Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (19 page)

Violette and Eddie’s visit to Buckland had worse repercussions than Bish imagined. The CCTV footage was forwarded to Elliot by the hospital security company, and also to the Dover police. From there it was leaked, and the image of Violette and Eddie was all over the media. For a minute, Eddie’s identity was kept safe because of the code of practice that stopped the media from naming a minor. Until someone from his village outside Tonbridge tweeted that
the kid with Violette LeBrac goes to my school
, which was followed by
yeah, that looks like Eddie Conlon.
That led to
Eddie Conlon & Violette LeBrac are the Calais bombers
.

‘How the fuck did this happen?’ Bish asked Elliot when he rang.

‘It goes viral, and no one’s accountable. The press still don’t have permission to release his name, but that means nothing when over a million people have already seen an image of Eddie and know his full name.’

Bish heard shouting in the background. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘In the office. Grazier isn’t taking it well. He’s paying a visit to the Dover police and then heading out to Tonbridge to have a word with a few of the locals.’

‘There’s not much he can do about them,’ Bish said.

‘Oh but he’ll try. He wants you to visit LeBrac again. Violette used to speak to her mother every day, so who better to know her whereabouts, or at least her plans.’

‘Pick that woman’s brain,’ Grazier shouted, replacing Elliot on the line. ‘I want those kids brought in. I want them in a safe house. What part of that don’t these people understand?’

‘The part where they don’t feel particularly comfortable being reassured by the police or the government,’ Bish said.

‘You’re beginning to piss me off, Ortley.’

‘It took you this long?’

Bish’s reading that night was the rest of the file Grazier had given him a few days ago. He started looking for anything in the Sarraf and LeBrac family histories that could shed light on how best to persuade Noor to open up. Most of the media articles were based solely on opinion. There was nothing on Jamal Sarraf post his arrest, but a great deal prior to it when Man United signed him up. Young Sarraf spoke obsessively about his old coach from the Brackenham council estate, and his mates there who’d watched his back, no matter what. His favourite topic was his girlfriend Layla, but it was the reverence he showed for his mother and sister that was most profound.

‘Before my sister and me, no one in our family had any sense of a home country,’ he was quoted as saying in one interview. He went on to relate that his mother had been born in Beirut, and at fifteen had made her way to Alexandria, on her own, to work for a wealthy relative. His father was born in Alexandria to a French mother and Egyptian father. When his mother was pregnant they left Egypt to head for the UK, but ended up having Noor en route, in Le Havre. ‘Fifteen years later,’ said Jimmy, ‘my mum wanted me born in the same place as my sister. It’s sort of cool because it’s also where my brother-in-law was born before his family migrated to Australia, which was a bit of a coincidence. So obviously my niece Violette had to be born in Le Havre. We like it that there’s a family tradition when it comes to passports and stuff like that. But Noor and I have never been confused about who we are. If there were two things we were sure of growing up, it was belonging to England and speaking Arabic. We didn’t let religion rule. It’s what me and my girl Layla have in common. Her mother’s Christian, my mother’s Muslim. Her father’s Muslim, my father’s Christian. We say it all the time: our kids are going to have the best of both worlds.’

Bish tried very hard not to be fascinated with this family. Two siblings, one who had completed a doctoral thesis, the other with a lucrative football contract. Up until the Brackenham bombing they were an immigrant success story.

A guard stood outside the now familiar interview room on Sunday morning. Noor LeBrac was already seated, her suspicious eyes following him from the door to the chair before her. One thing was certain: Violette’s disappearance was clearly affecting her. There were dark circles around her eyes, sinking deep. She swallowed constantly, as if trying to keep down the bile in her throat.

‘I’m presuming you know that Violette’s in the UK,’ Bish said, sitting opposite her.

‘Whether they’re here or in France makes no difference.’ She looked away and he felt the sting of her disdain.

‘We’ve got a better chance of finding them now,’ he said.

‘We?’ she demanded. ‘We who, Ortley? The people whose fault this was in the first place?’

She shifted in her seat. ‘You thought I’d be grateful, didn’t you? Do you honestly believe everything’s fine just because Violette and Eddie are in the UK? The only safe place for my daughter is with her grandparents in Australia. Etienne’s father will put a bullet through anyone who’s a threat to Violette.’

‘Then help me find her, Noor,’ he said patiently. ‘When was the last time you heard from her, apart from the postcard?’

She made a sound of disbelief. ‘Are we really doing this again?’

‘We’re doing this until something you say triggers a clue to where they are. I’m not accusing you of holding back information, I’m just saying I may be able to see something you can’t.’

She thought about that for a while, then sat forward in her seat. Bish took up his notebook.

‘I spoke to her three weeks ago when she supposedly left for her Duke of Edinburgh camp.’

‘Did she take part in Duke of Ed before this year?’ he asked.

‘Yes. She was going for her silver award so that next year she can be part of a residential project in Nepal and get her gold. Etienne was involved with the Duke of Ed Award when he was at school, and she’s determined to do anything her father did.’

Bish heard pride in her voice.

‘It was a short conversation,’ LeBrac said. ‘I have a two-quid phone card that doesn’t go far with international calls. Violette told me it would be the last time I’d speak to her for a couple of weeks. That I believed. The hikes are in deep bushland. Part of the program is that they have to rough it. She said, “I love you, Mummy. We’ll talk when I’m back.”’

It gave Bish a sinking feeling to realise that Noor LeBrac spoke to her daughter on the other side of the world, from behind bars, more often than he spoke to Bee.

‘Nothing strange about the conversation?’ he asked. ‘You didn’t sense her lying?’

He waited. On her face, yet another expression he couldn’t read. Or perhaps didn’t want to.

‘There was something?’ he prompted.

She nodded finally. ‘Months before, Violette told me she’d remembered an important detail from the last time she saw her father. She was only four and a half when he died, so her memory of that day has always been sketchy.’

Bish hoped Violette hadn’t seen her father jump.

‘She recalled that Etienne was wearing his watch.’

Bish was confused. ‘Is that important right now?’

‘When you lose someone, Chief Inspector Ortley, everything about the day they died is important. Especially the lies.’

Her stare bore into him and he looked back down at his notes before she could do some damage with it. Because Bish felt it was in her power to damage him. That she could seek out the thin parts of his skin. He felt his throat go dry.

‘The watch comes with an extraordinary story. One you don’t deserve to hear, so I’ll skip that part. What you need to know is that when Etienne’s parents flew across the world to identify his body, there was no watch. Violette remembering it being there makes all the difference in the world.’

Bish put his pen down because this watch business was bollocks and had nothing to do with bombs going off outside Calais or with Violette’s disappearance.

‘Keep writing,’ she ordered, pointing to his notebook.

‘Why? Do you seriously think Violette came all this way to find a watch?’ Bish felt the frustration of the past week. ‘Noor, you’re wasting my time.’

‘Please refrain from using my name,’ she said with a quietness soaked in ice. ‘You speak it with such contempt.’

Because it was contempt he felt.

‘I’m not the one who allowed an idiot to lock Violette up and then let her run off,’ she said. ‘When I think of my child —’

‘You should have thought of your child in 2002.’ The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

‘You’ve been dying to say that ever since you walked into this place, haven’t you?’ She looked at him in bitter disbelief, then leaned closer across the table. ‘No, I think you’ve been dying to say it even before that. Back when you took my daughter away from me. The first time.’

Her stare was a bullet now.

‘Oh, I remember you,’ she said, her voice wavering slightly. ‘I remember the disgust in your eyes when you came into the cell and cast judgement on my family. As if you believed my child was safer with you than with the people who loved her.’

He was finished here for the day. He moved to collect his notebook and pen but LeBrac grabbed them and began to scribble furiously.

Wordlessly he removed the notebook from her hands, not wanting her privy to its content.

‘Then commit this to your tiny brain,’ she said, hurling the pen against the wall. ‘Etienne wearing his watch in death could have been the tragedy of a man taking his life. Etienne’s body without it could be the tragedy of a man murdered for his watch.’

Bish had been a constable working behind the desk when Brackenham happened and they brought in the Sarraf family. The station had gone into lockdown because the crowd outside was baying for blood. His boss came to find him later that afternoon.

‘You’ve got a kid her age, haven’t you Bish? You’re going to have to go in there and take the little girl.’

When he went to remove Violette LeBrac from her mother’s arms, Jamal Sarraf cried. Her great-uncle Joseph Sarraf sat with his head in his hands. Her grandmother wailed. But Noor LeBrac was chillingly calm, all smiles, though a look of despair beyond reckoning was in her eyes.

‘It’s just a game,’ she whispered into her daughter’s ear, so close to Bish’s cheek that he felt the broken whisper of her voice for nights to come. ‘Daddy will be here soon and you’ll see it’s just a game.’

When news of Noor LeBrac’s confession came through six months later there was rejoicing at the station. And across the country. Louis Sarraf may have escaped punishment by blowing himself up, but justice had been served.

There was relief that the families of the dead would not be put through a trial. The country had moved on. A memorial hall was built on the Brackenham council estate where the supermarket once stood. It brought together a fractured community, and cultural diversity was once again celebrated rather than feared. There were music programs for youth, and concerts to showcase their talents. Occasional daycare for working parents. Weekly meetings about public policies that affected them; they were well attended, mostly for the suppers. PG Tips tea served alongside baklava and basbousa. The wounds had started to heal and no one wanted to look back.

Bish had looked back more than once. On the morning they buried his son he had the clearest memory of Noor LeBrac’s face the day he’d taken Violette from her. It reflected his own grief and hopelessness. Over time, only the blackouts from grog could make him forget that bleakness. Until a bomb went off on a bus carrying his daughter. Violette LeBrac Zidane was personal business for Bish. Removing her from the arms of her family had undone something in his psyche and he knew the only way to restore it was to return Violette.

The brutal bashing of two teenagers outside a Bristol skate park made news that Sunday afternoon. The girl was in serious condition with a punctured lung, the boy had had most of his teeth knocked out. Police in Bristol and Greater London made pleas to the social media sites that had been encouraging people to hunt for Violette and Eddie. It was the public’s responsibility to report any sightings, not take matters into their own hands.

Bee arrived to spend the night. The summer holidays were dragging on, as far as she was concerned. ‘All this sunshine,’ she complained, which Bish could relate to, and her friends at home were being cows and Rachel was in ‘baby la-la land’. When she went for a run he phoned Rachel just in case Bee had left without telling her.

‘I was about to ring to make sure she arrived safely. She was pretty shaken by those Bristol bashings and I got a sense she wanted to be with you.’

Bee returned from her run looking as if she had pushed herself hard. He saw tears but she refused to meet his eye and went straight to the shower. Later, he thought he could entice her out for a quick meal. Just as he was about to knock at her door, his phone rang.

‘She’s here and she’ll speak to you, for five minutes,’ said Layla Bayat. ‘Only because the Violette and Eddie lookalikes getting beaten up has freaked her out.’

It took Bish a moment to realise that ‘she’ was Layla’s sister. Before he could ask a question, Layla gave him her address and hung up.

He didn’t like the idea of leaving Bee alone in the flat. It gave him an easier reason to knock on the door.

‘We have a little errand,’ he said.