“Nope. Someone called Rachel.”
Layla’s heartbeat is back to out of control. Forgive me, Jimmy, she thinks, but a come-on from Rachel Ballyntine is what I need at the moment. “What does it say?”
“‘Let’s do this.’”
52
Bee came to stay with Bish and even took him out for brunch at an old church converted to a café on Westferry Road.
“My treat,” she said when they were seated at an outside table. It was one of London’s drearier autumn days, and Bish and Bee couldn’t have been happier with the weather as they enjoyed spectacular eggs and coffee under a filthy sky.
“Is this because you’re impressed that I sort of saved your girlfriend?” he asked, reaching over for the last of her bacon.
She sipped her coffee before answering. “First, she’s not my girlfriend. Second, you didn’t ‘sort of’ save her. You did actually save her.”
Not according to Grazier. “We’d rather you don’t get identified as having anything to do with what happened in Calais yesterday,” he’d told Bish on the phone. Bee had found out from Marianne.
“Anyway, I was impressed long before that,” Bee said. “When you rolled around in the rubbish with Gorman at the campground.”
“Really? I was oblivious to impressing you for a couple of weeks?”
“No. You haven’t impressed me for a couple of weeks; you impressed me a couple of weeks ago. Bum crack showing and all.” Bish could tell she was trying not to laugh. “Even Crombie admitted you weren’t as useless as you looked. He was also impressed.”
“With the bum crack?”
This time she did laugh. But then she set her coffee cup down on a precise spot. “I’m going to tell you something and you can’t get mad.”
There was a look in her eye that said he wasn’t here for a treat. “I can’t promise you that, Bee.”
“Of course you can.”
“But I’m not going to.” Now Bish was truly suspicious. “I’m presuming there’s a ninety-nine point nine percent chance you’re not pregnant.”
She was slightly amused, so he figured it couldn’t be that bad. “People trust you,” she said, leaning forward and moving his cup out of the way. “Parents. The government. Now even the French trust you, and they think everyone’s beneath them. Violette’s mum trusts you, and according to Violette she trusts no one.” Bee looked hard at him. “So if anyone rings with what may appear to be alarming news, tell them to trust you. Because you’ll take care of things.”
As if on cue, his phone rang. He looked at the screen. Grazier. They had already touched base that morning but Bish picked up the call anyway.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“Manoshi, Fionn, and Lola have gone missing from the fucking hospital.”
Bish stared in alarm at Bee, who was looking over his shoulder to avoid eye contact, he presumed.
He covered the phone so Grazier couldn’t hear. “Bee, what’s going on?”
Before she could answer, someone pulled up a chair and sat beside him.
“I’ll get back to you, Grazier,” Bish said, looking from Bee to Violette. “Trust me.”
Violette was thinner in the face and the dark circles under her eyes were prominent. But she seemed less fierce. Even relaxed.
“I need you to come with us, Chief Inspector Ortley,” she said. “We mightn’t be terror suspects anymore, but we’ve got a better chance of getting up to Yorkshire with you. I want to show Eddie where our father died. It’s part of why I came over here, and I’m not going back without doing that.”
Driving a bus of explosives through a convent school in France seemed so simple compared to dealing with Violette LeBrac Zidane.
“Where’s Eddie? And the others?” He wanted a response that didn’t involve a felony.
Violette and Bee seemed to have taken a vow of silence.
“They’re injured,” he said. “They can’t be out of the hospital.”
“It’s not as if they’re still on the critical list,” Bee scoffed. “They’re off drips and eating solids and bored to death.”
“Look,” Violette said, “it was only supposed to be Fionn, but Lola and Manoshi caught on and decided they were coming along or it would be hashtag we-know-where-Fionn’s-gone.”
Bee shook her head in disgust. “Whose stupid idea was it to put those two together again?”
It was Bish’s turn to stay silent.
“And the thing with Fionn is his mother,” Violette said. “He needs to see her.”
“We thought we’d kill two birds with one stone.”
He stared from one to the other. He didn’t like all this bird death with little promise of success.
“We’ll be back down south by nine tonight,” Bee said. “Win-win.”
“And all you have to do is tell anyone who rings that they can trust you,” Violette said.
“Noor’s not going to like your plan, Violette.”
“Noor?” she said, hostility suddenly in her voice. “We’re on first-name terms, are we?”
“Yes, we’ve bonded over your being the star of social media and CCTV for the past couple of weeks, Violette.”
Her eyes narrowed even more.