Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(21)

After the bombing, people wanted blood. Live blood. They wanted someone to hate, someone still breathing, and they got it when London police raided the Sarraf council flat and found evidence to suggest that Louis Sarraf had not acted alone. Jamal and his uncle Joseph had been caught on camera in the courtyard with Louis, arguing emphatically, all three agitated. The younger Sarraf had looked relieved when his father and uncle shook hands. He had embraced his father. To the authorities it was a deadly handshake, and it took longer than it should have to release Jamal and his uncle, even after his sister confessed.

“Can we sit down somewhere and talk?” Bish asked Sarraf, aware of the stares from the rest of the men.

Sarraf retrieved a newspaper from a nearby bench and threw it at Bish, who didn’t need to be fluent in French to understand it. The familiar photo of him standing behind Violette. Good to see that the British and French were united in something.

Jamal Sarraf walked out of the gym and into a back alley, and he followed.

“Is it true you’ve spoken to her?” Bish asked, and suddenly he felt a grip around his throat and found himself shoved against the steel fence. He saw rage in the man’s eyes, glimpsed a clenched fist.

“I don’t sit down and talk to cunts who lock my niece up in a storage cupboard.”

Sarraf’s face was menacingly close. Bish held up a hand of warning. Not that he believed it would be powerful enough to stop Sarraf, after seeing what he could do to a younger, fitter man in the ring.

“I removed Violette from that cupboard,” he said. “She’d tell you that herself if you asked her.”

Sarraf finally let go and shoved Bish away.

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she, then?”

“No idea.”

“I don’t believe you. You’d be out there looking for her otherwise. So that tells me you know exactly where she is.”

“It tells you nothing.”

“Did she say why she took the boy?”

“For a concerned father, you’re beginning to sound like a copper.”

“I’m both.” Bish took a business card from his pocket. One he currently had no right to hand out. He found a pen and crossed out his work’s landline and scribbled down his personal mobile number. “Bring her to me and she’ll be protected,” he said. “No one wants to hurt her or the boy. She’s just a kid.”

“Yeah, well, so was I,” Sarraf said bitterly, not taking the card held out to him. “And guess where I ended up when I was her age?”

In Belmarsh. Where good-looking boys like Jimmy Sarraf would have walked into a never-ending nightmare. Bish couldn’t help flinching at the thought.

“If you do know where they are, then God help you should something happen to them,” Bish said.

“If I knew where my niece was we’d be halfway down to North Africa by now,” Sarraf said before walking away.





9



Jamal watches Ortley drive away. He’ll be heading for the port, and it makes him heartsick just thinking of the trip home. On an honest day he’ll admit to himself that he chose to live in this town because he’s sentimental. He may have been denied entry into his own country, but it doesn’t stop him from yearning for it. When the weather is good, he can see England from the port.

Not that he doesn’t have an affection for this town. Calais has been good to him. He likes its lack of pretension, the hardiness of its people. The transient quality of the place. No foreigner stays long enough to recognize him or ask questions. He’s had a dog’s breakfast of paid work, but it’s got him by from year to year. When he’s not teaching at the gym he works with the kids in the makeshift migrant camps, because the local charities want someone who knows French, English, Arabic, and football. Or he works at the piano bar on Rue du Duc de Guise. Nothing changes in Calais for Jamal. Days mesh into weeks mesh into months mesh into thirteen years in exile.

Until three days ago, when he received a call from Nasrene LeBrac. Had he seen Violette? He thought he’d misunderstood at first. Had Jamal seen his niece who lived with Nasrene and Christophe on the other side of the world? But according to Nasrene, some nameless man had phoned to tell them that Violette had spent the past seven days in Normandy. Jamal thought Nasrene had lost her mind because they all knew that Violette was on a hike in the Tasmanian wilderness. And then came the worst part. Violette was at the campsite outside Boulogne-sur-Mer where a bomb had gone off on a tour bus. Jamal headed out there, but the only way of getting through those police barricades was to prove he was a parent or guardian. He returned to his flat, trying to think of a way.

Violette found him first, just before dawn on Sunday morning. He’d gone for an early run to clear his head and returned to find her on the front step of the gym below his flat. She was with a younger boy. Jamal hadn’t seen her since she was four years old. The Australian government had refused him a visa year after year, and no amount of Skype sessions and photographs could prepare him for seeing her in the flesh. She was dressed in skinny black jeans and a black Astro Boy singlet. She was all gorgeous, serious eyes and a feral, thin-lipped mouth that promised a baring of teeth when required. She was his mother. Little Aziza, they had nicknamed her as a kid. She was the question on the lips of every member of Jamal’s extended family, from Le Havre to Alexandria to Beirut. Jamal’s response was always the same: “She’s safe in Australia with Nasrene and Christophe. Nothing can hurt her now.”