black plumes of smoke above him. Voices were shouting in French. He needed familiarity and it came in the form of Jimmy Sarraf.
“What the fuck, Ortley? I thought you were going to drive that bus to Belgium.”
He tried to sit up. Sarraf was gently pushing him back down.
“Stay there.”
Then a paramedic was replacing Sarraf and asking him questions in French. Bish closed his eyes to shut her out. He didn’t have the strength to tell one more person in this country that he didn’t understand a word they were saying. He pushed her hand away and gingerly got to his feet, miraculously undamaged.
He looked around. A couple of firefighters were dealing with the bus, completely destroyed and smoldering. Bish could smell the sulfur in the air.
“Anyone hurt?” he asked Sarraf.
“Yeah. You broke the bus driver’s wrist. He complained to the coppers that you didn’t have to use so much force.”