Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(105)

Sarraf left another message for Attal. Then picked up even more speed.

It was Bish’s idea of hell, sitting in the passenger seat on the wrong side of the road at this speed. He shouted out more than once, remembering too late each time that Sarraf had driven on French roads for years now and knew what he was doing.

“Just close your eyes and shut up, Ortley. Okay?”



At 3:59 they sped through the school gates of what looked like a fifteenth-century convent. Three minibuses sat in a closely confined turning circle. They were marked with their destinations: Calais, Desvres, étaples. Bish was out of the car while Sarraf was still pulling up and he hit the ground running, hammering at the door of the Calais bus.

“Ouvrir. Ouvrir. Open the door! Open!”

The driver stared at him in irritation.

“There’s a bomb on your bus. Bomb.” Bish made a ridiculous bombing gesture with his hands but the idiot driver didn’t move. Then Sarraf was behind Bish, shouting at the man in French. The driver’s irritation turned to alarm and he opened the door. Just as the school bell rang. The first of the kids came spilling out of the buildings surrounding the turning circle. Bish dragged the driver out of his seat and onto the curb. Sarraf had already taken off in the direction of the students and Bish could hear him shouting, “Rentrez! Rentrez!” and suddenly everyone was screaming. And then Bish was in the driver’s seat, crashing into the bus in front, crashing into the one behind, before swinging left and mowing through the rose garden at the center of the turning circle, knocking down a statue of the Virgin Mary and narrowly missing a cluster of kids who were being ushered into the chapel by two teachers.

Hail Mary, full of grace, I’m so bloody sorry.

The turning circle had two exits. One where Sarraf had entered, the other leading to a meadow where Bish could see a grotto in the distance. He scrunched the gears and charged in its direction. Statues and grottoes could be repaired. Replaced. People couldn’t. He had to get the bus as far from the kids as possible. Perhaps there was no bomb and he was just some mad Brit causing chaos across the Channel. One who had desecrated a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary and ruined a fifteenth-century rose garden. But he thought of the body of the Spanish girl that night in Calais. A distance away from the bus, but still a victim. No more dead kids. He would give his life never to see a dead kid again. The time on the dash read 4:04. He hit the brake, almost falling out of the bus. Ran.

Come on, Dad!

And Stevie was shouting out to him, laughing, just as he had on that holiday in Cornwall, and Bish would have followed his boy anywhere. Anywhere. So he ran, his lungs exploding, feeling the way Bee described the last five meters of a two hundred.

Come on, Dad!

And when the ground shook beneath him and Bish felt himself thrown into the air he could still hear his boy laughing. It was the further tragedy of the past three years. He hadn’t been able to remember the sound of Stevie’s laugh but right now it was ringing in his ears. The entire world was ringing in Bish’s ears.





49



When he came to he could see black plumes of smoke above him. Voices were shouting in French. He needed familiarity and it came in the form of Jimmy Sarraf.

“What the f*ck, Ortley? I thought you were going to drive that bus to Belgium.”

He tried to sit up. Sarraf was gently pushing him back down.

“Stay there.”

Then a paramedic was replacing Sarraf and asking him questions in French. Bish closed his eyes to shut her out. He didn’t have the strength to tell one more person in this country that he didn’t understand a word they were saying. He pushed her hand away and gingerly got to his feet, miraculously undamaged.

He looked around. A couple of firefighters were dealing with the bus, completely destroyed and smoldering. Bish could smell the sulfur in the air.

“Anyone hurt?” he asked Sarraf.

“Yeah. You broke the bus driver’s wrist. He complained to the coppers that you didn’t have to use so much force.”

The paramedic must have understood, because she chuckled. Laughter. That didn’t happen where death was present. Bish felt as though he could take on the world. Zero body count.

Regardless, the place was chaos. Parents were still arriving in droves, hurrying past the ancient walls. Pushing past police, hysteria in their voices. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and retrieved it. The screen was cracked. His ears were still ringing and it got worse when he answered the phone. Someone was asking if he’d take the call. Then Noor’s voice: “Where are you? All I can hear are sirens.”

“I’m in Calais. There’s been another bomb—”

“What?”

“Jimmy’s here—”

“Oh God!”

“No one’s hurt.”

“You’re slurring your words.”

“I haven’t been drinking.”

“I didn’t say you had.”

He could see her brother being questioned now by a couple of uniforms. He hoped they wouldn’t do something stupid like arrest him.

“Slow down and tell me everything,” she said, her tone gruff. Not hostile. Not tender. But “gruff” belonged to the caring family.

He gave her the shortest version he could. One with an optimistic ending in which he hoped Benoix’s people got caught. “This means Violette and Eddie are safer out there now, and once they realize it, they’ll ask for help,” he said. “And the Home Office will stop sending me to bother you.”