“Eddie looks Mediterranean or Middle Eastern,” Lucy said.
“Was my granddaughter drawn to them?” Saffron said. “Doesn’t she look the same sort of foreign?”
Lucy thought about it a moment, as if it had never occurred to her.
“Is your wife Middle Eastern, Chief Inspector Ortley?”
“No, my father was,” Saffron answered.
“I’m so sorry—did I offend you by that term?” Lucy’s tears were welling up again. “I’m not one of those people who judge by skin color, and I sound as if I am.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, Lucy dear,” Saffron said, but her tone had cooled slightly.
They headed back towards the recreation hall. The bomb site was now crawling with national and regional police and a group of useless-looking suits. Attal seemed far from impressed, and Bish could understand why. A bunch of officials stomping on evidence was the last thing they needed.
“The French policeman’s daughter was on one of the other buses,” Lucy told them. “The Pas de Calais football tour. They used school-aged junior coaches. Marianne Attal was one of them.” Lucy leaned towards Bish, as if Attal could hear her at this distance. “What I would call a piece of work—strutting around as if she owned France itself.”
They watched as Attal almost came to blows with a photographer trying to take a photo of what lay inside the tents surrounding the bus.
“We seem to have done the same route as the French bus, but in reverse.”
Lucy’s phone rang and she cried out, as if it had burnt a hole in her pocket.
“You’re going to have to pull yourself together, Lucy,” Saffron said, losing some of her patience with the girl. She took the phone from her and walked away to answer it.
Bish reached to retrieve the handwritten list from his pocket but realized it was with Attal.
“Can you remember any of those taken to the hospital with minor injuries?” he asked Lucy.
She nodded. “Amy Jacobs.”
Bish found the number of the hospital and rang it. He was put on with Amy’s mother, spoke to her briefly, and then asked for one of the embassy staff. A woman named Carmody warmed to him after he gave her a quick but thorough rundown on what was taking place at the campground, and in return she told him they were dealing with ten injured kids. Four were serious. Two had lost limbs and one had lost an eye. Prepare for the worst, she told him, and Bish couldn’t get those words out of his head. He learnt that more embassy staff were on their way from Paris to the campground.
“SIS will no doubt be there,” Carmody said. “I hope our people arrive first. Intelligence aren’t exactly personable.”
Bish couldn’t imagine Attal escorting British intelligence around, but figured they’d find their way in. He hung up just as they reached the veranda of the recreation hall, where a cluster of older teenagers stood.
Lucy nudged him. “Charlie Crombie,” she murmured.
“Is it true what they’re saying about Violette?” asked a beefy rugby type. A bit of a stupid look on his face. Bish was disappointed that Bee was part of something that had put this Crombie character in charge.
A journalist from Sky News was hovering too close, desperate for any morsel. Someone had no doubt leaked Violette Zidane’s identity.
“You’re worried about her, are you?” Bish said to the boy. He couldn’t help himself.
“She was a slag,” the blockhead said. “I wasn’t going to have Crombie’s crumbs.” He elbowed the boy standing beside him, who didn’t react.
Bish was surprised. This was Charlie Crombie? When Bish was at school, thugs had looked like thugs. Not like this scrawny little bastard with ginger hair that needed a good wash. There was something vacant about Crombie’s stare. Insidious. Over the years Bee had hinted that she might not be interested in boys. Ever. Staring at these lads, all Bish could think was, Thank Christ.
“That’s an ugly word, Mr. Kennington,” Lucy Gilies said to the first boy, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice. “If I ever hear you refer to a girl in such a way again, your parents will be hearing from me.”
“My parents would be calling her a slag too.”
The others around him laughed nervously. But not Crombie. “Is it true what they’re saying about Violette?” he demanded. “Who she is?”
“So Violette didn’t tell you anything about herself?” Bish said.
Crombie shrugged. “Why would she? We were just shagging.”
The girl standing beside Crombie shifted to drape herself over him. Charlie had already moved on. Nothing like a rumor of being a terror suspect to kill a relationship.
Gorman stepped out from inside the recreation hall. The man seemed to be in his element. Bish had met his type before. Disasters gave them purpose, and Gorman wasn’t quite finished playing his part in this tragedy.
“Could you assist me in a matter, Chief Inspector Ortley?”
Charlie Crombie disengaged himself from the girl’s tongue in his ear, his eyes fixed on Bish.
“You’re Ballyntine-Ortley’s father?”