Bish went in search of Gorman or Lucy Gilies, hoping they could reveal the whereabouts of Violette Zidane. He knew that one of them would have to identify the bodies of Michael Stanley and Julius McEwan, and that once the embassy staff arrived, the families of the dead could be notified. He hoped this would all happen before those families came looking for their loved ones. Among the parents who had already turned up, one couple had been sent to the Boulogne hospital where their injured son had been taken. Still, better that than Attal’s temporary headquarters on site and waiting for the right person to tell them the devastating truth.
Bish glimpsed his mother, sneaking a fag behind one of the cabins.
“I can’t believe you’re still smoking,” he said, taking the packet of cigarettes from her and removing one to light up. He could see that the day had taken its toll on her. With one chaperone dead and the other two unreliable, Saffron had made it her job to meet and greet any parent arriving from across the Channel. It was what she was accustomed to. Saffron Ortley was an old hand at taking care of households and dire situations in foreign countries. She’d just been rubbish at looking after her teenage son.
“You should rest,” he said.
Saffron shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave parents at the mercy of Gorman. Have you met him? Can I quote Bee and call him an idiot?”
“Feel free.”
“You’ve got to do something, Bish. These people are distraught. They want to take their children home.”
“The authorities here need to collect as much information now as possible,” he said. “If they let everyone go, they’ll never get to the bottom of what happened this morning.”
Saffron nudged him and pointed in the direction of the recreation hall. “Lucy Gilies.”
The young chaperone was sobbing hysterically in the arms of a girl no more than fourteen. The poor kid was looking around, lost and confused.
Bish and his mother approached and sent the girl back inside, leading Lucy away to the pool. Attal had just begun to allow some of the press in, and Bish didn’t want the world media reporting that the British chaperone was a basket case.
“Lucy, can you tell me about Violette Zidane?” Bish asked.
Her crying intensified. Lucy knew exactly who Violette was.
“Russell—Mr. Gorman—came searching for the passports that were in my backpack. Someone must have grabbed it on the bus, because it was there in the recreation hall. I don’t remember taking it. I don’t remember much after the explosion.”
“So you didn’t record the names and details on the list that did the rounds?”
“No. Perhaps Mr. Gorman. He ended up with the passports, and he contacted the embassy and read out all our names straight from them.”
Lucy nodded, as if getting clarity for the first time. “Within minutes he got a call back. Someone had recognized Violette’s name. Her tour documentation has her down as Violette Zidane. But her passport includes ‘LeBrac.’”
“Where is she now?” Bish asked.
Lucy was taking deep breaths, and Saffron placed an arm around her.
“I’ll be fine,” Lucy said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve had something to take the edge off. They were a horrid lot, the kids. Violette. All of them.”
Bish and his mother exchanged a look.
“We never met any of Violette’s people at Dover,” Lucy said. “Most of the older kids were unaccompanied, except for Bee. Violette said her family had moved to Deal last autumn. She had all the right documentation, sent from there. But they were fakes. According to Mr. G’s contact at the embassy, she lives in Australia.”
“But where is she now, Lucy?”
Her blubbering resumed. Bish’s ex-wife had once told him that a male being critical of a crying woman was an act of misogyny, so he tried to be patient. “Have you any idea why she’d lie to go on the trip? Traveling across the world for an eight-day tour of Normandy isn’t exactly on top of a teenage wish list.”
She shook her head. “This was my first time chaperoning,” she admitted. “Mac—Julius McEwan—said that once in a while you experience a group that clashes.”
“This year’s?” Bish asked.
“Yes. The ringleader was expelled from one of those bluecoat private boarding schools for cheating. Charlie Crombie. He’s a depraved little beast. It’s quite ironic that he’s the son of a reverend. The kids all seemed to relinquish power to him.”
Lucy took another tissue from Saffron and dabbed at her eyes. “The thing is…Violette got herself a reputation with Charlie Crombie.” Her voice had dropped, as if after such a day the worst thing that could happen was a tarnished reputation.
“They had nothing to do with each other during the day, but…Of course it was forbidden to be in the cabin of someone of the opposite sex at night, but it’s hard to keep an eye on all of them, and they were a sneaky lot.”
“Violette and this Crombie boy were an item?”
“I don’t know what they were,” Lucy said. “Violette spent most of the days with Eddie Conlon.”
“Romantically linked?” Saffron asked.
Bish hoped not, seeing as Eddie was thirteen and Violette seventeen.
“I don’t believe so. Mr. G thinks they hit it off because they looked the same sort of foreign, but Mac reckons…reckoned it was grief. Said he could pick it. Eddie lost his mum to cancer last year.”
And Violette had lost her father young and grown up without a mother. That was enough common ground.
“What do you mean by ‘same sort of foreign’?” he asked.