“It’s not really who we are, Bish. Your mother’s more English than the Queen. No more Arabic study now, promise?”
And Bish had promised, although he wondered why his more-English-than-the-Queen mother had named him Bashir, and why the earliest memory he had was of her calling him habibi. But he chose not to pursue it. Stephen Ortley had worked hard for the foreign office. He was respected and loyal to his country and he expected his wife and son to be the same. Bish had honored that part of the deal. He didn’t know what his mother had honored. She had been a no-show for part of his teenage years, even during those times when his parents were living not half an hour’s drive from where he was boarding. When Bish was home for school holidays, he could see that she did her best to be the mother he remembered from when he was a child, but by the time he was fifteen he had switched off. Saffron’s saving grace in his adult life was that she was a good grandmother. Her grief following Stevie’s death almost broke her.
“There’s no way Violette did it, you know,” Bee said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I asked her myself after you got her out of that cupboard, and she said if she truly wanted to blow someone up, she’d have put the bomb under Crombie’s seat.”
Bish flinched. He hoped for Violette’s sake that she hadn’t said this to anyone else.
6
Bish had been home for less than a day when Elliot rang again.
“Get yourself to Kingly Court, Ortley. A colleague would like to have a word.”
He’d already downed his second Scotch of the morning. Wasn’t in the mood to stay focused. The previous evening he’d left an exhausted Saffron and Bee with Rachel and Maynard and driven home alone. Bish had always refused to break bread with David Maynard in the home he once owned. And here was Elliot trying to involve him in something he didn’t want to be involved in. It was boarding school all over again, except now the home secretary was involved.
“Get off at Oxford Circus. I’ll send you the address,” Elliot said before hanging up.
Bish hated public transport. These past two years he had lived in the Isle of Dogs. He worked locally and drove there, avoiding the West End at all costs. Saffron lived in Gravesend, his daughter in Ashford, both accessible within an hour via the A2 and M20. Getting to the West End was another story. The DLR seemed unnatural to him. An automated tram was too close to a metaphor of his life, on so many levels. No one at the helm, people putting their lives into those driverless hands. So he took the tube from Canary Wharf, regretting it in an instant. The heat and the body odor combined with his throbbing headache made him want to take up cycling.
Elliot’s directions led to a café with outdoor tables. Bish suffered from the opposite of the seasonal illness. He hated sunshine, and for the life of him couldn’t understand how a man with skin as white as Elliot’s would want to sit outside. At school Elliot had been called anything from Casper to albino boy, and the older he got, the more ghostly he seemed to become. Rachel used to refer to him as the Specter of Death.
The man sitting with Elliot had a pissed-off look that was directed at anyone who ventured too close. It was the sort of look that belonged to a harassed man at the end of the day, not at ten in the morning. Elliot introduced him as Grazier. He was older than Bish, but fit. Bish didn’t question whether Grazier was his first or last name because he didn’t want a relationship with the man and asking such a question would suggest he did.
A selection of morning papers lay on the table before them. All about the same person. SPAWN OF SATAN. VIOLENT VIOLETTE. POISONOUS AND PROMISCUOUS. The alliterations were turning his stomach. Violette LeBrac was front-page news everywhere he turned. Most media outlets had dropped the Zidane surname. Earlier that morning Bish had watched a panel arguing about Violette on a talk show. How had a minor’s name been made public? one of the panelists questioned. The killers of James Bulger were given more anonymity, and they’d actually been convicted of a crime. Violette LeBrac had not, so why was she being treated like a criminal? Another panelist brought up the rumors of Violette running off with one of the lads from the tour. At least Eddie’s name and age were being kept out of the media. Bish could just imagine the further savaging she’d receive about what pact existed between a seventeen-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy.
“We were relieved to hear your daughter wasn’t injured in the bombing, Chief Inspector Ortley,” Grazier said.
That “we” again.
“You had the opportunity to speak to most of the students and parents as well as the French police, I hear?”
“As a father. I have the right—”
“That wasn’t a reprimand.”
But it was something other than a friendly discussion, and Bish hoped Grazier would get to the point sooner rather than later.
“I don’t even know where you work,” Bish said, looking at Elliot.
“We work for the government.”