“Where are they heading?” he finally asked Georgette, hoping Bee didn’t think she was getting off scot-free.
“I don’t know.” She sent her mother a pitiful look. “I think she just wants to lie low so no one arrests her for something she didn’t do.”
In spite of himself, Bish was impressed by how easily she steered the attention away from her own wrongdoing.
Jocelyn was teary. “They must be petrified.”
“Another reason we need to get them off the streets.”
“Jimmy’s the only person who can bring her in,” Jocelyn said.
“I disagree,” Bish argued. “Violette had her chance to stay with him in Calais. I don’t think she trusts her uncle.”
He saw Jocelyn’s fury. “Do you not understand what’s happened to that family, Chief Inspector Ortley? When Jimmy got out of prison his mother begged him to take his uncle to Alexandria, because there was no way Joseph Sarraf was returning to Manchester. Although Jimmy couldn’t bear the idea of leaving her in that hospice alone, he went because he thought he’d be back within the week. But he was flying on a French passport and they wouldn’t let him back into this country. His mother died alone. He can’t see his sister. He can’t see his niece because the Australian government won’t give him a visa. Family is everything to the Sarrafs. It’s everything to Violette and she will do anything to protect them. She might not want to get Jimmy involved, but you need him. He knows the truth.”
“What truth?” Bish demanded.
“Speak to him.”
“You think I haven’t tried?”
“Get him to trust you!”
Layla stood up. “Can we keep this down? I don’t want the neighbors to know everything about my life.”
“And I don’t want the boys to know,” Jocelyn reminded herself. “This thing with Violette has given them nightmares.”
“The little one with the curly hair has got the moves like Jagger,” Bee said. “He’s met Eddie Conlon for sure.”
Bish started the car. Couldn’t get his head around the reality that he’d driven Violette and Eddie across the Channel. How was he going to explain that to Elliot and Grazier? Beside him Bee was silent. Had the audacity to take out her iPad as if she had every right in the world to switch off.
“Where did they get out of the car?” he asked. “On the ferry?”
No response.
“You know they’re not safe, Bee,” he said. “If you had told me, I could have helped them. Does she have a plan or is she just on the run?”
“I don’t know. She’s not much into confiding.”
“But she confided in you.”
“She asked a favor. ‘Can you get me across the Channel?’ There was no information other than that.”
“So someone you’ve known for a week asks you to commit a felony and you agree?” he asked with disbelief.
“It was a gut reaction to say yes. It felt right.”
“Just like that.”
“I came out to her!” Bee shouted. “So yes, I trusted her. Just like that.”
After a silent journey home, Bish parked outside his flat and neither of them got out of the car.
“I don’t like the name-calling,” he finally said. “With Gigi Shahbazi.”
“I wasn’t being racist,” Bee said. “She does look like a Middle Eastern Barbie doll.”
Obviously no photoshopping for the Shahbazi women.
“I don’t mean that. I mean the name-calling towards you.”
“Maybe you just don’t like the fact that I am one,” she said. “A dyke.”
“But why would you think that, Bee?”
“I heard you talking about it once with Mum. You said it was a phase I was going through. It made me feel like shit.”
“When did I say that?” he asked in disbelief. “When you were twelve?”
“Well, you haven’t brought it up since.”
“It’s just…you’ve never mentioned it to me.” A thought occurred to him. “Have you spoken about this to your mother, or the principal?”
“Stop calling him that. He’s Rachel’s husband, Bish. Get used to it.”
“Then stop calling me Bish! I’m your father. It’s the only frickin’ thing in this world that means anything to me.”
“I can’t believe you said ‘frickin’ and not ‘fucking.’”
“Well, Bee,” he said, imitating Jocelyn Shahbazi’s tone, “we don’t use language like that.”
Bee made a rude sound and somehow the tension in the car had softened. He didn’t know how to ask the next question, but this was progress and he had to make the most of it.
“Are you and Violette together?”
Bee was mortified. “As if she’s my type.”
His daughter had a type?
22
Rachel Ballyntine had a plan for the last couple of weeks leading up to the birth of her son. Keep off her feet. Get a good haircut because David would have the camera in her face through the whole birth. Most important, get a pedicure for her poor swollen distorted feet. If she could have sat with them soaked in water all day long, she would have.