Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(103)

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 f*cking 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.