Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(56)
He stood with her on the platform in silence until the tube came.
“Would it seem odd to say that I want you to have a place in this kid’s life?” she asked.
Bish could hardly be a player in his own life, let alone another man’s child’s. He pressed a kiss to her brow. “Text me when you get home,” he said.
Robert Houghton’s file on Noor LeBrac contradicted the one provided by Grazier, so Bish set down the identifiable truths. Fact: the Brackenham Four spent twenty-eight days of incarceration at Paddington Green police station, in underground cells built especially for terror suspects. Fact: they were imprisoned separately, in twelve-foot-square cells with no windows. Fact: the new post–September 11 terrorism laws allowed the government to hold them without a hearing or trial for as long as Downing Street wanted. Fact: they were then transferred to prisons in four different counties and didn’t see one another again until six months later, when Noor LeBrac confessed. Fact: Noor LeBrac’s confession came one day after Etienne LeBrac’s suicide.
As Rachel had pointed out, Noor’s letter wasn’t written by someone who was about to confess. It told the story of the family’s last days together in Brackenham. Written in a way that Bish found strangely haunting, it wasn’t so much a letter outlining a case as a plea for help. Well into the night, something niggled at him, and he searched his own notes on the Boulogne bombing. Searched Facebook pages, interviews, notes on phone conversations with parents and students. He googled the date of the confession. Found nothing. Went back to the letter Noor had sent to Rachel’s chambers thirteen years ago. Who was Owen Walden in all this? Bish found something online about Walden delivering a paper in Nova Scotia in 2005 on fibroids in the womb during pregnancy. A strange sort of alarm bell went off in Bish’s head as he scrolled to the end of the PDF for a brief biography and realized that St. Therese’s Hospital, where Walden had been head of obstetrics, was four miles away from Foston Hall Prison, in Derbyshire, where LeBrac had been transferred after Paddington Green. Bish started his search again, sifting through every single document he had in his possession. And there it was. On that faithful handwritten list of student names from the day of the bombing.
Eddie Conlon had been born on the same day Noor LeBrac confessed.
His hunches didn’t really come out of the blue. They brewed and festered and kept Bish awake for yet another hour. Until he called Layla Bayat’s number.
“What did Violette say to Eddie that day in Boulogne?” he asked.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“What’s the connection between Noor LeBrac and Eddie Conlon?”
There was silence, but he knew she was still there.
“Layla?”
“I’m not answering personal questions about Noor. Not at this time of the night and not over the phone. Someone’s probably tapping us now like everyone’s tapping phones these days. So can I say, Fuck off to you all and I hope none of you ever get a good night’s sleep again!”
Layla hung up.
A thought suddenly came to him. Bee had used his phone more than once at the campsite. Had she used it to set up contact points with Violette? He scrolled urgently through his calls, back to the day after the bombing. He went through the list of everyone he had rung then, until he came across a number he couldn’t identify. He called it, and after a few rings someone picked up without speaking.
“Violette?” he said.
Silence.
“Violette, listen, it’s Bee’s father. Please trust me. I’d never let anything happen to Eddie. You know that.”
He was disconnected. Bish tried again, but this time an automated voice recording told him that the phone was switched off. He tried three more times before he fell asleep, cursing himself for being so slow on the uptake. A link to Violette had been right there all along, in his hands.
The next morning he was surprised to see that Layla had finally accepted him as a Facebook friend. She’d accompanied her acceptance with a message. Short and to the point. Princess Victoria. Uxbridge Road. Noon.
25
Watching his daughter run a race was one of the few pleasures left in Bish’s life. He had always been in awe of his children’s accomplishments, but was particularly astounded by the idea that any such talent might have come from his half of the genes. Bee wasn’t just fast: she had grace. Ever since she had won a ribbon in the twenty-five meters at the age of four, Bish had gone to most of her track meets. He’d been watching her run up north on the day Stevie died on a beach in Newquay, learning to surf. It was bad enough that Bish would never forgive himself for not being there, but now Noor LeBrac’s words were in his head. It killed him more than a little inside to learn why Bee had stopped competing. He knew it was due to Stevie’s death but hadn’t known she was cutting herself. He and Rachel had both been happily surprised when she started training again this year. She easily made the junior British Athletics team sent to Gothenburg for the European titles and had come home with a gold and a silver.
Early on Tuesday morning he stood watching Bee warm up for the two hundred meters at a London club that was putting on a summer comp. It was her strength and it was Bish’s favorite race to watch, whether it was his daughter or an Olympic runner. It was the race of champions. He liked the fact that Bee had chosen it, rather than the length choosing her.