Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(65)

LeBrac laughed her throaty laugh again and Bish wanted to be in on it. He wanted to know what it was about Yimi and Khalti Sadie that produced someone like Violette.

He interrupted them. “We need to work out what her plan has been, and what it is now,” he said, removing a map from his pocket. He had spent the night in Rye marking every place where Violette and Eddie had reportedly been spotted. A red asterisk for a confirmed sighting, black for unconfirmed. “We’ll start with France. Why that trip? It wasn’t to see you, Sarraf. She could easily have stayed in London and just crossed the Channel any time she wanted. So why an eight-day tour of Normandy?”

Neither of them spoke. Bish didn’t know whether it was because of the guard or because they didn’t trust him. He got to his feet and scribbled down a number, tearing the page from his notebook and handing it to the guard standing outside the door.

“Ring it,” he said. “Tell whoever answers that I can’t have a guard in this room if they want me to get the job done.” He went back in and sat down.

LeBrac and Sarraf were staring at the map. “Violette spoke to him,” Sarraf said, referring to Bish. “So it seems he’s got more to tell us than we do.”

LeBrac stared at Bish in surprise. “When?”

“Yesterday.” He reached across the table and tapped the red asterisk at Olympic Park, in Stratford.

“You actually saw her?”

“Didn’t know she was there until it was too late. She phoned.”

“What did she say?” LeBrac demanded.

“She spoke about her father. His watch. I got a history lesson.”

“Nothing else?”

Bish shook his head. He didn’t think now was the right time to bring up the conversation about sex.

“Start with what you know,” Noor said. “When did she fly in?”

“The day before the tour began. She was only planning to stay for two weeks and then was flying out of Heathrow.”

He pointed to the red asterisks at St. John’s Wood tube station and Buckland Hospital, in Dover. “What we know is that she stayed with Georgette Shahbazi, then went to see the three injured kids.”

LeBrac was silent, studying the map. There was a knock on the door, and without a word their guard was beckoned out, leaving them alone.

“I know Eddie’s your son,” Bish said. “I know where he was born and who delivered him.”

LeBrac’s eyes met his. He couldn’t read her expression. She turned to her brother. “Have you been in contact with anyone in Australia, Jimmy?”

Sarraf didn’t respond, but LeBrac was staring at her brother with a strange expression. Bish realized she had read something in his eyes that told her he had more information.

“The federal police there are monitoring the LeBrac phone line,” Bish said. “So who’s Violette going through to get a message to her grandparents?”

“These are other people’s lives we’re involving,” Sarraf said to Bish. “They don’t deserve to have their phones tapped and their lives poked into. Give me your word that you won’t drag them into this. On your kid’s life.”

“Leave my kid’s life out of this,” Bish said.

“Tell him, Jimmy,” Noor said.

Sarraf sighed. “Violette emailed a photograph of her and Eddie to Nick Scolari.”

“Etienne’s best friend,” Noor told Bish. “He lives in a town close to Coleambally.”

“She told him to pass on a message to her grandparents that they were not to worry. She was heading north. She had things to do before she came home.”

It was a game changer. Bish could see from LeBrac’s expression that she agreed. Perhaps Rachel was right and the reason Violette was on the run had little to do with fear of an arrest. There had always been another purpose for the trip.

“Violette’s being Violette,” Sarraf said. “When she has a plan, nothing gets in her way.”

“Not even a bomb on a bus.” LeBrac was again focused on the map. Bish watched a sequence of expressions cross her face. Finally heard her halting breath.

She leaned an elbow on the table and buried her face in her hand. Bish almost reached out but checked himself. Sarraf took his sister’s hand.

“What is it, Noor?”

She composed herself. “I know where she’s heading.”

They waited as she moved the map closer.

“Remember Etienne’s tours, Jimmy? We’d go to the local market, or the park, or wherever, and it was all a history tour. You loved them as a kid, and years later, when we had Violette, she loved them more. They were funny. Idiotic at times. Full of facts. Because the history tours included us in them. ‘This is where Mummy kissed Daddy for the first time, and where the Beatles recorded at Lime Grove Studios and where the Germans bombed during the war and where Uncle Jimmy dropped his chocolate ice cream and cried all the way home.’”

Sarraf gave a watery smile.

“What’s that got to do with heading north?” Bish asked.

She held out a hand to Bish. “May I?” she asked. He stared at her outstretched hand until she pointed to his pen and he gave it to her. “They’re on a history tour of our lives. Starting in Normandy, where you and I and Etienne and Violette were all born. That’s why she chose the French tour.”