Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil(90)

“He was born twelve hours after his father died,” she went on. “I was allowed to keep him for forty-eight hours and in that time I gave him a history of our lives. It’s what Etienne had done with Violette the day she was born.”

She looked at Bish. “Samuel Grazier was the middleman. I still haven’t quite worked out whether I hate his guts or appreciate what he did. The Conlons met him when their Jimmy died in the bombing. It was his job to make sure the victims’ families were kept up to date on everything. Getting bodies returned. Arrests. That sort of thing. He got close to the Conlons. It was Grazier who made the exchange of letters between Anna and me possible. He made the adoption happen. He took Eddie out of my arms.”

She didn’t speak for a moment. Bish couldn’t help thinking what a pair he and Grazier were. Removing children from their mother.

“I had one stipulation,” she said, finding her voice again. “It was that neither Eddie nor the public could know who his birth family were. Anna agreed, but it didn’t stop her visiting me once a month. She brought picture books and a tape recorder and I’d spend hours reading the books into the tape, which she’d play back to our son. Eddie may have thought it was a stranger reading those books at the time, but the first thing he said to me today was, ‘I know your voice.’”

She was fighting back tears now.

“Anna continued to visit me right up to a few months before her death. It was a deep friendship that I will never forget. My fear now is that John Conlon is a man of few words and that darling boy seems to be the exact opposite. I can’t bear the idea of Eddie living in silence when he was so used to talking all the time with his mother. It’s what wakes me at the witching hour.”

The witching hour. How well he knew it.

To Bish, these people’s stories made sense of a cruel world. The story of Etienne LeBrac’s watch. Or the story of two sons.

“What else do you think of?” he asked. “At your witching hour.”

She seemed almost to welcome the question. “All the things I miss. Holding my daughter. All the talks we could have had when she came home from school. I miss my mother’s belly laugh, and the way my little brother would drop to his knees when he scored a goal. I miss talking to my best friend for hours on the phone, and I miss not having seen her four children grow up. I miss my husband’s lazy smile and I miss the sex and I miss wearing high-heeled shoes and beautiful things, and I miss using my brain and I miss the pride people used to feel in me…” Her shoulders slumped with a fatigue that was doubtless etched in her bones. It made Bish want to reach out. Hold her. Tell her he understood.

Instead he removed the image of Ahmed Khateb from his notebook. “Can you look at this photo again?” he asked. “He lived in North London in 2002. Could he be a threat to Violette?”

She stared at the photo. Shook her head. “I don’t know this man.”

There seemed nothing else to say, but he didn’t want to leave.

“How did the kids seem to you?” Bish asked.

“They’re tired.” He heard her voice crack. “I told her…to take Eddie home, where he belongs. But she’s a bit of a mess, my Violette is. Deep down she needs to feel convinced that Etienne didn’t desert her on that rock. That’s what happens when they stick you in a cupboard, lock you up. You start to believe all the lies and you don’t know what the truth is anymore. You don’t know who you are.”

“I can only help Violette if I know where she is,” he said. “If she’s working out how to get to Malham Cove, where could she be staying now? Would she be with Lelouche?”

“She wouldn’t tell me where she was staying. But it wasn’t with Bilal.” Noor took Bish’s pen and wrote down an address in his notebook. “He has a restaurant in Shepherd’s Bush. If Khateb was living in these parts in 2002, Bilal may have known him. He might also be able to tell you where Violette is, but I’m presuming she’s long gone from him.”

As he was walking to the door, she said, “When Eddie was sitting before me, Etienne’s spirit was dancing there between us. I felt it. Here.” She pressed a fist to her chest. “Make peace with your ex-wife’s life, Chief Inspector. Because her son will have some of your boy’s essence and it could bring you joy. How could it not?”



Officer Lorna Vasquez was at the desk when Bish asked for his belongings. “Looking forward to getting back to the mail room?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine her finding satisfaction working alongside Gray and Farrington.

She retrieved a form for him to sign. “Strange place to be, the mail room,” she finally said. “All that private business between people. All the lies and the promises. All the hate mail. All the marriage proposals.”

He signed and she handed him his phone. “But every month a letter arrives from Violette. Boy, can that kid write a letter. The kind any mother would want to receive. About the farm, the sunshine, the dog, the horse, the grandmother and grandfather, the crying, the hope. I know every lad she’s ever had a crush on, every kid who’s called her names. I know every confession she’s made to her mother, and every promise. Nothing delusional about that kid. I tell you what, Chief Inspector Ortley: if a girl like that looks you in the eye and hopes you won’t recognize who she is, you give her everything she wants. Because she deserves it.”