Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(71)

“Yes, but my mother isn’t in secret contact with Violette. Gigi is. This is quicker.”

She bristled a bit when he mentioned her mother.

“And my mother doesn’t gossip as much as she used to.”

“Sorry.”

“Ortley joined Facebook,” she tells him. “He’ll want to be your friend. You’ll get a request every day.”

“Doubt it. But I made a list of Violette’s pseudonyms. It’s unlikely she’s on Facebook, but if she is I know I’ll find her.”

“Violette has pseudonyms?”

“Yeah, like Lette Le-Hyphen.”

She smiles for the first time since he arrived. It’s a good one, Layla Bayat’s smile is. Always was. It promised things.

“Niece of James Hyphen-Hyphen?” she asks.

“Affable chap—bit dashing, really.”

She laughs this time. Accents were Etienne and Jamal’s thing when Etienne appeared on the scene. That was when James Hyphen-Hyphen came into being. Noor would roll her eyes and remark on her husband’s maturity being comparable with that of her little brother. But she’d be laughing. In their repertoire, there were the Rothfuss-Joneses and the Franklin-Mays and the Atkinson-Hills and the Fuckety-Fucks. The hyphen joke got old, but a couple of years back, when Jamal told Violette about it, she had to have her own, and Lette Le-Hyphen was born.

Jamal is suddenly overcome with a bittersweet ache. As long as he lived, he’d never get over Etienne’s death. It was senseless, and a shock, and he found out about it while sitting among the inmates at Belmarsh, watching the communal TV. For Jamal it was a breaking point. Etienne was like a blood brother to him, but also their only hope in the outside world. That night Jamal smashed his head against the wall of his cell so many times they had to restrain him, while he begged them, “Just kill me, kill me.”

Layla is watching him carefully. “Are you all right?” she asks. He’s holding the kettle and she’s pointing to her mug that he hasn’t yet filled.

“It’s hot,” he murmurs, taking the mug from her to make sure she doesn’t burn her hand. But it’s just a pathetic excuse to touch her.

When the doorbell rings she gives him a questioning look and he retreats to the partitioned study. He hears more than one male voice.

“Is it true he’s here, Layla?”

“Wouldn’t mind seeing him.”

Jamal knows those voices, even after all these years. The Tannous brothers, from the neighborhood. He ran around with these guys. Hasn’t seen them since he was seventeen. Alfie was the wilder of the two, in trouble with the law more than once. Disturbing the peace. His brother Robbie was smarter. Last Jamal knew, Robbie was teaching PE at a local high school.

“You’ve heard wrong,” Layla says, and Jamal, peering around the partition, watches her go to close the door on them.

“People are saying he’s here,” Alfie persists.

“People are having you on, Alfie,” she says. “Go home.”

“Your mother told us, Layla,” Robbie says softly.

Jamal hears her swear under her breath.

“We’re not here for trouble,” Robbie says. “Just let him know that the old guy’s still coaching down at Haversham Park tonight. He’ll want to see him.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

“You’re looking good, Layla,” Alfie says.

“Don’t even think about it,” she mutters, shutting the door in his face.

She looks over to where Jamal’s standing and points to the door and he knows the boys are still on the landing outside. He shakes his head. Jamal isn’t here to get nostalgic about football and old friends. Although he understood everyone’s fear at the time, he still feels betrayed. The lads he grew up with were tight and they always vowed to watch one another’s backs, didn’t they? But his father’s bomb killed locals. Everyone was connected. They knew either the families of those who died or the family of the accused. It was seen as disrespect to the dead to be in any way associated with the Sarrafs.

After Layla leaves for work, he rings John Conlon. He first spoke to Conlon after the visit from Violette and Eddie. It was an awkward conversation but he reasoned Conlon would want to hear from the last person to see Eddie. Now he has in mind a visit, and when Conlon has no objection he makes his way down to the tube station. On the corner he passes a restaurant called Algiers Street Food, where a man stands outside.

“Sabah el Kheir,” the man says. He’s in his early forties, with a receding hairline and an impassive look on his face. Or he’s trying to come across as impassive.

“Morning,” Jamal murmurs in response. There’s no doubt in his mind that the man knows who he is. The waiting on the street corner. The certainty that he understands Arabic. There’s a compartment in Jamal’s head that’s always alert to the possibility of someone’s vengeance for what his father did. And now it’s also alert to the possibility that Ortley and the government are using neighborhood spies to keep an eye out for Violette and Eddie. In the London that he owned as a boy, Jimmy is a stranger as a man, overwhelmed by the crowds, paranoid at any recognition.

He takes the tube to Charing Cross and then the train to Tonbridge and arrives within the hour. He’s never met Eddie’s adoptive parents, but Anna Conlon was a letter writer. Every year on Eddie’s birthday she sent Jamal a card with a photo. She mentioned her husband often. John Conlon was a gravedigger and, Jamal suspects, less forgiving than his wife. The Conlons moved to Kent when Eddie came to them. Originally from Liverpool, they couldn’t bear to live in their old neighborhood after losing a son.