Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil (36 page)

He also learnt from the letters that Violette was clever and wanted to be a doctor, and she loved her animals and was enjoying netball because for the first time she was allowed to be on a team. That she had become obsessed with her father’s death and wrote to Scotland Yard each time she remembered something new about the day Etienne died. That she swore way too much because she was used to being with the workers on the farm. That she knew very little about the world outside the town she lived in. That she spoke Arabic, French and English. And that she was going on a camp that year. To Tasmania.

So Eddie went searching for Violette. He couldn’t find her on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or anywhere else. The only Violette Zidane he came across was in a local paper called
The Daily Advertiser
. She played centre in a junior netball competition in the Riverina, New South Wales. So he found the name and address of the netball club and sent her a letter. He kept it short in case it never reached her.

Dear Violette,

My name is Eddie Conlon and I think you’re my sister. If you get this, my email is [email protected]

Yours sincerely,

Eddie Conlon

One month later he received an email from [email protected]

Dear Eddie,

This is Violette. Yes, I am your sister. I’ve thought of you every day since you were born, and I will think of you every day until I die. (Not to be dramatic or anything.) I’ve attached a photograph of myself. Do we look the same? It doesn’t matter if we don’t. I hope for your sake you don’t have my hair.

Love, Violette

And from that time on, they hadn’t stopped emailing each other. Twice, three, four times a day. The first time they Skyped she bawled her eyes out. The second time, he did. They talked about everything. Like music and the fact that he wanted to be a DJ, and she wanted to be a doctor and her netball team had a chance of winning the grand final for the first time ever. Everyone said she was a bitch, but a good centre had to be.

During that time, his dad got a bit better. He started cooking dinner, getting the mail. It made Eddie happy because he had thought things would never be normal again. But one night he could see that his father, who had fallen asleep in the armchair, was having a nightmare. ‘It’s okay, Da,’ he said, nudging him. ‘It’s Eddie. It’s okay.’ And Eddie would never forget the next moment. The way his da opened his eyes and flinched. Cringed.

‘Get away from me.’

So. That was the real truth, then. His father had only ever put up with him because of his mum. He actually thought Eddie was a monster, just like people said Louis Sarraf was when he blew up our Jimmy and the others.

When he Skyped Violette that night he told her, and she said it killed her to see him so sad. He knew by the look on her face she was up to something.

‘What are you thinking, Violette?’

‘I’m going to have to miss out on Duke of Ed camp,’ she said in a determined voice.

‘Why?’ He knew how much Duke of Ed meant to her. It had a lot to do with the other father, Etienne.

‘Because I’m coming there to be with you.’

Bish arrived at Holloway on Saturday afternoon with no visiting order and no clearance from Grazier. But his find last night was burning a hole in his head. Added to that was the news that Khateb had lived in North London at the time of the bombing. As far as Bish was concerned, he had reason enough to talk his way in.

Gray was nowhere to be seen at his hole in the wall. Bish identified himself to the guard and said he was here on his ongoing Home Office business, and was surprised by the startled look in the man’s eyes.

‘That was quick,’ the guard muttered.

Bish was even more confused when he was taken straight to the acting governor’s office. Sitting there with Eleanor Cook were Gray, his younger sidekick, Farrington, a female guard whose nametag identified her as Vasquez, and Allison from the Visitors’ Centre. They seemed alarmed to see him there. Nevertheless, he was invited to sit down.

‘Everyone’s off sick these days,’ the acting governor said once he was seated. She had misapplied lipstick around her mouth. ‘We were short-handed.’

He looked from one to the other of them. ‘And I’m being told this because . . .?’

Eleanor Cook cleared her throat. ‘A woman visiting an inmate this morning claimed to recognise Violette LeBrac and a younger boy in the visits hall.’

He stared at her. ‘Violette and Eddie were here? Visiting Noor LeBrac?’

‘We haven’t confirmed that, but the visits hall was understaffed this morning.’

‘Lorna here had to help out,’ Farrington chimed in. ‘She usually works in the mailroom and probably didn’t know what she should be doing.’

‘Just the two of them, on their own?’ Bish asked Farrington, who seemed the one to break. ‘They just walked up to the visits hall and popped in to see Violette’s mum?’

Farrington didn’t seem to know how to answer this without looking at Gray.

‘A Mr Bilal Lelouche came visiting,’ Allison answered for him, handing Bish a printout of the visitors’ log.

‘Who’s he?’ Bish asked.

‘A LeBrac family friend,’ Allison said.

‘We spoke to Noor LeBrac after the report was made,’ Cook said. ‘She told us that Mr Lelouche visits every year, after Ramadan. We checked previous years’ records and confirmed it.’

‘Ramadan ended almost a month ago,’ Bish said.

Cook was irritated. ‘Yes, we know that, Chief Inspector Ortley. Apparently, out of respect for what’s happening with LeBrac’s daughter, he held off this year. According to the records, he did the same thing today he always has. He brought along two of his kids —’

‘Names and ages?’ Bish asked.

Farrington had found his voice again. ‘We asked for his ID, as we do all adult visitors.’

‘But you didn’t check the IDs of his children?’ Bish said.

Cook indicated the printout of the visitors’ log. ‘It says here they were Fatima and Anwar, seventeen and fourteen years old.’

Bish took a deep breath.

‘I’d say it’s unlikely that Violette LeBrac and the boy were actually here,’ the acting governor said, looking at the others. They, of course, nodded in agreement.

‘It was probably some racist who made the claim because she thinks they all look the same,’ Gray said.

Bish wondered how long they’d spent getting their story right. ‘Let me see the security cameras,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s all there in black and white.’

‘We’ve already looked,’ Cook said. ‘The images aren’t clear enough to make confirmation.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

Cook already had the footage downloaded to her computer. Bish stared at the screen where Bilal Lelouche and the children were visible. The girl was wearing a hijab and the boy an Arsenal beanie. They were quite obviously avoiding the security camera.

‘It’s them,’ he said.

‘How can you be sure?’ Cook asked.

‘Because I’ve met them,’ Bish said. ‘My question is, how could this happen? Two kids of Middle Eastern appearance wander into the Visitors’ Centre, and no one takes the time to check them out?’

‘So now we’re going to intimidate every single teenager of Middle Eastern appearance who walks through those gates?’ Cook demanded.

‘No,’ Bish said with forced patience. ‘You’re going to interview every single teenager of Middle Eastern appearance who visits Noor LeBrac.’

‘The girl offered to take off her hijab for security,’ said Farrington. ‘But Lorna said we wouldn’t want any trouble from the bleeding hearts who think they have a right to be covered.’

Vasquez shot Farrington a dark look, but Bish was unimpressed with all of them. ‘Can I see you in private?’ he asked the acting governor.

Cook dismissed the others and Bish waited until the door had closed behind them. ‘Gray’s lying. He let this happen and you’re protecting him. You’ve done Noor LeBrac a favour and that’s not going to look good for you.’

‘You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she snapped. ‘Gray is merely backing his two officers. He wasn’t there when Lelouche came through with the kids. Farrington is less experienced and Lorna doesn’t even handle visits. It’s mayhem here in the mornings.’

Bish wasn’t buying any of it. ‘You’re lying too, for Noor LeBrac.’

‘I don’t give a damn about Noor LeBrac! As far as I’ve heard, there’s no love lost between her and Gray either. She’s complained about him in the past and he’s been known to use a choice word or two about her. I can assure you no one’s done anyone a favour here, Chief Inspector Ortley. It was a mistake for us not to have interviewed Bilal Lelouche and those kids, but that’s all it was. A mistake. Not a conspiracy.’

Bish didn’t believe for a moment that the guards hadn’t bothered to question the teenage visitors. Whatever else they were, Holloway’s guards had never struck him as incompetent. ‘I want to see her,’ he said.

‘No.’ Now Eleanor Cook’s voice was cool. ‘A visit hasn’t been sanctioned by the Home Office, so you’ll have to organise it like everyone else. You’re not calling on a neighbour for afternoon tea, Chief Inspector. There’s a number you can call to get a visitor’s pass.’

‘Well, how about you let it slide that there’s no paperwork sanctioned by the Home Office, and I won’t mention the fact that your guards think all people of Middle Eastern appearance look the same, and have let two at-risk teenagers walk out of your prison.’

Noor was waiting for him. He could tell the difference in her instantly; she’d seen her children. The happiness lingered.

‘Where are they?’ he asked, keeping his voice even, and when she didn’t respond he said, ‘I made it possible for you to see your brother. I
brought
him here so he could find your kids.’

‘What is it you want?’ she asked. ‘Gratitude?’

Yes, he did. The realisation hit him in the gut and made him feel like a pathetic needy kid. He was furious at being left out. Left behind. A boy in the playground crying, ‘I thought you were both my friends.’

‘Do you want me on my knees?’ she asked. ‘Are you like those arsehole screws at the last place who wouldn’t give me my daughter’s letters unless I gave them something in return?’

He felt as if she’d slapped him. ‘Damn you for saying that.’

‘As if you care what I think of you.’

‘Why can’t you fucking trust me?’ he shouted.

‘Because you think I’m a monster!’ she shouted back.

And regardless of his anger, all Bish wanted was not to ruin the beauty of her day with the son and daughter she hadn’t seen for thirteen years.

‘I know who the Conlons are,’ he said, sitting down. ‘I know about their son. James Edward Conlon. Eighteen years old. He’d been in London for a couple of months, working on a construction site around the corner from Brackenham Street.’ Bish had spent the previous night trying to fathom the mentality of the people on both sides of the Brackenham tragedy. ‘Why would you give Eddie to people who could so easily have hated him?’

She held his eyes but he couldn’t read hers.

‘Some people get hate mail in jail,’ she finally said. ‘Some get proposals. I got Anna Conlon. Hers were the only letters the authorities passed on to me before I “confessed”. Maybe they didn’t want to deny a woman who had lost her son in the bombing. She needed to understand why her boy died. I had no answer, and she didn’t deserve my theories or whatnot. She wanted her boy back and I couldn’t give her that. Perhaps it was something in my reply that made her write again, that led her to believe I had nothing to do with Brackenham.’

She bit her lip to stop it from trembling.

‘And we just continued writing to each other. Apart from Etienne, Anna was my only link to the outside world. Mostly, she wrote about her boy. “Our Jimmy,” they called him. I wrote about Etienne and Violette and Jamal and my mother. By the time I gave birth to Eddie I felt as if I knew Jimmy Conlon, as if I’d grown up alongside him. When you make a decision not to give your baby to family, you make damn sure about the people you hand him over to.’

‘So why not your husband’s parents, since they were taking Violette?’

She looked away. ‘My mother-in-law had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She was only in her fifties so it was a bit of a surprise. That’s why Etienne was in Australia without us when Brackenham happened. To help his father on the farm. So the idea of giving her a baby to care for seemed cruel. But worse than that was what happened to Violette after Etienne died. His parents flew to England to take Violette and Etienne’s body back home with them. Violette had been placed in foster care for a couple of nights, and a whole lot of well-meaning people had collected clothing for this poor destitute child whose father had left her freezing on the dales. Except some base repulsive subhuman laced a cardigan with acid and it burnt her little arms. And I knew then that there was no way to protect my children from other people’s rage and insanity. I had to give them anonymity. The Conlons had moved away from Merseyside because they couldn’t handle the memories, or the scrutiny. Who better to give my son to than a couple who had raised a beautiful lad like Jimmy Conlon? It’s why we decided on the name Eddie. Edouard, for my grandfather, and Edward for Anna’s father.