Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(78)

Yet there it was. A further descent.

“I black out for a minute and they call my next of kin? Haven’t they got better things to do?”

“You’ve been out for longer than that,” Noor said. “Gray’s not happy about the paperwork.”

She moved the ice pack on his temple and he flinched, grabbing for her hand to shift it.

“You hit your head on the table on the way down,” she said, and her voice was almost gentle. “And they didn’t call your mother, they called the home secretary’s office. The ubiquitous Samuel Grazier called your mother and your mother called here.”

His head made it hard to think clearly. “You know Grazier?”

“Intriguing woman, your mother,” she said, ignoring his question.

Bish tried to sit up too quickly. She pointed back to the floor. “You’re going to faint again. Try to believe me this time.”

“You spoke to my mother?” he asked. Had Noor LeBrac infiltrated all the women in his life?

“Apparently, Gray—he of the matching name and nature—wasn’t impressing her at all, so she asked to speak to the person in the room with the highest IQ.” Noor was enjoying herself. The slightest ghost of a smile on her face.

Beside her lay Grazier’s file. Also his wallet, opened, its contents displayed as if she had been going through them. There was nothing much in there. License. Couple of business cards. Forty quid. An Oyster card. Credit card. A photo of him with his children taken three years ago. The last shot taken of Stevie. Noor studied it and sighed with a depth of sadness and grief that played with his head. As everything with this woman did.

“People keep telling me I’ll get over it,” he found himself saying. “I don’t want to get over my son.”

She took one of his business cards and pocketed it before handing back the wallet. But not the file. “All those years ago I never got to read what the press scrounged up about me.”

The file contained not just interviews but clippings from the time of the bombing. He didn’t want her reading them. Even the more reputable newspapers had gone for the knee-jerk headlines and it was Noor who copped the worst. Long before she confessed, she’d already been found guilty by the media. As well as by him. They had often made a play on her name. “Noor,” meaning “light.” So they spoke of the darkness within.

She opened the file and removed an article. “‘Cold and driven,’” she read out.

He tried to retrieve it from her, but she held it away.

“A university colleague wrote that,” she said. “Angus Stephenson. But then again I won a university medal and he didn’t.” She scanned another article. “According to Anonymous, I was ‘the least maternal person in the Morphus Street mothers’ group.’” She gave a harsh laugh. “I remember the Anonymous type well. Insignificant twits.”

She looked at Bish angrily. “I loved my daughter to death but I hated the domestic part of it. More than anything, I hated talking about the domestic part of it.”

“Give it here,” he said, holding out a hand for the file. But she refused and he wasn’t in a position to fight her for it.

“‘A fanatic about everything Islam,’” she read on. “That came from a supposed schoolmate. What were you fanatical about when you were fourteen, Chief Inspector?”

It was the first personal question she had ever put to him. “Well…I wanted to join the seminary. I went to a Jesuit school and discovered St. Francis of Assisi. He was sort of the first environmentalist and I wanted to be him, hair shirt and all.”

“Really? I wore a hijab my entire third form,” she said. “I wanted to make a point about how Muslim women were treated after my mother was verbally abused at a park. My point was proven. On top of the discrimination I was subjected to then, eighteen years later someone labeled me a fanatic over it. No one labels a nun a fanatic for wearing a habit. Or a priest for wearing a collar.”

“Do you practice Islam?” he asked warily, and to his continuing surprise she answered him.

“On my terms.” She was emphatic. “I pray at sunrise and sunset because my brother does and it’s the only control we have over our lives together. I fast during Ramadan because Violette wanted to do it one year and Nasrene wouldn’t let her. It would have been hypocritical if I insisted that she be allowed to if I wasn’t going to join her. Now I do it for my mother, who did it year after year on her own.”

She took a moment to collect herself. “My mother practiced goodness. Part of that came from her religion. Giving to those less fortunate is one of the five pillars—the giving of alms. That’s what I practice, the aspects of both my parents’ religions that make sense to me as a human. My brother is the same.”

Now he couldn’t take his eyes away from her. From the passion and her fury.

“And you? How do you feel about Catholicism now?” she asked.

He grimaced. “I can’t get past the pedophile priests and brothers and cover-ups. I hate the hypocrisy of it. But probably the same as it was for you. My mother and father practiced the good side of it, and that was the part of my childhood I remember most. The teenage years weren’t so good. I was petrified that everything I did was a sin. That every time I masturbated, I’d be struck down.”