Two blocks from the station, he saw the figure of Sarraf walking in the direction of his home. Didn’t know whether to beep the horn or stop or just drive by. But he couldn’t rid himself of the image of Sarraf on the floor, gun to his head. He pulled over and wound down the window. Sarraf glanced at him but kept walking.
“I need your help, Jimmy.”
“Fuck off.”
“There’s going to be another bomb,” he said, trailing him in the car. “Today at 4:05 p.m., and we don’t know where.”
That made Sarraf stop.
“I need a computer and a place to work,” Bish said.
Without a word, Sarraf got into the car.
Some ten minutes later, Bish followed him through the gym and up a flight of back stairs that looked nailed solid but still creaked. Sarraf unlocked a door and led Bish into a small flat. Kitchenette in one corner, table at its center, neatly made bed in the opposite corner. It was surprisingly clean and homey.
“You use the desktop. I’ve got an old laptop,” Sarraf said, unlocking a cabinet next to his bed. “And then you’ll tell me what we’re looking for.”
Bish was surrounded by photographs of the family. Mostly Violette at various ages, snapshots sent by the LeBracs, perhaps, or Violette herself. Images of her horse, her dog, the ducks, the pigs, the cows, the sheep. There were one or two of a younger Jamal and his sister. Noor’s wedding to Etienne LeBrac, his grin so wide, her joy so potent. A photo of the Sarraf and Bayat siblings from sometime back in the eighties, judging by the clothes; a wild promise of beauty and intelligence and talent and a sense of wicked fun shining in all their eyes. The four of them would have been a force beyond reckoning. These were photographs Sarraf must have begged from relatives; those in his home at the time of the bombing had been confiscated, locked up like the rest of their lives. Along with Noor’s thesis and Violette’s childhood keepsakes and Jimmy’s football trophies.
Then Bish saw a photo of Violette and Eddie. He couldn’t believe Sarraf had been stupid enough to take a photo of the kids in public, until he realized with a quickening heart that Lola was standing behind them, waving. It had been taken in Normandy.
“You have a photo of Violette and Eddie on the tour.”
Sarraf sat down at the table, laptop in hand. “You know I saw the kids in London, Ortley.”
“Did they give you any others?”
Sarraf booted up his ancient laptop.
“I downloaded it from Eddie’s Instagram account.”
They were the exact words Bish wanted to hear. He logged into his Dropbox account.
“I was searching for anything out of the ordinary,” Bish explained, finding one of the six photos he had collected of Lola and Manoshi sleeping on the bus. He zoomed in. “An anomaly. Something that seemed out of place.” He pointed to the figure in the woodlands. “French intelligence and our lot couldn’t get much more out of it. Attal even went back to where he thinks this was taken. There’s a walking track beyond those trees, so it could have been a bird-watcher.”
Sarraf adjusted the shutters, blocking out as much light as possible. It made no difference to the image on the screen.
“The kids used to prank anyone who fell asleep,” Bish explained. “Eddie was sure to have taken a shot like this. He was sitting opposite these girls, one row down. He may have the clearest picture of whoever’s beyond that window.”
Sarraf logged into Instagram and went straight to Eddie’s profile.
“Why don’t the other kids follow Eddie online?” Bish asked.
“Violette banned any social networking,” Sarraf said. “Moveslikejagger02 has one follower: me. He was planning to network when he got home from the tour. That hasn’t happened yet.”
Sarraf turned the screen towards Bish.
“I didn’t take much notice of his tour stuff. The photo of the two of them was the only one I got printed. My eyes glazed over by the time I saw the twentieth shot of someone’s tongue stud.”
“Reggie Hill from Brighton,” Bish said. “I think someone dared him to lick the pigeon shit off the rocks at Mont-Saint-Michel.”
Eddie had taken photos of anything that moved, but thankfully they were in date order. Bish looked at the time. It was past 3 p.m.
“There,” he said a minute later, pointing to a couple of photographs of the sleeping girls. Most were close-ups. Eddie had seemed determined to capture every dribble, freckle, or blemish. Sarraf focused on one of the photographs that didn’t capture just the faces.
Bish indicated the space behind the girls’ heads. Sarraf zoomed in until Lola and Manoshi were a blur. But the image in the woods was the clearest Bish had seen yet. It was definitely a man. Middle-aged. Deep-set eyes, jowls that drooped, a bulbous nose. Bish reached over to click onto the next image, hoping it would reveal even more.
“Wait wait wait,” said Sarraf.
“What?”
“I know this guy!”
“Bullshit! How?”
“Comes into the gym. A real thug, you know.”