Bish’s headache didn’t like the word “fool.” The pain pounded back its response and made him giddy. Pity she didn’t appreciate that her daughter trusted Bish enough to ring him. He opened the file Grazier had given him. “There’s been a development,” he managed to grind out. He filled her in on the driver of the French bus.
“That’s all you’ve got?” she said. “The fact that he’s Algerian? Would he be a suspect if his name were John Smith and not Ahmed Khateb? Would a German bus driver arguing with a Spaniard be a suspect?”
“He was caught on CCTV arguing with your daughter and now he’s disappeared. That’s why he’s a suspect.” Bish handed her a photograph of Khateb. “Do you recognize this man?”
She shook her head in disgust. “I married an Australian whose mother is Algerian and you think I’m going to know every one of her countrymen? You people are so ignorant.”
He counted to three, to stop himself from telling her to fuck off. “Just look at it, please!”
She looked at it again and pushed it away. “Yes. The spitting image of the Algerian spice man at our Saturday markets. Has to be him.”
Bish’s hand snaked out to grip her wrist across the table, dragging her closer.
“A bit of fucking humility would work a charm here.”
“I don’t do humility,” she said, pulling free of him. “Because I’ve met very few people in the past thirteen years who have humbled me.” She stood up. “And I won’t tolerate the profanities.”
“You’re in a fucking jail, Noor. You take whatever is dished out to you. Including profanities.”
“I think we’re finished here,” she said.
“Off you go, then. Let someone else take care of your kids. You should be used to it by now.” He stumbled out of his chair.
“You’re going to faint,” he heard her say.
“I’m not prone to fainting.”
He came to, lying on the floor with his feet up on something soft. Her face was the first thing he saw. During his sleepless moments deep in the night he often thought of her mouth. The freckle on her bottom lip. What he’d like to do with it. And here he was laid out on the ground like a pathetic drunk at her feet. His humiliation could get no worse.
Gray was beside LeBrac. “Keep the ice pack on the bump and don’t let him fall asleep. His mother’s coming to collect him,” he said before disappearing from view.
Yet there it was. A further descent.
“I black out for a minute and they call my next of kin? Haven’t they got better things to do?”
“You’ve been out for longer than that,” Noor said. “Gray’s not happy about the paperwork.”
She moved the ice pack on his temple and he flinched, grabbing for her hand to shift it.
“You hit your head on the table on the way down,” she said, and her voice was almost gentle. “And they didn’t call your mother, they called the home secretary’s office. The ubiquitous Samuel Grazier called your mother and your mother called here.”
His head made it hard to think clearly. “You know Grazier?”
“Intriguing woman, your mother,” she said, ignoring his question.
Bish tried to sit up too quickly. She pointed back to the floor. “You’re going to faint again. Try to believe me this time.”
“You spoke to my mother?” he asked. Had Noor LeBrac infiltrated all the women in his life?
“Apparently, Gray—he of the matching name and nature—wasn’t impressing her at all, so she asked to speak to the person in the room with the highest IQ.” Noor was enjoying herself. The slightest ghost of a smile on her face.
Beside her lay Grazier’s file. Also his wallet, opened, its contents displayed as if she had been going through them. There was nothing much in there. License. Couple of business cards. Forty quid. An Oyster card. Credit card. A photo of him with his children taken three years ago. The last shot taken of Stevie. Noor studied it and sighed with a depth of sadness and grief that played with his head. As everything with this woman did.
“People keep telling me I’ll get over it,” he found himself saying. “I don’t want to get over my son.”
She took one of his business cards and pocketed it before handing back the wallet. But not the file. “All those years ago I never got to read what the press scrounged up about me.”
The file contained not just interviews but clippings from the time of the bombing. He didn’t want her reading them. Even the more reputable newspapers had gone for the knee-jerk headlines and it was Noor who copped the worst. Long before she confessed, she’d already been found guilty by the media. As well as by him. They had often made a play on her name. “Noor,” meaning “light.” So they spoke of the darkness within.
She opened the file and removed an article. “‘Cold and driven,’” she read out.
He tried to retrieve it from her, but she held it away.
“A university colleague wrote that,” she said. “Angus Stephenson. But then again I won a university medal and he didn’t.” She scanned another article. “According to Anonymous, I was ‘the least maternal person in the Morphus Street mothers’ group.’” She gave a harsh laugh. “I remember the Anonymous type well. Insignificant twits.”