The bout finished and the two men touched gloves. As the older man stepped from the ring, Bish approached.
“Jamal Sarraf? Bish Ortley.”
Sarraf didn’t respond, but the look in his eyes said there’d be no handshaking between them.
“I’m the father of one of Violette’s friends,” Bish continued. “And my daughter’s desperate to know that your niece and the boy are safe.”
The man standing before Bish seemed a world away from the promising footballer he had been as a teenager. Back then, Jimmy Sarraf was the star of the England Under-17 team and sought after by a number of the big clubs. When Man United signed him up to their junior team, the headlines read LITTLE BIG MAN and Sky News did a feel-good piece on him. “He’s a cheeky bugger, that one,” Sarraf’s childhood coach in Shepherd’s Bush had said. When seventeen-year-old Jimmy was first interviewed on TV and asked what he’d do when he made it in the big league, tears had welled up in his eyes. “Buy me mum and sister a house each, as big as that mansion Posh and Becks have out in Hertfordshire.” Bish recalled the boy talking nonstop and at a speed beyond reckoning in that interview.
After the bombing, people wanted blood. Live blood. They wanted someone to hate, someone still breathing, and they got it when London police raided the Sarraf council flat and found evidence to suggest that Louis Sarraf had not acted alone. Jamal and his uncle Joseph had been caught on camera in the courtyard with Louis, arguing emphatically, all three agitated. The younger Sarraf had looked relieved when his father and uncle shook hands. He had embraced his father. To the authorities it was a deadly handshake, and it took longer than it should have to release Jamal and his uncle, even after his sister confessed.
“Can we sit down somewhere and talk?” Bish asked Sarraf, aware of the stares from the rest of the men.
Sarraf retrieved a newspaper from a nearby bench and threw it at Bish, who didn’t need to be fluent in French to understand it. The familiar photo of him standing behind Violette. Good to see that the British and French were united in something.
Jamal Sarraf walked out of the gym and into a back alley, and he followed.
“Is it true you’ve spoken to her?” Bish asked, and suddenly he felt a grip around his throat and found himself shoved against the steel fence. He saw rage in the man’s eyes, glimpsed a clenched fist.
“I don’t sit down and talk to cunts who lock my niece up in a storage cupboard.”
Sarraf’s face was menacingly close. Bish held up a hand of warning. Not that he believed it would be powerful enough to stop Sarraf, after seeing what he could do to a younger, fitter man in the ring.
“I removed Violette from that cupboard,” he said. “She’d tell you that herself if you asked her.”
Sarraf finally let go and shoved Bish away.
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she, then?”
“No idea.”
“I don’t believe you. You’d be out there looking for her otherwise. So that tells me you know exactly where she is.”
“It tells you nothing.”
“Did she say why she took the boy?”
“For a concerned father, you’re beginning to sound like a copper.”
“I’m both.” Bish took a business card from his pocket. One he currently had no right to hand out. He found a pen and crossed out his work’s landline and scribbled down his personal mobile number. “Bring her to me and she’ll be protected,” he said. “No one wants to hurt her or the boy. She’s just a kid.”
“Yeah, well, so was I,” Sarraf said bitterly, not taking the card held out to him. “And guess where I ended up when I was her age?”
In Belmarsh. Where good-looking boys like Jimmy Sarraf would have walked into a never-ending nightmare. Bish couldn’t help flinching at the thought.
“If you do know where they are, then God help you should something happen to them,” Bish said.
“If I knew where my niece was we’d be halfway down to North Africa by now,” Sarraf said before walking away.
9
Jamal watches Ortley drive away. He’ll be heading for the port, and it makes him heartsick just thinking of the trip home. On an honest day he’ll admit to himself that he chose to live in this town because he’s sentimental. He may have been denied entry into his own country, but it doesn’t stop him from yearning for it. When the weather is good, he can see England from the port.
Not that he doesn’t have an affection for this town. Calais has been good to him. He likes its lack of pretension, the hardiness of its people. The transient quality of the place. No foreigner stays long enough to recognize him or ask questions. He’s had a dog’s breakfast of paid work, but it’s got him by from year to year. When he’s not teaching at the gym he works with the kids in the makeshift migrant camps, because the local charities want someone who knows French, English, Arabic, and football. Or he works at the piano bar on Rue du Duc de Guise. Nothing changes in Calais for Jamal. Days mesh into weeks mesh into months mesh into thirteen years in exile.
Until three days ago, when he received a call from Nasrene LeBrac. Had he seen Violette? He thought he’d misunderstood at first. Had Jamal seen his niece who lived with Nasrene and Christophe on the other side of the world? But according to Nasrene, some nameless man had phoned to tell them that Violette had spent the past seven days in Normandy. Jamal thought Nasrene had lost her mind because they all knew that Violette was on a hike in the Tasmanian wilderness. And then came the worst part. Violette was at the campsite outside Boulogne-sur-Mer where a bomb had gone off on a tour bus. Jamal headed out there, but the only way of getting through those police barricades was to prove he was a parent or guardian. He returned to his flat, trying to think of a way.
Violette found him first, just before dawn on Sunday morning. He’d gone for an early run to clear his head and returned to find her on the front step of the gym below his flat. She was with a younger boy. Jamal hadn’t seen her since she was four years old. The Australian government had refused him a visa year after year, and no amount of Skype sessions and photographs could prepare him for seeing her in the flesh. She was dressed in skinny black jeans and a black Astro Boy singlet. She was all gorgeous, serious eyes and a feral, thin-lipped mouth that promised a baring of teeth when required. She was his mother. Little Aziza, they had nicknamed her as a kid. She was the question on the lips of every member of Jamal’s extended family, from Le Havre to Alexandria to Beirut. Jamal’s response was always the same: “She’s safe in Australia with Nasrene and Christophe. Nothing can hurt her now.”
But there was a look in Violette’s eyes that told him those days were over.
“We need to go inside,” she said. She was carrying nothing with her, not even a backpack.
Wordlessly he took her hand, dropping his keys once. Twice. Until they were all three in the gym and Violette was clinging to him, both their arms shaking as they held each other.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry.”
“Talk to me, Violette,” he said, turning on the lights. “Nasrene and Christophe are out of their minds with worry. Why would you come all the way here without telling anyone? Without seeing me?”
She didn’t respond; instead she looked at the boy. A skinny kid in sunglasses and a hoodie, despite the time of the morning and the heat. A wannabe rapper’s version of incognito. Bloody annoying.
“You were down at the campsite,” she said. “You know how bad it was.”
How could he not? Five dead. More injured. Some badly. It’s what happened when you were the son of Louis Sarraf: you became obsessed with victims and numbers and how many people were affected. One dead man meant kids and a wife and parents and brothers and sisters and in-laws and nieces and nephews. Injured kids meant the same. A mother. Father. Two sets of grandparents. Approximately seven aunts and uncles and at least fourteen cousins. Not to mention friends…Jamal had become a mathematician after his father blew up their lives. The figures he tallied based on t
wenty-three fatalities fucked with his head every time.
Violette was fighting back tears. He saw the tremble of her mouth.
“They’re saying it was me, Jimmy.”
His blood ran cold just to hear the words. He would take her as far from this place as possible, where no one could find them. He’d kill anyone who tried to stop him.
Beyond Violette, the kid was hitting one of the boxing bags.
“Stop doing that,” Jamal told him. He didn’t like strangers in his life. Violette, he knew, was the same. She was a tough kid because she had to be. It was rare that she spoke of friends and he wondered what had made her decide to let someone tag along.
“If you were near here all this time, Violette, why didn’t you come to me?”
“As if I wouldn’t,” she said. “It’s just that I had a plan and it was a good one.”
The boy was still whacking the bag. “Tell him to stop, Violette,” Jamal said, seeing as the boy wouldn’t listen to him.
“They’re saying Mac’s dead,” the boy called out, and Jamal realized he was speaking to him. “Is that true? And Michael from Hastings and one of the Spanish girls. They’re saying she got a piece of glass right through her throat. And now they’re saying Serge the bus driver’s dead and there are heaps in hospital. With legs gone, and arms. That’s what they’re saying.”
Whack. Whack. Whack. The kid grunted as he pounded into the bag.
Violette grimaced, shooting Jamal a warning look. “We used to talk to the bus driver all the time. But I told him,” she said quietly, indicating the kid, “I told him that just because Facebook says people are dead, it doesn’t mean they are.”
Jamal didn’t know how to break it to them. He’d read it in the news online. The bus driver and a young British girl had died overnight in the Boulogne hospital.
Violette could see the truth in his eyes. “Who else?” she asked softly.
“Astrid Copely.”
She made a pained sound, drowned out by the whack of the boy’s punching. His grunts were sobs now.
“One of the chaperones told everyone who I was,” Violette said. “Who Mummy was—and it’s going to be in the papers and everyone’s going to know. Everyone.” She looked back at the kid, anger and then anguish in her eyes.
“Tell the boy to go back to the campsite,” Jamal said. “I’ll pack us some stuff and we’ll head down south.”
She shook her head. “I need to go because they’ll come here first. Don’t worry—we’ve got money.” She patted the waist of her jeans at what he presumed was a money belt. She’d started to sweat and was trembling again and it broke him to see someone as tough as she was look so vulnerable. He grabbed a jug of water from the fridge and poured a glass for her, then soaked a towel and cooled down her face.
“You’re not making sense, Violette,” he murmured. “You’re not going anywhere. We’ll ring Nasrene and Christophe and work out what to do.”
But she was shaking her head. “They had photos of you at the gate, Jimmy. Just say they arrest you? They’ll put you away again and Mummy will never forgive me.”
“Why would Noor need to forgive you?” Jamal asked. “You’re everything to her.”
“She’ll hate me for this.”
“It was me who ruined everything!” the boy shouted. “Not you, Violette. I found you, and if I hadn’t you’d be on that hike. Safe.”
The air began to smother Jamal. He felt the bile rising in his throat. What had this kid dragged Violette into?
“I heard Henna Nasrene speaking to Papy,” Violette said. “She asked him what they should give me for my eighteenth birthday and he said…he said, ‘I want to take her back into the past, to a time when Etienne was alive.’ And he was crying, Jimmy, and I’ve never heard my grandfather cry before.”
Jamal swallowed hard. He felt a twist in his gut. His brother-in-law had come into their lives when Jamal was five years old. Easygoing Etienne LeBrac, the complete opposite to Noor in so many ways. Even after all these years, Jamal still couldn’t believe he was dead. And he’d never accept that Etienne had taken his own life, leaving Violette alone up on that cove at Malham.
“But why come here, Violette? Without telling anyone?”
“To do part of what Papy Christophe wants. But not for me, though.”
Right then the boy was finally toppled by the bag. He let out a laugh and Jamal turned to see him on his arse, sending a toothy grin towards Violette, his gangster sunglasses flying across the floor. Jamal couldn’t help staring. Couldn’t trust what he was seeing. He walked over, needing a good look at him, and Violette was there, clutching Jamal’s hand.
“Isn’t he beautiful, Jimmy?” she said. “Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
Jamal stood before the kid and removed the beanie from the boy’s head. And like a punch in the gut, the truth sank in.
“Oh Violette. What have you done?”
10
Bish decided to make the most of the trip and drove out to the hospital at Boulogne-sur-Mer. He told himself it was in order to give an update to the parents, but he knew it was more than that. Lola Barrett-Parker and Manoshi Bagchi had sat close to Violette and Eddie for most of the trip. Bish hoped they might have heard something that could shed light on where the two would be heading.
On the front lawn of the hospital, waiting for a story, was a cross section of the world’s media. Sky. CNN. BFMTV. There were no kids left out at the campsite, so the only possibility for a sound bite was the families of the injured. One or two journalists recognized Bish from the day of the bombing, and before he could make it to the entrance, microphones were thrust at his face and cameras blocked his path.
He succeeded in ignoring them, but inside was a different set of problems. A strong police presence stopped him in the foyer. According to the hostile receptionist, who at least spoke English, the list of people allowed up to the third floor didn’t include media or troublemakers. Bish tried anyway. Explained that he was the father of one of the British kids and he just wanted to check on those injured. He thought it best not to mention that he was a police inspector because he had no badge to prove it. He also suspected that unauthorized British law enforcement came under the category of troublemaker. The receptionist dismissed him.
Next he tried the cop stationed at the lift, politely asking in slow English how it was possible to get onto the third-floor list. The cop snapped back in fast French. Bish was about to walk away when he heard a familiar voice behind him. He turned. Attal. No sleep, little food, and a whole lot of grief were taking their toll on the French captain. Attal exchanged a few words with the officer before acknowledging Bish with a sound that perhaps meant “Hello” or “Fuck off.” Whatever the case, Bish found himself on the list.
Outside Lola’s room he encountered her father berating an orderly. Ian Parker was a member of Parliament. He came from wealth, had married into wealth, and his public rhetoric reeked of xenophobia and Britain’s decay.
When he was finished, Bish introduced himself.
“Ortley?” said Parker. “Aren’t you with Scotland Yard?”
Bish shook his head. “I’m here as—”
“I’m fed up with you people and your inane questions,” Parker barked. “Make yourself useful. Get out there and find that LeBrac bitch or I’ll have someone do it for you, and there’ll be nothing left of her to put on trial.”
His much younger wife put a cautionary hand on his arm. “Ian,” was all she said, softly. Down the corridor, a doctor exited a ward and headed for the lift. Parker went after her, leaving Bish with the insipid Katherine Barrett-Parker. Moments later, they could hear Parker yelling at the doctor down the corridor.
“Lola is his youngest, and the only one of his children who gives him the time of day,” Katherine finally said. “Arrogance is one thing. Mixed with heartbreak it’s lethal.”
Not quite insipid. Just grief-stricken.
“Can you do something about the
press?” she asked. “Sometimes my husband and I need fresh air. Apparently the Pakistani mother is frightened to step outside as well.”
Bish was going to point out that the Bagchi family were originally from Bangladesh, but decided not to make an enemy of Katherine Barrett-Parker. When her husband’s shouting grew worse, she excused herself and went to rescue the doctor.
Two rooms and another world away were Manoshi and her mother. Manoshi had qualified for one of the travel grants the Bengali community in Spitalfields provided for their youngest and brightest in public housing. Her mother was inconsolable as they took Manoshi away for another set of tests. The girl’s hair was half shaved, her face bruised, her arm bandaged, the hand missing. Bagchi told Bish she’d spent the past three nights on a stretcher bed in her daughter’s room, weeping.
But your child’s alive, he wanted to say to her. He asked about her husband instead.
“We have four other children at home. He needs to be with them. He needs to work.” Her Bengali accent sang him a sad tune. Of something more than pain for her daughter.
“It was my pride,” she said bitterly. “I demanded that my husband let her go to France. He is very protective, but I shamed him. ‘Do you want our clever daughter selling cucumbers at the markets like her clever father?’ I asked him.”
She met his eyes across her daughter’s empty bed. “Who would do this to our children, sir? Who would be so cruel?”
Bish had been asked that question too many times over the years, and could never find the right response.