Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(6)

“No. Perhaps Mr. Gorman. He ended up with the passports, and he contacted the embassy and read out all our names straight from them.”

Lucy nodded, as if getting clarity for the first time. “Within minutes he got a call back. Someone had recognized Violette’s name. Her tour documentation has her down as Violette Zidane. But her passport includes ‘LeBrac.’”

“Where is she now?” Bish asked.

Lucy was taking deep breaths, and Saffron placed an arm around her.

“I’ll be fine,” Lucy said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve had something to take the edge off. They were a horrid lot, the kids. Violette. All of them.”

Bish and his mother exchanged a look.

“We never met any of Violette’s people at Dover,” Lucy said. “Most of the older kids were unaccompanied, except for Bee. Violette said her family had moved to Deal last autumn. She had all the right documentation, sent from there. But they were fakes. According to Mr. G’s contact at the embassy, she lives in Australia.”

“But where is she now, Lucy?”

Her blubbering resumed. Bish’s ex-wife had once told him that a male being critical of a crying woman was an act of misogyny, so he tried to be patient. “Have you any idea why she’d lie to go on the trip? Traveling across the world for an eight-day tour of Normandy isn’t exactly on top of a teenage wish list.”

She shook her head. “This was my first time chaperoning,” she admitted. “Mac—Julius McEwan—said that once in a while you experience a group that clashes.”

“This year’s?” Bish asked.

“Yes. The ringleader was expelled from one of those bluecoat private boarding schools for cheating. Charlie Crombie. He’s a depraved little beast. It’s quite ironic that he’s the son of a reverend. The kids all seemed to relinquish power to him.”

Lucy took another tissue from Saffron and dabbed at her eyes. “The thing is…Violette got herself a reputation with Charlie Crombie.” Her voice had dropped, as if after such a day the worst thing that could happen was a tarnished reputation.

“They had nothing to do with each other during the day, but…Of course it was forbidden to be in the cabin of someone of the opposite sex at night, but it’s hard to keep an eye on all of them, and they were a sneaky lot.”

“Violette and this Crombie boy were an item?”

“I don’t know what they were,” Lucy said. “Violette spent most of the days with Eddie Conlon.”

“Romantically linked?” Saffron asked.

Bish hoped not, seeing as Eddie was thirteen and Violette seventeen.

“I don’t believe so. Mr. G thinks they hit it off because they looked the same sort of foreign, but Mac reckons…reckoned it was grief. Said he could pick it. Eddie lost his mum to cancer last year.”

And Violette had lost her father young and grown up without a mother. That was enough common ground.

“What do you mean by ‘same sort of foreign’?” he asked.

“Eddie looks Mediterranean or Middle Eastern,” Lucy said.

“Was my granddaughter drawn to them?” Saffron said. “Doesn’t she look the same sort of foreign?”

Lucy thought about it a moment, as if it had never occurred to her.

“Is your wife Middle Eastern, Chief Inspector Ortley?”

“No, my father was,” Saffron answered.

“I’m so sorry—did I offend you by that term?” Lucy’s tears were welling up again. “I’m not one of those people who judge by skin color, and I sound as if I am.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, Lucy dear,” Saffron said, but her tone had cooled slightly.

They headed back towards the recreation hall. The bomb site was now crawling with national and regional police and a group of useless-looking suits. Attal seemed far from impressed, and Bish could understand why. A bunch of officials stomping on evidence was the last thing they needed.

“The French policeman’s daughter was on one of the other buses,” Lucy told them. “The Pas de Calais football tour. They used school-aged junior coaches. Marianne Attal was one of them.” Lucy leaned towards Bish, as if Attal could hear her at this distance. “What I would call a piece of work—strutting around as if she owned France itself.”

They watched as Attal almost came to blows with a photographer trying to take a photo of what lay inside the tents surrounding the bus.

“We seem to have done the same route as the French bus, but in reverse.”

Lucy’s phone rang and she cried out, as if it had burnt a hole in her pocket.

“You’re going to have to pull yourself together, Lucy,” Saffron said, losing some of her patience with the girl. She took the phone from her and walked away to answer it.

Bish reached to retrieve the handwritten list from his pocket but realized it was with Attal.

“Can you remember any of those taken to the hospital with minor injuries?” he asked Lucy.

She nodded. “Amy Jacobs.”

Bish found the number of the hospital and rang it. He was put on with Amy’s mother, spoke to her briefly, and then asked for one of the embassy staff. A woman named Carmody warmed to him after he gave her a quick but thorough rundown on what was taking place at the campground, and in return she told him they were dealing with ten injured kids. Four were serious. Two had lost limbs and one had lost an eye. Prepare for the worst, she told him, and Bish couldn’t get those words out of his head. He learnt that more embassy staff were on their way from Paris to the campground.