She looked at him in frustration. “But I don’t know how to make that happen!”
“Is what Elliot said true?” Bish asked. “That you and Jamal were lovers even after his release?”
“Is it true that your wife ran off with a school principal?” She held his eye. “I mean, wives run off with rock stars, and men with sports cars, and personal trainers, but whose wife runs off with a school principal, Chief Inspector Ortley?”
Bish ignored the jibe. “Noor says Jamal knows Violette better than anyone. But he’s not trusting me. If you went to see him—”
She was shaking her head vigorously before he could finish. Fighting back tears.
“Layla, please. Give me something. And I promise it won’t get back to anyone who will put Violette or Eddie in danger.”
There was a long stretch of silence.
“My sister…I once asked her why she believed Noor had confessed. Joss said it was about the breaking point. Everyone has one, and the day Noor confessed she’d reached hers. Etienne meant everything to her. His death would have broken her.”
Bish couldn’t buy that. There was more to Noor LeBrac than loving a man.
Layla finished her drink and stood. “If I cross the Channel to see him, the people I work for, the same ones I want to impress enough to give me a junior partnership, will find out. I can’t let the rest of my life be controlled by the misfortunes of the Sarrafs.”
She was crying now.
“It pains me—it shames me—to say that. So please don’t ask me again.”
27
From the pub he headed south for Rye, where Rachel had discovered that the retired Dr. Walden was running the Red Goose B and B. If Bish wanted to reduce himself to quoting Violette, then being at the mercy of holidaymakers clogging up the A229 was what he would describe as a nightmare of biblical proportions.
He arrived in Rye an hour after his GPS promised he would and drove through the narrow town wall gate, clipping his side mirror in the process, before parking his car on a steep lane that petered out in what looked like a courtyard shared between the village church and a cottage. Heading off on foot in search of the B and B, he passed the same pub patrons at least five times until one of them took mercy and pointed him in the direction of the Red Goose. Dr. Walden was out for the evening, which meant that Bish was forced to spend the night in a room too small for someone not born in the seventeenth century and stunted by famine.
Next morning, Dr. Walden’s wife proved to be like most B and B hosts he’d come across by giving him an excess of local information.
“…and then I’d finish on Winchelsea Beach. Glorious in this sunshine. Let me get you a couple of maps.”
Bish smiled politely. “And would you tell Dr. Walden I’d like to say hello?” he said.
She looked at him with curiosity. “Then you know Owen?”
“A mutual friend whose baby he delivered at St. Therese’s told me to look him up here.”
“Of course,” she said, and left to get his maps while he pocketed a few of the marmalade samples.
When Owen Walden finally stood before Bish after the breakfast rush, he was wary. Bish felt studied, judged, dismissed, then reluctantly studied all over again.
“I’ve seen you on the telly,” the doctor said.
“You may well have. My daughter was on that bus in France,” he said, extending a hand. “Bish Ortley. I’ve been sort of dragged in as a spokesperson for the parents.”
“The media seem to be reporting a whole lot of nonsense,” Walden said. And when Bish agreed, the man added, “Emma mentioned we have a mutual friend whose baby I delivered.”
“Yes, at St. Therese’s. Noor LeBrac,” Bish said.
At the mention of the name, Bish could see that Owen Walden had a story to tell but wasn’t quite sure whether Bish was a man to trust.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment. No one’s ever come asking about her. Until now, with those kids off all over the place.”
“Her kids?” Bish prompted.
Walden took a moment to reply. “I’m presuming you’re in contact with people who know all the answers, so why come to me?”
“Because I have a feeling you’ll give me the straight-out truth and they won’t,” he said.
Owen Walden seemed to like the response. He sat down.
“You knew something the rest of the world didn’t,” Bish said. “Did it ever worry you?”
The doctor dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “I don’t think it was top secret. She may have been in solitary confinement but there would have been a handful of people who knew she was pregnant. Granted, the authorities didn’t want people to know. It would have earned her sympathy, and someone had to pay for what happened. True?”
“Is that what you believe?”
“I believed a lot of things before I heard her confession.”
“So you can vouch that there was one?”
“Oh, there certainly was.”
A pity, Bish thought, and was surprised at himself. Perhaps Rachel and Violette’s conviction had started to make a dent in his head.