Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(30)

But Sarraf refused to listen to Attal.

“It’s not her!” Bish said.

Sarraf shrugged free. “I need to see for myself.”

When Bish knew his son was dead, he had still needed to see. He’d needed to see so he wouldn’t believe that Stevie was there at every corner, every doorway, in the backseat of his car, at the dinner table, in his room, at his school, on the football field.

So they let Sarraf go and he followed the attendant into the room. Bish waited in the stark white corridor with Attal.

“Investigation?” Bish asked, hoping it sounded like the French equivalent.

Attal shook his head, a look of bitterness on his face.

“DGSI,” Attal said. “La sécurité intérieure.”

From what Bish knew, the DGSI was French intelligence answering to the Minister of the Interior. That meant Attal was no longer handling the case, and was here today only because dead refugees in the Channel fell under his jurisdiction.

Bish thought of the makeshift camps along the port of Calais, and wondered if the girl in the morgue belonged to anyone in them. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister or niece or neighbor. Someone who had given her father grief. Someone who believed that swimming over a treacherous Channel would lead to a better life. Now Bish wanted to find this girl’s people. He wanted to find Violette LeBrac. All of them. Because who were they if they couldn’t protect their children?

Outside the hospital, Sarraf stumbled to the side of the gravel driveway and threw up in a flower bed. Bish and Attal watched through a cloud of Attal’s cigarette smoke as Sarraf stood up straight, took a deep breath.

Attal put out his cigarette and went to leave, then changed his mind, turned back, and demanded something of Sarraf.

Sarraf shook his head. “Dites-moi pourquoi?” he wanted to know.

The only word Bish understood was “why.” “What’s he’s asking?” he said to Sarraf. He looked at Attal. Although the Frenchman was reluctant to speak, he didn’t walk away.

“He wants to know if I’ve heard of a man named Ahmed Khateb,” Sarraf said. “An Algerian. He was the driver of Attal’s daughter’s bus.”

Bish looked back at Attal. “Pourquoi?”

Attal hesitated before responding.

“Because Khateb’s nowhere to be found,” Sarraf translated.

The French captain walked off to his car. Sitting on the hood was a tall girl around Bee’s age, all lanky arms and legs. Marianne Attal, Bish guessed. Rust-colored hair untidily pulled back in a ponytail. Prominent facial features. She wore denim shorts, cowboy boots, and attitude. When her father approached she fired out something rapid at him. It gave Bish some relief that the French were getting as much of a hammering from their kids as he was. Until she jumped from the hood and reached her father, linking her arm in his.

France 1. England 0.

The girl got into the car, staring back at Bish with a good healthy glare of dislike. She looked shifty. Bish had received two warnings about her so far. Did she know something about the bombing? Was her father covering up for her? Was that the reason for Attal’s being taken off the case?

Walking back to his own car, Bish felt a firm grip on his upper arm. Sarraf.

“Make sure someone tells my sister it’s not Violette.”

Bish tried to shrug free. “Someone will,” he said.

“No. You make sure,” Sarraf said forcefully. “We made a pact. If something ever happened to Violette, we’d end it.”

Bish felt a shudder go through him. Hadn’t he made the same vow on his way to Calais last week? He finally pulled free and got into his car, but Sarraf was hammering at the window.

“You make sure someone tells Noor that Violette’s not the dead girl in the water.”

When Grazier rang for an update, Bish told him, “A name’s come up. Ahmed Khateb, driver of the French bus.”

“Motive?”

“Attal hasn’t let on much, but it seems Khateb’s disappeared.”

“Then we’ve got a suspect?”

“Looks like it.”

“Anything else?”

“Sarraf wants you to let his sister know it wasn’t Violette’s body, sooner rather than later.”

“You can go see her as soon as you’re back,” Grazier said. “LeBrac will be grateful to the bearer of good news and you may be able to find out more from her.”

“The prison won’t appreciate us turning up whenever we want,” Bish said.

“The home secretary is making the decisions there, not the guards,” Grazier said. “Push LeBrac. If anyone knows where her daughter’s heading, she does.”





14



At Holloway late that afternoon, Bish was forced to wait. Officer Gray wasn’t happy. Why wasn’t the general visits hall being used for LeBrac? Why did a police inspector from the Met think he could just walk in any time he chose? Bish watched Allison from the visitors’ center hold up a faxed document.

“Because this says so.”

Grazier was thorough, if nothing else.

But that didn’t stop Officer Gray from taking his time sending out his staff to locate LeBrac.

“It’s been forty-five minutes,” Bish said after listening to Gray give priority to the repair of the foyer’s vending machine and to taking a phone interview from a journalist about the authenticity of Orange Is the New Black.