Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(102)

“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 addressed 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.”

“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.