Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil

by Melina Marchetta

  Bish put up a hand. “Can we leave out what he says? Just this one time.” It seemed to him that whenever David Maynard spoke, his words were quoted and spun into pure gold. David Maynard’s take on education. David Maynard’s views on youth. David Maynard was the most quoted wife stealer in England.

  “Okay, I won’t go into what David says, although he did say hello.”

  Sod off, David.

  “Noor LeBrac made mention of something and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.” Rachel was searching through the file with one hand and sipping her tea with the other. “She told me that all those years ago, she’d given a doctor a letter to send to me.”

  “To you?”

  “She was looking for a human rights lawyer. This doctor apparently recommended me.”

  “You never mentioned Noor LeBrac contacting you back then,” he said. When they were married he had always known what she was working on, just as she knew what was going on in his world.

  “Well, she did, but too much was happening and I must have forgotten to tell you,” she said. “It was two weeks before Stevie was born. I passed on all my cases to Robert Houghton and forgot about it. Forgot about her.”

  She removed a letter from an envelope with writing on it, still pristine. Bish couldn’t believe she had spent the day traveling from Ashford to Holloway to her chambers and then here to the Docklands.

  “She was guilty, Rach. She confessed.”

  “This letter is logical, smart, and convincing,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “And on that basis you believe what, that she’s innocent?” he asked with disbelief. “Rachel, she has a copious amount of degrees from Cambridge. You’d hope for the sake of British education that she does know how to string a sentence together.”

  “It’s unbelievable to me that the person who wrote this letter then confessed the very next day.”

  She pushed the file towards him. Another volume on the subject of Noor LeBrac to sift through.

  “I’m not investigating Noor LeBrac’s case,” he said firmly. “I’m trying to work out where those kids are.”

  Rachel glanced over his shoulder towards the pantry. Her way of hinting that her sweet tooth was about to make her narky if she didn’t get a fix.

  “I’ve only got Scotch Finger shortbread,” he confessed.

  “Buttered, please.”

  “It’ll go straight to your arse.”

  “Fuck, you’re cruel for saying that to a pregnant woman.”

  He couldn’t help smiling and went searching through the pantry for the biscuits.

  “Robert Houghton jumped ship a couple of months later for the corporate world,” Rachel said, “and that was that. But what he collected before he left is interesting.”

  “Rach—”

  “I can’t do this now, for obvious reasons. But there’s something here, Bish. Please don’t ignore it. If not for me, then do it for Bee. Because whenever she’s locked in her room with that iPad, I think she’s looking for those kids. I think she’s worried rotten that something’s going to happen to them, and I think the only way to get Violette LeBrac off the streets is to sort out why she’s on the run. I honestly don’t believe it’s because she’s scared of an arrest.”

  Bish thought of the message Violette sent her mother.

  “LeBrac received a postcard from her. A cryptic message about telling the truth and shaming the devil.”

  Rachel was nodding. Bish could tell she had already thought this through.

  “What if this kid’s trying to prove her mother’s innocence?” she said.

  He finally sat down and she seemed to take that as a sign that he was ready to listen. Perhaps he was.

  “I’ve done a bit of research of my own,” she went on, indicating the top left-hand corner of the envelope, where the doctor’s name and personal address appeared on a gold-colored sticker. “I searched everywhere for this Dr. Owen Walden. It’s not such a common name, and the only one I could find was out at St. Therese’s. When I rang they told me he retired five years ago and now runs a B and B in Rye.”

  Bish went to speak but she stopped him.

  “Bish, just read what’s in this file,” she said, “and you’ll see that the arrest of the Sarraf family would never have stood up at trial. Whoever was in charge at the time found a way to get around one. They were desperate to keep the public happy. Elections were won on the back of those arrests. It would have been humiliating for Blair’s people to admit they got it wrong.”

  “Do we have to blame everything on Blair?”

  “No. Just the war on terror, and Iraq, and having his head stuck up Bush’s arse.”

  “Rachel, let me repeat yet again: LeBrac confessed.”

  “Stop calling her that,” she said, irritated.

  “What the hell am I supposed to call her? She won’t let me use her first name. You won’t let me use her last.”

  She ignored his question and pointed once more to the file. “It’s all in there. The week of the bombing, she handed in her PhD. I don’t know too many people who have the time to make a bomb, complete a doctoral thesis in molecular biology, and hold down a full-time job when they live with their extended family and have to take their mother to chemo as well as bring up a child.”

  She looked at him, waiting for a reaction.

  “Listening,” he muttered.

  This time she smiled. “The single flimsy piece of evidence they had was the dynamite on the soles of her shoes. In her letter she claims that her husband, Etienne, had spoken to experts who confirmed the high probability of explosives being on the shoes of anyone living with the bomber. Anyone who walked into that flat. That was the key evidence at the time of her arrest, Bish!”

  “And the fact that she’d threatened the manager of the supermarket the week before,” Bish reminded her. “‘Your time will come,’ she was heard to say. And the fact that she wouldn’t let the police into the house without a search warrant, and when they returned with one it was obvious someone in that house had burnt evidence. And the fact that they found residue from the bomb in the boot of her car.”

  Rachel was shaking her head. “All circumstantial. It should have gone to trial, that’s all I’m saying.” She had a look in her eyes that Bish recognized, and he took a childish pleasure in knowing that David Maynard wouldn’t. Maynard had never seen her hungry for a legal case.

  Bish relented and took the file.

  He walked her down to the tube station, knowing Maynard would be waiting for her at Ashford, and it made him melancholy. His hand almost tempted to take hers. It seemed the natural thing to do, and because Rachel was more evolved than Bish, she took his. The next time he saw her, she’d likely have had the baby. How strange it would sound to hear Bee speak about a brother who wasn’t Stevie. Who wasn’t theirs.

  He stood with her on the platform in silence until the tube came.

  “Would it seem odd to say that I want you to have a place in this kid’s life?” she asked.

  Bish could hardly be a player in his own life, let alone another man’s child’s. He pressed a kiss to her brow. “Text me when you get home,” he said.

  Robert Houghton’s file on Noor LeBrac contradicted the one provided by Grazier, so Bish set down the identifiable truths. Fact: the Brackenham Four spent twenty-eight days of incarceration at Paddington Green police station, in underground cells built especially for terror suspects. Fact: they were imprisoned separately, in twelve-foot-square cells with no windows. Fact: the new post–September 11 terrorism laws allowed the government to hold them without a hearing or trial for as long as Downing Street wanted. Fact: they were then transferred to prisons in four different counties and didn’t see one another again until six months later, when Noor LeBrac confessed. Fact: Noor LeBrac’s confession came one day after Etienne LeBrac’s suicide.

  As Rachel had pointed out, Noor’s letter wasn’t written by someone who was about to confess. It told the story of the family�
��s last days together in Brackenham. Written in a way that Bish found strangely haunting, it wasn’t so much a letter outlining a case as a plea for help. Well into the night, something niggled at him, and he searched his own notes on the Boulogne bombing. Searched Facebook pages, interviews, notes on phone conversations with parents and students. He googled the date of the confession. Found nothing. Went back to the letter Noor had sent to Rachel’s chambers thirteen years ago. Who was Owen Walden in all this? Bish found something online about Walden delivering a paper in Nova Scotia in 2005 on fibroids in the womb during pregnancy. A strange sort of alarm bell went off in Bish’s head as he scrolled to the end of the PDF for a brief biography and realized that St. Therese’s Hospital, where Walden had been head of obstetrics, was four miles away from Foston Hall Prison, in Derbyshire, where LeBrac had been transferred after Paddington Green. Bish started his search again, sifting through every single document he had in his possession. And there it was. On that faithful handwritten list of student names from the day of the bombing.

  Eddie Conlon had been born on the same day Noor LeBrac confessed.

  His hunches didn’t really come out of the blue. They brewed and festered and kept Bish awake for yet another hour. Until he called Layla Bayat’s number.

  “What did Violette say to Eddie that day in Boulogne?” he asked.

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “What’s the connection between Noor LeBrac and Eddie Conlon?”

  There was silence, but he knew she was still there.

  “Layla?”

  “I’m not answering personal questions about Noor. Not at this time of the night and not over the phone. Someone’s probably tapping us now like everyone’s tapping phones these days. So can I say, Fuck off to you all and I hope none of you ever get a good night’s sleep again!”

  Layla hung up.

  A thought suddenly came to him. Bee had used his phone more than once at the campsite. Had she used it to set up contact points with Violette? He scrolled urgently through his calls, back to the day after the bombing. He went through the list of everyone he had rung then, until he came across a number he couldn’t identify. He called it, and after a few rings someone picked up without speaking.

  “Violette?” he said.

  Silence.

  “Violette, listen, it’s Bee’s father. Please trust me. I’d never let anything happen to Eddie. You know that.”

  He was disconnected. Bish tried again, but this time an automated voice recording told him that the phone was switched off. He tried three more times before he fell asleep, cursing himself for being so slow on the uptake. A link to Violette had been right there all along, in his hands.

  The next morning he was surprised to see that Layla had finally accepted him as a Facebook friend. She’d accompanied her acceptance with a message. Short and to the point. Princess Victoria. Uxbridge Road. Noon.

  25

  Watching his daughter run a race was one of the few pleasures left in Bish’s life. He had always been in awe of his children’s accomplishments, but was particularly astounded by the idea that any such talent might have come from his half of the genes. Bee wasn’t just fast: she had grace. Ever since she had won a ribbon in the twenty-five meters at the age of four, Bish had gone to most of her track meets. He’d been watching her run up north on the day Stevie died on a beach in Newquay, learning to surf. It was bad enough that Bish would never forgive himself for not being there, but now Noor LeBrac’s words were in his head. It killed him more than a little inside to learn why Bee had stopped competing. He knew it was due to Stevie’s death but hadn’t known she was cutting herself. He and Rachel had both been happily surprised when she started training again this year. She easily made the junior British Athletics team sent to Gothenburg for the European titles and had come home with a gold and a silver.

  Early on Tuesday morning he stood watching Bee warm up for the two hundred meters at a London club that was putting on a summer comp. It was her strength and it was Bish’s favorite race to watch, whether it was his daughter or an Olympic runner. It was the race of champions. He liked the fact that Bee had chosen it, rather than the length choosing her.

  His phone rang. A blocked number. He ignored it. Twice. Accepted the call reluctantly the third time.

  “I will ring you back,” he said, “and for the record, if someone doesn’t pick it up the first time, Elliot, they don’t want to speak to you.”

  “But you eventually did pick up, Chief Inspector Ortley, so it must have worked.”

  A calm voice. Practical-sounding. A girl with a slight lisp.

  “Where’s Eddie, Violette?”

  “Safe.”

  “He needs to be home with his father.”

  “John Conlon had his chance and stuffed up. No more talk of Eddie or I’ll hang up.”

  Their accents may have differed, one private school educated, the other broad country Australian, but Violette and Noor LeBrac shared the same tone.

  “Where are you, Violette?”

  “Why would I tell you that, Chief Inspector Ortley? I’m a suspect and you’re a cop.”

  “There’s never been talk about you being a suspect,” he said. “We all just want you and Eddie safe.”

  “How do you know everyone wants me and Eddie safe? Have you been following Twitter lately?”

  “Okay, so how about we limit it to Bee and I want you both safe. She’d love to see you and Eddie.”

  “You reckon? I think she’s angry because I didn’t tell her who I was on the tour.”

  “Yes, but you asked her for quite a big favor and she helped you out, regardless.”

  “She was still pissed off.”

  “Bee’s a bit pissed off with everyone.”

  “Well, so am I,” she said, irritated. “Look, I just need you to tell my mum I’m okay.”

  “What are you angry about, Violette?”

  “Nothing! Everything. Just shut up and promise you’ll tell my mum I’m okay.”

  He did part of what she asked and shut up. Knew she was still there.

  “I’m sorry,” she said moments later. “That was rude.”

  She had manners. Who would have thought?

  “Do you know what pisses me off the most?” she asked. “My father was proud of being a LeBrac and my mother still is. I hated not sharing something that belonged to my parents. For all these years I’ve been Violette Zidane, but now you go and take even that away from me.”

  “Tell me the story of the watch,” he said.

  There was such a profound silence that he thought she was gone. Then: “Who told you about the watch?”

  “Your mother. She said I wasn’t worthy to hear it, but since you’ve bothered to return my call, Violette, perhaps you think I am?”

  “Is she angry with me?”

  “Why would she be angry with you?”

  “Because of the talk about me and Crombie!” she said, as if Bish were an idiot for not working it out.

  “You think your mum’s angry at you for having sex with Charlie Crombie?”

  She made a sound of disbelief. “How would you react to Bee having sex with Charlie Crombie and everyone reading about it in the papers and on social media?”

  He doubted that Noor LeBrac would appreciate him doing the fatherly thing with Violette and giving her a lecture on keeping away from the wrong guy, but he couldn’t resist. “I wouldn’t want Bee in love with someone who’s going to break her heart,” he said.

  “Then you should have had that talk with her a while ago.”

  He didn’t know what she meant by that. Had Bee fallen in love with someone who broke her heart? He was desperate to ask but had to focus on Violette.

  “I think your mother is more angry with the media and the chaperones and me and Charlie Crombie,” he said. “You she’s worried about.”

  “And Eddie.”

  “How does your family know the Conlons?”

  “That’s a long story and I’ve o
nly got time for one today, so I’ll tell you about the watch.”

  Bish wished Bee wasn’t just about to run her race. He needed to watch it, but he also needed to hear this story.

  “Go on,” he said, keeping an eye on the marshaling area.

  “It started sixty years ago, during the Algerian War of Independence. Just after the massacre of pro-French Muslims by the FLN. I assume you know about that, so I won’t go into the details.”

  Bish noticed the change in the way she spoke. The intensity. He was hardly an expert on the Algerian War of Independence, but he offered a few hmms to cover his ignorance.

  “The retaliation was vicious, and in a village outside the capital, hundreds of Algerians were killed. But it was one dead Algerian who would haunt a French soldier for the rest of his life. You see, it was a macabre French tradition for a soldier to take something from those he had killed, and this soldier took a watch from one of the dead. Not an expensive watch, or even particularly beautiful. But he wasn’t after anything more than acceptance among his own. It wasn’t until he arrived home in Le Havre that he looked at it properly, and found engraved on the back a message in Arabic. He asked a neighbor to translate. Beloved son. I love you. I love you. I love you. The words haunted the French soldier. He had a ten-year-old son, so the watch became a reminder of how much he had taken away from another man’s family. He gave the watch to his son as a token of love. Not just his love, but that of a supposed enemy’s father for his own child. The son grew up haunted by the words on that watch, and when his father drank himself to an early death he went on a journey. Despite the dangers for the French to be traveling in Algiers after independence, he knew he would drink himself into the same sort of grave if he didn’t return that watch to where it belonged.

  “So he went to the village that had given his father nightmares over the years, and knocked on every door to tell them the story. Until one day he came across the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, who looked at the watch and wept. It had belonged to her father, who, all those years ago, had died at the hands of this Frenchman’s father.”