Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(38)
He set about studying her list of friends. A handful from her athletics club, her school football team, and about half a dozen from the Normandy tour. The rest were names he didn’t recognize, though he checked those pages just in case. They all seemed legit. The one thing he was certain of was that Eddie and Violette weren’t using their real names on Facebook. He tried every variation of Violette’s name and came up with nothing. There were only a few Eddie or Edward or Ned Conlons, and they all lived a long way from Kent.
What he did read on Bee’s Facebook wall was that Lola, Manoshi, and Fionn had been transferred from Boulogne to Buckland Hospital, in Dover. It hadn’t made the news yet, so Bish couldn’t help wondering if it was true. It seemed too soon to be moving them around.
He went to bed that night with three Facebook friends: Bee, his mother, and Jill from the comms team at work, who had 768 friends. He had ended up in bed with her after the Christmas party last year because they were both pissed, so once again he felt a great regression in his life, accepting her invitation to befriend him online.
Next morning he checked to see if he had gained any friends overnight and found himself bombarded by the Worthington side of the family. Bish had spent a lifetime avoiding them, and now he would be subject to hearing about their tedious lives on a daily basis. By 9 a.m. the transfer of the three injured kids to Buckland had been confirmed, and was being discussed vigorously on morning talk shows in both countries. The French were insulted that the kids had been moved so soon, given the severity of their injuries. The British media commentary was along the lines of “Thank God these kids are safely home on UK soil,” as if France were a distant enemy territory and not a thirty-five-minute drive across a twenty-one-mile channel.
It was now a week since the bombing, and the mainstream press had exhausted their stories about the five dead and three badly injured and were now after tales of heroism and resilience. Bee had already expressed regret that she had got out of the bus as fast as she could, and Bish didn’t want her actions judged by others. It’d break her.
He was checking his Facebook page to see if Layla Bayat had accepted his friend request within the past five minutes when Elliot rang.
“Grazier’s fuming because Ian Parker won’t let us talk to his daughter.”
Bish didn’t question why he needed to know how Grazier felt. “You work for the government, Elliot. Just go down there and demand to speak to him.” He was concentrating on finding any new friends Bee had accepted overnight. Was Zulu Dawn a pseudonym for Violette despite there being no obvious connection between their names?
“Making demands is tricky,” Elliot was saying now. “The French already did that. Apparently their investigators were insinuating that Lola Barrett-Parker was the target of the attack.”
Elliot suddenly had his attention. The daughter of an MP who persisted in expressing his views about foreigners could easily have been a target. Lola was sitting in the front row of the bus that day.
“Grazier wants you to speak to Parker face-to-face,” Elliot said.
“I already did that. Wasn’t pleasant. And I thought my job was bringing Violette and Eddie out of the cold?”
“Yes, by getting the parents to find out what they can from their kids. Ian Parker is a parent. Both your children were on that bus. Common ground.”
Common ground? It’s what he had with Noor LeBrac. With Ian Parker. With the Kennington bigots. Bish didn’t want that sort of common ground.
“Lola, Manoshi, and Fionn haven’t been interviewed by British intelligence. Better that you chat with the kids than those goons. Total ignorami when it comes to dealing with kids.”
“Ignoramuses,” Bish corrected.
“You’ll make the home secretary very happy if we don’t have to force an interview on Parker and other parents of the injured.”
“And yet making the home secretary happy is not my number one priority this morning.”
“Try,” Elliot said, hanging up.
So Bish spent the next two hours talking to parents, trying to find a way to Ian Parker. There was no number for him on the Calais list and no one seemed to have a connection with him. No one seemed to want it. When Bish rang Greta Jager’s father, he knew he had to question what Grazier’s journalist contact had overheard. They spoke about the injured kids for a while, until Bish found his segue.
“Paul, is there a chance Greta might have seen something that could help the investigation? On the night before the blast?”
There was silence on the other end.
“The kids are my priority, Paul. You know that.”
“That I do,” Paul said. “But just say it’s not connected. What she saw, I mean.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about. But for now, every detail of the night before is important.”
“Can you promise you won’t bring her into the investigation, Bish?”
“I’m not part of the investigation. As far as this case goes, I’m just another father who wants to know who’s behind this thing. I can’t promise something I can’t deliver, but I will promise that if Greta has to be questioned again, I’ll be there with you all.”
Bish waited, then at last heard a sigh.
“That night, she saw a security car being pushed out of the grounds. The engine wasn’t on. Or the lights. She knew it was security because of the shape at the top of the car.”