Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(33)

Bish stumbled to the sink, his stomach churning. He thought of the vulnerable teenage girls he came across at the station, caught up in porn.

He felt Rachel’s hand on his shoulder. “They’re not what you think,” she said.

He splashed his face with cold water and dried it with a tea towel. When he was seated, he took the phone.

The photos were a shock all the same. Bee with her arms around Violette Zidane and Eddie Conlon. An expression on her face that Bish hadn’t seen for three years. Pure happiness. Another shot of Bee rolling her eyes while Eddie’s tongue cheekily hovered near her ear, Violette watching on with a half smile. Then the three of them staring solemnly ahead with eyes so dark and skin so perfectly matched. Another of them laughing. Bee looked gorgeous. They all did.

“She told me she’d had nothing much to do with Noor LeBrac’s daughter, but that’s definitely her, isn’t it?” Rachel pointed to Violette.

“They were forced to be roommates for the entire trip.”

“Who’s the boy, Bish?” she asked quietly, and he knew what she was thinking. Beautiful boys with golden skin belonged to Rachel and Bish.

“Eddie Conlon. He’s the one who’s gone missing with Violette. They’re trying really hard to keep his name out of the papers.”

Bish studied the photos one more time before handing back the phone. “Can you email them to me on that thing?” he asked. “I can print them off here.”

Rachel concentrated on the task of sending the photos and he watched her master something he had no idea about.

“What made you suspicious about the martial arts file?” he asked.

“I bumped into her instructor at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago and he asked after her. Told me how disappointed he was when she dropped out back in May.”

Had they become those type of parents? Who didn’t know where their kids were?

“What could she possibly have been up to on Saturday mornings?” he asked.

“I was going to ask her when she returned from Normandy, but then…” Rachel shrugged.

But then someone blew up their daughter’s bus and it didn’t seem important.

Bish heard a sound at the door and leaned back in his chair to see David Maynard standing in the hallway. Maynard was an unorthodox principal. Every kid at the school had his mobile number. Bee had told Bish the story of his speech to the seniors: not to get into the car of a drunk driver—to ring him instead. Any time of the night. He’d drive them home, no questions asked. The child protection people wouldn’t have been impressed, but the parents were.

“I rang the doorbell but no one answered,” Maynard said.

“It doesn’t always work,” Rachel responded for Bish.

Maynard stepped into the kitchen. “Are you okay?” he asked Rachel. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, you know. The usual.” She was trying to keep her tone light. “Bee’s hanging out with terror suspects.”

Maynard seemed tentative, as if waiting for Bish to invite him to sit down. When he didn’t, Maynard stared over Rachel’s shoulder at the photograph on her phone.

“Bee was friends with Violette Zidane?” he asked. “Who’s the boy?”

“Eddie Conlon,” Rachel said. Her phone rang and she went off to answer it, leaving Bish with Maynard. It wasn’t the most pleasant silence, so Bish decided to break it.

“She thought you were an idiot first time we met you,” he said, because he wanted to destroy something and Maynard was accessible.

Maynard nodded. “Yes, she told me. And that you totally disagreed and said I was the sort of chap you’d enjoy a pint with.”

Bish didn’t go around using the word “chap,” so it rankled even more to be misquoted.



Fearing that Grazier or French intelligence would somehow discover a more intimate connection between his daughter and the missing kids, Bish drove to Gravesend late that afternoon to see Bee. The house had been in the family for generations. A three-acre property that was ridiculously too big for a woman living on her own, but it was home. Saffron had spent the past fifty years traveling for his father’s work, “to some of the most tedious parts of the world, darling.” His father had never made it high enough up in the service to have preference regarding where to be sent next. The Worthingtons had commented more than once that lack of ambition ran in the Ortley line. It’s what some people believed when a cop chose not to become a detective.

When Bish pulled up at the former coach house on Church Lane, his mother was pruning roses in the front garden. He watched her work and realized that regardless of her beauty, Stevie’s death had aged her. It had aged them all.

“Rachel rang,” she said when he crouched beside her.

“Does Bee know I’m coming over?”

They looked up to see Bee staring down at them from her window.

“Well, she obviously does now.”

Inside the house Bish climbed the stairs and waited awhile at Bee’s door before knocking, then entering. It had been his room once, and now it was Bee’s whenever she came to stay. He was pleased to see that she hadn’t thrown out his posters. Bauhaus. Joy Division. Siouxsie and the Banshees. He had Elliot to thank for his postpunk obsession.

Bee was lying on the bed with her headphones on. She removed them and shook her head bitterly when he handed her the photos he’d printed out.