Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil

by Melina Marchetta

  Saffron finally angled Bee away from the grisly view and back to the bedroll. Close by, a boy of about fifteen sat slumped with his head on his knees. Bish crouched beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. The boy looked up.

  “I didn’t get to ring my mum,” he said, fighting the tears. He was holding a sheet of paper torn out of a wire-bound notebook. It had a list of names and dates of birth written in a neat hand. Some had phone numbers written alongside. Since Bee was identified as Sabina Ballyntine-Ortley, Bish figured the details had been copied from the passports. On the back of the sheet was a sketch of seating placements. Bish took it from the boy, relieved at someone’s initiative to be practical under such circumstances.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the boy.

  “Matty.”

  “Who wrote this, Matty?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Who has your passport?” he prompted.

  “Lucy. The shap. She was in charge of holding the passports since Dover.”

  Lucy the chaperone wasn’t as switched off as Bee thought if she’d taken the time to record these details.

  “Most of our phones are out there,” Matty said, pointing in the direction of the bomb site. “Someone had theirs on them and they passed it around so we could ring home, but it ran out of credit halfway down the list. Gorman won’t let us use his phone because he’s waiting for a call from the embassy.”

  Bish retrieved his phone. “What’s your mum’s number?”

  When the boy had finished speaking to his mother, Bish’s phone did the rounds. From the handwritten list, he worked out that if a kid had contacted home he was to tick his or her name. Those who had been taken to hospital were marked with an H. There were seven names marked “Unaccountable.”

  He saw a tick next to Eddie Conlon’s name. Bee had seemed concerned about him and would be relieved to hear he’d contacted a parent. Bish noticed the date of birth beside his name: Eddie had turned thirteen in February. When Bee had mentioned Eddie, Bish got a sense they were the same age, not four years apart.

  “Chief Inspector Ortley.”

  Russell Gorman, the teacher from Strood, was coming towards him. There was a fevered look in his eyes.

  “The locals think they’ve got total control.”

  “Well, Calais and Boulogne do belong to them,” Bish reminded him. “Who have you been dealing with here?”

  “A local. Capitaine Attal. I’ve been letting him think he’s in charge until someone arrived,” Gorman said.

  Bish was about to correct him. He wasn’t here to investigate. The Metropolitan Police didn’t send their officers to France to investigate a bombing. But a cry at the entrance made him turn, and he saw a couple embracing a pair of identical twins who looked about Bee’s age.

  “I know who did it,” Gorman said. “Bad blood,” he added.

  “What are you saying?” Bish asked.

  “We’ll talk in a moment,” the chaperone whispered, before hurrying to introduce himself to the newly arrived parents.

  Bish went back to the handwritten sheet. He didn’t want to look further down the page. Didn’t want to see a phone number penciled beside an unaccountable because then he’d feel obliged to ring a parent. But he did look, committing the names to memory. And there on the list he saw one he couldn’t easily forget. It seemed unfathomable. It stunned him, but he dared not let himself think it was anything more than sheer coincidence.

  Violette LeBrac Zidane.

  2

  The moment Bish stepped outside, it was easy to see who was in charge: Capitaine Olivier Attal. The French police captain looked like a prizefighter. Ugly as one. A nose broken too many times to count, from the looks of things. A bear of a man in both shape and facial hair. Attal had insisted that all the anglais stay until he’d interviewed everyone who’d been on board the bus, even if it took all night.

  More parents had arrived from across the Channel, at first hysterical, then relieved, and then guilty at their relief. The rumor was that Julius McEwan was dead. He was a history teacher at a school in Dover and the chaperone the kids most relied on. They seemed indifferent to their youngest shap, Lucy Gilies, a twentysomething reading history at Cambridge. Bee claimed Lucy was prone to hysterics and had to be sedated after the bomb went off, which made Bish question whether she’d written the list of names after all. That had left the kids at the mercy of their least favorite shap, Gorman, who’d earned the nickname Vermin. Since the blast, he’d spent most of his time on the phone with the embassy, and this was known because all he seemed to say was, “I’m on the phone with the embassy.”

  Bish watched Attal exchange a word with one of his officers, who was labeling items around the bomb site. Suddenly the two were staring in Bish’s direction.

  Even across this distance he knew he was under scrutiny, so he faced the inevitable and made his way towards them.

  “L’inspecteur en chef?” Attal asked with more than a hint of hostility.

  Before Bish could introduce himself, Attal cut him off.

  “Not need d’inspecteur en chef anglais.”

  Bish shook his head. Pointed back to the hall. “My fille. Sabina.”

  “Passport?” the man demanded.

  Bish bristled but retrieved his passport from his pocket and handed it to Attal, who studied it.

  “Bashir Ortley.”

  Bish wasn’t interested in explaining his family history right now.

  The capitaine pointed back to the bomb site. “Vous connaissez les noms?”

  Bish shook his head, confused. He had a very basic understanding of French. Didn’t know what the man was asking, and contemplated a search for Saffron, who could translate.

  “Les morts?”

  Dead. Did Bish know who the dead were? He was about to shake his head but remembered the list in his pocket. He handed it to Attal, pointing to the names beside “Unaccountable” and then showing him the roughly sketched seating plan.

  The capitaine studied the page and pointed to two names, their ages, their genders. Bish had to congratulate the scribe, whoever it was, for going into such detail. Attal was making a match. Two males. One aged in his thirties, the other fifteen. A student named Michael Stanley and a teacher named Julius McEwan. Bish’s heart sank. With their names came the thought of family, friends, schoolmates, colleagues, teammates, neighbors…

  Bish saw Attal stiffen as he scanned further down the list.

  “Merde.”

  That word Bish did understand, and he knew exactly what Attal was referring to. Couldn’t agree more. Bee’s tour of Normandy had included the granddaughter of Louis Sarraf, the man responsible for killing twenty-three people, and himself, in the Brackenham bombing over thirteen years ago. Violette LeBrac Zidane’s mother, Noor LeBrac, confessed to making the bomb and was now serving a life sentence.

  “Où est-elle?” Attal pointed to the name. Repeated the question.

  Bish shrugged. A universal gesture. He had no idea where she was, but as a copper he understood what Attal was thinking. Violette Zidane could have been the intended target of this morning’s carnage. The girl needed to be found sooner rather than later. Bish and Attal struggled through their language barrier for a couple more minutes, until they both gave up. The only fact Bish was able to comprehend was that the body at the steps of the other bus belonged to a Spanish girl.

  Bish went in search of Gorman or Lucy Gilies, hoping they could reveal the whereabouts of Violette Zidane. He knew that one of them would have to identify the bodies of Michael Stanley and Julius McEwan, and that once the embassy staff arrived, the families of the dead could be notified. He hoped this would all happen before those families came looking for their loved ones. Among the parents who had already turned up, one couple had been sent to the Boulogne hospital where their injured son had been taken. Still, better that than Attal’s temporary headquarters on site and waiting for the right person to tell them the devastating truth.

  Bish glimpsed his
mother, sneaking a fag behind one of the cabins.

  “I can’t believe you’re still smoking,” he said, taking the packet of cigarettes from her and removing one to light up. He could see that the day had taken its toll on her. With one chaperone dead and the other two unreliable, Saffron had made it her job to meet and greet any parent arriving from across the Channel. It was what she was accustomed to. Saffron Ortley was an old hand at taking care of households and dire situations in foreign countries. She’d just been rubbish at looking after her teenage son.

  “You should rest,” he said.

  Saffron shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave parents at the mercy of Gorman. Have you met him? Can I quote Bee and call him an idiot?”

  “Feel free.”

  “You’ve got to do something, Bish. These people are distraught. They want to take their children home.”

  “The authorities here need to collect as much information now as possible,” he said. “If they let everyone go, they’ll never get to the bottom of what happened this morning.”

  Saffron nudged him and pointed in the direction of the recreation hall. “Lucy Gilies.”

  The young chaperone was sobbing hysterically in the arms of a girl no more than fourteen. The poor kid was looking around, lost and confused.

  Bish and his mother approached and sent the girl back inside, leading Lucy away to the pool. Attal had just begun to allow some of the press in, and Bish didn’t want the world media reporting that the British chaperone was a basket case.

  “Lucy, can you tell me about Violette Zidane?” Bish asked.

  Her crying intensified. Lucy knew exactly who Violette was.

  “Russell—Mr. Gorman—came searching for the passports that were in my backpack. Someone must have grabbed it on the bus, because it was there in the recreation hall. I don’t remember taking it. I don’t remember much after the explosion.”

  “So you didn’t record the names and details on the list that did the rounds?”

  “No. Perhaps Mr. Gorman. He ended up with the passports, and he contacted the embassy and read out all our names straight from them.”

  Lucy nodded, as if getting clarity for the first time. “Within minutes he got a call back. Someone had recognized Violette’s name. Her tour documentation has her down as Violette Zidane. But her passport includes ‘LeBrac.’”

  “Where is she now?” Bish asked.

  Lucy was taking deep breaths, and Saffron placed an arm around her.

  “I’ll be fine,” Lucy said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve had something to take the edge off. They were a horrid lot, the kids. Violette. All of them.”

  Bish and his mother exchanged a look.

  “We never met any of Violette’s people at Dover,” Lucy said. “Most of the older kids were unaccompanied, except for Bee. Violette said her family had moved to Deal last autumn. She had all the right documentation, sent from there. But they were fakes. According to Mr. G’s contact at the embassy, she lives in Australia.”

  “But where is she now, Lucy?”

  Her blubbering resumed. Bish’s ex-wife had once told him that a male being critical of a crying woman was an act of misogyny, so he tried to be patient. “Have you any idea why she’d lie to go on the trip? Traveling across the world for an eight-day tour of Normandy isn’t exactly on top of a teenage wish list.”

  She shook her head. “This was my first time chaperoning,” she admitted. “Mac—Julius McEwan—said that once in a while you experience a group that clashes.”

  “This year’s?” Bish asked.

  “Yes. The ringleader was expelled from one of those bluecoat private boarding schools for cheating. Charlie Crombie. He’s a depraved little beast. It’s quite ironic that he’s the son of a reverend. The kids all seemed to relinquish power to him.”

  Lucy took another tissue from Saffron and dabbed at her eyes. “The thing is…Violette got herself a reputation with Charlie Crombie.” Her voice had dropped, as if after such a day the worst thing that could happen was a tarnished reputation.

  “They had nothing to do with each other during the day, but…Of course it was forbidden to be in the cabin of someone of the opposite sex at night, but it’s hard to keep an eye on all of them, and they were a sneaky lot.”

  “Violette and this Crombie boy were an item?”

  “I don’t know what they were,” Lucy said. “Violette spent most of the days with Eddie Conlon.”

  “Romantically linked?” Saffron asked.

  Bish hoped not, seeing as Eddie was thirteen and Violette seventeen.

  “I don’t believe so. Mr. G thinks they hit it off because they looked the same sort of foreign, but Mac reckons…reckoned it was grief. Said he could pick it. Eddie lost his mum to cancer last year.”

  And Violette had lost her father young and grown up without a mother. That was enough common ground.

  “What do you mean by ‘same sort of foreign’?” he asked.

  “Eddie looks Mediterranean or Middle Eastern,” Lucy said.

  “Was my granddaughter drawn to them?” Saffron said. “Doesn’t she look the same sort of foreign?”

  Lucy thought about it a moment, as if it had never occurred to her.

  “Is your wife Middle Eastern, Chief Inspector Ortley?”

  “No, my father was,” Saffron answered.

  “I’m so sorry—did I offend you by that term?” Lucy’s tears were welling up again. “I’m not one of those people who judge by skin color, and I sound as if I am.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about, Lucy dear,” Saffron said, but her tone had cooled slightly.

  They headed back towards the recreation hall. The bomb site was now crawling with national and regional police and a group of useless-looking suits. Attal seemed far from impressed, and Bish could understand why. A bunch of officials stomping on evidence was the last thing they needed.

  “The French policeman’s daughter was on one of the other buses,” Lucy told them. “The Pas de Calais football tour. They used school-aged junior coaches. Marianne Attal was one of them.” Lucy leaned towards Bish, as if Attal could hear her at this distance. “What I would call a piece of work—strutting around as if she owned France itself.”

  They watched as Attal almost came to blows with a photographer trying to take a photo of what lay inside the tents surrounding the bus.

  “We seem to have done the same route as the French bus, but in reverse.”

  Lucy’s phone rang and she cried out, as if it had burnt a hole in her pocket.

  “You’re going to have to pull yourself together, Lucy,” Saffron said, losing some of her patience with the girl. She took the phone from her and walked away to answer it.

  Bish reached to retrieve the handwritten list from his pocket but realized it was with Attal.

  “Can you remember any of those taken to the hospital with minor injuries?” he asked Lucy.

  She nodded. “Amy Jacobs.”

  Bish found the number of the hospital and rang it. He was put on with Amy’s mother, spoke to her briefly, and then asked for one of the embassy staff. A woman named Carmody warmed to him after he gave her a quick but thorough rundown on what was taking place at the campground, and in return she told him they were dealing with ten injured kids. Four were serious. Two had lost limbs and one had lost an eye. Prepare for the worst, she told him, and Bish couldn’t get those words out of his head. He learnt that more embassy staff were on their way from Paris to the campground.

  “SIS will no doubt be there,” Carmody said. “I hope our people arrive first. Intelligence aren’t exactly personable.”

  Bish couldn’t imagine Attal escorting British intelligence around, but figured they’d find their way in. He hung up just as they reached the veranda of the recreation hall, where a cluster of older teenagers stood.

  Lucy nudged him. “Charlie Crombie,” she murmured.

  “Is it true what they’re saying about Violette?” asked a beefy rugby type. A bit of a
stupid look on his face. Bish was disappointed that Bee was part of something that had put this Crombie character in charge.

  A journalist from Sky News was hovering too close, desperate for any morsel. Someone had no doubt leaked Violette Zidane’s identity.

  “You’re worried about her, are you?” Bish said to the boy. He couldn’t help himself.

  “She was a slag,” the blockhead said. “I wasn’t going to have Crombie’s crumbs.” He elbowed the boy standing beside him, who didn’t react.

  Bish was surprised. This was Charlie Crombie? When Bish was at school, thugs had looked like thugs. Not like this scrawny little bastard with ginger hair that needed a good wash. There was something vacant about Crombie’s stare. Insidious. Over the years Bee had hinted that she might not be interested in boys. Ever. Staring at these lads, all Bish could think was, Thank Christ.

  “That’s an ugly word, Mr. Kennington,” Lucy Gilies said to the first boy, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice. “If I ever hear you refer to a girl in such a way again, your parents will be hearing from me.”

  “My parents would be calling her a slag too.”

  The others around him laughed nervously. But not Crombie. “Is it true what they’re saying about Violette?” he demanded. “Who she is?”

  “So Violette didn’t tell you anything about herself?” Bish said.

  Crombie shrugged. “Why would she? We were just shagging.”

  The girl standing beside Crombie shifted to drape herself over him. Charlie had already moved on. Nothing like a rumor of being a terror suspect to kill a relationship.

  Gorman stepped out from inside the recreation hall. The man seemed to be in his element. Bish had met his type before. Disasters gave them purpose, and Gorman wasn’t quite finished playing his part in this tragedy.

  “Could you assist me in a matter, Chief Inspector Ortley?”

  Charlie Crombie disengaged himself from the girl’s tongue in his ear, his eyes fixed on Bish.

  “You’re Ballyntine-Ortley’s father?”