Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(110)

Bish didn’t quite lie, just left out some of the truth. “Fionn needs to see his mother. I’ll ring you when we get there.”

“No, you’ll see me when you get there,” Grazier said. “And judging by the phone call I just had from Ian Parker, you’ll be seeing them as well.”

When Bish hung up, his phone rang immediately. Twice. Elliot. Rachel. He ignored them both.

“Can you please turn that off?” Crombie said. “It’s annoying me.”

“Chief Inspector Ortley, is it true you were involved in what happened at Marianne Attal’s school?” Manoshi asked.

Bish turned back to face the rest of the kids. Perhaps it was time to own his hero role.

“Someone tweeted that you broke a man’s arm and ran over a statue of a saint,” Lola said.

Or perhaps not.

“Chief Inspector Ortley, is it true you thought there was a point one percent chance that Bee was pregnant?” Lola asked.

“Why only point one?” Violette said. “Being a lesbian doesn’t mean someone’s nicked off with her uterus, Chief Inspector Ortley.”

“I might want kids one day,” Bee said. “Sperm’s all I need.”

“You can have mine if it’s okay with my missus,” Charlie said.

“Eyes on the road,” Bish ordered. He looked at Violette. “Is that what you aspire to? Being Charlie’s missus?”

“Quite sure.” Violette seemed proud to own the title. “He’s going to be my first ex-husband.”

“Cheeky bitch.” Charlie was grinning.

By the time they passed through Cambridge, Bish was ordered to swap seats with Bee and found himself forced to sit next to Violette.

“I need to say something to you, Chief Inspector Ortley, that you’re not going to like hearing,” she said, not wasting any time.

There were screeches of laughter from behind them. He turned to see Eddie Conlon imitating someone, doing pelvic thrusts in his seat, entertaining the girls.

“If this is about your mother—”

She held up a hand to warn him against further mention of her mother.

“It’s about Bee. She thinks that she wasn’t enough to keep you all together…and that her brother would have been. She thinks she wasn’t worth it.”

He winced, glancing at Violette. She nodded in confirmation. When he couldn’t think of anything to say, she sighed.

“Sorry,” she said, and he heard the regret in her voice. “I’ll swap with Eddie. He’s really good at lifting moods.”

“Stay,” he said. “Tell me one of your stories.”

A hint of a smile crept across her face.

“How about the one where my parents fell in love in Cambridge?”



When they reached Sheffield, Bish suggested they stop for sandwiches.

“Sandwiches?” Charlie said. “That’s what they serve these three every day in hospital. Have a bit of imagination.”

Imagination was McDonald’s. It didn’t have a drive-through, so Bee and Charlie went to get the food because, according to Eddie, “they aren’t ex–suspected terrorists or missing any body parts, so they won’t stand out in a crowd.”

Bee and Charlie came back soon enough with bags of food and serious expressions.

“We’re all over the news,” Charlie said.

Lola and Manoshi were caught between the drama of being all over the news and the excitement of eating chicken nuggets and french fries. Bish fiddled with the radio scan and found a news station.

“Chief Inspector Bish Ortley is a person of interest in the disappearance of three young patients who were injured in the August Boulogne bombing.”

“A bit dramatic,” Bish said, and everyone agreed.

“Ortley was suspended from the force last month after assaulting a fellow officer with a firearm.”

He felt their eyes on him. So much for Grazier keeping the media out of it.

“Should we be scared?” Charlie said, sounding anything but.

“Did he deserve it?” Bee asked.

“No one deserves to be threatened with a gun, Bee.”

“Bullshit,” Violette said. “I’d threaten a pedophile with a gun. I’d actually shoot him in the dick.”

After tapping away at the minivan’s GPS, Charlie started up the car. Bish turned his phone back on and regretted it the moment he saw the eleven text messages and twenty missed calls.

“Nothing you can do until we get to Malham, so I’d switch it to silent if I were you,” Charlie said.

Bish did as he was told.

In the rearview mirror he could see Violette whispering to Fionn, a vicious little expression around her mouth. Fionn seemed uncomfortable, and Bish had a feeling that she was forcing him into something he didn’t want to do.

Charlie saw him looking and checked his own mirror. “She doesn’t judge, you know,” he said in a low voice. “She just says, ‘Move on, Charlie. Don’t let shit define you.’” He took a moment to contemplate. “I suppose a cheating scam seems nothing compared to stuff that’s happened in her life.”

Bish was surprised that he had brought that up. He dared to ask, “If it was a scam, what happened to the others?”