Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(18)
“Why not ask Crombie?” Bish asked.
“According to Charlie Crombie, Violette wasn’t with him. According to Crombie’s roommate, Crombie wasn’t in his room.”
“So apparently half the tour bus was missing from their beds that night.”
“Not quite half, Ortley,” Grazier said, looking him in the eye. “Five, in actual fact.”
Bish didn’t like where this was going, and he was now down to “Ortley,” which meant the niceties were over.
“Aren’t you going to ask who the others without an alibi are?” Grazier asked.
Bish leaned forward in his seat. They were going to drag Bee into this. Now he was seething, blinding-headache-in-this-damn-sunshine and all. Elliot poured a glass of water and handed it to him.
“Sit back, Ortley. You’re scaring the boss.”
Grazier didn’t seem the sort to be scared by anyone or anything.
“Your only suspects are teenagers missing from their cabins?” Bish asked.
“I don’t recall saying Violette or the kids were suspects,” Grazier said. “I simply want to know where they were the night before the bomb. Could you find that out for me, Chief Inspector Ortley, you being one of the fathers?”
Bish bit his tongue. He didn’t want to admit the next fact out loud. Not in front of Elliot.
“I’m probably not the right person to be playing chief inspector right now.”
“We’re not Scotland Yard,” Grazier said. “We don’t give a rat’s arse what your suspension was about. All I’m saying is that we’d be happy for you to go out there and continue being who you were in France.”
Bish presumed “No thanks” wasn’t an option. Grazier was eyeing him with that look he had. Elliot was wolfing down his eggs and bacon, one arm protectively around his plate. The boarding school fear that someone was going to steal your food.
“You and I share a few theories,” Grazier said. “If Violette does have a target on her back, it just got a bit bigger, thanks to the media and that moron who locked her in a cupboard. Those kids are running from us. We’d better find them alive.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
“The parents we’ve spoken to are pissed off at the embassy staff for taking their time getting to the campsite. They believe that Downing Street should have sent someone as soon as it happened. They’re not exactly being chatty with anyone who works for the government. Most of them claim that the only person who did anything was Chief Inspector Bish Ortley. We want you talking to those families. One of the kids on that tour might have a clue to where Violette and Eddie are heading.”
“So I came here this morning for you to give me permission to be everyone’s friend?”
“No, Ortley, you’re here because I was dying to meet you,” Grazier said.
“Really?”
“No.” Grazier’s tone was blunt. “But someone else is. The acting governor of Holloway contacted us last night. Noor LeBrac has asked for you specifically. She wants to talk. The home secretary would like you to go and see what she knows about these kids, and this bombing. You just seem to be everyone’s favorite father at the moment.”
Bish doubted he was Noor LeBrac’s favorite anything, although he was certain she’d remember him over everyone else from that day her family was arrested.
Grazier handed him a file. “This is what we know about her since she’s been in prison.”
Bish had no choice but to take the file. “Can we call it quits after that?” he asked, staring at Elliot.
“I’m genuinely hurt,” Elliot said. “We’ve been friends all these years.” He turned to Grazier. “He was Ron Weasley to my Harry Potter.”
“Don’t talk to the press, Ortley,” Grazier said. “Don’t talk to any of your colleagues. And whenever you’re talking to the students and parents, remember you’re there as a father.”
“So I’m going undercover as myself?”
Grazier liked the sound of it. He stood and handed Bish a business card that identified him as Samuel Grazier and contained only a mobile number.
“Ring if there are any issues with Holloway. Clearance comes through Elliot or me. No one else.”
7
Holloway Prison was on the Piccadilly line, so at least Bish didn’t have to travel far. He got off at Caledonian Road and waited for the shuttle bus that would take him to one of the country’s most polarizing women. While he waited, Bish flicked through the file. Noor LeBrac had been arrested alongside her mother, brother, and uncle for their part in the Brackenham supermarket bombing. They were referred to as the Brackenham Four. Six months later, LeBrac confessed to having built the bomb, claiming she’d been the only person in her family involved, other than her father, who died in the blast. She was thirty-three at the time, the mother of a four-year-old daughter. Cambridge-educated, having just completed a PhD in molecular biology. Married for twelve years to Etienne LeBrac, an Australian of French and Algerian parentage. He had been visiting his parents in rural New South Wales at the time.
The file included a clipping of a newspaper article dated March 2010. A journalist who had followed the case from the outset reinterviewed LeBrac when there was talk that she would try to get an appeal off the ground. Her first attempt had been in 2005. The journalist commented that jail seemed to have broken her spirit, and LeBrac’s response was quoted at length: “My father filled the boot of my car with explosives, dropped my daughter off at preschool, drove to work, and murdered twenty-three innocent people. My mother died of stomach cancer in a hospice without her family around her. My brother lives in exile, unable to travel. My uncle Joseph, the patriarch of the Sarraf family, has chronic kidney damage from the beatings he received when he was wrongly imprisoned. My husband’s death has been so lied about that people actually believe he left his daughter alone on those dales, in the middle of a brutal Yorkshire winter. And my daughter has nightmares from the fear of not being able to speak to me at nine p.m. her time, ten a.m. London time. All this has broken my spirit. Not jail.”