“It’s Ms. Bayat to you, and what I think, Elliot, is that deep down you want to fuck me, but you’ve seen photos of Jamal Sarraf so you know I don’t go for pale middle-aged men with little dicks.”
There’s the hint of a smile on Chief Inspector Ortley’s face.
“Now get out,” she tells them.
Phillip Grayson is in her office before the men have reached the lift. “What was that about?”
Layla dismisses the question with a wave of her hand. “They can’t afford us.”
Phillip offered her a job when she was straight out of university and competing with candidates whose connections and qualifications were better than hers. Layla never quite guessed why he chose her, but she worked hard enough to ensure that he never regretted his decision.
“Are you ready for next week?” he asks, referring to the interview for junior partner.
“I’ve been ready since you interviewed me eight years ago.”
The purse of his lips means she’s going to get a reprimand.
“When you’re up in front of the rest of the partners, sweeten the tone,” he says.
She tries to smother the anger. Fails, like always.
“Did you give Luke the same advice, Phillip?” she asks. “Or Damien?”
“Don’t turn this into accusations of sexism,” Phillip says, a flash of irritation crossing his face.
Layla feels as if everything is slipping through her fingers. If it isn’t the fact that she’s a woman, it’s that she once lived next door to the Brackenham Four. A week before the most important interview of her life, she doesn’t need two men in suits screwing with her head.
Phillip stops on his way out the door. “Tell me that bombing business with the LeBrac girl is not going to touch this firm, Layla.”
She gives him a smile. She has a killer of a smile, she’s always been told. “Whatever you’ve heard about my family and hers is doubtless exaggeration and fabrication,” she lies. “My sister and I can hardly remember living next door to those people.”
One thing was always certain to the people of the Brackenham council estate: the greatest war in the Arab world took place on Uxbridge Road back in the 1970s, between two women, Mariam Bayat and Aziza Sarraf. It wasn’t over religion or territory or water rights or the fact that they were born on opposite sides of Beirut, or that one was married to an Iranian and the other to a French-Egyptian. It started with their firstborn children, Jocelyn and Noor. Who was more beautiful? Who spoke first? Who was meant for greater things? Fifteen years later, when both mothers coincidentally gave birth to their second children, the Sarrafs won by having a boy. From the very beginning, Layla was the lesser in her mother’s eyes. Not so much when compared to Jocelyn—well, anyone was lesser than Jocelyn—but compared to Jamal Sarraf. Layla didn’t stand a chance alongside him. When five-year-old Jimmy showed signs of being the estate’s football prodigy, Aziza’s boasting was drowned out by Mariam’s declaration that her elder daughter was the greatest beauty Brackenham had ever seen. Photos of Jimmy holding up trophies that weighed more than he did were stuck all over the community notice board in the foyer of the main building, only to be replaced by photographs of Jocelyn being presented with a bouquet of flowers by the ex–Duchess of York for her work with the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, or of Jocelyn’s portrait, painted by an award-winning artist as part of his Women of Persia exhibition.
The thing the two mothers couldn’t control was the deep connection between all their children. Jocelyn and Noor adored each other, not once allowing their mothers’ rivalry to get in the way of their friendship. When their younger siblings were born within the same month, the girls believed it cemented something special. They were doting older sisters, Jocelyn the maternal, Noor the more practical.
But what turned out to be even less controllable was the bond between Jimmy and Layla. They were raised mostly by their semi-mad mothers and adoring older sisters, and not a day went by that they didn’t see each other. Until Jimmy went up north to meet with football scouts and tour with the England Under-17s team. Three months later, when Layla stood on the platform at Euston Station watching her best friend get off the train, she hadn’t expected the strange rush of weirdness. All their lives, Jimmy had looked younger than her, but now there was such confidence in his walk. And that look on his face. Despite his newfound maturity, he still managed to blurt out, “Fuck, you’re hot,” in a way that had them both flushed and refusing to look at each other the rest of the way home. From that day on, everyone knew that Jimmy and Layla were forever.
When Jimmy was finally released after the Brackenham bombing, Layla was waiting for him outside Belmarsh Prison. He didn’t walk towards her with a swagger and he didn’t have that “Fuck, you’re hot” look on his face. She should have turned and walked away then, because he wasn’t the Jimmy she’d known all her life. But after he traveled with his uncle to Alexandria and they wouldn’t let him back into England, Layla made the trip across the Channel every weekend.
“My shrink says that you and I probably romanticize who we were when we were kids,” she told him on the last night they were together, in the shoe closet he called home down by the Calais port. The sex was rough, and Layla hadn’t signed up for rough. “Most people romanticize the first person they sleep with. She says we do because we’ve never coped with the reality of who we are now.”
“Why the fuck do you need a shrink, Layla?”
He’d lose it over anything those days.
“You need to speak to someone, Jimmy,” she said, getting out of bed.
“And tell them what?” he shouted, suddenly standing over her. “That I spent my eighteenth birthday in jail and got fucked up the arse? You think talking to a shrink’s going to make it all go away?”
Back home, she went off the rails for a while. Got herself a reputation with the local boys. Everyone knew she’d been with Jamal Sarraf after he got out of prison. By the time she was nineteen she felt as though she had lived a lifetime.
“Shame on you, Layla,” her sister said one day while they were sitting in the park, watching her niece play. “For wasting your brain. Noor’s stuck in that prison wasting hers, but she doesn’t have a choice. You’ve got all the choices in the world.”
So Layla applied for university, and life with the Sarrafs and LeBracs was forgotten. A boyfriend or two, but nothing serious enough to get in the way of her work. She was ambitious and she wanted the junior partnership, and she worked hard for it.
And now a second bomb has gone off in their lives, and Layla has a feeling that everything is already heading downhill fast.
12
Outside on Fetter Lane, Bish walked ahead of Elliot. Surrounding him were buildings housing state-of-the-art courtrooms that reeked of multimillion-dollar cases. London had outgrown him. It was for people with a burning desire. People like Layla Bayat and those young ambitious faces that had surrounded him in the lift, talking apps and tweets. He felt a little man in a big city and it frightened him to the core. Had he reached an age at which he no longer had access to the riches of the greater world? At his work in the Met, at least there was a place for authority. Seniority. Until his suspension, there was respect for a man who’d worked hard for longer than some of them had been alive. Bish had no idea who he was without his work, and nothing reminded him of that more than standing amid the city’s high achievers.
Elliot was at his heels, further confirmation of the regression of Bish’s life. Six years sharing a dorm weren’t enough? What gods had Bish angered to have him and Elliot sharing space more than three decades later?
“Much appreciated if you’d give me a heads-up on when you’re going to threaten people,” Bish said.
“You’ve spent too much time behind a desk, Ortley. You’re getting soft.”
“I wasn’t the one identified with a little dick,” Bish said.
“And I’m not the one whose wife ran off with the school principal.”
Bish refused to feel held back by the Nokia brick he carried. He knew plenty of dumb people with smartphones.
Elliot hung up. “Grazier’s on his way up north and can’t deal with this—Violette’s made contact with her grandparents. The Australian Federal Police have taken their time sending us the recording. Grazier wants to know if there’s anything of importance in it.”
A few moments later, Bish heard the alert and watched Elliot retrieve the attachment. He tapped on a link and they waited, only to hear Arabic being spoken.
“Shit. Fuck. Bum. We’re going to have to wait till the translator gets to it.” Elliot stopped at a filthy black Prius, retrieved a parking fine from the wipers, and stuffed it in his pocket just as his phone rang again.
“It’s a no go for the time being with the—” he began. Elliot listened, then he paled. “Are they sure—” He removed the phone from his ear and glared at it. “Fuck.”
“Battery dead?” Bish asked. “Not so smart after all, then?”
There was no comeback. Elliot went to open the door but it refused to budge. He kicked it. Once. Twice. “Fucking kids. Fucking fucking kids.”
Bish glanced around. They had an audience. Elliot was a likely candidate for road rage, but Bish knew that whatever had set him off had nothing to do with a stuck door and a dead phone battery.
“What’s going on, Elliot?” he asked quietly once they were in the car, Bish having first shoved a week’s worth of fast-food containers and coffee cups off the seat. He wanted to remind Elliot that Prius drivers were meant to be helping the environment. “What’s happened to those kids?”
Elliot stared at his hands on the steering wheel. After a moment he turned on the ignition and it spluttered.
“The French border police picked up a body in the Channel. Young, female. It’s all we know.”
Bish’s heart hammered. “Attal,” he said, fumbling for his phone. He found the Frenchman’s number and messaged Violette LeBrac?
They sat in silence. Five minutes later, Bish’s phone beeped a response. He showed it to Elliot, who read it and winced.
“He wants you to meet him at the morgue on Boulevard des Justes.”
13
The body in the Channel made the news within the hour. Bish was numb as he drove to Dover. There was something about Violette LeBrac Zidane that had seemed unbreakable. Attal had also messaged that the French border police were searching for a second body. Eddie’s father had been contacted and Downing Street wanted confirmation as soon as possible.
Saffron rang just as he was driving onto the ferry. “We saw the news,” she said quietly. “Bee’s here for a couple of days.”
“How’s she reacted?”
“She’s on her i-whatever. Claims she hardly knew the girl.”
Regardless, Bee had spent seven days sharing Violette LeBrac’s room. She had to be feeling something. Was his daughter in shutdown, or was it an apathy that bordered on amorality?
“That poor woman,” Saffron said.
“Eddie Conlon’s mother died last year,” Bish said. “Small mercies.”
“I meant Noor LeBrac.”
“She’s a terrorist.”
“But still a mother.”
“Tell that to the mothers of those who died in Brackenham Street. And Bee’s upstairs on Snapchat or Facebook or whatever the fuck’s in fashion, not giving a shit.”
“Maybe that’s Bee’s way of coping,” Saffron said. “You spent every moment of your school holidays with earphones on, listening to that depressing Jones band. It made me want to slit my wrists.”
“The Smiths,” he corrected.
Attal met Bish at the entrance to the morgue attached to the Centre Hospitalier de Calais. The Frenchman ground out his cigarette and raised his chin in acknowledgment.
“A girl,” he said in his thick accent. “Young. Arabe.”
“ID?”
Attal shook his head. He shoved the door open and they went inside.
“L’oncle. He is coming.”
The mother. The uncle. Regardless of everything the Sarrafs and LeBracs had done, Bish couldn’t get the families out of his head. Eddie Conlon’s father, Violette’s uncle and grandparents. If it was Violette lying in this morgue, Bish was grateful that he wouldn’t be the one to have to tell them.
They stepped into a room and an attendant pulled open a drawer. The last time Bish had been in a morgue was to identify his son’s drowned body. He’d known for sure it was him. There’d been no room for hope, only the sort of certainty that could kill a man.
Attal waited just behind him. The capitaine had never interviewed Violette. Bish knew he’d hardly had a good look at her, except in the photos from the trip that the media were using.
Bish studied the girl lying on the slab, his stomach churning. An overwhelming sense of relief came over him, mixed with a sickening sadness. He shook his head.
“Again,” the Frenchman ordered. “Look again.”
Bish tugged at his own hair. “Violette. Light.” He pointed to his shoulder. “Up to here.” This girl’s hair was longer and darker.
They heard shouting outside the room and exchanged a look. Attal walked out with Bish close behind. In the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor they saw Jamal Sarraf hurrying towards them, his presence filling the narrow space.
“Where is she?”
Bish heard the anguish. Felt it. Attal stepped in front of Sarraf, who shoved past him. It took both Bish and Attal to hold him against the wall.
“Ce n’est pas Violette.”
But Sarraf refused to listen to Attal.
“It’s not her!” Bish said.
Sarraf shrugged free. “I need to see for myself.”
When Bish knew his son was dead, he had still needed to see. He’d needed to see so he wouldn’t believe that Stevie was there at every corner, every doorway, in the backseat of his car, at the dinner table, in his room, at his school, on the football field.
So they let Sarraf go and he followed the attendant into the room. Bish waited in the stark white corridor with Attal.
“Investigation?” Bish asked, hoping it sounded like the French equivalent.
Attal shook his head, a look of bitterness on his face.
“DGSI,” Attal said. “La sécurité intérieure.”
From what Bish knew, the DGSI was French intelligence answering to the Minister of the Interior. That meant Attal was no longer handling the case, and was here today only because dead refugees in the Channel fell under his jurisdiction.
Bish thought of the makeshift camps along the port of Calais, and wondered if the girl in the morgue belonged to anyone in them. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister or niece or neighbor. Someone who had given her father grief. Someone who believed that swimming over a treacherous Channel would lead to a better life. Now Bish wanted to find this girl’s people. He wanted to find Violette LeBrac. All of them. Because who were they if they couldn’t protect their children?
Outside the hospital, Sarraf stumbled to the side of the gravel driveway and threw up in a flower bed. Bish and Attal watched through a cloud of Attal’s cigarette smoke as Sarraf stood up straight, took a deep breath.
Attal put out his cigarette and went to leave, then changed his mind, turned back, and demanded something of Sarraf.
Sarraf shook his head. “Dites-moi pourquoi?” he wanted to know.
The only word Bish understood was “why.” “What’s he’s asking?” he said to Sarraf. He looked at Attal. Although the Frenchman was reluctant to speak, he didn’t walk away.
“He wants to know if I’ve heard of a man named Ahmed Khateb,” Sarraf said. “An Algerian.
He was the driver of Attal’s daughter’s bus.”
Bish looked back at Attal. “Pourquoi?”
Attal hesitated before responding.
“Because Khateb’s nowhere to be found,” Sarraf translated.
The French captain walked off to his car. Sitting on the hood was a tall girl around Bee’s age, all lanky arms and legs. Marianne Attal, Bish guessed. Rust-colored hair untidily pulled back in a ponytail. Prominent facial features. She wore denim shorts, cowboy boots, and attitude. When her father approached she fired out something rapid at him. It gave Bish some relief that the French were getting as much of a hammering from their kids as he was. Until she jumped from the hood and reached her father, linking her arm in his.
France 1. England 0.
The girl got into the car, staring back at Bish with a good healthy glare of dislike. She looked shifty. Bish had received two warnings about her so far. Did she know something about the bombing? Was her father covering up for her? Was that the reason for Attal’s being taken off the case?
Walking back to his own car, Bish felt a firm grip on his upper arm. Sarraf.
“Make sure someone tells my sister it’s not Violette.”
Bish tried to shrug free. “Someone will,” he said.
“No. You make sure,” Sarraf said forcefully. “We made a pact. If something ever happened to Violette, we’d end it.”
Bish felt a shudder go through him. Hadn’t he made the same vow on his way to Calais last week? He finally pulled free and got into his car, but Sarraf was hammering at the window.
“You make sure someone tells Noor that Violette’s not the dead girl in the water.”
When Grazier rang for an update, Bish told him, “A name’s come up. Ahmed Khateb, driver of the French bus.”
“Motive?”
“Attal hasn’t let on much, but it seems Khateb’s disappeared.”
“Then we’ve got a suspect?”
“Looks like it.”
“Anything else?”
“Sarraf wants you to let his sister know it wasn’t Violette’s body, sooner rather than later.”
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil Page 9
