“How’s Eddie taking everything?” he asked, reminding himself that he was the adult here.
“Did you see the graffiti on the news?” she asked. “Someone wrote Eddie Bin Lardin leaves hear on his cottage wall. Can’t even spell. Frickin’ dumb people give me the shits.”
“Same,” Bee said.
Bish nodded. Same.
“So where are they?” he asked as Bee put money on the table and stood up. “How the hell did you get Fionn into a car?”
Sighing from his companions, as if Bish were an idiot for asking too many questions.
A long car horn sounded loudly from the road.
“In that,” Violette said.
“What?” he asked.
“We got him out of hospital in that.” She was pointing to the Salvation Army twelve-seater with wheelchair access that had just pulled up. Lola, Manoshi, Fionn, and Eddie waved ecstatically from the back seats.
Bish stumbled to his feet. Bee and Violette followed him to the van.
Charlie Crombie poked his head out of the driver’s window. “He’s not driving.”
That was how Bish found himself riding shotgun to Charlie Crombie on the road to Yorkshire with a carload of kids who should have been in school or in hospital. The upside was that Lola’s and Manoshi’s fathers finally found something to unite them: their desire to have Bish arrested on a string of charges. Katherine and Sadia were only slightly more forgiving.
“Have you lost your mind, Bish?” Katherine had asked when Lola passed him her phone. “Ian’s called the police. You do know that?”
“They are sick children,” Sadia said. He could tell he was on speakerphone.
“I think they’re sick of being sick children,” he said. “And they were heading north regardless of whether I came with them or not. Would you rather I’d let them go on their own?”
“I’m calling your mother,” Sadia said.
Bish rang Grazier and waited for the swear fest to end before he spoke. “You’re a heart attack waiting to happen, Grazier.” Now he was reduced to channeling Sarraf.
“Turn the bus around and bring them back,” Grazier ordered.
“I don’t have access to the keys. Charlie won’t relinquish them for the time being.” Charlie shot him a look that said he was never going to relinquish them. “I’ll have the kids back at the hospital tonight,” Bish said. “Meanwhile, keep the media away from this. Call off whatever police Ian Parker’s got on board. No roadblocks. No car chase.”
“I’m up for a car chase,” Charlie said.
Grazier swore again. “Where are you heading?”
Bish didn’t quite lie, just left out some of the truth. “Fionn needs to see his mother. I’ll ring you when we get there.”
“No, you’ll see me when you get there,” Grazier said. “And judging by the phone call I just had from Ian Parker, you’ll be seeing them as well.”
When Bish hung up, his phone rang immediately. Twice. Elliot. Rachel. He ignored them both.
“Can you please turn that off?” Crombie said. “It’s annoying me.”
“Chief Inspector Ortley, is it true you were involved in what happened at Marianne Attal’s school?” Manoshi asked.
Bish turned back to face the rest of the kids. Perhaps it was time to own his hero role.
“Someone tweeted that you broke a man’s arm and ran over a statue of a saint,” Lola said.
Or perhaps not.
“Chief Inspector Ortley, is it true you thought there was a point one percent chance that Bee was pregnant?” Lola asked.
“Why only point one?” Violette said. “Being a lesbian doesn’t mean someone’s nicked off with her uterus, Chief Inspector Ortley.”
“I might want kids one day,” Bee said. “Sperm’s all I need.”
“You can have mine if it’s okay with my missus,” Charlie said.
“Eyes on the road,” Bish ordered. He looked at Violette. “Is that what you aspire to? Being Charlie’s missus?”
“Quite sure.” Violette seemed proud to own the title. “He’s going to be my first ex-husband.”
“Cheeky bitch.” Charlie was grinning.
By the time they passed through Cambridge, Bish was ordered to swap seats with Bee and found himself forced to sit next to Violette.
“I need to say something to you, Chief Inspector Ortley, that you’re not going to like hearing,” she said, not wasting any time.
There were screeches of laughter from behind them. He turned to see Eddie Conlon imitating someone, doing pelvic thrusts in his seat, entertaining the girls.
“If this is about your mother—”
She held up a hand to warn him against further mention of her mother.
“It’s about Bee. She thinks that she wasn’t enough to keep you all together…and that her brother would have been. She thinks she wasn’t worth it.”
He winced, glancing at Violette. She nodded in confirmation. When he couldn’t think of anything to say, she sighed.
“Sorry,” she said, and he heard the regret in her voice. “I’ll swap with Eddie. He’s really good at lifting moods.”
“Stay,” he said. “Tell me one of your stories.”
A hint of a smile crept across her face.
“How about the one where my parents fell in love in Cambridge?”