“Fuck. Fuck!” But Bish could see Sarraf’s reaction wasn’t just about the wrong bus.
“What?” he asked. “Anything. Say whatever’s in your head, Jimmy. Even if it sounds like bollocks!”
“It’s the first day back at school,” Sarraf said. “Last bell rings at four p.m. What if the fucker’s put a bomb on her school bus and Fréthun is a hoax? Or a diversion?”
They were back in Bish’s Renault inside a minute, with absolutely no idea which direction to drive.
“How many schools in town?” Bish asked.
“Too many for guesswork.”
“Fuck!” They tried Attal’s mobile number again, and this time when it went to message bank, Sarraf repeated what he knew. He spoke slowly with an element of calm before hanging up.
“What about your daughter?” Sarraf asked. “These kids know more about each other than you’d think.”
Bish looked at his watch: 2:53 in Kent. Bee could be anywhere. She didn’t start school until Wednesday.
“It’ll be quicker to text,” Sarraf said. “They ignore phone calls but can’t resist a text.”
“Please tell me you’re not dating teenage girls.”
“One teenage girl in my life is enough and she’s giving me gray hair.”
Bish figured that if they had been in a stolen car together, Bee and Marianne might have exchanged that sort of information.
Urgent. Where does Marianne Attal go to school?
They were stopped at an intersection on the Boulevard la Fayette. Cars honked their horns behind them as Sarraf debated which way to go.
“Quai Gustave Lamarle, Quai du Commerce, or Boulevard Victor Hugo. Take a guess.”
Bish’s phone beeped. He read the message aloud. “‘Convent school in Calais. Why?’”
Sarraf rammed his foot on the accelerator, dodging cars as he turned onto Boulevard Victor Hugo. “It’s about two kilometers out of town,” Sarraf said. “But what if we’re wrong?”
“Then a bomb goes off on a train heading to London and we’re fucked either way.”
Sarraf left another message for Attal. Then picked up even more speed.
It was Bish’s idea of hell, sitting in the passenger seat on the wrong side of the road at this speed. He shouted out more than once, remembering too late each time that Sarraf had driven on French roads for years now and knew what he was doing.
“Just close your eyes and shut up, Ortley. Okay?”
At 3:59 they sped through the school gates of what looked like a fifteenth-century convent. Three minibuses sat in a closely confined turning circle. They were marked with their destinations: Calais, Desvres, étaples. Bish was out of the car while Sarraf was still pulling up and he hit the ground running, hammering at the door of the Calais bus.
“Ouvrir. Ouvrir. Open the door! Open!”
The driver stared at him in irritation.
“There’s a bomb on your bus. Bomb.” Bish made a ridiculous bombing gesture with his hands but the idiot driver didn’t move. Then Sarraf was behind Bish, shouting at the man in French. The driver’s irritation turned to alarm and he opened the door. Just as the school bell rang. The first of the kids came spilling out of the buildings surrounding the turning circle. Bish dragged the driver out of his seat and onto the curb. Sarraf had already taken off in the direction of the students and Bish could hear him shouting, “Rentrez! Rentrez!” and suddenly everyone was screaming. And then Bish was in the driver’s seat, crashing into the bus in front, crashing into the one behind, before swinging left and mowing through the rose garden at the center of the turning circle, knocking down a statue of the Virgin Mary and narrowly missing a cluster of kids who were being ushered into the chapel by two teachers.
Hail Mary, full of grace, I’m so bloody sorry.
The turning circle had two exits. One where Sarraf had entered, the other leading to a meadow where Bish could see a grotto in the distance. He scrunched the gears and charged in its direction. Statues and grottoes could be repaired. Replaced. People couldn’t. He had to get the bus as far from the kids as possible. Perhaps there was no bomb and he was just some mad Brit causing chaos across the Channel. One who had desecrated a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary and ruined a fifteenth-century rose garden. But he thought of the body of the Spanish girl that night in Calais. A distance away from the bus, but still a victim. No more dead kids. He would give his life never to see a dead kid again. The time on the dash read 4:04. He hit the brake, almost falling out of the bus. Ran.
Come on, Dad!
And Stevie was shouting out to him, laughing, just as he had on that holiday in Cornwall, and Bish would have followed his boy anywhere. Anywhere. So he ran, his lungs exploding, feeling the way Bee described the last five meters of a two hundred.
Come on, Dad!
And when the ground shook beneath him and Bish felt himself thrown into the air he could still hear his boy laughing. It was the further tragedy of the past three years. He hadn’t been able to remember the sound of Stevie’s laugh but right now it was ringing in his ears. The entire world was ringing in Bish’s ears.
49