Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(34)

“You have no right looking at my personal stuff.” A tremble of fury in her voice.

Bish sat down on her bed. “We’re worried about you, Bee. You’ve been so cagey—even before Calais. What’s this about you dropping out of martial arts? Where did you go every Saturday morning?”

“It’s none of your business,” she said.

“Well, actually it is, sweetie.”

Bee got off the bed and pulled on a pair of runners. “Let’s make a deal, Bish. I won’t ask why you’ve been suspended and you don’t pry into my life.”

“Tell me about the photos,” he said, not giving in. “You said Violette wasn’t a friend.”

“I’ve got photos with everyone!”

“No you haven’t.”

Bish had never seen a photograph of Bee with friends. She slipped in and out of friendship groups with little fanfare. It didn’t worry Rachel, who claimed that not many people still hung out with their school friends; Bee would find her tribe one day. Were Violette and Eddie part of her tribe now? Violette LeBrac’s arm had hugged Bee to her in an almost sisterly way.

“Bee, I need you to tell me the truth. The French equivalent to MI5 is in charge of this investigation now and I don’t want them on your doorstep. Do you know where Violette and Eddie are?”

“She’s a scummy terrorist’s spawn and I hope she rots in hell. That’s all you need to know.”

Bish thought it best not to ask the question that was hovering. Was she in a relationship with Violette? Was his daughter secretly in love with Noor LeBrac’s daughter?

Saffron insisted he stay the night. Bee made a brief appearance at dinner—for her sake, Bish presumed. Bee never extended her surliness to his mother. When Bish’s phone rang after the meal and Elliot’s name showed on the screen, he was tempted to ignore it, and then he remembered that Grazier and whoever he worked for had a tape of a conversation between Violette and her grandmother. Had there been mention of Bee? He took the call.

“Is there a reason you don’t answer your phone?” Elliot asked.

“Yes. I rarely want to speak to you.”

“Grazier thinks the kids on the bus know more than they’re letting on,” Elliot said.

“Why would he think that?”

“Because one of Grazier’s contacts is a journalist who was at the campground, and he overheard a girl talking about the night before the bombing. Said she saw something. When Grazier tried to set up an interview with the family he was told to go away.”

“Who is she?”

“The girl from Chichester.”

“Greta,” Bish said.

“Can you look into it, seeing you’re on first-name terms with these kids?”

“I’m not,” Bish said. “It’s common courtesy to know their names. You know, referring to her as the girl from Chichester doesn’t exactly invite a relationship with the girl from Chichester’s parents.”

“Then can you have a chat with Greta and find out if she saw or heard something the night before the bombing?”

Bish wanted something in return. He tried to sound casual about it. “By the way, did Grazier get that conversation translated? Violette and her grandmother?”

“He did, and we’re trying to work out how to deal with it. We don’t want some of this stuff getting out.”

“What stuff?” Bish hadn’t meant his question to sound so much like a demand. He could feel Elliot hesitating.

“Just talk to the kids and parents, Ortley. That’s what Grazier wants you to do.”

He joined his mother to watch the news. A teenage girl in Marseille had been threatened by a group of thugs wearing balaclavas outside a gymnasium. It was only through the intervention of a passerby that she escaped without being hurt. She claimed that her assailants had mistaken her for Violette Zidane. Not that the girl looked anything like Violette, but she clearly didn’t have to.

“How did Lucy Gilies put it?” Saffron asked with bitterness. “‘The same sort of foreign.’ And then all you need is a social vigilante on Twitter who wants their hundred and forty characters of fame claiming to have seen her in the neighborhood.”

“I thought you were a social networker extraordinaire,” he said.

“Oh I am. I just find the unregulated part of it frightening.”

In the guest room Bish lay in bed,desperate for a drink. He knew with great certainty that he was going to be creeping around the house in the dark soon enough, like a seventeen-year-old searching for his parents’ booze. He hadn’t slept in this room before. It was an attic space converted, but there was nothing stuffy and old-fashioned about it except the portable TV.

He found himself watching a movie in Arabic and French, the subtitles difficult to read on the small screen. It was hard to watch while half asleep. He couldn’t close his eyes a moment and still understand what was going on. But somewhere, in a different sort of blur to the one he’d woken up in that day, he heard words that had him wide awake in an instant. The subtitles were gone already from the screen, but the phrase echoed in his memory. It sounded like the same thing Violette had said to Eddie in the campsite kitchen—he was sure of it. He scribbled it down phonetically. He had no idea how to make sense of it, but those words haunted his sleep and were on his lips when he woke the next morning.