Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (11 page)

His much younger wife put a cautionary hand on his arm. ‘Ian,’ was all she said, softly. Down the corridor, a doctor exited a ward and headed for the lift. Parker went after her, leaving Bish with the insipid Katherine Barrett-Parker. Moments later, they could hear Parker yelling at the doctor down the corridor.

‘Lola is his youngest, and the only one of his children who gives him the time of day,’ Katherine finally said. ‘Arrogance is one thing. Mixed with heartbreak it’s lethal.’

Not quite insipid. Just grief-stricken.

‘Can you do something about the press?’ she asked. ‘Sometimes my husband and I need fresh air. Apparently the Pakistani mother is frightened to step outside as well.’

Bish was going to point out that the Bagchi family were originally from Bangladesh, but decided not to make an enemy of Katherine Barrett-Parker. When her husband’s shouting grew worse she excused herself and went to rescue the doctor.

Two rooms and another world away was Manoshi and her family. Manoshi had qualified for one of the travel grants the Bengali community in Spitalfields provided for their youngest and brightest in public housing. Her mother was inconsolable as they took Manoshi away for another set of tests. The girl’s hair was half shaved, her arm bandaged and the hand missing. Sadia Bagchi told Bish she’d spent the past three nights on a stretcher bed in her daughter’s room, weeping.

But your child’s alive, he wanted to say to her. He asked about her husband instead.

‘We have four other children at home. He needs to be with them. He needs to work.’ Her Bengali accent sang him a sad tune. Of something more than pain for her daughter.

‘It was my pride,’ she said bitterly. ‘I demanded that my husband let her go to France. He is very protective, but I shamed him. “Do you want our clever daughter selling cucumbers at the markets like her clever father?’’ I asked him.’

She met his eyes across her daughter’s empty bed. ‘Who would do this to our children, sir? Who would be so cruel?’

Bish had been asked that question too many times over the years, and could never find the right response.

They spoke for a little while longer about the other students before he left to look in on Fionn Sykes. Bish had found out little about him from Bee, but the papers had profiled all the injured kids. Despite losing part of his left leg from below the knee, his injury was simple compared to Manoshi’s and Lola’s, and he seemed to be healing better than the others. Bish had no idea how the boy was faring mentally, except that according to Sadia Bagchi he was pining for his mother.

Bish knocked at his door and went in. A rather plain face looked up at him from the bed. ‘I’m Bee’s father,’ he said. ‘She sends her best,’ he lied.

‘She’s not hurt then?’ Fionn asked.

‘One of the lucky ones.’

‘That’s a relief.’ A twist of a smile transformed his face.

Bish made small talk. The kid was quiet, unassuming. Just a few minutes in his presence and Bish was already a fan. Fionn seemed to be an old soul, which would no doubt have made him an outcast among the likes of Crombie and Kennington.

‘Well, I won’t keep you,’ Bish said after a while. ‘Just thought I’d say hello.’

‘I haven’t really spoken to anyone in days,’ Fionn said. ‘The nurses and doctors are kind but it’s hard to communicate.’

Bish figured it was an invitation to stay, so he sat down in the chair beside the bed.

‘What about the others, sir?’ Fionn asked, a flicker of pain on his face. Bish couldn’t tell whether it was physical or from the memory of what happened. ‘I know about Mac and Serge, the bus driver. They won’t bring me newspapers or a TV yet, but I know someone died here on the first night. I can’t understand much because they speak so fast, but I saw one of the nurses crying.’

Bish nodded gently. It felt like an insult to deny the deaths. ‘Michael Stanley and Astrid Copely,’ he said. ‘And a Spanish girl called Lucia Ortez.’

Tears sprang to the boy’s eyes and he gave a ragged sigh before composing himself. ‘They were younger than me, Michael and Astrid. Fifteen, I think.’

‘Did you know them well?’

‘No. But I remember that his great-grandfather was buried in the Bayeux War Cemetery. Michael played the last post there on his harmonica. Astrid was getting her braces off when she got back from France. I heard her telling him one day.’

Fionn Sykes seemed to take notice of people in a way that others, including Bee, didn’t.

‘Lola and Manoshi are just down the corridor, of course,’ Bish said.

‘Yes, their mothers have popped their heads in once or twice. And I worked out that if I was here, anyone sitting close to where I was would be too. I’m not sure they’re being honest about how badly those two are hurt.’

‘Well . . . Manoshi lost a hand, and her left eardrum has been severely damaged. Lola’s lost an eye and has a broken arm.’

‘I did know that much,’ Fionn said. Then, ‘Lola and Manoshi were like those two guys in
The Muppets
. A running commentary on everything.’ He looked a little guilty. ‘Everyone thought they were pretty annoying.’

Was that how Bee felt? Guilty that people she didn’t like or who annoyed her had ended up with such horrific injuries?

The phone buzzed on the bedside table. The boy reached for it awkwardly and put it down again.

‘It’s the newest iPhone,’ he said. ‘An anonymous donation with a 200-quid credit so I get to speak to my mum whenever I want.’

‘Have you seen her?’

Fionn shook his head.

‘Will she be arriving soon?’

‘We’re from Newcastle way.’ He grimaced. ‘We can’t afford this. Private rooms and all.’

‘I don’t think you have to worry about hospital fees for the time being, Fionn.’

‘And if my mum was to come, she’d have to find a place to stay near the hospital and that costs money too, and she doesn’t speak a word of French. She’s never travelled outside our village.’

Bee had never had to worry about where the next fiver was coming from. As a barrister, Rachel earned more than Bish and they’d lived comfortably.

‘She doesn’t drive,’ Fionn mumbled.

Bish regretted mentioning his mother. The boy was forced to make excuses and it was none of his business. ‘What do you hope to do with yourself after next year?’ he asked to change the subject, although he’d hated that question more than any other at Fionn’s age.

‘It’s between reading history or theology at Cambridge. I’m going for a scholarship.’

‘Theology?’

The boy seemed amused by Bish’s reaction. ‘I get all the criticism about religion, you know, Mr Ortley. But the thing is, you can’t take it away from people and not leave something else of substance. That’s what your generation will be remembered for. Taking so much away and replacing it with so little of worth.’

Seventeen going on seventy.

‘I don’t want to hit you when you’re down, Fionn,’ Bish said, ‘but I think your generation is going to be known for being the least useful at anything except ticking likes on Facebook.’

‘Cruel words, sir,’ Fionn mocked. ‘Only this morning the nurse let me look at my Facebook page on her phone, and I was feeling heartened by the hundred and fifty likes for the words “Get well soon”.’

But the mockery was bitter. ‘My leg’s been blown off and someone writes, “Get well soon” as if I’ve just had my tonsils out.’

Bish was grateful to Fionn for bringing up the elephant in the room. He could see the tears threatening to spill. Bee got vicious if Bish ever caught her crying.
Sod off, Dad. I don’t have to share every thought that goes through my head.

‘ Sometimes people who care about us say all the wrong things for all the right reasons,’ Bish said. ‘How bad’s the pain?’

‘I get asked that question every half-hour by the nurses,’ Fionn said. ‘Can you ask me something else?’

‘Talk to me about the other kids on the bus then.’

‘I know the chaperones probably said we were a rubbish lot, and all that talk about Violette . . .’ Fionn shrugged.

Bish thought of the rumours circling around Violette and a number of the boys on the bus. Had Fionn been one of them?

‘Did you fancy her?’

Fionn was surprised by the question. ‘Violette only had time for Eddie Conlon. And Crombie, of course.’

‘You didn’t like her?’

‘It wasn’t that. On the first day she made a name for herself when she punched Charlie Crombie. I thought she did it for attention, but it scared people off and I realised that was exactly what she wanted. To be left alone.’ Fionn thought about it a moment, his face aflame. ‘I don’t know how the two of them ended up . . . I heard her talking to Eddie Conlon about me. “I know his type,” she said, “I’ll bet you the dickhead asks who our favourite Doctor is.”’ A blush crawled up Fionn’s face again, and reached his ears. It seemed Violette had guessed right.

‘I was obsessed with Tom Baker,’ Bish told him. ‘Even wore the long scarf, much like every other nincompoop in the seventies. It’s pretty obvious who everyone’s favourite Doctor is.’

Fionn laughed, and again his face was transformed.

‘She called me a dickhead as well,’ Bish added.

‘In here,’ Fionn said pointing to his heart, ‘Violette was tough. Revealed nothing. As girls go, she’s probably up there in the category of don’t-even-think-of-it-unless-you’re-insane, like Charlie Crombie.’

‘Do you have someone back home?’ Bish asked.

The boy shrugged, his cheeks and ears instantly red again. ‘Not really,’ he mumbled. ‘There was a girl from school. We were just flirting.’

Flirting didn’t appear to conjure up great memories for the lad.

‘Tell me about Charlie Crombie.’

Fionn seemed relieved at the change in conversation. ‘He used to be a student at my school. We were both bluecoat scholarship students, but our paths never crossed. I suppose you know of the cheating thing?’

Bish nodded.

‘I heard him tell Rodney Kennington that he had to repeat a whole history unit at his new school, and that they were going to accept the trip as one of his assignments.’

Fionn was pensive a moment. ‘The thing with Crombie is that he was hands down the leader.’

‘Was there a need for one?

‘Always.’

‘A bullying cheat? That was everyone’s only option?’

‘Yes. If he hadn’t established hierarchy, he’d have been at the mercy of the other year elevens. He said he could smell the weakness in their piss from a mile away. The only two who had balls were “the alpha bitches”. Violette and – pardon me, sir – your daughter. The rest of us were his minions.’

Yes indeed. Bee came from a long line of alpha bitches on both sides of the tree.

‘You liked being one of his minions?’

Fionn laughed again. ‘It was a strange sort of fun. I’m better as a follower, except I was almost wetting my pants half the time Crombie suggested something to the group. It was mostly getting back at the French kids. The French police captain’s daughter is another one you don’t want to cross. Sometimes it got vicious.’

Fionn looked up at Bish, as if working something out for the first time. ‘Crombie’s a bit bent, you know. He sees things at a tilt. It’s why Violette made sense to him. Everything about her screamed different to the rest of us. Nothing matched. Her accent. Her name. Her face and her hair. She was pretty intense.’ He sighed. ‘It’s hard not to think of her as anything but the Brackenham bomber’s granddaughter, now that I know that.’

‘And the Eddie thing?’

‘I heard someone say his mother died, not even a year ago. But I don’t know, they seemed to just get each other.’

‘Did you feel that she was hiding something?’

‘Weren’t we all?’

Was Bee hiding something, apart from her sorrow? ‘What were you hiding, Fionn?’ Bish asked softly instead.

Another flash of pain in his expression. ‘The girl I’d been hanging out with, we board together at Ashcroft. She came home to Newcastle with me at Easter. My best mate too. It was pretty awful. They hooked up in the end. Came back to school and spread stuff around about my mum. I think I miss being friends with him more than the idea of her, but it was a bad term and I thought the holidays would be even worse, knowing they were together. So the tour made sense.’

Fionn seemed embarrassed by his disclosure. ‘If you tell me that my time will come at university, sir, I’ll have to ask you to leave.’

Bish laughed. ‘I was a social twat at university, so I’d never lull you into a false sense of security.’

Fionn grew pensive again. ‘He’s a smart one, that Crombie. Don’t know why he cheated on that exam. He didn’t have to, you know.’

Was the truth behind the bombing to be found in a hidden part of Fionn’s memory? This boy who noticed the not so obvious? Bish would love to know what he had observed of Bee, but talking about her seemed a betrayal.

A nurse came in to check Fionn’s blood pressure and Bish thought it was a good time to leave.

‘Mr Ortley,’ Fionn called out when he was at the door.

Bish waited, but Fionn didn’t speak again until the nurse had left.

‘It would be easy for people to hate Violette because she belongs to that family, but regardless, she didn’t hand out sexual favours on the bus. I think it’s wrong that they’re saying things about her that aren’t true. It’s just wrong.’

Elliot rang him when he was on the M20 heading home. ‘Every time I turn on my TV or open a paper, there you are.’

‘What is it you want, Elliot?’

‘Layla Bayat. She’s a connection to the Sarrafs and could have information about Violette and Eddie. Grazier wants us to speak to her.

‘Good luck with that, Elliot, but you and me aren’t an us.’

‘We are if the Home Secretary says we are.’