Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(66)

“Fuck,” Jamal muttered under his breath.

“So let’s presume they meet for the first time at the port of Dover the day after she arrives,” Noor said, marking the map at Dover. “The plan is to take Eddie to Le Havre.”

“But why not come to me?” Jamal asked. “She waited seven days to come to me.”

“Because there goes her plan if she does. You would have contacted Etienne’s parents straightaway and Christophe would have been on the first flight over.”

“But if the bomb hadn’t gone off, John Conlon would have been waiting for Eddie in Dover. That would have spelt the end of their history tour.”

“The Conlons live less than an hour out of London,” she explained. “So if John Conlon is there to pick up Eddie after the tour, what’s to stop Eddie meeting Violette every day after that? If Anna was still alive, I’d say none of this would have been possible. But it’s school holidays and John Conlon’s at work, so who knows where Eddie would have spent his days?”

She pointed to Richmond on the map. “Twickenham Cemetery, where Yimi is buried, is close by.” She looked at Bish. “Violette knows how Jamal and I feel about neither of us having seen our mother’s grave.” Bish heard the catch in her voice. “She would have gone there for us.”

He dared not look at them. Let them have their time.

Some moments later, Sarraf tapped Edgware Road tube station on the map. “Paddington Green,” he said, in a voice resigned to the truth of what his sister was saying.

Where Bish had taken Violette out of her mother’s arms. Was he part of this history tour?

“So heading north can only mean one thing,” LeBrac said. “She’s taking Eddie to Malham Cove. To the last place she ever saw her father.”

“It’s been almost two weeks,” Bish said. “There’ve been no sightings up north.”

“She knows everyone’s on the lookout for them,” Jamal said. “In London it’s easy for them to get lost in the crowd, but they’ll get noticed the moment she gets on a train heading north, or hitchhikes. Fewer people around, and much harder to blend in. They’d stick out for sure.”

LeBrac nodded. “If the bomb hadn’t gone off, it would simply have been Normandy, London, Malham Cove, me, Jimmy back in Calais, and home. All within two weeks. Her destinations haven’t changed. The chronology has.”

Sarraf looked gutted, gripping his sister’s hand. “Why now? How did they find each other?”

“Talk to John Conlon,” she said to Sarraf, and Bish heard the anger in her voice. “Remind him that Eddie’s thirteen years old and that Anna would never have let this happen. Tell him to be a damn father to his son.” Her tears spilled now. “Because Violette wouldn’t have gone behind our backs if Eddie didn’t need her, and if Eddie needs her it means John Conlon has screwed up!”

When it was time to go, Bish joined the guard outside the door, leaving them to say their good-byes. A couple of minutes later they stepped out and Noor said, “Take him to my mother’s grave.” It wasn’t an order or a plea, and she waited for neither a refusal nor confirmation. She pressed a kiss to her brother’s hand and cupped it to her face before the guard led her away.

He drove Sarraf to Twickenham Cemetery and asked for directions at the office, which prompted a lecture from the woman behind the desk about the desecration of graves being an offense. When they came across Aziza Sarraf’s grave he understood why. Someone had taken to the headstone with a sharp object, and there were traces of old graffiti.

Sarraf couldn’t contain his fury. “After she died, they pissed on her grave and left their shit. No one did anything about it except for a bunch of the old women from the council estate. People are only outraged when Muslim men are violent towards Muslim women. That’s the only time you people care about our women.”

“Don’t generalize,” Bish said. “I’m not a racist and most people I care about aren’t either.”

“You like to think you’re not a racist.”

“No, actually, I’m f*cking sure of it.”

“Watch your mouth around my mother’s grave,” Sarraf said. “And give me some privacy.”

Bish walked away, reading the pamphlet he had picked up at the office. Plots in the Islamic section were on unconsecrated land, the bodies buried with their heads facing Mecca. He had always been fascinated with rituals for burying the dead. Until he had to bury his son.

Twenty minutes later he saw Sarraf stand up and walk away from the grave and figured it was time to go.

“Don’t tell my sister we found it like this,” Sarraf muttered as they went back to the car.

“Your sister and I don’t get into that sort of conversation.”

“She’ll ask. She obsesses over things like this. The only reason she let Etienne’s parents take his body home to Australia was because she knew he’d be buried on the farm.”

“Where’s your father buried?” Bish asked, and got no response at first.

“My uncle took my father’s ashes back to Egypt,” Sarraf said suddenly, when they reached the London Road roundabout. “He was a Christian, you know. Not many people remember that. They were too busy labeling the bombing an act of Islamic terrorism.”