The body in the Channel made the news within the hour. Bish was numb as he drove to Dover. There was something about Violette LeBrac Zidane that had seemed unbreakable. Attal had also messaged that the French border police were searching for a second body. Eddie’s father had been contacted and Downing Street wanted confirmation as soon as possible.
Saffron rang just as he was driving onto the ferry. “We saw the news,” she said quietly. “Bee’s here for a couple of days.”
“How’s she reacted?”
“She’s on her i-whatever. Claims she hardly knew the girl.”
Regardless, Bee had spent seven days sharing Violette LeBrac’s room. She had to be feeling something. Was his daughter in shutdown, or was it an apathy that bordered on amorality?
“That poor woman,” Saffron said.
“Eddie Conlon’s mother died last year,” Bish said. “Small mercies.”
“I meant Noor LeBrac.”
“She’s a terrorist.”
“But still a mother.”
“Tell that to the mothers of those who died in Brackenham Street. And Bee’s upstairs on Snapchat or Facebook or whatever the fuck’s in fashion, not giving a shit.”
“Maybe that’s Bee’s way of coping,” Saffron said. “You spent every moment of your school holidays with earphones on, listening to that depressing Jones band. It made me want to slit my wrists.”
“The Smiths,” he corrected.
Attal met Bish at the entrance to the morgue attached to the Centre Hospitalier de Calais. The Frenchman ground out his cigarette and raised his chin in acknowledgment.
“A girl,” he said in his thick accent. “Young. Arabe.”
“ID?”
Attal shook his head. He shoved the door open and they went inside.
“L’oncle. He is coming.”
The mother. The uncle. Regardless of everything the Sarrafs and LeBracs had done, Bish couldn’t get the families out of his head. Eddie Conlon’s father, Violette’s uncle and grandparents. If it was Violette lying in this morgue, Bish was grateful that he wouldn’t be the one to have to tell them.
They stepped into a room and an attendant pulled open a drawer. The last time Bish had been in a morgue was to identify his son’s drowned body. He’d known for sure it was him. There’d been no room for hope, only the sort of certainty that could kill a man.
Attal waited just behind him. The capitaine had never interviewed Violette. Bish knew he’d hardly had a good look at her, except in the photos from the trip that the media were using.
Bish studied the girl lying on the slab, his stomach churning. An overwhelming sense of relief came over him, mixed with a sickening sadness. He shook his head.
“Again,” the Frenchman ordered. “Look again.”
Bish tugged at his own hair. “Violette. Light.” He pointed to his shoulder. “Up to here.” This girl’s hair was longer and darker.
They heard shouting outside the room and exchanged a look. Attal walked out with Bish close behind. In the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor they saw Jamal Sarraf hurrying towards them, his presence filling the narrow space.
“Where is she?”
Bish heard the anguish. Felt it. Attal stepped in front of Sarraf, who shoved past him. It took both Bish and Attal to hold him against the wall.
“Ce n’est pas Violette.”
But Sarraf refused to listen to Attal.
“It’s not her!” Bish said.
Sarraf shrugged free. “I need to see for myself.”
When Bish knew his son was dead, he had still needed to see. He’d needed to see so he wouldn’t believe that Stevie was there at every corner, every doorway, in the backseat of his car, at the dinner table, in his room, at his school, on the football field.
So they let Sarraf go and he followed the attendant into the room. Bish waited in the stark white corridor with Attal.
“Investigation?” Bish asked, hoping it sounded like the French equivalent.
Attal shook his head, a look of bitterness on his face.
“DGSI,” Attal said. “La sécurité intérieure.”
From what Bish knew, the DGSI was French intelligence answering to the Minister of the Interior. That meant Attal was no longer handling the case, and was here today only because dead refugees in the Channel fell under his jurisdiction.
Bish thought of the makeshift camps along the port of Calais, and wondered if the girl in the morgue belonged to anyone in them. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister or niece or neighbor. Someone who had given her father grief. Someone who believed that swimming over a treacherous Channel would lead to a better life. Now Bish wanted to find this girl’s people. He wanted to find Violette LeBrac. All of them. Because who were they if they couldn’t protect their children?
Outside the hospital, Sarraf stumbled to the side of the gravel driveway and threw up in a flower bed. Bish and Attal watched through a cloud of Attal’s cigarette smoke as Sarraf stood up straight, took a deep breath.
Attal put out his cigarette and went to leave, then changed his mind, turned back, and demanded something of Sarraf.
Sarraf shook his head. “Dites-moi pourquoi?” he wanted to know.
The only word Bish understood was “why.” “What’s he’s asking?” he said to Sarraf. He looked at Attal. Although the Frenchman was reluctant to speak, he didn’t walk away.
“He wants to know if I’ve heard of a man named Ahmed Khateb,” Sarraf said. “An Algerian. He was the driver of Attal’s daughter’s bus.”
Bish looked back at Attal. “Pourquoi?”
Attal hesitated before responding.
“Because Khateb’s nowhere to be found,” Sarraf translated.
The French captain walked off to his car. Sitting on the hood was a tall girl around Bee’s age, all lanky arms and legs. Marianne Attal, Bish guessed. Rust-colored hair untidily pulled back in a ponytail. Prominent facial features. She wore denim shorts, cowboy boots, and attitude. When her father approached she fired out something rapid at him. It gave Bish some relief that the French were getting as much of a hammering from their kids as he was. Until she jumped from the hood and reached her father, linking her arm in his.
France 1. England 0.
The girl got into the car, staring back at Bish with a good healthy glare of dislike. She looked shifty. Bish had received two warnings about her so far. Did she know something about the bombing? Was her father covering up for her? Was that the reason for Attal’s being taken off the case?
Walking back to his own car, Bish felt a firm grip on his upper arm. Sarraf.
“Make sure someone tells my sister it’s not Violette.”
Bish tried to shrug free. “Someone will,” he said.
“No. You make sure,” Sarraf said forcefully. “We made a pact. If something ever happened to Violette, we’d end it.”
Bish felt a shudder go through him. Hadn’t he made the same vow on his way to Calais last week? He finally pulled free and got into his car, but Sarraf was hammering at the window.
“You make sure someone tells Noor that Violette’s not the dead girl in the water.”
When Grazier rang for an update, Bish told him, “A name’s come up. Ahmed Khateb, driver of the French bus.”
“Motive?”
“Attal hasn’t let on much, but it seems Khateb’s disappeared.”
“Then we’ve got a suspect?”
“Looks like it.”
“Anything else?”
“Sarraf wants you to let his sister know it wasn’t Violette’s body, sooner rather than later.”
“You can go see her as soon as you’re back,” Grazier said. “LeBrac will be grateful to the bearer of good news and you may be able to find out more from her.”
“The prison won’t appreciate us turning up whenever we want,” Bish said.
“The home secretary is making the decisions there, not the guards,” Grazier said. “Push LeBrac. If anyone knows where her daughter’s heading, she does.”