They spent the night at a motel in Calais close to the port. While Bee texted her life away, Bish borrowed her iPad and searched through media from thirteen years ago. If Ahmed Khateb had been living in North London in 2002, someone he knew could have been a victim of the Brackenham bombing. What did Violette mean by calling him a stickybeak? Had Khateb approached her because somehow he had worked out who she was? With a name like Zidane it wouldn’t have been as easy as linking a LeBrac to the bombing, but perhaps a grief-stricken man knew every single detail there was to know about the family whose patriarch had been responsible for Brackenham.
In Bish’s search for names, statements from the injured, death notices, and everything else that was written about back then, he came across the front page of The Guardian, which showed photographs of the twenty-three victims. At one point in his police career, Bish had known the names of them all. Remembered their personal stories. A young mother and her five-year-old son on their way to school. A father of four who worked for the council. An eighteen-year-old lad who was the only child of a couple from Merseyside. Bish stared at the lad’s face. Eternally laughing, without a care in the world. His name caught Bish’s eye. A common name, so he should have put the thought aside, but he couldn’t help a Google search. And at a time when he thought there was no more room for surprises from Noor LeBrac, Bish discovered her biggest one.