Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(100)

“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 f*cker’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.”