Bish didn’t question why he needed to know how Grazier felt. “You work for the government, Elliot. Just go down there and demand to speak to him.” He was concentrating on finding any new friends Bee had accepted overnight. Was Zulu Dawn a pseudonym for Violette despite there being no obvious connection between their names?
“Making demands is tricky,” Elliot was saying now. “The French already did that. Apparently their investigators were insinuating that Lola Barrett-Parker was the target of the attack.”
Elliot suddenly had his attention. The daughter of an MP who persisted in expressing his views about foreigners could easily have been a target. Lola was sitting in the front row of the bus that day.
“Grazier wants you to speak to Parker face-to-face,” Elliot said.
“I already did that. Wasn’t pleasant. And I thought my job was bringing Violette and Eddie out of the cold?”
“Yes, by getting the parents to find out what they can from their kids. Ian Parker is a parent. Both your children were on that bus. Common ground.”
Common ground? It’s what he had with Noor LeBrac. With Ian Parker. With the Kennington bigots. Bish didn’t want that sort of common ground.
“Lola, Manoshi, and Fionn haven’t been interviewed by British intelligence. Better that you chat with the kids than those goons. Total ignorami when it comes to dealing with kids.”
“Ignoramuses,” Bish corrected.
“You’ll make the home secretary very happy if we don’t have to force an interview on Parker and other parents of the injured.”
“And yet making the home secretary happy is not my number one priority this morning.”
“Try,” Elliot said, hanging up.
So Bish spent the next two hours talking to parents, trying to find a way to Ian Parker. There was no number for him on the Calais list and no one seemed to have a connection with him. No one seemed to want it. When Bish rang Greta Jager’s father, he knew he had to question what Grazier’s journalist contact had overheard. They spoke about the injured kids for a while, until Bish found his segue.
“Paul, is there a chance Greta might have seen something that could help the investigation? On the night before the blast?”
There was silence on the other end.
“The kids are my priority, Paul. You know that.”
“That I do,” Paul said. “But just say it’s not connected. What she saw, I mean.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about. But for now, every detail of the night before is important.”
“Can you promise you won’t bring her into the investigation, Bish?”
“I’m not part of the investigation. As far as this case goes, I’m just another father who wants to know who’s behind this thing. I can’t promise something I can’t deliver, but I will promise that if Greta has to be questioned again, I’ll be there with you all.”
Bish waited, then at last heard a sigh.
“That night, she saw a security car being pushed out of the grounds. The engine wasn’t on. Or the lights. She knew it was security because of the shape at the top of the car.”
“Get her to write down everything she saw. Tell her not to leave anything out. I’ll pass it on and we’ll keep her name out of it until we have no choice.”
“We just don’t want whoever’s responsible for the bomb knowing Greta saw anything. We’re really worried about her. How’s your daughter holding up?”
Bish heard a break in the man’s voice. He knew he couldn’t hang up now, so he chatted a while longer. He then sent a text to Grazier detailing the conversation, and one to Attal as well, even though Bish knew he wasn’t on the case anymore. Then Naomi Hill returned his missed call. Reggie’s mother had met Parker at the Boulogne hospital on that first day, before Reggie was discharged.
“Are you joking, Bish?” she said when he asked if she’d had further contact with Ian Parker. “Have you read what he says about young black people? It’s not just foreigners he goes after.” She added briskly, “Anything else?”
“Yes. Can you teach me how to use Instagram?”
It was an icebreaker. Naomi worked for an entertainment magazine so he figured she’d know.
“You need an account,” she said. “All your photos go public unless you set your account to private. Then only the people who follow you will be able to see them.”
So he had to continue begging people to be his friends online.
“Do you think I could follow Reggie’s account?” he asked.
Within an hour he had access to ten Instagram accounts. He pitied French intelligence, who had to go through eight busloads of teenage photography. Under any other circumstances Bish would take the time to despair the priorities of the young. Seven days in Normandy and hardly any landscapes or monuments. Who went to Mont-Saint-Michel and took selfies in the gift shop?
It was at lunchtime, when he was back on Facebook, that a gift was presented to him. Bish couldn’t help marveling at his ubiquitous mother. Absent throughout his teenage years, everywhere he turned in his middle age. Saffron had 134 Facebook friends. Katherine Barrett-Parker was the latest.